30 4 30 logo of Maika Sakuranomiya with a birthday cake

The 30 4 30 Challenge 2021 is now closed. Thanks to everyone who participated, and see you next year!

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 and a surprising twist to the format. So... are you up for the challenge?

The 30 4 30 Challenge begins on November 1, 2021 at 12AM EDT (UTC-4) and ends on November 30, 2021 at 11:59PM EST (UTC-5) (Daylight Savings Time ends while the challenge is active). Casual races will be scheduled for several of the challenge games, but participation in these races is not required to complete the 30 4 30 Challenge. You may start and finish each game in the challenge at your own pace, as long as you do not begin your save file/progress before the start date of the event, and as long as you finish before the end date. See official rules in the section below.

Revisions

This page has been revised since its original publication. Please be aware of the following revisions:

  1. The Wave Race 64 race with N64Mania has been rescheduled to November 19.
  2. The word tentatively has been removed from the text regarding the Forbidden Memories race. The race time has been finalized as originally scheduled.
  3. The following clarification has been added to the Kid Chameleon notes: However, the capabilities absent from the original console release are NOT permitted. This includes, for examples, Frame Skip, Rewind, Quick Save, and Quick Load.
  4. Builds of the Kid Mystic source code are now permitted. This may be an easier way to capture the game in OBS.

Games and Objectives

Game Objective Console Notes
Pocky & Rocky Any% 1P SNES Any difficulty is acceptable. Either playable character is acceptable.
Bubble Bobble Any% 1P NES Bad Ending is acceptable. Continuing from passwords after you acquire them is acceptable.
Goof Troop Any% 1P Max SNES Continuing from passwords after you acquire them is acceptable.
Kid Mystic Any% PC Game is published for free by the developer. In-game cheats are banned. Game may be difficult to capture in OBS; might need to use Display Capture. For a bare-bones windowed mode, create a shortcut to the executable on your desktop and edit the "Target" field to end in window: screenshot.
Download the game here. Playing any of the builds of the Kid Mystic source code (or building yourself without changing game logic) is also permitted. The web version may be easier to capture (you will need to upload the excutable from itch.io to play the web version).
Katamari Damacy Any% PS2 Playing the remake, Katamari Damacy Reroll, is acceptable.
Super Mario Bros. 2 Any% NES/SNES Either the NES version or SNES version packaged in Super Mario All-Stars is acceptable.
Wave Race 64 All Championships N64 Game will also be featured as an N64Mania race on November 19.
Pokémon Pinball Defeat Mewtwo GBC
Jackie Chan Adventures: Legend of the Darkhand Any% GBA Any difficulty is acceptable. Level-select debug menu is banned.

Elite Games

This year's challenge introduces a new component: the 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 new 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 Notes
Yu-Gi-Oh! Forbidden Memories Any% No RNG Manipulation PSX Race scheduled for Saturday November 13 at 1PM EST.
Kid Chameleon All Bosses, memory underflow banned GEN It's very unlikely to skip one of the bosses accidentally in a casual playthrough, so don't worry about triggering a skip unintentionally.
Menuing to "Give Up" on the same frame as the player takes lethal damage with no lives left causes the life count to underflow. Though legal for the speedrun leaderboard, this technique is banned for the 30 4 30 Challenge. Other methods of farming lives are permitted.
The PC re-release on Steam (SEGA Mega Drive and Genesis Classics) is identical to console and acceptable for challenge completion. However, the capabilities absent from the original console release are NOT permitted. This includes, for examples, Frame Skip, Rewind, Quick Save, and Quick Load.
Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble! 103% SNES

Announcement video

Submit Your Completion

Submit your completion of the challenge (list of VoDs) via Google Forms.

Challenge Champions

2021

2020

Past Challenge Event Pages

2020

Rules

  1. The start time of the event is November 1, 2021 at 12:00AM EDT (UTC-4). You may not load any save file created before this time.
  2. 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, 2021. For Twitch, make sure you have enabled VoD storage and highlight the VoDs because non-Prime/Turbo accounts only have 14 days' storage.
  3. You must submit your proof of completion via the form above ("Submit Your Completion") by November 30, 2021 at 11:59PM EST (UTC-5).
  4. You may complete any of the event games in multiple sittings as long as all of the gameplay is submitted.
  5. You may use any console to play the event games. 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 (in Donkey Kong Country 2, for example, Wrinkly's College to save, and power off/on or reset to load).
  6. 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.
  7. You may make progress in the event games at any time during the event, including before their assigned race days.
  8. Feel free to use or not use the official event logo anywhere in your 30 4 30 Challenge content: Download event logo.