This month's competition is for Batman Returns for the Super Nintendo. You can play it here:
https://www.vizzed.com/play/batman-returns-snes-online-super-nintendo-7617-user-game


RULES: You MUST play the game using the RGR Plugin in 'Timetrial Mode' and take a screenshot of your top score from that by pressing F6. To play in 'Timetrial Mode', scroll down the page where the highscores appear, you'll see a link that says 'Click Here to Compete for Highscore', click that. Once you've taken your screenshot, click the link near that one that says 'Click Here to Submit your Score' to submit your score.

You must also record your time trial session using the RGR Plugin and than submit that video to the game's page. The reason that this is important is because there are cheats for this game that allow you to skip levels, having to show your session prevents the possibility of cheating. You can upload your video to either the vizzed youtube account or your own but you must record a video and submit it to the game's page.


Prizes:
1st = 10,000 Viz
2nd = 2,500 Viz
3rd = 1,000 Viz


Competition begins now.

Are there any conditions to follow while entering this contest like changing options and such?

theweapon2 : Basically anything goes.

Are videos going to be required. There is a manipulation that makes it to where you can max out the score. I won't say how, but I will say that the 2 users who have submitted a score have used this manipulation. I know this because I know the exact spots of the 2 locations that you can use it on, and both submitted screenshots are on those spots. Also, the fact that they got that high of a score on the first level of the game just supports that.

rcarter2 : Not really sure what I'll do since high score mode uses ZSNES and ZSNES doesn't support video recording within the plugin. I guess I'll talk with Tom and see if we can get something figured out.

Super Nintendo highscore mode now uses Mednafen instead of ZSNES. This means that you can now record video while doing a high score run. This also means that it's now harder to cheat while going for a high score on SNES games (before there were ways to use native saves, now you can no longer use those). This also means that SNES is now a system which will support Speed Runs.

rcarter2 : Just letting you know of this.

I noticed that as well rcarter2. Screenshots were taken the very first place you can exploit this. Thanks for the fix guys!

Davideo7 : Yay, speedruns for SNES games. That's pretty exciting since there are several games for that system that would make for fun speedrunning. (In particular, I'm thinking the Donkey Kong Country games)

madison : Those would take quite a long time to do a speed run. But I guess if you aren't concerned with getting the 100% completion, that shortens it up quite a bit. That would be pretty fun to do.

There's a lot of people who probably can't even beat the game without cheating or save states, those are very hard games and require a lot of time to play through.

How long is too long for a speedrun? The last time I played through Donkey Kong Country, I believe it took me 1 hour and 8 minutes, and that was a pretty casual playthrough. With practice, people could probably get 35-50 minute times (the world record is 31 minutes). I don't think that is too long. Though the sequels are definitely harder and longer, and I've never played through either of those in one sitting, so I can't really comment on how good they would be for speedrunning.

madison : I guess that depends on what the other users think.

Davideo7 : If you stop a video, does it stop the speed run too? What I was thinking for those is just start a video, stop it at whatever time, and then start another one right away. Just keep doing that until you finish, and it will just be more than one video showing your whole speed run. Just label the videos part 1, part 2, etc. 

rcarter2 : I can answer this. If you stop a video recording, the speedrun doesn't stop, but the problem with starting and stopping video recording is that the timer keeps going while you're naming and saving your video files, so the more video files you make, the longer your time will be for your score/speedrun.

A better idea might be to just record one video, and then splice it up into separate segments afterwards with a video editing program.

madison : Yeah. But now that I think of it, a game like Donkey Kong Country doesn't really have a way to cheat a speed run, so maybe just don't worry about the video there. 

rcarter2 : Well, the original release version of Donkey Kong Country has a 'warp glitch' that lets you skip a few worlds, but later versions of the game had the glitch patched. And I believe the rom is from the patched version, because I couldn't get it to work. So yeah, I don't think a video would be necessary for it either.

rcarter2 : Stopping recording doesn't stop speed run. What would be the benefit of doing the video in parts?

madison : That would work out better if someone wanted their video broken into parts.

Davideo7 : For a particularly long game like DKC, most probably couldn't get it done within youtube's time limit for video length. But also, the larger the video, the longer it takes to upload. It already takes forever for me to upload a simple 30 minute video. I couldn't imagine trying to upload an hour long video. So breaking it up can make them easier to upload as far as time.

I did have one question about the SNES games using the other emulator now to support videos. Is there something I can do on my computer to speed up the game? Playing SNES on madnafen is pretty much slow motion for me. 

rcarter2 : It must be your computer. Do any of the other mednafen systems play slowly?

Davideo7 : From what I can see, just the SNES games.