I recently finished a TAS of this game which is now published on TASVideos:

I recently finished a TAS of this game which is now published on TASVideos:

I recently finished a TAS of this game which is now published on TASVideos:

In addition to the 2017 104% TAS done by me in 53:55 (leaderboard timing):

(with commentary here), just today my new Any% TAS (in 35:58 leaderboard timing) has been published on TASVideos! Direct video link:

VOD link is broken, this is the updated one

There are two versions of the game: the PAL (EU) version, and the NTSC (US) version. According to this GameFAQ page, the US version released in December 2003, while the EU version released in March 2004. This means that the US version is v1.0 and the EU version is v1.1 (as also encoded at the very beginning of the Combined WRAM when playing the game: for the US version it says Oct 30 2003 14:21:33, while for the EU version it says Dec 12 2003 20:03:06). This difference is not merely cosmetic but has significant consequences for speedrunning. The tl;dr is that the EU version, maybe not surprisingly, is the better version to run, but the point of this post is to document all the changes between the versions that are currently known.

Gameplay

• While Max can never shoot over obstacles (tables, counter, etc.), only in the EU version is this also true for the enemies. Indeed, in the US version the enemies can shoot Max from behind tables and the like (at least it seems this way), making for quite a challenging asymmetry in certain levels. This is most notable in level 7 where certain rooms are incredibly difficult to clear without dying
• In the EU version you can buffering inputs through any screen transition. What this means, for example, is that holding any direction, or A to shoot, during a cutscene will result in Max moving or shooting after the cutscene. In the US version on the other hand this will do nothing: you really have to let go of all buttons and the start holding directions or press A for the action to happen. This doesn't sound like much, but it makes many setups possible and is an overall quality-of-life thing to have
• There is a difference in how throwables work, resp. what trajectory they take when thrown. Implications of that difference are a few enemies that simply die upon throwing their weapon in the EU version (e.g., the molotov enemy in level 4 or the grenade enemy in level 8), and the fact that in the very last level, in the US version you can stand right up against the wall when throwing the grenades to destroy the steel ropes, whereas in the EU version doing that hurts Max and you instead have to throw from a rather particular distance from the wall

Glitches

• The ammo underflow glitch does not work in the US version; seemingly, it was introduced in the EU version when fixing something about the US version's weapon animations.
• In the EU version, upon starting level 7 you get back all weapons that you had unlocked prior to level 6. This may very well not be a glitch but rather a choice the devs made when finalizing the EU version. Still, I'll list it in this section because I'm not sure whether this is intended, and it anyway is a fact that in the US version you don't get any weapons back when starting level 7

Minor

• The top of the title screen in the EU version says "Max Payne Advance", while in the US version it's just "Max Payne"
• In the EU version, turning off gore in the options removes all blood from the game. In the US version, the same setting only removes the blood from active enemy that you're shooting/killing, but the blood that's part of the scenes is still present.
• The maximum ammo count for the ingram and the dual imgram are 300 in the US version, which was lowered to 250 in the EU version. This change is probably due to a bug in the US version where the ingram ammo count does not correctly carry over to further levels if you have more than 255 ammo. The maximum ammo counts of all other weapons are the same in both versions though
• In level 3, in one of the bathrooms (Level 3, Room C4 in the notation of the All Collectibles guide) there is an extra enemy in the US version which runs at Max and drops shotgun shells once killed
• There is a random hole in level 5 (at the bottom of the long staircase) present in the US version which is simply not there in the EU version
• The first lava pit in level 8 is secured by a railing in the US version, which has been removed in the EU version (but the jump over the lava pit is still possible when first jumping onto the railing)
• The password for the computer in level 9 is different. In the US version it says "668 the neighbor of the beast", which was fixed in the EU version ("667 the neighbor of the beast")
• In the second corridor of level 11 (Room M6 in the notation of the All Collectibles guide) there is only one guy behind the mines in the EU version, but two guys in the US version
• In the outside platforming part of level 11 there are three mines placed on the walls in the US version, which are simply not present in the EU version

(and backup VOD in case the original one ever goes down)

As is common with point'n'click runs, the main timesave comes from optimizing what things to do in what order. This game is no exception, and to my knowledge there are also no useful glitches. However, there is still some tech to this run, and the purpose of this thread is to document all of it. In case anything else is found in the future it can simply be added to this thread.

