As hinted in my previous update, there would be a follow-up on the NES theme!

Let's kick things off with first-time submitter Steve '8-Bit Steve' Lynn. He's been on a bit of a frenzy lately and now adds speedruns for two new games to the archives. First out is Kung Fu Heroes, which is based around a generic "save the princess captured by the bad guys" theme. Luckily, the developers focused on the gameplay instead of the story and this has resulted in a fun and action packed beat-em' up well worth the attention of more NES-gamers.  Progress through the game is made by defeating 12 enemies in each room or by using warps. By careful item planning and solid execution, the 14 rooms are navigated in 0:07:47.

The other game plown through by 8bitSteve is Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom. It's a text adventure game for the NES revolving around a political plot in the vegetable kingdom. I assume the list of vegetables ran out when naming the characters, because there are also some scattered fruits to be found in the game. By a combination of a well-memorized route and good fortune in the rock-paper-scissor boss battles, 8bitSteve unfolds the political conspiracy and saves the princess in 0:40:33.

Next up is a 4 second improvement in the any% category of Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers over feasel's run from 2011. If you know your NES, this game hardly needs an introduction. For the rest of you, this is a classic 2D-platformer from the mold, but a damn good one. 'philosoraptor42' has set the new bar at 0:10:09, which also means he's now the author of both the available categories for this game.

Last out is a run done by myself, 'ktwo'. Solomon's Key is a game I started playing in 2009 and that has regularly drawn me back into it. It's a challenging puzzle-platformer with rich game mechanics that allow for many options on how to clear the rooms. In this latest iteration of the any% category (which involves warps and only achieving the normal ending), I've implemented a few new time savers and thereby managed to cut my old time by 7 seconds down to 0:12:50.