periwinkle | How much time does PAL actually save in SMB1 Minus World (non-FDS)? @periwinkle. | Uploaded July 2021 | Updated October 2024, 13 hours ago.
I've heard from several sources now that "1:35.559 isn't actually the 'perfect' Minus World speedrun; someone could theoretically beat it on the PAL version with 1-1 FFPG and 1-2 floor clip." That got me thinking, how much of a time difference is there really? The answer may surprise you...or maybe not.
SPOILER ALERT:
Unless I'm missing something, PAL is actually *slower* than NTSC overall for this category. Let's break it down level by level and find out why:
1-1: PAL FFPG beats out normal FPG on NTSC, to finish the level by about a half second ahead. No surprises there.
1-2: Here we arrive at a major bottleneck for the PAL version: Unlike NTSC Minus World, where you can go straight into the -1 pipe after clipping through the wall, in the PAL version you have to wait for the piranha plant to go down before you can enter the pipe. (Piranha plants move at a speed of 1 pixel every other frame, but PAL runs at a slower framerate compared to NTSC so in real-time they move more slowly.)
Given that you have to wait for the piranha plant in the PAL version, floor clipping ends up being *slower* than going through the wall because it spawns the piranha plant later, which means you have to wait longer for it to go down. This is the same situation as the NTSC "Beat 5-4" category, where doing a "blazit"-style clip through the wall in 1-2 is faster than doing the pipe clip because it spawns the piranha plant in the W5 pipe sooner. Just like the Beat 5-4 situation, spawning the piranha plant earlier here saves one framerule over doing the faster clip method (the floor clip in this case).
When all is said and done, PAL ends up entering -1 just barely behind NTSC.
-1: Swimming speed in NTSC is 24 subpixels per frame. Because NTSC runs at a ~20% faster framerate than PAL, that means that in order for PAL to keep up with NTSC it would need to swim at 24×1.2 = 28.8 subpixels per frame. Unfortunately for PAL, the devs rounded this number down instead of up so you actually only swim a whole 28 subpixels per frame. Because of this, NTSC pulls far ahead of PAL in the swimming section, ending the run almost a full second ahead.
The final times of each of these runs (by RTA timing) are:
NTSC: 1:35.559
PAL: 1:36.467
Note, neither of these TASes use L+R. In any case, L+R wouldn't have made a framerule difference in either 1-1 or 1-2, and only a small difference in -1.
(Actually oops, I accidentally used L+R in the floor clip comparison clip to stall while waiting for the piranha plant. It doesn't make a time difference though, and can easily be replaced with just releasing B to drop to walking speed.)
I've heard from several sources now that "1:35.559 isn't actually the 'perfect' Minus World speedrun; someone could theoretically beat it on the PAL version with 1-1 FFPG and 1-2 floor clip." That got me thinking, how much of a time difference is there really? The answer may surprise you...or maybe not.
SPOILER ALERT:
Unless I'm missing something, PAL is actually *slower* than NTSC overall for this category. Let's break it down level by level and find out why:
1-1: PAL FFPG beats out normal FPG on NTSC, to finish the level by about a half second ahead. No surprises there.
1-2: Here we arrive at a major bottleneck for the PAL version: Unlike NTSC Minus World, where you can go straight into the -1 pipe after clipping through the wall, in the PAL version you have to wait for the piranha plant to go down before you can enter the pipe. (Piranha plants move at a speed of 1 pixel every other frame, but PAL runs at a slower framerate compared to NTSC so in real-time they move more slowly.)
Given that you have to wait for the piranha plant in the PAL version, floor clipping ends up being *slower* than going through the wall because it spawns the piranha plant later, which means you have to wait longer for it to go down. This is the same situation as the NTSC "Beat 5-4" category, where doing a "blazit"-style clip through the wall in 1-2 is faster than doing the pipe clip because it spawns the piranha plant in the W5 pipe sooner. Just like the Beat 5-4 situation, spawning the piranha plant earlier here saves one framerule over doing the faster clip method (the floor clip in this case).
When all is said and done, PAL ends up entering -1 just barely behind NTSC.
-1: Swimming speed in NTSC is 24 subpixels per frame. Because NTSC runs at a ~20% faster framerate than PAL, that means that in order for PAL to keep up with NTSC it would need to swim at 24×1.2 = 28.8 subpixels per frame. Unfortunately for PAL, the devs rounded this number down instead of up so you actually only swim a whole 28 subpixels per frame. Because of this, NTSC pulls far ahead of PAL in the swimming section, ending the run almost a full second ahead.
The final times of each of these runs (by RTA timing) are:
NTSC: 1:35.559
PAL: 1:36.467
Note, neither of these TASes use L+R. In any case, L+R wouldn't have made a framerule difference in either 1-1 or 1-2, and only a small difference in -1.
(Actually oops, I accidentally used L+R in the floor clip comparison clip to stall while waiting for the piranha plant. It doesn't make a time difference though, and can easily be replaced with just releasing B to drop to walking speed.)
