The thrilling conclusion to the inaugural year of the SHIRO! Community Challenge begins Friday as participants will compete in the Raizing-developed, shooter-racing game hybrid “Kingdom Grandprix.”
Throughout the month of November, challenge organizers will collect the fastest times and highest scores with nine prizes awarded once the checkered flag drops Nov. 30.
SHIRO! member Danthrax, a co-organizer and member of the committee that selects the games and sets the rules, initially pitched the idea for this month’s event.
“We were bouncing ideas around a few months ago, and I thought Kingdom Grandprix would be a good choice because it’s something a little different than other games we’ve played for the community challenge — it’s primarily a shooter, and we haven’t had something like that yet,” Dan said.
Fellow co-organizer Gregory Rasputin said the committee also wanted to highlight the work of fellow SHIRO! community heroes Bo Bayles and Malenko, who teamed up in January to release a patch for the game that unlocked previously hidden English text.
Two other organizers teamed up to make a trailer for the challenge — Double Dime edited it and Random composed its music:
Seven time attack-specific awards will be handed out, one for the lowest time in each of the six stages regardless of branch and one for the lowest total time across the 12 races, drawing from all stage branches.
The 1996 SEGA Saturn port of the arcade classic boasts a “Shooting Mode” in addition to the “Racing Mode,” converting the experience into more of a straight-ahead shooter. Originally, the shooting-only version required the input of a cheat code. The English activation patch also makes that game mode selectable.
The award for highest score, dubbed “Raizing Would Be Proud,” will be given to the participant with the best overall score.
Like recent iterations of the Community Challenge, November’s will feature a mystery community award reveiled at the end of the month.
All nine winners will receive a bespoke patch made by community member Moosetrack.
Participants are required to use real SEGA Saturn hardware. The use of optical drive emulators is permitted.
Software emulation as well as Action Replay and Pseudo Saturn cheats are prohibited.
Events must be set to normal difficulty with up to eight continues allowed. Participants can race and shoot as any character.
Photographic evidence of times and scores is mandatory and can be submitted to the Community Challenge channel in the SHIRO! Discord server. A photo of the best times screen during the attract mode is required for time attack submissions. A photo of the high score leaderboard is required for score attack submissions.
The organizers also encourage participants to submit times to Speedrun.com. Previous SHIRO! Community Challenges brought about world records, according to Speedrun.com.
The organizers also encourage participants to utilize the English translation patch, which can be downloaded over at SEGAExtreme.
In addition to posting photographic evidence, submissions also will require participants to fill out a brief form to help organizers manage the data generated by all the submissions.
“I am hoping for some tight competition across all categories,” Rasputin said. “There is a lot of room for skill expression, and I expect metas to develop and change as the month progresses.”
The November SHIRO! Community Challenge will be the sixth in the series so far and the last in its inaugural year. Previous challenges centered around Saturn titles SEGA Touring Car Championship, Steep Slope Sliders, two Digital Pinball games, two Touge King games and Blazing Heroes.
The SHIRO! Community Challenges are currently on an every-other-month schedule and are free and open to SHIRO! community members.
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