Had some questions, want to be 100% sure when I start running this game properly.

1. There are no rules on the speedrun page, what exactly are the timing requirements? The co-op run just submitted started on choosing level 1, and ended on last hit to Giga Skullmageddon, is that correct? Or is it IGT?

2. Main categories seem to be New Game + but there's also no rule on that. New Game would be a completely different speedrun. Is there any reason to consider that separate from these runs?

You can play Japanese games on a US N64 if you can get a hold of one of the screwdrivers that can open the cartridges, then take the back off of a cheap US cart and put it onto the back of the Japanese cart. No other modding required.

This helps a lot! Didn't realize it was going to be that tricky but I'll be practicing. Thanks!

Back when I first learned the run of this game offstream, double fire was the prevailing method of movement. I'm wanting to take this game seriously now, but having trouble getting fire cancelling down.

The guide describes it as pressing A to inhale, then pressing B twice, once to puff, and once to start another fire attack. But I'm not sure what the correct timing is supposed to be for this. Is there anywhere that shows about what the correct timing to execute a fire cancel is, perhaps with input display?

The issue I'm currently having is I can't seem to get an inhale immediately after the fire attack ends, and then pressing the B button to do the puff or next attack doesn't seem to happen as quickly as the videos show. I'm losing a lot of height and I think it's a timing issue.

Ideally if you're doing pretty well in runs, getting to the point where your PB is sub hour, this would be a reset for you since it'd be pretty rare.

If for some reason you were keen on not resetting, the gem stage that appears on King Knight's stage later in the game offers plenty of cash, and if you want something else quick you can play Plains again--but this would lose a lot of time. If you happened across a music sheet you could sell them before entering the stage as well.

Your other option is to try to play it safe and grab more gold earlier. Breaking easy checkpoints here and there is good, especially if you would otherwise skip it. You may want to consider opening some secret walls with chests or gold while doing your run, to not go too far out of your way and grab some extra money.

It's important to have a gold "route" where you keep rough track of how much money you should have at each stage of the game, and how much is required for major purposes.

Since we have to verify runs, if you start in a NG run it makes the run much easier to verify overall. NG runs always have to play every level but someone with a completed file could slip in a skipped level or something. I'm not saying they would do that but it means with NG+ runs you need to be careful that the runs are legitimate.

I think that if we feel the need to separate it, then it's fine, but a category should only be "main" if it has more community interest, keeping in mind of course that the top 3 times all use NG. But keeping it on the same leaderboard doesn't seem to hurt anything either since there isn't that much time lost or gained in menus. The game is RNG and speed heavy so the time gained by not mashing textboxes here or there is completely arbitrary, and is not going to change anyone's position on the leaderboard just because they had to mash or didn't have to mash.

Pretty much the way to delete the save data is to go into whatever your savegame data is for the console or profile--it varies based on what system you're using of course, then find the save data for PPT and delete it.

Switch makes it easy since you can have speedrun stuff on its own profile and erasing it doesn't have detrimental effects.

I leave it on because S2 does, even though it technically would lose time over using a prebaked file.

But still doesn't really answer the question of whether you need to start with a new file or not since that doesn't seem to be answered and it varies from person to person.

I figured out how to clear my save data, but my initial question still holds--is it necessary to clear the data before a run? Not clearing it is obviously a bit faster, and on 100%/130% categories it would make tracking to see that 3 stars were collected on each level much more difficult for run verification.

Noticed a few runners are starting with clean files and some are not--was wondering whether it matters to run from a clean file or one that is already existent (as this might need to be clarified)

And then for people who hvae cleared the data--I have a J copy of the game and can't read so I'm curious how exactly you delete the save data in the settings if that is required.

The most affordable and versatile card available now is probably the Elgato Game Capture HD. It supports Composite/Component and HDMI capture with HDMI passthrough. It uses USB 2.0, so it does have a 2.5-3 second delay of video on the computer from what's on the TV but that doesn't matter so much. Supports up to 1080p30 capture; I think it is limited to 30 fps capture on all inputs, but not sure.

Either way, without going for a much cheaper card, such as the I-O Data GVUSB2 or the Dazzle DV100, both of which are limited to composite/s-video inputs and much lower resolutions, the Elgato Game Capture HD is pretty much the most bang for your buck if a bit flawed.

There is of course a way to speedrun Bust-A-Move 4, just play it how you want to, and time it. I plan on running it as well and will create a leaderboard then if it hasn't been already.

So I noticed something that seems to happen after completing a run today--apparently when trying to save on the stage select after completing the 100% collection, the save button just doesn't work. It doesn't save and for some reason pressing it does nothing. The only way to save after 100% is to enter a stage and save that way. Given that, is there something else we should end time on?

"All Items" certainly works and I feel that the save with all Items collected makes sense on where to end the run.

No idea on how 100% would be defined since there isn't any counter apart from the items, or if there is any way to define it.

