Okay the people have spoken, default difficulty it is. Like I said, I'm terrible at fighting games so I was trying to make a judgement through that lens, and trying to give people a challenge and meaningful bonus point for an entire month

Sorry for the minor inconvience.  This is why bimmy has guillavoie to throroughly test everything for a month  

Thanks, very helpful, downloaded!  
I think that I used default Jago the most when I had the game, but I see here that for all special moves he needs haduken kind of inputs, which are a mess to input with a keyboard. So I guess I'll have to use cinder, b.orchid or sabrewulf to be able to perform some special stuff in a reliable fashion. I wonder what characters are other players using. My prediction is Jago being the most popular, but my bet was also Ken being the most popular on SFII, and it turned out that I was so wrong!

I've been using Glacier, personally. He's the only one I've managed to pull off Awesome and higher combos. Obviously with some actual practice I could do so with others, but I like the character, so will probably stick with him.

Okay, in Killer Instinct I win a match, it has me enter my initials, and the next match my score is 0. What? Someone please explain how the hell the scoring works in this game?

This happens to me as well.
 

Unfortunately I don't think this game is playable for a high score contest unless it's going to be your high score after the first fight.

 

I mentioned this too few posts above.

@Gloves
Just for the sake of conversation, and sharing an opinion, not to argue.  
Your points on combos is exactly the reason for me to state that SFII is an harder game.
Last year in SFII month tournament (I finished 7th, using emulator, keyboard and character ChunLi), I defeated Vega with double perfect in few games (hitting the guy once, and jumping away until timer is over, this in both rounds), and Sagat in the game with the best score I made (I think was that game, not sure). I assume I made like maybe more than 10 perfects rounds or something like that in my best score game. Still, if you ask me "can you get to Bison for sure in your next game?", I say no. The AI in SFII is more unpredictable IMO. Sometimes it really looks like anything you try, it just doesn't work, and end up losing to a Ken or a Blanka (maybe winning big time one round, and just losing by a bit the other two), on normal difficulty.
KI is about combos, and from what I remember defeating it it was more like a Rubik cube solution: learn the algorithm, and it will work. Sure the sequence is complex, but once memorized it works wonderfully.
I am not claiming to be absolutely right, I can very well be wrong on my position or remember things wrongly; I just wish to explain why I do rank SFII an harder game: solve a rubik cube seems hard, but once you understand it is just about an algorithm, you made it once, and using the same sequence, you made it always.
From what I remember, defeat KI is a bit more like that compared to SFII: the AI will block your combos sometimes, but from what I remember, memorizing and spamming combos sequences over and over will normally pay.
But maybe I remember wrong, and KI it is an harder game; we will see players opinions about it at the end of the month.  

I checked and both arcade and SNES versions reset your score to 0 after every fight. I'm not sure why it was designed this way.

IIRC, the next generation, Tekken (polygonal), World Heroes (NEOGEO), and so on, did not have score at all. This was an hybrid maybe? Surely weird. To be honest, no one was playing these kind of games for points score, between my arcade friends. It was either PvP (the most), or about finishing up the game (defeat the last boss), with the most possible different character. Even with SFII, it was considered a good player the one finishing it with the most different characters, regardless of the best score. But maybe this was just us, for others it was different.

He is SF and MK Master, not me. Im not bad at SF, got 2nd last year, but nowhere close to him.  I mentioned he was good at them to make an example on how he is very freaking good at fighting games. Ive never been able to beat him my whole life. He has played KI plenty in the past and is familiar with the game, and was struggling to get anywhere in the game this past saturday when we were playing.

As a pickup and play KI is so much harder than SF and its not even close. If you cant successfully consistently combo in KI then you cant win. You can button mash in SF and beat the thing on occasion. Yeah bison is hard. Thats also the last person. SF isnt hard to beat at all. Might be hard to high score, but not beat. Comparing the games difficulty by just the end boss doesnt make sense. This KI contest is also only 1 life bar, and you dont even get a second round. You have to supreme victory each person. CPU gets 1 combo on you and your screwed. You basically have to play flawless on a much harder game than SF
 

Ah... ok. If this is what we are talking about, then you are 100% correct. At level of competency 0, and level of strategy knowledge 0, KI is very hard. Same thing with a Rubik cube. I was talking about a different perspective: after knowing about it, how much you can rely on your skills and competences to defeat the game again? I agree that for a beginner SF is (hard as well, but) more "instinctive" and "natural" to play.
However, I must say that to master SFII is harder, because against the same AI opponent, with the same strategy, it does not always end up in the same way. You must be somewhat "creative" sometimes.
This is the reason for me to rank SFII harder, besides Bison being a final boss really hard (again, biased opinion here, since I have friends finding Sagat harder than Bison, while I find Sagat less than 50% as menacing as Bison is).
So, likely my perspective in judging these games is wrong to your eyes. No big deal.  
I like when people draw different conclusions from similar experiences: it makes you see things from another perspective! Thanks!  

Yep. True. I managed to play a bit (like 15 or 20 minutes maybe) earlier, and under these rules this game is definitely harder than SFII. Agreed.  
Also, a joypad is badly needed, differently from SFII (ChunLi, Guile, Blanka, Honda, ...), there are not really characters you can play with a keyboard here, you need haduken like inputs no matter what.
So, on 4 stars difficulty, after just a couple of games or so, to get to stage 4 just jumping and kicking with Jago or Orchid is possible; but under these rules (only one single round and score matters) the best was something like 6500 points IIRC, and maybe round 2 (I doubt that it was round 3).
So, in the end, you are correct on your statement. I usually never play games for points, I play just to defeat it and see the end of the game, so I never gave importance to supreme, points, and stuff like that.  
I'll spend my free time in the next days/weeks also to test a bit a NES homebrew game for a friend, but I hope also to be able to take part in this competition somehow sometimes here and there this month too, like in the SFII one, just for the fun: but don't expect an interesting score from me!
Finally, I did not mean to contradict you, just to state an opinion (which turned out to be quite wrong).
Best luck with the tournament.  

