Hobbies Speedrunning

I'm not someone who speedruns myself, but I do watch quite a lot of Pokemon speedrunning, primarily the side games, with Mystery Dungeon being my favorite. Recently Wh0misDS pushed for a new WR on English Wii U Blue Rescue Team (2:20:33, a record of almost 4 minutes over his old one for Wii U) and has been going for japanese runs as a result.

One of the big things with Blue Rescue Team are missions, which you want to get "near missions" (missions that want you to find an item in a dungeon, which can be completed without having to do anything if you just happen to have the item already), there's also the dungeon Uproar Forest, which is entirely mandatory despite potentially seeming optional to start with, where you will also need to get two exclusive items to the dungeon (Chestnuts) to progress. It is possible but unlikely to find 2 in a single run, but you will always find one on 9f, and if you have a pokemon with Pickup recruited they will always pick up a Chestnut on 9f if at all possible. Partner choice is something, the run uses Cyndaquil due to it having a better midgame, but Squirtle is often used for a better early game with Skitty not needing the better partner for the midgame if you get a TM in the shop to link with tackle

There's a lot more that goes into this but i think i'll stop there, the run was uploaded on youtube about 3 weeks ago, it's pretty cool, you can go check it out if you're interested
 
I semi-recently watched a commentated All Dungeons run of Twilight Princess by bewildebeest and it's a fun time.


imo All Dungeons tends to be the best category for Zelda run spectating because you get to see the whole game being broken without skipping massive chunks and all the crazy glitches that involves. In TP this means Back In Time, early Master Sword for warping + on demand wolf, Ooccoo shenanigans, and dungeons done out of order (Snowpeak is the second dungeon completed).

Oh also, Poe Gate skip was discovered within the last year or so, which is cool.
 
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pzwrd said:
How much game knowledge do I need to start making successful speedruns.
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It varies on the game, as well as the category, for example some runs can be as simple as NES Home Alone in that as the whole game is a timed mission, merely beating the game (aka, surviving) in a casual run (which lasts nearly 20 minutes) nets a world record (nowadays a bug is exploited to make this trivial within about a minute), this also applies to scrolling levels in platformers as by nature merely surviving until the end almost inherently nets a world record for those (for example the Klonoa community bans level-specific runs for that kind of levels out of their simplicity at getting WRs).

Meanwhile, other games demand advanced knowledge and skill for them (glitches, RNG stuff, optimal tricks and routes, fallback options, muscle memory for specific time-sensitive inputs, etc), but even then they can be simplified with categories, such as variants that ban certain tricks (most commonly certain glitches that may limit / change gameplay, for example, the Spongebob Battle for Bikini Bottom remake has a separate category for runs that abuse a bug that allows to skip nearly the entire game to the final boss), limit the run to a single level / chapter / mission / boss or similar (over beating the entire game), or disallow going out of bounds, among others.

In general it's recommended to beat a game in a casual run before trying to speedrun it, as well as checking resources and guides for speedrunning the pertinent game in question or their Discord server (if any), once you've done that you're more than ready to start trying.
 
cool shit in the pokemon speedrunning hemisphere the past few months. i like gen 3 so here are the latest gen 3 changes:
- emerald glitchless mudkip now is able to utilize a mudkip on a different RNG frame with lonely nature and better attack thanks to the efforts of a few people working on a rng manip for that. this game doesnt usually get much route changes so thats neat to say the least.
- sapphire glitchless people have been working on a completely new zigzagoon route which manipulates getting 1 or more rare candies from pickup, thanks to the efforts of creative ideas from runners. the candies in question save net time cuz ur able to use those as opposed to battling extra optional trainers or wild encounters for extra experience.
- fricken firered/leafgreen has been kinda revolutionzed, less so for glitchless but more so for the round 2 category. a casual guy named clemi was able to find a trick (while casually playing through switch releases) which skips jingles after catching which saves about 2.68 seconds each time you capture something. this is huge and such a timesave has never been found before in all of the games history (the biggest timesave trick by comparison is probably instant text in red from a decade ago). in round 2 you have to obtain 60 pokemon in your pokedex to unlock the post game sevii quest, so it adds up to about 70-90 seconds of time save in a 3h30m ish hour category. lots of runners are trying to farm pbs with this new discovery. a youtuber named gunnermaniac made a cool video explaining everything about this new trick.

what about other generations of pokemon?
- in pokemon crystal runners have found ways to manipulate catching raikou without using a master ball! credits to hwangbro for this and speaking of him hes also made extensions to manipulating the majority of the early game up until falkner's gym. extending rng manips like this are usually tricky and monumental laborious tasks to route (working with constantly advancing rng is a pain), but rewarding and save time as you dont have to spend time save and quitting during a run or ur able to extend to a turn 1 critical hit in a fight. thanks to the new manip advances already been a new crystal wr using these strats.
- in pokemon platinum chimchar route has gotten a major early game rework with roark manip being a thing now. a few talented people were able to find winning paths to victory using just chimchar via battle rng manipulation (it gets rly crazy the battle lines with this manip; ember burns, rock throw dodges, ember crits, whatever luck you can name its present in the roark fight). with this in action the chimchar route now saves like 2 minutes in the early game since you dont have to fight extra trainers to battle roark with monferno! the route onwards is a little tough with less experience, but net total still a good amount of time save and could be enough to overtake the current platinum wr with piplup.
- in pokemon bw1 tools have been developed to make plasma skip. in gen 5 theres something called "plasma skip" (bw1) or "trainer skip" (bw2) where using the phenomenon feature to spawn dust clouds in front of trainers visions can allow you to bypass them without having to fight them. its hard to pull off and nigh impossible under realistic non-manipped circumstances, but thanks to tools and research its possible to make this work. in total bw1 can skip 5 plasma grunt trainers in chargestone cave (1-2 years ago it was 4), so thats neat!
 
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