Seems there is still debate
1) It must be possible in theory to verify the run by replacing the keyboard and joystick inputs with a bot in theory. This disqualifies ram injection/vdrive/virtual device traps.
2) The fastest loading original should be preferred. Cartridge is always fastest, but if it's not available for cart, usually disk is faster. But taking advantage of a glitch only present in an earlier release.
3) Format conversion was never intended to be possible. as programs were usually copy protected. It sometimes is still doable without extra peripherals. There are a number of tape to disk transfer utilities. The action replay cart, for example has a built in "novaload transfer" routine that will save a novaload tape to disk for later loading. many cracking groups wrote their own tape transfer utilities. But you would often usually need to crack the protection. transferrig form tape to disk can speed load times. transferring from disk to tape is pointless. transferring to cart is impossible under our guidelines.
4) while glitches are generally fair game, glitches that are only present when the game runs on the wrong video game system, and affect gameplay beyond the 50/60 hz change are not fair game, and mean you must use the video system where the glitch is not present, unless the game was officially released in that territory.
5) i still disagree on the decision that running a game that was not released in ntsc territory in ntsc is a valid choice. It's not a valid choice because real people don't have that option. their real tvs back in the day can only handle their own video standards. This is also to provide parity with console releases, where PAL versions must be tased on PAL emulation, admn NTSC versions must be tased on ntsc emulations. If we are allowed to tas pal released c64 games on NTSC settings, we would also allowed to tas pal NES game son NTSC settings. The fact that many games run on both is not a valid argument.
c64 preservation (
https://rittwage.com/c64pp/dp.php?pg=database) is an authority on if an original is PAL or NTSC for games released on disk. Look up the game there if it's a disk image.
I will throw some examples.
Great Giana SIsters. if you look it up there, ther'es only a (PAL) version. that's a very strong clue that the game is PAL. it was neve released in the USA at all.
Ollies Folies. It notes that the loader crashes on NTSC, but the game doesn't appear to be PAL. NTSC is correct for this game.
Encounter. The disk release is NTSC, as it's by synapse software. all novagen releases of the game are PAL, because they crash on NTSC intentionally. the game was developed on PAL, but got a commercial NTSC port. The novagen tape orginals only run on PAL, so they must be TASed there. There IS a ROM difference, in this case.
Uridium. the game has pal releases, as well as a worldwide release by mindscape. NTSC is correct. It turns out most of Andrew Braybrook's games (Uridium, Gribbly's Day Out, Alleykat, etc.) account for pal/ntsc differences in their coding. Whichever is faster should be used, and it's probably NTSC. Any game that accounts for differences is a glabal release, even if not actually sold as such. For uridium he outright states that the us and europe releaes are identical.
Thing on a Spring. there's no PAL after it, s it got an NTSC release by Epyx. TAS that release there, or other tape releases on pal, if it's faster.
Working out pal/ntsc is not as hard as it seems.
If you can't find a disk release of the game, unless it was made by a known US company (Epyx, Synapse,Activision non lucasfilm, br0derbund, etc.), the game is most likely PAL.
If you CAN find a disk orginal, and it works fine on NTSC, it's PROBABLY a NTSC game.
high voltage sid collection is a fairly authoritative resource. you simply punch the game title into the sid search, and usually it will come up. there's usually enough info to make a reasonable determination. That said, it's still not perfect (it say Commando is PAL, where a listen and compare with the arcade says otherwise, and c64 preservation confirms a US release from data east).