What is the release date of this game? Everything points to it having been released in 1996, but nothing more concrete than that.

The first disc appears to have been authored on 1996-10-21, at 23:04:20. The second disc appears to have been authored on 1996-10-23, at 02:41:50.

On both discs there are files from 1996-10-19 at the latest, but that's not the release date, that's the point where they go "yep, we're done, let's sort out what goes on the disc".

So this could not have been released any earlier than 1996-10-23.

It was rated one of the best-selling games of December 1996.

The Neverhood, a game released by the same company, has a concrete release date of 1996-10-31.

This'll need more research.

EDIT: Giant Bomb claims the release date was 1996-07-02. This is earlier than the date on the disc images I have. But maybe this was a later batch... and a later version? GB also says it's a UK release. I'm tempted to go with this date...

I've got enough of the maze format reverse-engineered to make use of it. The mummy maze is maze10.maz.

First things first, hugging left will most likely give you the most coins, but one of the slowest routes.

Quick warning, this assumes that wall order is not a thing. If you run against an outward-facing corner, if you're rubbing against the side that is later in the list, you can "snap" ahead a bit... or behind if it feels like doing that because all walls in the mazes are double-sided. (Yes, every wall in a maze is in an ordered list of walls.)

Here are two runner-ups for consistent fast routes:

• Left, go until wall, left, go until wall, left, go until wall, left, go until end. Easy to remember.
• Left, go until wall, left, go until wall, RIGHT, go until wall, left, go until end. Looking at my maps this should be ever so slightly faster, UNLESS the wall order is in favour of the other one.

This one I think is the actual fastest consistent route:

• RIGHT, go until wall, left, go until wall, left, go until end.

And here's the fastest route if the stars align correctly and enough people spam BlessRNG in chat:

• Manipulate the mummy to get out of the way at the first junction, then get in behind where the mummy was. Go until end. Yep, there's an exit there too!

Enjoy.

Two things.

If you want to get rid of the Disc 1 to Disc 2 transition, make sure hidden files are visible, then copy the disc files to a directory on your hard drive (the data/index.mdi file is the same on both discs) and run setup.exe from said hard drive. Bam, no disc swap needed. I'd recommend allowing this.

As for the remaining load times themselves... well, the worst of them are actually waiting for sound effects to stop. This is quite apparent in the Butcher Shoppe where you're freeing... whatever her name is, I'll remember it eventually. Entering through the door, you hear 3 knocks. If you click on the freezer door to get closer to it, you have to wait for the knocks to end. Then you'll hear the knocks again. Opening the door starts the video more or less straight away, but skipping the video waits for... yep, those knocks.

A fine example where a sound effect can be avoided but if it plays it wastes time: Outside the stocks, just before you go to Horrorland Plaza for the first time. Sometimes you'll hear a wolf howl. That wolf howl means time loss.

The thing that disturbs me is I think that sound effects are what a lot of the speed tech is going to be about.

Starting to run this game, decided to do AMGID for various reasons although the main reason is it doesn't rely on displacement clips. I've been getting the first 2 decks refined and I somehow ended up breaking my shotgun part way through Deck 1. (On the plus side, I remembered all the modules this time.)

The shotgun I picked up was the one in Med B down the far end.

Is there something I'm missing here, or was this patched? Would the fact that I didn't skip the cutscene on Deck 1 have anything to do with it?

(Also, is there a Discord instance for SS2 or SS in general?)

This post is mostly directed at FitterSpace.

I haven't touched this game in over 10 years. I think. I had the idea of trying to run this game I think yesterday, and then somehow found out today that you just started routing this a few days ago. Weird.

These notes are entirely based on the 43:21 run and not the later Sub 40 you've done, so you may have worked these out already.

The jumpy hud is probably due to janky interlacing handling on ePSXe - I don't have this issue on Mednafen. Software rendering may be a good choice if you wish to alleviate it.

Thanks for pointing out that you don't need to strafe run in this.

Armour stops the stun that you get when you get shot - I find myself taking advantage of this from time to time.

L3: After opening the remote doors you can shoot the glass for a slightly more direct route to the room with the elevator key. Also, the SMG's really nice for killing quickly.

L4: On the "escape" objective, you can run through w/o killing anyone - should save a few seconds in theory.

Thanks for the bar tender tip and the boss fight tip on L5. With that said, you don't need to hit circle to get into the car, at least on PAL.

I've been using the armour for the first part on L6 but if your run is anything to go by it's kinda pointless. I'm also terrible at the car chase part.

L9: You only need to break one barricade to pass the objective. Is it faster to backtrack, or to break the other barricades? I've not measured this. Very nice work with the chopper fight - I lost two lives in my initial playthrough on that fight. On the other hand, yes, your code inputting was terrible.

L10: It's possible to softlock this mission if, during the first boss fight, one of the sets of boxes explodes badly and ends up blocking the path to the boss. This happened in my initial playthrough.

If you want to find out how horribly ruined this game would be if you could clip through things, there's a noclip cheat. On the other hand, I seriously doubt that there would be any interesting clips other than diagonal ones.

P.S. In the movie, Carter doesn't have a "famous last word", he just ends up getting mauled by a grinder.