What's the 30 4 30 Challenge?

The "30 4 30" originated in 2019 in honor of sg4e's 30th birthday. During the 30 days of November leading up to his December 1st birthday, sg4e beat 30 different games.

The spirit of the original 30 4 30 continued on in a new form starting in 2020, with the creation of the first 30 4 30 Challenge: an endurance trial in which participants attempted to beat the 10 selected games before the end of November. The few who managed to complete the challenge have their names inscribed on this page in recognition of this achievement. And this year, the 30 4 30 Challenge begins once again, with an all-new gameslist. So... are you up for the challenge?

The 30 4 30 Challenge begins on November 1, 2023 at 12AM EDT (UTC-4) and ends on November 30, 2023 at 11:59PM EST (UTC-5) (Daylight Savings Time ends while the challenge is active). See rules below.

Revisions

Any revisions to this page after its initial publication will be listed here. Please check back periodically to become aware of any updates or clarifications of rules.

~~Final Fantasy IV's objective has been changed to "All Bosses" and the permitted versions of the game have been updated.~~ This change has been reverted.
DOS-specific rules have been added.
The Genesis/MegaDrive release of Bubsy 2 is now allowed.
Elite Game 2 has been reverted to its original design, with the exception that the PSX release is now allowed.
Bubsy 2's goal has been clarified as "Grand Tour" because "Any%" is not an official goal on speedrun.com.
Elite Game 2 has been reverted to its original design, with the exception that the PSX release is now allowed.
The .ZIP file of the DOS emulator and games has been updated to fix in-game saving for Mario Is Missing. The notes in the table have been updated to recommend in-game saving instead of emulator-based savestates, which are prone to crashes.

Games and Objectives

DOS-specific rules: Overclocking the DOS CPU and any kind of speedup or speeddown are disallowed. Do not alter any of the default CPU settings. Feel free to customize the rest of the emulator settings (scaling, sound, mouse capture, etc.) to make the game experience more comfortable.

DOSBox-X is recommended, but any DOS emulator is allowed. Here's a .ZIP file with the emulator for Windows x64 and games included. Click on the .BAT file corresponding to the game you want to play. When Lemmings prompts you with questions, just keep pressing "Enter".

Game	Objective	Console	Notes
Cyber Tiger	Complete Stroke Play under par	N64	Complete all 18 holes of the first course in Stroke Play: Badlands. The sum of your stroke count after all 18 holes must be strictly less than (not equal to) the total par of the 18 holes. Unlimited in-game mulligans are allowed.
Super Mario Bros. 3	Any% Warpless	NES/SNES	The SNES version (Super Mario All-Stars) is recommended because it saves more often and you will lose less progress on Game Over.
F-Zero or F-Zero 99	Grand Prix	SNES/Switch	Cross the finish line of the final course of the Grand Prix. Your final placement in the Grand Prix is irrelevant. For the SNES game, all 3 Grand Prix (Knight, Queen, and King) must be finished. You may race on any difficulty. For the Switch game, any Grand Prix must be finished. You may submit your completion using the Switch's built-in video-capture feature as long as your clip shows you crossing the finish line of the final race, or shows your NSO username in the Grand Prix final standings having finished the final race. You may choose to play either game. Playing both does NOT count as completing two 30 4 30 games.
Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars or Super Mario RPG	Any%*	SNES/Switch	Beat either game. Playing both does NOT count as completing two 30 4 30 games. *If playing the Switch game, you must defeat the final boss AND 2 boss refights. You may submit your completion using the Switch's built-in video-capture feature as 3 clips: the final hit on the final boss and the final hit on 2 refight bosses.
Mario Is Missing	Any% (Adult)	DOS	You MUST play on "Adult" age/difficulty. Open the menu before entering the first door and set this. Use in-game saves frequently to protect your progress from crashes. Emulator savestates don't work (they crash shortly after loading). Make sure you redownload the latest DOS-pack (same link as above), which fixes problems with in-game saves.
Bubsy 2	Grand Tour	SNES/GEN	East Wing or West Wing is your choice. The Grand Tour is 15 levels and 3 boss fights. A Game Over will put you back to the beginning. There are some Continue collectibles that can be found in levels. Selling all your collectibles in the post-level shop and amassing extra lives is highly recommended.
Treasure MathStorm!	Any%	DOS	You MUST start from a new player. Do NOT play as "Clayton".
Yu-Gi-Oh! Dark Duel Stories	Any%	GBC	Receive the credits password from the final duelist and watch the credits.
Smol Ame	Full game Any%	HTML5

Elite Games

Like Elite mobs in MMOs, these games are markedly more difficult than the rest of the games, either by virtue of their more grueling objectives, or the demanding nature of the game itself.

Completion of the 30 4 30 Challenge is defined as meeting the objectives of 10 of the selected games on this page. The format supposes that most players will choose 1 of the Elite Games alongside the other 9 normal games to achieve their completion of the challenge. However, choosing to complete 2 or all 3 Elite Games to forgo playing 1 or 2 of the normal games is expressly permitted.

There is no additional recognition or award for completing more than 10 games.

