The problem with Hard mode is that from what i've experienced:

It becomes almost mandatory to kill the first ennemy in the jail right at the beginning except if you force luck so that he doesn't crouch shoot you, which happened like 1 time out of 10 for me.

The energy walls disappears faster than in normal difficulty and for some reason the strat I was using at the end just won't work and had to change it to something riskier sadly (It's faster tho).

Also unlike what you seem to have experienced brandoo the beginning becomes EXTREMELY harder for me to get right with the "slugs" when using Hard difficulty. I have to rely on alot of luck to pass it even though the pattern is almost identical everytime on Normal. (And 15th anniversary)

Haven't checked this discussion in a while and it seems everything went in a good direction. It was a good decision to separate Console and PC. However, "Also Timmy if you don't mind resubmitting your "No Skips" Run again I'll approve it. I think it may have gotten lost in the mix : (" My no skips run doesn't make sense anymore since it wouldn't fit anywhere now. But my 20th Anniversary run has been moved to 15th category and is now obsoleted behind my 9:08 run. Should I submit this one again to the other category ? Because I don't want to have two identical runs at different places. Since you moved all my runs to 15th maybe you can move back the 10:26 which was played on 20th anniversary ?

After seeing the new changes, I really think right now is probably a better way to go even if, imo something still doesn't feel right, let me explain:

My 9:08 run is done using a reload and I really think it would be a fair decision to separate runs using a reload and those that don't. Right now, what "Any%" should define is litterally NHG's 8:03 run. (All skips and no reload)

The clip through the wall can still earn you some time even if you don't reload, (just go down the elevator and kill your character, you will respawn with the gun. Instead of 15/20s earned it's more like 3/5s) it doesn't feel right to force any runners to use that trick in the Any% category and probably should have it's own (Any% Reload trick) or, what could be decided is to only allow this trick in a Segmented Category.

In my mind the categories would look like that:

Any% / Any% Segmented

There is no point in having a Any% No Water Skip category until someone finally does it lol And since all versions seem to have little differences mainly with cinematics speed. If you really want to make a fair ranking for everyone. You would need to either count out cinematics time and lag time between level screens OR Separate every version and console. (Even though all skips and the gun glitch are possible on 3DS / SNES / PS4 / PC (15th and 20th versions) The only problem being that it's a bit harder to perform what I call the cage skip just before the arena due to the SNES controller being really bad for that. If you put the categories in that layout you could consider adding as a subcategory "Any% with Water Skip" for Any%.

There are some points though which I don't agree with, in Another World right now, there are no trick or glitch that are RNG dependant except for the Water Skip. It can happen that you die to a random laser (At the start of the Harem) Probably the game gives very low accuracy stats to these and 1 time in 1000 they will hit you. But at this point it's probably unintended from the game and shouldn't be taken into consideration. Right now, there are only 2 things that really need to be discussed it's about the "reload trick" and the "Water Skip" Since the Water Skip is entirely RNG dependent. What could be considered to have a clean leaderboard is having "Any%" as the best Single-Segment no reload route. And "Any% Segmented" the route which allows reloads.

@Beckski93 All the tricks that I've done in my 9:08 run have been done in my 10:26 run (except the reload but it does work) which is played on the 20th Anniversary you can see the run if you toggle the filter for obsoleted runs. I've switched to the 15th anniversary version only because I've noticed later that it was faster with the cinematics time. To be honest, I find it easier to perform most of the tricks in the 20th anniversary where the input feels way more responsive.

Hey, just noticed this section and here is my POV on the situation: (Will only talk about the PC versions as it's the only one I've tried)

The first thing to know is that 15th Anniversary version is the fastest if you compare with 20th anniversary mostly due to cinematics taking longer for some weird reasons on the 20th. But for the time i've spent playing around on it, it seems that probably due to the average FPS being higher in the 20th version, the spawn behavior of the larves in the very first chapter seem less consistent and leading to probably more deaths in the end as you technically try to go as fast as you can.

This is the most obvious thing that probably affects the gameplay in differences between both versions. About the glitch in the jail chapter: as you noticed the only way to perform this glitch is to not pick up the gun right after escaping the cage.This leads to a different animation when crouching that allows the player to clip slightly through the wall. Then reach the checkpoint which allows me to reload. The game doesn't literally save your position but just that moment of the game when you reach it. That's why the save gives back the gun to the player.

There is only one thing I'm having a hard time to understand about the rules on the new "glitchless" category. It's about the fact that it doesn't allow "skips" WAIT WHAT!? As for all the games I've ran until now there have always been a consensus about the fact that "Skips" if done without any sort of glitches were allowed in glitchless categories and if categories were to be distinguished, it would require that one of those skips to be really heavy and for it to cut a huge part of the game. (even though most of those skips are probably glitched anyway) but here, the run is not even 10 minutes long it feels really weird to put in the same bag glitches and skips.

To go in-depth with my opinion, even glitchless is kinda redundant as the only glitch inside the game that allows the player to earn some seconds is right at the beginning. But let's say why not. It still looks weird to me to be forcing glitchless category to look like a walkthrough with arbitrary rules such as "you are forced to do this thing" or "that thing" It's really losing the point of a Speedrun. Many of the considered skips are just about timed jump to manipulate the ennemy behavior leading to being able to kill them or just to simply manipulate the badly made instant death scripts.

I'm really sorry if this wall of text sounds aggressive it's really not my point. I'm just wondering what was the thought process behind the new rules even though 100% category really needed to disappear as it didn't really make any sense in the first place.