[Thorn]

The topic title says it all: after a long wait and plenty of nagging the admins, game charts are now up for the Console and PC versions -- the DS and mobile versions do not have charts yet. DsS thanks you all for giving him another championship and more sitewide points.

Please take note of the following unusual rule that was added for the game:
Do not simply submit times shown when pressing the Info button at the course select, since some times that aren't achieved by the player appear for an as of yet unexplained reason.

If you're not sure if you actually achieved a time in the Races category, don't submit it.

Update: Metal Sonic & Death Egg Zone -- Egg Hangar are now downloadable from Xbox Live Marketplace for 560 Microsoft Points, but not on the Playstation Network; it will be coming soon, though, as evidenced by the leak a week before today. Charts for DLC will not be available until we know that it will consist of more than one or two courses, and it will be ranked separately from the standard game to be more fair to Wii and PC version players.

Update 2: The Playstation 3 version has been released.

[EngiNerd]

I say we need to really examine our concept of fairness and keep it consistent across the board ... this choice weirds me out for some reason.

[Thorn]

^ You mean you want DLC and the standard game to all be one chart? I see that as less fair, not more... that means that people who got the same game on Wii or PC need to buy another console just to play every level. Heck, we even separate Sonic Unleashed DLC from the main game even though everybody has access just because some people weren't too keen on paying for it in Sonic '06 just to stay competitive.

Of course, feel free to make a case for the contrary.

EDIT: A side note... this is fundamentally different than any "version difference" we've dealt with so far. Up until now all versions could compete in every level, if not optimally.

[Groudon]

What about DLC characters?  How are they going to be handled for charts?

[Parax]

I don't see any logical way to handle DLC characters aside from just treating them like a version difference and allowing them on normal charts. The only way we would is if we had a separate set of charts for the same levels where DLC characters are allowed. It's nothing at all like eg Sonic 06's situation, where the 360 has a few DLC levels that aren't on PS3; those are charts that PS3 cannot submit to -at all-, which is obviously pretty unfair as it puts ps3 players at a major disadvantage on the overall charts against 360 players. Players who don't have the characters can still submit to the stage, they'll just be at a slight disadvantage if there's any disadvantage at all. Secondly there isn't really any indication that DLC characters will have a major advantage over the non-DLC characters, meaning we'll just have a set of separate charts for characters that are more or less the same as the on-disc characters, with times that will be more or less the same, if not slower.

So I vote for allowing DLC characters to be used on the main charts, there doesn't really seem to be any other way to handle it and it likely won't have a major impact on competition.

[Thorn]

Downloadable characters are going to be considered version differences -- if one version of ASR ends up with a fast character that scrapes a few records, it's not much different than somebody with a PAL Sonic Chaos having a slower timer. You could argue that Sonic Chaos has a ROM dump that anybody can download, but we didn't design the chart around illegal downloading; rather, it was just a circumstance.

Every decision I'm making is based not on my own opinion, but how the more vocal TSCers think. I don't imagine my Sitewide spot will change from 2nd or 3rd place, so I see no need to interject with my own thoughts unless people are acting utterly moronic. If anybody dissents with particular rulings us admins make, you'll usually want to argue TSC as a whole unless we say somewhere "screw what you people think, the admins run this shindig, not you, and here's what's going down".

[Strong Bad]

I agree with Umbreon on this issue. Version differences on SA(:DX) and SA2(:B) are allowed, so the precedent set by those games should be followed.
And yes, I do intend to submit times for this game whenever I get around to buying it, so I'm not just poking my head into a game I don't intend to compete in.