Timing begins at machine selection confirmation, and ends at hitting the last "next" button after racing Chinatown Jam with the last machine.
Short version:
- Expert grand prix first overall with Avenger
- Expert grand prix first overall with Shredder
- Intermediate grand prix all first place (including qualifiers) with Black Lightning
- Expert grand prix all first place (including qualifiers) with Hornet
The order of these 4 can be swapped to your liking, but the fastest route through 1 and 2 require grinding for good RNG (more on that below), so i recommend doing those two first.
Details:
There are 6 things to unlock, and 4 grand prix to complete to get them all. The unlockables are: the Neo Speed Way track, the Chinatown Jam track, the Vengeance machine, the Prowler machine, the Reaper machine, and the Dominator machine. Beating grand prix on intermediate difficulty with all first place finishes (including qualifiers!) unlocks Neo Speed Way, and beating grand prix on expert difficulty with all first-place finishes unlocks Chinatown Jam. As for unlocking machines, all you have to do is finish an intermediate or expert grand prix in first (but not necessarily all first-place finishes) with a certain default machine. The corresponding default machine and unlockable machine pairs are: Hornet -> Prowler Avenger -> Vengeance Shredder -> Reaper Black Lightning -> Dominator. There's one more unlockable machine, the N64 Control Pad, but we don't get it in the run because it's unlocked by getting a lap time ending in .064 which is extremely unlikely¤, and up to chance.
¤ At the time of writing, I actually don't fully understand how unlocking the CP even works! After getting lots of .064 lap times, I still haven't unlocked it. Something even stranger is going on here.
The run, with specifics:
I will follow the route I listed in the short version of the run description above, feel free to do these in whatever order you like. Also as a beginning sidenote, you can confirm menu selections with this game with either the A button or the Z button. Use this to your advantage, spam with both buttons and stave off arthritis for another year!
1. Unlocking Vengeance
Set the game difficulty to expert in the options menu, and move to grand prix. Select Avenger and you'll see the confirmation dialog come up - press A to confirm this and to begin the run, and start timing. Complete this grand prix with a first place overall, no need to do any qualifiers: just retire as soon as youre able to. As for the races themselves, try to get first place, because you'll want to skip as many races as possible to save time and still come out in first at the end of the grand prix. The riskiest pathway is to skip both Chinatown and Chinatown Jam, which will leave you with 30 points at the end of the grand prix. This will sometimes be an overall first place in the tournament, but often not, so it's a battle with RNG. A guaranteed route you can take, losing 2 minutes, is to only skip Chinatown Jam. To skip the race, just retire as soon as the race starts. Note that skipping the other tracks would not save as much time: Canyon Rush and Bikini Island are short, and Neo Arena is the shortest of all with the out of bounds strat.
As soon as the credits appear after completing the grand prix, reset the console. You can time this by listening for the music!
2. Unlocking Reaper
Set the game difficulty to expert again, and start a grand prix with Shredder. Complete the grand prix the same as the last one, that is, by getting first overall, no need to get first on all races, etc. Again, reset as soon as the credits appear.
3. Unlocking Dominator and Neo Speedway
Set the game difficulty to intermediate this time, and start a grand prix with Black Lightning. This time, in order to unlock the new track in addition to the new machine, you'll have to get first on all qualifiers AND races. This means that during each qualifying round, you'll want to get a quick time on your first lap, and as soon as you begin your second qualifying lap, retire. This works because the qualifying round takes your best lap time out of the two - if you forfeit one lap, then it will just take the one lap that you did as your best. Note that if you aren't confident about your first qualifying lap time, you might want to do another one, because not getting first will require you to start the grand prix over again. For the races themselves, just be sure you come out in first.
Once again, reset as soon as the credits begin.
4. Unlocking Prowler and Chinatown Jam
Set the game difficulty to expert once again, and start a grand prix with Hornet. For this grand prix, you'll again have to get first in all qualifiers and races.
As soon as you select "Next" on the grand prix final results screen and the screen begins to fade, stop the timer.
