The difference with how we're looking at it with the Fighting game genre is the new element being an unlocked character.
I can refer to Guilty Gear X: Advance Edition where
Ky is obsoleted by
Zato as they're both characters available form the start for an instance of a character that wasn't unlocked.
I can also refer to
Digimon Rumble Arena where an unlocked character wasn't allowed, and instead a character that's available from the start would have been preferred instead.
But we're in the new site era now where we have a new submission that's using an unlocked character in
Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance which should outright obsolete the
Kenshi run and be the preferred run. But isn't for some reason.
A character name as a branch implies we would accept and publish every character. Which isn't good on the site side, as Judges and Publishers will have to deal with a "mess" of fighting game TASes.
But I already experimented with that idea with
5 separate characters in Tekken 3 and they're ineligible to be accepted due to Yoshimitsu (and
that puddle can get muddier, but let's avoid that puddle) and of course Guilty Gear X as I referred to earlier.
In my opinion the character should obsolete the other regardless if they're an unlocked character or not and if they're an unlock then they should have the tag of well in this case `Second quest/Post game-completion`. We have tags, we should make the tags work at the very least, we still make new ones to this day.
This allows it to be simplified, and any other run from an unlocked roster or a standard one can instead go to Playground whilst the actual fastest can obsolete one another.
This also allows another type of branch for fighting games, where you have the fastest character, a playaround and then "all endings", at least for the fighting games that show off different endings.
SRAM should obsolete, but only for Fighting Games, and the information has to be very clear about it in the Publication. It will also cause the least amount of headaches.
tl;dr what I wrote.
Is unlock character faster?
> Yes
Obsolete.
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