Discussion stopped here about 3 weeks ago and so far everyone participating seems to be in favor of the proposed change. I'll give this a few more days for anyone else to come out of lurking, otherwise I'll write in new rules for the leaderboard.
I'm against this. Skipping the mission (1) devalues current runs, (2) is effectively cheating and not in the spirit of a full campaign speedrun, (3) cannot be associated with a single final time due to how end-mission triggers function (although to be fair, this is arguably negligible but still important to point out), (4) sets bad precedent for other missions with timer sequences (e.g. Zerg 9, BW Protoss 8).
Thanks for the suggestions and notes guys.
After some discussion elsewhere and with a variety of people, I think one of the common concerns and potential dangers here is setting bad precedent by allowing Mouser skip at all. For example, the current strategy for Mouser skip isn't even the theoretical fastest (I believe a second controller can be used to expedite the game over?). Other warps are possible as well, such as forcing a game over in 3-3 and then warping from 3-1 to 3-3's Mouser fight. I'm sure more weird stuff will be found in the future, and this is in addition to the fact that world 1's Mouser skip already results in 19/20 completed stages. "Warpless" probably isn't the best name for this category because I would argue that ladder clips (e.g. 1-1, 1-3) are effectively wrong warps but have legitimate use and are true to the spirit of the category in its current form.
An immediate solution that I'd like to propose is retaining the name "All Levels," banning Mouser skip, but grandfathering in all runs already on the leaderboard. It's not the greatest option, but it preserves the leaderboard in its current form and it would protect the category from discoveries down the road that lie in a gray area of sorts.
With respect to the relay at SGDQ 2017, we can accept Mouser skip since I know runners may want to show it off and it's what they've thoroughly practiced.
So as of this moment, "All Levels" as a category name is a bit of a misnomer. The primary issue is allowing for Mouser skip: a trick that involves a forced game over in 1-2 and then warping from 1-1 to 1-3, thereby circumventing the need to formally complete 1-2. One can argue--through loose interpretation--that entering 1-2 meets the requirements set by "All Levels", but I'm in the camp that treats this name as completion rather than mere visits. If you're unsure about whether or not 1-2 is actually flagged as completed in the game code, defeating Wart with Mouser skip results in a final tally of 19 levels during the podium sequence at the end (there are 20 levels in SMB2).
Now, what I'm suggesting isn't necessarily the banning of a trick. I understand that a lot of runs on the leaderboard employ this route and I would prefer not to obsolete times wholesale. I would argue that the easiest solution here, if one is taken, is to rename the category to something like "All Worlds" or whatever else is deemed most appropriate.
Ultimately I'm leaving this up for discussion, so please let me know what you guys think.
Yeah, I always imagined this trick was subpixel dependent upon running into the corner, but Hourglass is so unstable for me with this game I never had the chance to dig deeper. I couldn't find a consistent setup for this which is why I omitted it from my any% runs, but if anyone can find some clues here, this could open up a lot of applications across all categories.
Since there seems to be renewed interest in this game, I thought it'd be meaningful to make a post about this glitch. Basically it's possible to clip through the floor (in particular, at the intersection of two lines). I'm not quite sure how this works, but I imagine a number of movement variables come into play:
Fortunately in this stage, there's actually floor immediately below the corner you can clip through.
If the current "100%" category doesn't see all exits and finishing all exits only adds a few more minutes to the run, then honestly, just visit those exits and keep the category name. 100% is a young and unoptimized category, a change this early won't hurt anyone. As mentioned already, two categories doesn't make sense given this and keeping the category as is (but renamed) seems really odd to me given how close it is to just being a true 100% category under most common definitions.
Categories are defined differently across communities, and as cool as it'd be to have universal rules, such an ideal world will never exist in speedrunning. 100% being defined as "having a lasting effect" is also arbitrary; Super Metroid 100% for example is focused purely on item collection (which the in-game percentage tracking is based off of), and the map is not completely explored despite it being persistent across play sessions.
If you want to create a category involving strictly all exits, I suggest taking the Super Mario World approach and calling it "64 Exit". (This game has 64 exits right? I haven't played this in full in years.) And if 100% doesn't already have all exits, how much longer would it become by adding all of them? Might just be easier to increase the length of the run a bit, maybe it'd add some cool stuff too?
Lastly, don't name it Reimu%. This is something that bugs me across a lot of different games but the "%" in category names should only be used for actual quantities (e.g. low%, any%, 100%); using it for anything else is a bad meme.