(Re)Introducing Leaderboard(s) of the Month!



I am bringing back this event with some new twists to hopefully make the competition more exciting and fun for users. Some of the key features of the new version of the competition are:

A point system!

Points will be a big focus and new feature for this iteration of the competition and there will be various ways to obtain them but the majority will be from your placements in the leaderboards since that is the focus of this competition. All players that have participated will be ranked according to their total points so they can compare progress.

A badge!

Users who reach a certain threshold of points will be awarded with a sexy badge to show off on their profile (if they don't want to hide it).

A Discord Channel!

A new discord channel for all you leaderboard enthusiasts. Whether it be showing off your new #1 spots, asking for advice on how to improve or just bullshitting with your competition. We'll also be encouraging people to share any recorded gameplay of their runs if they'd like.

Steps taken to reduce chances of foul play!

You may have noticed some recent changes to leaderboards lately. Now whenever a leaderboard is edited or user entries are removed from a leaderboard there will be system messages that tell who made changes and what they did. This should greatly help with alleviating chances of foul play as well as give participants more peace of mind.

Now that you know what this competition is about lets get into some of the more finer details.

Start Date

Today! July 1st will be the start of the competition with new leaderboards.

End Date

This competion won't have an end date unless something happens to the host(s) or there is blatantly apparent lack of interest.

How does it work?

Each month there will be multiple leaderboards that will be selected through various methods and each one will be available for players to compete in for a specific length of time. Normally there will be somewhere between 2-4 leaderboards that will last between 1-4 weeks but there may be some special months to change things up.

What do I need to do to participate?

The only thing you need to do is compete in the months chosen leaderboards. All tracking and updates to points will be done by me so you don't need to worry about anything except competing. Event leaderboards will be enabled when they start and disabled when they end  No sign ups, no forum posts, no commitment, nada. *With the exception of special events if we have any where user input may be required.

What do I need to get the badge?

Points! You will need to earn 300* points in order to earn the badge for this ongoing event.
  *The total may be adjusted after getting feedback as well as the possibility of higher tiers if there is enough participation over a long period of time. Current required points are estimated to take roughly around 1 cumulative year or participating.
After some feedback the points requirements for the badge have lowered. There are now two separate requirements you can choose between to earn the badge based on how you'd prefer to participate, both of which are lower than the intial 300 point requirement.
100 LotM only points. These are the points earned by participating in the selected leaderboards.
200 LotM points including bonuses. These include bonuses from any type such as video recordings and #1 spots.

How do I earn points?

Points will be earned mainly by your ranking in the leaderboards but there will be other ways to earn them.
  
  Main Method: Leaderboard Rank
  Rank - Points
  1     - 10
  2     - 7
  3-5   - 5
  6-10  - 3
  11-50 - 1
  
  Bonus: Recorded Run
  Any player that finishes in the top 10 and provides a recording of their best run for the event leaderboard will earn 2 bonus points. These videos can either be files or links to a service such as Youtube.
  
  Bonus: #1 Spots
  Earn 2 points for every leaderboard you newly obtain or improve and hold the #1 spot in at the end of the month for as many games as you want! You can earn up to 10 points per game. Tied #1 spots do not count unless you were the first to get the #1 spot. Your submission must have a date within December.
To claim your bonus you must notify me either in the Discord LotM channel, Discord DM, Site DM or by posting your progress in event forum (here).

  Note: There may be special events that change the rules a bit for points such as having 5+ shorter leaderboards running and the point distribution being lowered. Whenever something differs from the above it will be noted beforehand.
  
  Note: Only the first 50 entries for the top 50 players will be counted, meaning if there is a tie for the last place of the first 50 entries only the players on the first page will be counted. If enough people feel strongly enough against this then I will consider counting the last tied position but to start with they will not be counted.
  
  

How will leaderboards be selected?