Game	Objective	Console
Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest	102%	SNES
ファイナルファンタジーIV (Final Fantasy IV)	Any% No 64	SFC/ PSX	You MUST play either (1) the SFC release in Japanese, (2) this and only this English translation patch for the original SFC release, or (3) the official PSX release in any language. All other releases are disallowed. The official SNES release (titled Final Fantasy II), the Easy Type release, and the Pixel Remaster release are explicitly disallowed.
Lemmings	All Levels	DOS	There are 120 levels total: 30 levels for each of the 4 difficulties. You may use passwords as a way to save your progress and complete the game over multiple sessions, but you may NOT use a password until it's given to you in-game. You may change the difficulty setting and complete harder levels before easier ones if you'd like, as long as all levels are completed by the end of your playthrough. Jumping ahead to the most difficult levels to see what you're in for may be a good idea. If you're going to jump between difficulties frequently, please consider using some form of on-stream tracking (notepad, OBS text source, etc.) of your progress in each of the difficulties to help facilitate the verification of your playthrough. Don't confuse this game with Oh No! More Lemmings, the sequel that contains substantially more levels!

Register and Submit Your Completions!

This year's iteration of the 30 4 30 Challenge features a dedicated website for submitting games as you complete them and monitoring other participants' progress. A Twitch account is required to register, but you may submit your playthroughs from any video platform.

If streaming on Twitch, it's recommended to register with the account you plan on streaming most of the event games on, so that your stream may be featured when you go live.

Participants are encouraged to register even if you don't intend to complete every game of the Challenge. You will still receive recognition for the games you do complete on the participants' progress page.

Announcement video

Challenge Champions

2022

2021

riocoys Twitch | Playlist
tapioca Twitch | Playlist
poptart_cat Twitch | Playlist
Thatonenewtagerplayer Twitch | Playlist
shoehorse Twitch | Playlist

2020

poptart_cat Twitch | Playlist
Halfbeasty Twitch | Playlist
riocoys Twitch | Playlist

Past Challenge Event Pages

2022

2021

2020

Rules

The start time of the event is November 1, 2023 at 12:00AM EDT (UTC-4). You may not load any save file created before this time.
Some games have more specific rules in the "Notes" column in the table above. Those rules override these more general rules.
Completion categories for each game are the same as those defined on speedrun.com. For games or categories that do not exist on speedrun.com, the completion objective shall be clearly defined in the "Notes" column of the respective game.
Cheats are NOT allowed. Cheats are hidden button-press combinations on the game's start menu, secret passwords, etc., intentionally coded into the game by its developers to give the player some type of powerful advantage when activated and are almost always labeled as "cheats". Conversely: glitches, out-of-bounds clips, integer overflow/underflow, arbitrary-code execution, and any and all speedtech are expressly allowed, provided that they are permitted in speedrun category.
Event games must be streamed, or local-recorded and uploaded to Youtube/Dropbox/anywhere they can be publicly accessed. These videos must remain accessible at least until December 7, 2023. For Twitch, make sure you have enabled VoD storage and highlight the VoDs because non-Prime/Turbo accounts only have 14 days' storage.
You must submit your proof of completion via the event's website as you complete games. No proof may be submitted after November 30, 2023 at 11:59PM EST (UTC-5).

Marathon-stream exception: If you are streaming an event game at the moment the submission window closes, that game remains eligible for submission under the following conditions (all must be met):
1. You are livestreaming a game from the 30 4 30 Challenge gameslist on a livestreaming service (e.g. Twitch) without viewer restrictions (e.g. a subscriber-only stream). Local recordings are ineligible and must be completely uploaded and submitted before the submission window closes.
2. Only the game you are streaming at the moment the submission window closes may remain eligible. Any other unsubmitted games become ineligible.
3. You may take breaks while you attempt to complete the game past the closure of the submission window. Breaks are defined as any period of 15 or more seconds during which the player does not issue input to the game. However, no single break may exceed 30 minutes, and cumulative break time may not exceed 120 minutes.
4. Internet outages or computer problems that cause the stream to become momentarily unavailable do not render the completion attempt as invalid per se, as long as no substantial gameplay occurs while the player's stream is offline. However, time for which the stream is offline shall be counted as break time, with all conditions for breaks in effect.
5. If the player completes the game past the closure of the submission window with all of the above conditions met, the player has 60 minutes from the moment the clear condition is met to submit the VoD on the submissions website, after which it is no longer eligible.

You may complete any of the event games in multiple sittings as long as all of the gameplay is submitted.
You may play any official release of the event games, including releases in languages besides English, as long as the release is on the same console as specified in the "Console" column. For example, playing the Japanese release of Donkey Kong Country for the Super Famicom is allowed, but playing the GBA release is NOT allowed.
You may play virtual re-releases of the event games, such as on Wii Virtual Console or Nintendo Switch Online. However, you may NOT use any savestate-like capabilities such as the Switch-specific save/load functions; you may use only the native save/load capabilities of the original game.
You may use an emulator to play any of the event games as long as the emulation behavior is close to console. However, you may NOT use any emulator capabilities that are not available in the original console release. This includes, for example, savestates and speedup.
Feel free to use or not use the official event logo anywhere in your 30 4 30 Challenge content: Download event logo. The event logo is original art commissioned by sg4e.