If we could add all items and low% at least, will try to have some runs go up in those categories pretty soon.

I have found a way to remove text from the game--which at the moment does act against some of the point of speedrunning.

But if you wanted to practice the game with text boxes that are empty and therefore waste less time, here are the steps that I used to get rid of them:

1. Go to the font folder inside the folder where the game is installed--usually C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Pharaoh Rebirth\data\font
2. Use Notepad++ to edit the file called "dial_en.txt" -- this contains all of the English text
3. Press Ctrl+F and click the Replace tab
4. Under the "search mode" box, select "Regular Expression"
5. In "Find what" type ^$¤[^#]¤ That string of characters tells Notepad++ to find any lines that optionally start with a $ sign or start with any other character that isn't a # sign. (i.e., all text in the game and special dialogue triggers)
6. Leave "Replace with" blank
7. Click Replace All.
8. Make sure when you save this file you DON'T OVERWRITE the dial_en.txt file. If you do, you won't be able to get the original text back. Instead, save this file as a copy, then any time you want text omitted, backup the dial_en.txt file and replace it with the modified one.
9. Play the game in English to remove the text. This does not stop all dialog triggers or prevent text boxes from popping up, but it makes every dialog session have a single empty text box which pops up and immediately skips itself. Saves several minutes if you go through the game with it.

Shouldn't be used for actual runs, at least I don't think but it does work for practice. Might be able to reach out to Krobon and see if they would be willing to add some feature to clean the text out, but not sure at the moment.

Also, Japanese is the faster language in Pharaoh Rebirth overall, saving somewhere between 50-200 frames (this is determined by the total amount of text in the "dial.txt" and "dial_en.txt" files) in text which is pretty insignficant. It only saves all of those frames if you encounter every text box, which would only happen in 100% runs, which do skip a couple anyway.

Can we get a Low% and 100% Item category on the leaderboard?

I know that this game has very little in the way of runners, but I have done a 100% route and run today-- it looks like a viable category to run.

The reason I say "100% Item Collection" over "100%" is because 100% gets hard to define beyond items. It could include map completion and a "settled" stamp on both the Vegas level and the boss rush. However playing the Vegas level doesn't really offer any benefits since there is nothing collectible on the stage, and the boss rush has a tendency to kill you when you complete it due to some bug, removing any credit you have. I feel that 100% Item Collection fits that bill. Also, I feel that the timing should end on selecting "End Roll" after completing everything since it is at that point that you lose control of your character and selections.

I have not done a low% run but it seems like it might also make sense since the boss fights and movement would change a little bit by omitting some items.

I intend to run these categories anyway for fun but having a leaderboard would be an added bonus.

I had the same question... Doesn't make any sense. I'd like to reach out to the mods and get them combined in some way.

How feasible would it be to try and consolidate the Bust-A-Move/Puzzle Bobble leaderboards so that there's not separate game entries in speedrun.com for games that are essentially identical?

In particular, I know that Bust-A-Move 3: DX, Bust-A-Move 99, and Puzzle Bobble 3 are all the same game and don't have enough differences to warrant different leaderboards.

Same goes with Puzzle Bobble 2, Bust-A-Move 2, Bust-A-Move Again, and Bust-A-Move 2 Arcade Edition. I think some sort of discussion could happen between the mods of the various entries on speedrun.com and something could be worked out to get all of the games into a Puzzle Bobble series leaderboards, so there's not so much overlap. Makes the games have more players overall and could grow our community.

Hi guys,

I don't know how interested anyone else is in this idea, but I'm curious to see if anyone would like to get into a Discord server for runners of the Bust-A-Move/Puzzle Bobble series? I can create a server if there is interest.

Also if possible, I think it would be fun for us to do races of the Bust-A-Move games at some point as possible. The game doesn't have a lot of visibility or much of a community, and might be good for the game in the long run.

Let me know what you think and I'll get ready to set things up if there's plenty of interest.

While I think that would be fun, I think one of the big issues with this is playing online; RNG can easily get out of sync if you have two players playing over the internet, due to latency and lag issues.

Personally I think it would be fun to do some races of BAM2 (or any of the BAM games) but we need more people who stream before we can feasibly do that. Considering this is a speedrun website, competing each other in the form of racing I think is a bit more along the lines of what fits here.

(Could just be me, but speed strats for versus mode and actual human v. human versus mode strats vary a lot and they don't translate well between one another)

I was doing Puzzle Mode attempts recently and realized that I could beat the #1 time, but due to my crappy CPU in my computer there's no way I could've recorded it. I won't submit my run because I can't prove I got an 18:25 (which I did), but I can post my TAS here.

It's really unoptimized because I'm lazy and there's free timesave there for anyone who wants to manipulate RNG or ever so slightly tweak shot placement. Still looks pretty cool though, and is much faster than human capability, especially when using the analog stick over the D-Pad.