To start for the first few months I will be hand selecting them myself. As the competition goes on I will gather feedback and open up the possibility of allowing active participants to make suggestions as well as vote on a pool of suggestions. Possibly a system like selecting 5 random games with leaderboards and voting on those as well. There may be other special events thoughout the competition where leaderboard selection will vary as well. If you have any suggestions or cool ideas feel free to reach out to me.
*Edit - Anyone placing in the Top 5 for any LotM is free to select a suggestion, either message me on the site/discord or post your suggestion in this forum.

What will you do if people don't reset their emulator to keep the leaderboard active after it is disabled?

Entries will only be accepted if they fall within the time window of the event. If the event runs from July 1st to July 14th and someone submits an entry later on July 15th it will not be valid. If you do this and had another valid placement entry before I'm sorry but there isn't much I can do, your entry will be removed so the other placements are in order. I will however make exceptions depending on the length of the leaderboard and how close to the cutoff time the entry is, for example if a entry is submitted just a few minutes after the cutoff. I don't believe this will happen often but if people feel strongly against allowing exceptions or if they start to cause issues I will disallow them completely.

What do I do if I think someone cheated

Please do not make any public accusations, if you feel that someone has cheated or an entry is not possible and may have glitched then reach out to me and I will reach out to the suspected player about the entry and try to resolve things. If you feel that things are not being handled properly you are also welcome to reach out to mods/admins/RAdmin with your concerns.

What do I do if I find any issue with a leaderboard?

Please reach out to me privately so I can look into the situation and depending on the severity and how soon it is brought to my attention I'll choose the best course of action I can. If something is severe enough or brough up soon enough there is a possibility of rerolling the leaderboard to a new challenge as a backup plan but hopefully it won't come to this often.

I have some suggestions/feedback

Please give any suggestions or feedback you have, I'd love to hear them as well as see how others feel about them. Whether it be in the events forum post, discord channel, or in a dm to me I'd like to make this event as fun as it can be for everyone and will do my best to make any improvements I can over time.

Further Questions?

Have any questions or want clarification on anything? Feel free to reach out to myself, post them here on this forum, or in the event channel in Discord.

Overall Player Points (Top 20) (Updated as of 4/1/2021)
Now have a separate leaderboard with bonuses excluded for those that want to compete solely through the picked LotM's



(For the most update results check the spreadsheet Here)

July 2021 Leaderboards of the Month:

To start things off we will be going with a classic:
Super Mario Bros. (NES)

For the 1st new Leaderboards of the Month your goal is to complete SMB1 in the fastest time. There will be single week leaderboard for World 1-1 and a two week long leaderboard for the full game.

Finished Leaderboards
Super Mario Bros. (NES)
July 1st to July 7th at midnight - LotM-07-2021 World 1-1 Speedrun

July 1st to July 14th at midnight - LotM-07-2021 Any% Speedrun


Nintendo World Championships 1990 (NES)

July 15th to July 31st at midnight - LotM-07-2021 Nintendo World Championships High Score


Super Mario Bros. 3 (NES)

July 22nd to July 31st at midnight - LotM-07-2021 The Wizard





Finished Leaderboard Results:

JULY

Super Mario Bros. (NES)

July 1st to July 7th
LotM-07-2021 World 1-1 Speedrun


multonic's Run - 0:00:11.98


July 1st to July 14th
LotM-07-2021 Any% Speedrun


Xymjak's Run (Recording issues) - 0:05:22

multonic's Run - 0:06:08


Nintendo World Championships 1990 (NES)

July 15th to July 31st
LotM-07-2021 Nintendo World Championships High Score


multonic's Run - 1,420,290


Gamechamp's Run - 1,172,200



Super Mario Bros. 3 (NES)

July 22nd to July 31st
LotM-07-2021 The Wizard


multonic's Run - 391,150



AUGUST

Umihara Kawase (SNES)

August 1st to August 14th
LotM-08-2021 High Score



Ice Climber (NES)

August 15th to August 31st
LotM-08-2021 - Spring Breeze Highscore



September

Kirby Super Star (SNES)

September 1st to September 14th
LotM-9-2021 - Ice Scorer



Gauntlet (NES)

September 15th to September 30th
LotM-09-2021 - Hi-Score Archer

Well I'm going to see about having /r/sbcgaming compete on this Leaderboard of the Month, since this is exactly what I've been wanting myself.