So... Is it still possible to play KI for the contest since the score resets after every fight?

Wow, you're right.  What a piece of shit.  I'll figure something out.  I have one more day until my twins are born so I'll study youtube tomorrow at work and see what I can come up with

 

It's a decent fighting game just not for playing for high score.

Congrats on the twins! Hope everything goes okay.  
 

Oh yeah. I forgot about the scoring in this game. The goal was always to have the highest score in a single fight. There is one thing it tracks over multiple fights, though, and that's consecutive victories. I'm pretty sure if you beat the game and start a new game, it will keep tracking consecutive wins, so progress should work just fine for this.

I will work to confirm this.  This may be the best we can do

 

Sincerely Congrats!  

***

Back on topic. I toke some screen shots yesterday in that quick test game.

So, there is a speed victory which I doubt it is good for anything, an high score which you guys say it resets after each fight, and a winning streak stat.

So, here few considerations. Take them for what they are worth, probably very little.
I tend to be minimal, so to me a rule is best the less words are needed to explain it.
People is pointing out that the game is hard. So difficulty dropped from 6 stars to 4 stars. Then we have a rule that you have to defeat twice each opponent (default) with only one life bar instead of two (house rule). This makes to progress in the game on 4 stars difficulty likely harder than playing on 6 stars difficulty with default rules (ie two life bars to defeat the two life bars of the AI opponent). Can I understand the purpose of such choice? Either you need it to be accessible to more gamers (ie. reasonably hard), or to be very selective (ie. extremely tough). Drop down difficulty and set this arbitrary house rule sounds a bit strange.
Before each battle the game shows you a "ladder" to point out how far you are in the game. IIRC Folgore is always the last one before Eyedol. Now, sure, if someone wants to cheat, using continues, setting difficulty to 1 star, and so on, it would be very easy, but assuming that no one wants to cheat, isn't to survive the most possible opponents (and possibly defeat the final boss) the goal in this game? And would not a picture of this ladder, to be taken before each fight, good enough (you post only the last picture, of course, taken before the fight that you lost). It is enough everyone to say: "defeated 3 lost in 4th, or defeated 4 lost in 5th, or got to Eyedol and lost, or defeated Eyedol, ...", and post a picture of the "ladder" before such lost fight. If no one wants to cheat, this must work. And if people cheats, it cheats anyways, no matter the rules.
What about tiebreakers? Here is what the scoring system could be good for. You guys say that it keep tracks of only one single fight, correct? And it is shown in the end someway. If the best score is recorded, then this could be used for the tiebreaker between two players surviving the same number (ie. same position in the "ladder") of fights (or defeating Eyedol) in their best game.
So, bottom line, everything would work with me, I play just for the fun. However, for what my opinion is worth, to set a difficulty level (4 stars or 6 stars), leave the game rules intact (no house rule of only one life bar allowed each fight), and see how far everyone can get would be the best choice.
Just trying to help giving an opinion. I am really fine with whatever decision, just guys let me know what the rules are once that they are fine tuned. At least I know what pictures I have to take.
Thanks for reading!  

Note: if you have issues downloading teh attachment, try: vintage.nintendoage.com

Long story short I'm trying to find the right balance of fun and difficulty that can actually keep people engaged for an entire month. But that is complicated because A) I have no free time when I'm at home so I can do very minimal (if any) testing, and B) I'm terrible at fighting games so it is very hard for me to gauge difficulty. I have beaten Killer Instinct many times whereas I cannot beat most other fighters on the system

If I change it so that you play until a loss, are we in danger of people having to play the game for eons, looping the game over and over again? I can tell you from experience that when that happens in the NES contest, no-on has fun.

It probably also makes the bonus point too easy

you're bad at fighters but you beat this? damn.

I dont think you have to worry about me looping this one. 

Rules updated. I have run out of time and this is what I have come up with. If it's too easy, too hard, too annoying; well, that's just the way she goes.  Adapting SNES games to a competition, while trying to keep the slate diverse and full of crowd-pleasers is a tricky tightrope to walk.

I will work on recruiting a neutral party to help test the titles for me because it is just not realistically gonna happen via me anytime soon

Maximum respect from me for all the effort you put in running this. I know from experience how much organize things is time consuming and not always easy.  

The rules that your posted make perfect sense to me. For this game I fail to see a better option.

""" # You're going to need to manually track how many opponents you defeat. This is not optimal but it's the best we can do as I'm not going to require everyone post 50 screenshots of every defeated opponent. """
Just take a screen shot of the "ladder screen" before each fight, so you can double check if in doubt before posting your result. By deduction if you are on top (say lost to the guy before Folgore), you can know how many opponent are below.

@Brock: Also, it makes perfect sense to don't post 50 pictures in the thread, but then there is a (single) picture required? If so which? I mean what do I have to take a picture of when posting my result?

Thanks for everything!  

And again, congrats!  

Updated. Pics of your opponent you end up on, and a pic of each defeat of Eyedol. They don't really provide any proof of anything, but it at least gives us something.

Ok, post updated in first page with a first pathetic result just to break the ice and give an easy benchmark to everyone. Just screen shot for now, I'll post a real pic when achieving something better.

If you let the credits roll, the game will go to a high score screen that shows the top 10 or so longest streaks. Granted, you won't make the list with 2 or 3 victories, but it's something and it doesn't require taking lots of pics. As long as you put your initials in as something unique, i think this will suffice.