Minimal Items - Thoughts and Problems
4 years ago

In light of a certain individual's recent achievement, my mind was flooded with shower thoughts of a possible Minimal Items category. The more I thought about it, the worse it got, so now that I've done all the thinking for everyone, here's a digest:

Problem IA: Best Ending Requirement In order to make this category more visible and easier to manage on the leaderboard, we would need to enforce a Best Ending Requirement for all runs. In this way, it would sit alongside API and the others so we wouldn't have to get into the matters of difficulty. The problem in doing this is that runs would be very long and almost impossible to complete consistently due to the difficulty of getting through Hell on 3hp. This brings us to the 1B.

Problem IB: Subcategorization To allow people to run MI more easily, we simply need to allow them to play for different endings individually. We simply would need to place Minimal Items in the Difficulty Subcategory. The problem is that it won't be that simple. Sure, Normal and Hard difficulty will be the same, but Easy Mode halves damage and enemy health. In addition to adding MI, we would need an Easy-MI subcategory to go along with it, which would be messy.

Problem II: Actual Requirements Minimal Items would require that the player only picks up items they are forced to. Of course, this implies no life capsules, missile upgrades, or additional weapons or trades. But some things are little screwy. For instance, when you collect all the dogs for Jenka, you can choose to not talk to her and avoid the Life Pot. Therefore, the item is not required to complete the game, and collecting it would mean breaking the golden rule. In addition, what of picking up useless items, such as the Ogre Medallion or extra Jellyfish Juice? Would taking these invalidate a run? These are the sort of things that need to be answered prior to any consideration of adding a category such as this.

Problem III: The Runs Would be Long

In addition to a lack of a Machine Gun, damage boosting will be entirely thrown out the window. 3hp Chako Skip will be made impossible from a lack of a map. Runners will have to take cautionary routes as well as find ways to maneuver without the aid of the MG Boost. A fully optimized run with Best Ending might be 1:10:00

Problem IV: Who Would Actually Run This? I only know of 4 people currently interested in running hard mode, including myself. Minimal Items is objectively less fun to play than Hard Mode as it is more challenging and just as unforgiving. I don't see anybody playing it.

Problem V: It's a Self-Imposed Restriction This, and all the other reasons described perfectly sums why this should not be a main category. It's something you do to yourself. It's playing the game in a way the developer did not intend for anybody to play it. It's hard, it's slow, it's tedious, it's complicated to define rules, and nobody actually wants to do it.

I think that covers all the bases.

Edited by the author 4 years ago
New York, USA

While it would slightly clutter the board, requiring people to get the Best Ending in this would be absurd - so other difficulties would absolutely have to be an option. I'd probably add them as people actually do runs in each difficulty.

As for if one somehow accidentally picks up a non-required that doesn't actually impact game play - such as the Ogre Medal - it shouldn't invalidate the run.

As for the others, it would absolutely be a niche category. I can't say I've much interest in it myself, but it is an interesting challenge.

RepentMF likes this

@thunderzap7

I agree that useless items such as Ogre Medal shouldn't invalidate the run. A Life Pot, however, still has some use even at 3hp, and since it is avoidable, I feel it should be a requirement that it is not picked up.

If we were to add the category while nixing the Best Ending Requirement, if anybody actually did a run, I think we would need MI for Normal and Hard Mode, and Easy-MI for Easy Mode.

That being said, I don't see anybody being insane enough to attempt a run for any ending, easy mode or not.

Georgia, USA

So why would there need to be a separate categorization of Minimal Items? The fastest category would likely be easy-mode/ bad ending. Why would those be separate?

Georgia, USA

I know, I was speaking to what @ekornene said. Having them separated by Normal/ Hard and Easy categories is weird. Nothing about what you said, @golderzoa sorry if I confused you

@RepentMF

If we subcategorized MI to sit alongside the difficulties, we would need to split MI into two subcategories, MI and Easy-MI. The reason for this is that Easy Mode on Minimal Items would be different due to taking half damage and enemies having half their health. Normal/Hard runs would essentially be the same as there is no such change.

In regards to what @golderzoa said, if we were to add the category at all, the runs themselves would be impressive enough that putting them into misc. would be a crime. It's not a meme category. MI is definitely something we would want to display up front, simply due to the skill and dedication the runs would take. All that being said, I still don't think it should be added to any board.

thunderzap7 likes this
United States

I don't think I would run a 60fps min. items category (at least not seriously), thus I don't have any particularly strong opinions on this matter. So, here's a (possibly) hot take just to spice up the conversation (again, I don't have any strong feelings about any of this):

  • Minimal Items isn't really a difficulty setting. What would an "All Possible Items, Minimal Items" run look like?
  • We currently have "All Possible Items" (a "max%" category, if you will) and Best/Normal/Bad Ending (the "any%" categories) as main categories. So, it would make certain sense to have "Minimal Items" (a.k.a. "low%") alongside those, which would make it a main category. (It would also solve the issue of Min Items Easy vs. Normal/Hard, since those would be handled the same way as the difficulty settings for the other main categories.)
  • All Possible Items implies Best Ending since there are items in Hell that must be obtained in order to get "all possible items". If we apply the same logic to Minimal Items, then that should imply Bad Ending (for non-Switch and Switch JP platforms) or Normal Ending credits warp (for Switch NA/PAL), since those are what minimize the number of items that you have to pick up.
  • Minimal Items Normal Ending or Best Ending can probably be treated like All Possible Items Normal Ending or Bad Ending. They can all technically be well-defined categories with the right ruleset, but very few people (if anybody) are going to want to run any of those, so we might as well just leave them out (or add them as people decide to run them, or maybe even create a separate category extensions page for them and other categories like Mimiga Mask Ending etc.?).
  • As for the useless items: I don't think a run counts as "minimal items" if you didn't pick up a minimal number of items. It's like forgetting an item in All Possible Items...it's not "all possible items" anymore if you do that, no?
Edited by the author 4 years ago
Ekorn, thunderzap7, and RepentMF like this

Gave some thought to rules for the run. Think it might be helpful to those whom are interested in trying.

This is what I would expect to see in a 'View Rules' tab:

Reopen the game before starting a run. Timing starts when selecting the menu option that starts the game ("Start Game" on Steam, "Single Player" on Switch). BE: Timing ends when Quote gets on the Sky Dragon. NE: Timing ends when the HUD disappears when jumping off the island after Undead Core BestE: Timing ends on the cut to the floating island after defeating Ballos. Turbo is not allowed. Category Requirements: Beat the game, picking up only required items. Required items include:

  • Polar Star
  • Fireball
  • Blade
  • Silver Pendant
  • Arthur's Key
  • Keycard
  • Santa's Key
  • Jellyfish Juice
  • Charcoal
  • Rusted Key
  • Gum Key
  • Gum Base
  • Bomb
  • Dogs
  • Clinic Key
  • Cure-All
  • Tow Rope (Best Ending Only)
  • Air Tank
  • Either Booster v0.8 or v2.0
  • Alien Medal (forced due to health limitations)
  • Teleporter Room Key
  • Sue's Letter
  • Mimiga Mask
  • Sprinklers
  • Itoh's Controller
  • Mushroom Badge, Ma Pignon, and Iron Bond (Best Ending Only)

Picking up additional items, such as life capsules, missiles, or Life Pots is not permitted.

thunderzap7 likes this