Rules

Preface

The "Hardest Kaizo Stars List" contains information about difficult stars in SM64 romhacks ("kaizo stars" in "kaizo romhacks"), and about completions of those stars. To keep things comparable, some rules are needed as framework.

I. Completion rules

1. Savestateless Gameplay

Since many kaizo players intend for kaizo to be a difficult and rewarding experience, the kaizo community has developed a framework of standards known as "savestateless". While this hasn't always been the intended playstyle for every kaizo hack at release (notable exceptions including Super Mario 74 Extreme Edition, dj0nk's Junk, and Lug's Tiny Torture), "savestateless" has emerged as the standard way of grinding out difficult accomplishments in kaizo (though different ways of playing the games exist and can be fun).

For the purposes of the list, savestateless gameplay means

a) No loading of savestates (neither emulator nor in-game savestates) during the relevant gameplay segments (see below). Creating or overwriting savestates during a completion is allowed, as well as starting your completion from a savestate.

b) No use of cheat codes to affect any game mechanics (this excludes timers, cosmetic changes to the heads-up display, and music),

c) No modification to the romhack itself, other than the cosmetic changes listed below

d) No rapidfire macro, TAS playback, or the like. Each physical input into your input device should cause at most 1 input into the game. Using multiple physical inputs to specify one in-game input more precisely, e.g. a slowwalk toggle on keyboard, is allowed.

e) No slowdown or frame advance. No memory read tools, except to access information that would normally be shown in the heads-up display.

In contrast:

Adjusting game resolution, screen ratio, brightness, and hotkeys is allowed.
The "Enable widescreen improvements" patch is allowed.
Changing the music is allowed.
Using the emulator's fast-forward button (F4 by default) is allowed.
If or where the game allows for in-game pauses without restrictions, pausing the emulator (F2 by default) is allowed.

Changing the textures, background, and fog in a level is allowed unless it changes the visibility of something that is normally not easily visible In particular:

If the fog makes it hard to see 5 longjumps ahead (e.g. Anti-Weegee), changing the fog is forbidden.

If a texture has no or very little contrast (e.g. IoF C10 pink blocks, TAIC B1 walls), using a texture with more contrast is forbidden.
If a texture is fully or partially invisible (e.g. TW C13 brambles), replacing it with a differently shaped texture is forbidden.
If a texture is next to an invisible section and could be used for cues (e.g. DE C15 triple invis), changing it is forbidden.

2. A savestateless completion

A completion of a star or similar challenge is a segment of savestateless gameplay, starting from first movement after a valid starting point and ending on the frame that the star, key, or similar objective is collected.

Valid starting points

A completion may be started by loading into any level or area, as long as

a) the warp used to load into the area is located in a different level,

b) one side of the warp used to load into the level is next to where you would respawn if you were to die in that level,

c) you don't actually die at the very start of the completion, and you don't end up in the same situation as if you had died one or more times at the very start of the completion, and

d) the game doesn't force you to access the level with 0 lives, or dying with 0 lives doesn't cause a gameover.

Let's take the star "Madnight Memories - Warp from Wall Wall Melancholy [TWDE]" as an example.

You are NOT allowed to start at the warp from Wall Wall Melancholy, as dying in Madnight Memories would put you in a completely different location.

However, you ARE allowed to start at the bottom of Wall Wall Melancholy despite the star being located in Madnight Memories, as dying while trying to climb towards the warp to Madnight Memories would put you back at the bottom of Wall Wall Melancholy.
On the other hand, you are NOT allowed to start at the bottom of Overworld 3, dance around in Overworld 3 for a bit, and then go through the key door to Wall Wall Melancholy, as climbing Overworld 3 hasn't led to any progress on the completion.
You are also NOT allowed to start at the bottom of My First Determination, climb to the high section of Overworld 3, collect a red coin in Overworld 3, and then enter the key door, as you could get to the key door by simply dying twice, and collecting a red coin in Overworld 3 doesn't give you any progress towards the Madnight Memories star.

