Details

Event Handling

There are a number of things you might want to be aware about in terms of how this event will be ran:

• Challenges will be published at the 1st Saturday of each month, at 06:00 UTC (so no matter where you live, you should be able to view them at around noon at the latest).
• For challenges that are ranked by time, time starts on name input confirmation, and stops as soon as all requirements have been fulfilled.
• Any kind of help provided for runners is explicitly allowed, regardless of whether those providing such help are participants or not. This includes the use of probability calculators or setup finders, just to name a few otherwise perhaps questionable examples.
• Runs can be submitted by direct-messaging me (RealCritical) a link to the recording on discord; the submission of the recording has to reach me by 06:00 UTC on the 3rd Monday after the start of the challenge, which gives you 16 days (including three full weekends) to complete each challenge. timezone issues will be resolved in favor of the runner where feasible.
• Runs are expected to be submitted reasonably quick after completing them. Therefore, keeping times secret or stockpiling runs is discouraged for the sake of competition.
• From the point a run is submitted, I will get to verify it as soon as I'm able, and add it to the challenge's leaderboard if it meets all of the challenge's requirements. Runs will be posted immediately after being verified in all cases. The results of each challenge will be published shortly after the timeframe for the challenge ends.
• The overall winner will be determined by the most placements in top spots, meaning the most first places, with the most second places as a tiebreaker if necessary, and so on. In the event that no single winner can be determined in this manner, there will be multiple winners of the event.

Rules

As there's no reward with an attributable value awarded, I'd hope and will assume that runners are in it for the sportive nature and therefore refrain from cheating. Going from there, the following rules exist merely to provide clarity and a common starting point for everyone:

• Only runs started and submitted within the challenge's timeframe may be submitted.
• Runs have to be started in Gift mode, from the name input screen.
• 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.

Previous Challenges

You can also submit runs for challenges that already closed, either from this or from past years. I will verify them and put them on the leaderboard as well (with the exception that they won't be getting a placement indicator to preserve the original challenge's placements).