I dunno if Nintendo World Championships is a good game for Leaderboards simply because most of the retroarch cores don't really support dip switches, which I think is needed for the World Championships.

Yeah this was brought up in discord pretty quickly and is my fault for not realizing the issue sooner but it will be good to bring up here as well.

For now we are going to continue with this one but are highly recommending anyone who is putting in serious attempts to use the FCEUmm NES core in RetroArch as it allows you to change the dip switch settings to get the full 6:15 allowed for the leaderboard.

Do you have a guide to making those changes? I couldn't see how to do so on my end in retroarch settings. Also, how do you even start the game? Do you need 2 controllers?

Load the game up - Quick Menu - Options
Gameplay Duration - Set to 6:15 (May already be the default setting)

Yes you will need to use controller 2 to start the game as well.

Just a heads up: don't use fast forward during your attempts. It seems to shorten the timer by A LOT.
I just fast forwarded through my deaths in SMB and I think it halved the timer.

Believe me, getting to Tetris in 3:00 is impossible.

UPDATE: Actually, the problem was not fast forwarding. You just need to turn off Overclocking. Whoops.

For the new The Wizard leaderboard please be aware that different regional versions do run differently and make noticeable differences in some strategies so if you are really pushing for a high score make sure to test out different versions.

August 2021 Leaderboards of the Month:

To start things off we will be going with a cure and casual platformer:
Umihara Kawase (SNES)

For the 5th Leaderboard of the Month your goal is to get the highest score.

A special bonus will be active for this game. Anyone who places in the Top 5 for any of the 49 Time Attack leaderboards will also be eligible for 1 extra point per Time Attack up to a total of 5 extra bonus points per person. No new leaderboards will be created for these so you will also be competing with the existing scores and if you happen to have any existing scores in the Top 5 those will be eligible. Only participants of the main LOTM leaderboard will have their existing scores counted for the Time Attack bonus points.

Finished Leaderboards


Active Leaderboards

Umihara Kawase (SNES)

August 1st to August 14th at midnight - LotM-07-2021 High Score

Upcoming Leaderboards
To be announced on August 15th.

Stay tuned for further updates as the month progresses

As for the new suggestions I'll be reaching out to the top 5 from the latest leaderboard(s) as well as the top 10 overall. I'll go ahead and ping everyone that is in discord here and you are free to message here or in a dm to me your suggestion for a future leaderboard of the month to be voted on or randomly selected from the pool (pending decision). If you are mentioned multiple times below you still only get one suggestion. If the total amount of responses/suggestions is too low we can add more (I've made it top 10 overall since with Top 5 there was overlap and only 9 total different players. For those not on discord I will be sending a message to the individuals and a post on the event forum.

Top 10 Overall - Xymjak multonic h4vok Nabz JAM Keltron3030 Sef Searo Gamechamp DanielARP
Top 5 World Championships - Xymjak JAM RomaKiev FunnyKong multonic
Top 5 SMB3 - Xymjak TheClassicOne88 h4vok multonic Keltron3030

For the 6th Leaderboard of the Month your goal is to get the High Score in Spring Breeze!


Kirby Super Star (SNES)

August 15th to August 31st at midnight - LotM-08-2021 - Spring Breeze Highscore

Top 10 Results:

For the 7th Leaderboard of the Month your goal is to

Ice Climber (NES)

September 1st to September 14th at midnight - LotM-9-2021 - Ice Scorer

Top 10 Results:

For the 8th Leaderboard of the Month your goal is to get the highest score with the Archer!

Gauntlet (NES)

September 15th to September 30th at midnight - LotM-09-2021 - Hi-Score Archer

Top 10 Results: