As it is known, God of War 1 on PAL (European) and NTSC-J (Japanese) versions has some cutscenes that are censored. These censored cutscenes are shorter than the ones on the original NTSC (American) version, which means runners playing on these versions are at an advantage. Specifically, glitchless runs on the PAL version gain 4.1 seconds compared to the NTSC version, while glitchless runs on the NTSC-J version gain 28.1 seconds. A full list of affected cutscenes is given below.

If you don't know what is the version of your game, the PAL version replaces the human soldier with a monster in the Poseidon's Sacrifice level. The NTSC-J version has all text and voicelines in Japanese, censors all nudity in cutscenes and in the game, has the same censorship on Poseidon's Sacrifice level as the PAL version, and also has a number of other cutscenes that are censored due to violence.

While it is common on many speedrun communities to have a preferred version to play the game, the PAL and NTSC-J versions of GoW1 don't affect gameplay at all and only gain time due to the censored cutscenes. The existence of these versions creates an accessibility challenge, where runners are forced to play on a different version (which often requires jailbreaking their console and downloading illegal copies of the game) just to acquire a seemingly artificial advantage that doesn't change at all the way the run is played.

Therefore, we have decided to compensate for this difference by adding to the final run time the amount of time that was gained by using a censored version of the game. This way all runners are at an equal playing field and no one gains any advantage due to having a different version of the game.

The affected cutscenes are:

• Boat cutscene: 4.75s gained on NTSC-J
• Minotaur introduction: 0.26s gained on NTSC-J
• Saving the Oracle: 1.21s gained on NTSC-J
• End of Challenge of Atlas: 2.64s gained on NTSC-J
• Sacrifice: 4.13s gained on both PAL and NTSC-J
• Harpy cutscene on Cliffs of Madness: 14.68s gained on NTSC-J
• Death of Kratos: 0.51s gained on NTSC-J

The total time gained in each category:

• All full-game glitchless categories: 4.13s on PAL, 28.18s on NTSC-J
• Any% NG+: 19.43s on NTSC-J
• Any% NG+ Swimless: 19.69s on NTSC-J (with Oracle skip)
• Cronos%: 6.22s on NTSC-J
• Any% NG+ Magicless: 22.07s on NTSC-J

Note that depending on which skips you perform on the run, these sums may be different.

All existing runs have been checked and corrected for any time gained due to censored versions. For future runs, when submitting a run made on a censored version, please add to the final run time according to the list above. This new rule also applies to Category Extensions and Trilogy runs.