Hey all! I've never speedrun a game in my life, though I've been a fan of watching others for a while. I've watched 100's of runners and never thought of doing it myself until I caught jay_cee's run of CV2 at AGDQ this past week. It was awesome, informative, funny, and most importantly to me, inspirational. It made me want to pick up a controller and learn to dominate a game I could never beat that I haven't thought about in almost 30 years.

Now that he intro is out of the way, I had a couple questions as a noob (point me in the right direction if these are obvious questions):

1. What's the best way to learn more about CV2 speedrunning? I saw the 1 or 2 videos in the guides section, and I've been catching people's PBs on the board here, but are there other resources where the strategies, techs, glitches that are used are better explained?

2. Should I ever get to the point of actually submitting a speedrun, is running it on an emulator OK? Are there an approved list of devices or emulators somewhere? I saw the rules about no tool assist or memory watching, but other than that, are all emulators fair game?

3. Apologies is this is some streaming/twitch type question, but how do you guys time your runs? What software do you use to accurately time it? Additionally, how do you guys get those cool video overlays that show your time in milestones relative to your own PBs or WR?

4. I saw a discord mentioned around here... can i get access to that?

Thanks for any guidance here, much appreciated!

1 - I'd say the current tutorial out that I made is prob the most informed compilation out atm, granted you can always join the CV discord and ask runners directly in the cv2 channel.

2 - emu is okay, typically FCEUX is wildy accepted and used by alot of people for NES games. I'd def submit a run if you get it down to a point where you feel proud of it, typically I'd say if you can beat the time at last place, that qualifies for acceptance.

3 - We use Livesplit most commonly as a timer, you can find a link to the software under "More-Resources" on top page of SRC.

discord https://discord.gg/HsnhrXP

Hope that helps a bit

wow, didn't expect you guys to respond so quickly, thanks so much! And yes, I've been digging into your tutorial thoroughly! I just know that often in the speedrunning community that recent re-routes or new strategies can significantly impact how one "should" run so I wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something critical, but I guess I'll pick that up watching top level runs when it's actually worth my time to consider other optimisations

I should have mentioned this before, but could you expand on the any% problems with emulators? Is input delay really a concern on a modern PC playing an NES game? I'm totally ignorant on this subject so I'm just curious to learn more.

On a related note, anyone got suggestions on QUALITY usb NES controllers? There's LOTS of options out there, but I don't want one with buttons or a d-pad that suck ass.

freeland is making a hen out of a feather. emu and console is accurate enough to compete with each other, its not a problem at all unless you are used to console. If you are like me, just playing on emulator all day long, you won't know the difference. When it comes to controllers, it is hard to find something good these days, even for the ones people recommend, its typically hit or miss from my experience.

Edit: you have people like prisi for instance whom is a great runner. He did emu runs for years and competed for the top on many games, he recently switched to console because of the input delay emu has and he is doing "better" on console. That being said, you can still achieve great times through emulation rather than investing in full-on console setup from day 1 - only to give up speedrunning within 6 months due to lack of time or interest. I'd say dont worry about it until you feel its time to make the switch.

Thanks for the clarification. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't doomed from the start attempting any% glitches with any consistency on emulator.

If you have any questions feel free to ask, most of us are extremely encouraging and love to see new runners. I'm glad you were inspired to run this game first. I started out with CV2 aa well and it's def one ofmy favorite games/runs