Other completion rules

e) If your starting point has an act select screen, or if you encounter an act select screen during your completion, you may only select acts that are available before collecting the star that you are going for.

f) If a cannon bob-omb, cap switch, warp, or similar flag is unavailable before collecting the star that you are going for, you may not use it. Changed textboxes from having 120 stars are fine.

g) You may set your lives value to a theoretically achievable value before starting your completion. If dying isn't part of the completion, you may set your lives to any value for cosmetic purposes.

h) If your completion makes use of checkpoints, start from a starting point where no checkpoints are active. However, if you reach a checkpoint during your completion, you may use it. You may also (optionally) end your segment after the checkpoint and start a new segment with the checkpoint enabled, but once again from a valid starting point (i.e. from outside the level).

II. Star rules

3. What constitutes a star

A star is defined as a collectible or action that can increase the in-game star counter, which must be displayed in-game or otherwise used as a counter within the game.

Things that are not stars can't apply for the list and therefore will not be added.

The image below can give a sense of what is a star and what isn't one:

4. Requirements for a star to be added

Not every star is eligible for the Hardest Kaizo Stars List. The obvious requirement is difficulty, but there are a few more to ensure some degree of comparability and to prevent flooding with pointless uninteresting stars.

a) There needs to be a video recording of a savestateless completion of the star.

b) The star needs to be in a released romhack or a publically released demo/beta version.

Furthermore, we will be rejecting

c) stars that draw almost all of their difficulty from doing the same type of move several times in a row and/or from delaying a small number of hard jumps by repeating the same trivial move a large number of times,

d) easier versions ("nerfs") of earlier stars that are released in a separate romhack and don't add enough new difficulty to make the star substantially different (as a benchmark, ask yourself "when playing the star as if it was unnerfed, would you face substantial new roadblocks?"), and

e) stars that draw almost all of their difficulty from random or seemingly uncontrollable events (as a benchmark, ask yourself "would someone who has just learned about the controls of SM64 get this star in a similar amount of tries as someone who has completed many difficult stars?").

On the other hand, a star will not be rejected purely because an easier star with the same star ID exists. Instead, a more precise description of the star will be listed below the "Allowed versions" row on the star's page.

To request a star to be added, submit a difficulty rating alongside your completion.

5. Allowed versions

Sometimes, later releases of a romhack make a star substantially easier than when it was first completed. To correct for this, some of the stars on the list will only list completions that have been done on a certain version.

There are no rigorous standards for this, we just evaluate whether the drop in difficulty is meaningful enough to require a particular subset of versions. Updates by the original author tend to be treated with more leniency than nerfs by a different community member, but difficulty is still the primary factor.

The version that a star has first been completed on (barring first-day major cheese fixes) will always be allowed.

III. Submission

6. Evidence of a completion

A completion will only be added to the list if there is a permanent video of the entire completion segment (if your completion uses checkpoints, you may upload each segment individually). If we find that the video has been removed, we will remove the completion from the list.

If the community has doubts about whether your completions are legitimate, you might be asked to provide better evidence. This may include providing in-game sound, showing the full emulator window, showing an input display, loading a savestate at the start of your recording, or streaming/uploading failed attempts, all of which are good measures to take anyway. Generally, the harder it would be to imitate your video by splicing or playing back a TAS, the better.

7. How to submit

You can submit your completions by posting them in #attempt-submissions on the Discord server associated with the Hardest Kaizo Stars List. If you are an active member of the community and upload your completions to YouTube, however, it is likely that your stars will be found and added even if you don't post them there.

You can request for some or all of your completions to be removed from the list. If there are no completion videos remaining for a star, it will be moved to the Legacy page until someone else completes the star or someone asks for their completion to be readded.

8. Difficulty ratings

If you have completed a star, you are encouraged to compare its difficulty to the difficulty of other stars on and slightly below the list. Familiarize yourself with the scale explained on the Rating Info page, then either

a) open the spreadsheet with the ratings and comment your rating in the cell intersecting your column and the star's row (if you don't have a column yet, comment in the "New User" column),

b) write your rating into #rating-submissions on the Discord server,

c) write your rating into the description of your completion video,

d) communicate your rating to a list moderator directly, or

e) request direct edit access to the sheet by sharing your mail address to a list moderator. This comes with the drawback that anyone will be able to see your mail address.

To add a new star to the sheet, please use one of the above methods to submit

the name of the star,
the name of the stage that holds the star,
the level ID of the stage that holds the star,
the name of the romhack that holds the star, and
your rating of the star's difficulty.

When writing or commenting a star directly on the rating sheet, please use one of the "New star" rows below the rest of the sheet.