Username:
B
I
U
S
"
url
img
#
code
sup
sub
font
size
color
smiley
embarassed
thumbsup
happy
Huh?
Angry
Roll Eyes
Undecided
Lips Sealed
Kiss
Cry
Grin
Wink
Tongue
Shocked
Cheesy
Smiley
Sad
1 page
--
--
List results:
Search options:
Use \ before commas in usernames
umad
Not sure if this has been brought up before, but I'd like to get some kind of official ruling on this.

The current Majora's Mask run on SDA (1:49:33 by me) was done on the English version of the game, which was the standard version at the time the run was made. However, in recent years, it was discovered that the Japanese version of the game has relatively major gameplay differences that make it significantly faster for the any% run (probably somewhere around a minute and a half faster). These differences include:

-Crouch stabs store the power of your last attack (saves over a minute on the final boss alone)
-Crouch stabs don't do any damage at all by default in the Japanese verison, meaning that you have to swing your sword before doing bombchu hovers on walls so that your infinite sword glitch blows up the bombchu
-Zora swimming is different, resulting in the need for a slightly different strategy for Gyorg
-The pirates in Pirate's Fortress have reduced eyesight at night, which allows you to sneak into the hookshot room and shoot the beehive without getting the bow and shooting it from the room next door. This results in a radically different route for the Japanese version - the current English route skips going to Pirate's Fortress altogether, instead using a series of glitches to duplicate the zora eggs in Pinnacle Rock and using different strategies in Snowhead Temple to skip needing the hookshot.
-The text is slightly faster on Japanese - about 30 seconds over the course of the whole run (not as much as in Ocarina of Time since the English text in MM was sped up to 2 characters per frame as opposed to 1).
-Screen transitions are about 0.2 seconds slower on the Japanese version
-Putting on and taking off masks turns Link toward the camera on Japanese, resulting in different setups for some tricks
-Song of Double Time behaves differently on Japanese. As a consequence, the normal method of Turtle Cutscene skip does not work; instead of playing Song of Double Time to skip the cutscene, you have to advance 1 frame at a time with pause buffering to get into Zora Hall without the cutscene activating, which takes about 10-20 seconds longer than the SoDT method.

Japanese Majora's Mask has enough differences from the English version that I almost consider it a different game, and I'd really rather run on the English version since I'd feel like I wasn't really running the same game anymore if I ran it on Japanese. The route on English is also quite a bit more interesting and is pretty radically different from the Japanese route, even though the time difference between the 2 versions is probably only about a minute and a half. So I'd like to know if Japanese warrants a separate category for this game so I can decide whether or not to switch versions for my next run.

Thanks,
ingx24
Thread title:  
.
The only one of these differences that would warrant a separate category is the reduced eyesight at night allowing a different route altogether, but even that is a pretty small difference. It's unlikely that we would consider keeping the English version as a separate category if a Japanese run that was faster by more than how much time the text difference saves was submitted.
umad
The text difference alone is only about 30 seconds. Most of the time saved comes from the different route and the Majora fight being faster due to power crouch stabs.

I know this is kind of a subjective thing, but as someone who has played Majora's Mask for years, I can say that the Japanese version really doesn't feel like the same game to me. A lot of the differences are pretty subtle (like zora swimming), but they add up to an experience that just feels "broken" compared to the English version. It's pretty obvious that the Japanese version was essentially an unfinished prototype that hadn't fully past the testing phases yet. It's not the Majora's Mask that I've come to know, and I wouldn't feel comfortable running it and then calling the finished product a "Majora's Mask speed run". I know a lot of other MM runners that would back me up on this sentiment.
For the two folks who just couldn't seem to help themselves: we'll be seeing you in a week.
umad
wait what happened :s
umad
Alright after thinking about it a bit I think I have a better argument as to why English and Japanese should be separate categories for this game.

The differences between the two may not seem significant, but they save a lot of time to the point where an English run simply cannot compete with a Japanese one. The text and loading zones pretty much cancel out (the difference is about 25-30 seconds both ways with no net gain/loss), so all the relevant differences are gameplay-related. The route is *completely* different on English than on Japanese, and the final boss fight on Japanese is over a minute faster (which in a game like MM is a LOT of time). The total difference throughout the whole run is approximately 1 minute 30 seconds, which on paper may not seem like a huge difference, but is enough that an English run is VERY unlikely to beat a Japanese one. And again, this is NOT because of just text - the faster text and slower loading cancel each other out. All the relevant differences are gameplay differences, and they amount to a very unfair advantage for the Japanese version. Combine this with the fact that the routes are radically different, and I think that it warrants a separate category. I just don't want a Japanese run to obsolete an English one on the site because of significant gameplay differences that can't be factored out. There's simply no way to compare the two versions accurately.
HELLO!
Sounds like the Zelda 2 FDS v NES difference.  Text isn't really a question. It's all game mechanics and glitches that are different.
Edit history:
ING-X: 2015-03-27 10:15:23 am
umad
Pretty much. I don't like the idea of switching to a different version to save time. Timesavers should be stuff like speed tricks, better movement, sequence breaks, etc., not using a different version of the game with different mechanics. Versions with differences like that should be tracked separately (or filtered by version like on the ZSR and Speedrun.com leaderboards) unless the time difference is so small as to be negligible.