Overview

What is Arena?

Arena was a challenge series that spanned a few months per year, featuring a winner each month, and an overall winner for the season. It has been concluded with the end of the 2026 season.

You can still submit runs for challenges, and they will be verified and placed on the leaderboard, however without a placement indicator. If you want to submit such a run, also check the Rules section below to familiarize yourself with the global rules that apply for all challenges.

Rules

• Runs can be submitted by direct-messaging me (RealCritical) a link to the recording on discord.
• Runs have to be started in Gift mode, from the name input screen.
• For challenges that are ranked by time (which is true whenever the challenge doesn't state otherwise), time starts on name input confirmation, and stops as soon as all requirements have been fulfilled.
• The music menu glitch is banned.
• Allowed emulators are Snes9x 1.53+ and bsnes, as well as any other emulator using the respective cores without distorting accuracy. Real hardware is allowed as well, of course.
• Any emulator feature that isn't purely visual and that isn't available on barebones real hardware is banned (for example turbo functionality, or save states). Likewise, any kind of external feature that interacts directly with the game (as opposed to being operated by the runner) is banned (such as RAM readers or injectors); autosplitters are an exception to this rule.
• Runs can be done with any set of save files, but intentional RNG manipulation (which for the purpose of this event includes known and easily reproducible gear pickups such as picking up floor 1 Gades Blades) is banned.
• Runs have to be done with an unmodified US cart or ROM, with the exception of specific romhacks that may be required by a challenge.
  Visual romhacks such as sprite changes are allowed, as long as they don't provide any reasonable kind of advantage. Unlocking Gift Mode is allowed both by patching the ROM, or by unlocking it with a code.