• Fast screen transition

This is a classic that is present in most point'n'click games: changing scenes by double-clicking makes the transition happen instantly, thus skipping the walking animation.

• Frame-perfectly skip all dialogue

There are three known ways to skip dialogue and cutscenes in this game: left-click, right-click, and spacebar. What is special about space is that holding it skips all dialogue as soon as it comes up. An example of this can be seen in this run (with input viewer).

Notably, this seems to be an "accelerating feature" similar to writing text where holding a key takes a split-second before the key is entered continuously. As such, holding space to skip dialogue should happen ~1 second before the actual dialogues would show up for it to skip all dialogue frame-perfectly. Holding space can be buffered throughout some, but not all screen transitions; moreover, clicking on things while holding space does not always work. Thus it is recommended to only hold space when needed.

• Language differences

Because of frame-perfect dialogue skipping, even if there were dialogue differences between different languages they would likely not matter. However, there is a more interesting version difference: in the German & Italian versions can you talk to Victoria after realizing that the door to William's chamber is locked (Chapter 1, ~6-7 minutes into the run). In all other language versions, trying to talk to her gives the "I should leave her alone for now" dialogue, but in German & Italian checking the door gives an additional dialogue which roughly says "I should ask Victoria about the key" (Samuel does not say that in other versions) which unlocks going to Victoria early. This is a big timesave as well as an argument for German/Italian being the fastest versions for speedrunning.

Before locking this thread let me point you to different setup videos for jumping on the crow, hopefully one of them helps. If it doesn't, then---as Smath said---feel free to join the PoP speedrunning discord to get more help:

"jumping on the crow is [...] a glitch"

No, it's not. That aside, you can run No Major Glitches and just not do that skip if you find it too hard.

PoP1 SNES Romhacks can be found over at popot.org—click here & scroll down to the bottom of the page—or on romhacking.net. Some ROMs may also be found in this leaderboard's "Resources" section.

We'll gladly add any hack to the leaderboard that has a speedrun already.

...by @vo1dm1nd; for the sake of completeness, because it's currently not on the board:

In August 2024, this game was finally released on Steam (as version 1.4.0). In particular, this means that we finally have the ability to downpatch to 1.4.0 and above through Steam, so runs done on these versions are safe to play on in the future. As a result, however, we had to do a final clean-up of runs and archive old versions that cannot be downloaded or accessed anymore. Given this is the last time we had to do this, we were able got rid of the temporary "Old Patch" misc category and, instead, archive all pre-1.4.0 runs (including all detail) in this spreadsheet! And with this, the patch wars come to an end. ☮️

The current rule is that restarting the game is no problem, if

1. you "continue"/load a save made during the run; loading a save made prior to the current run attempt invalidates the run.

2. you keep the timer running throughout the re-start. While there do exist speedgames where re-starting the game is subtracted from the final time, this does not apply to the Deponia games—at least as of now—because there has never been a widespread reason to implement this.

Ah that's the yellow parry clip then, my bad

Guess it not only works through doors but only on slopes? Would need a video to conclude more

Thank you for letting us know! If you're talking about this enemy

then getting past them has been fixed in the latest patch (which is already out everywhere but Xbox Series X|S and the Switch):

Sorry to hear that the autosplitter is causing you trouble. Here's how to raise the issue to the developer:

Record your runs with DebugView (see tutorial) and raise an issue on GitHub with the recording of the problem. Both a recording with DebugView as well as using GitHub are necessary for the programmer of the load remover to be aware of the issue.

Some people from the PoP community already got the chance to play the full game a week early, and hereby all strats and glitches that have been found are being shared. All findings are compiled in this document and are being updated with new tech as it's found. Also contains a table of all amulets & their impact on damage values, a list of all Athra surges (and their location), as well as all puzzle solutions.

Some people from the PoP community already got the chance to play the full game a week early. As such we'd like to share the strats and glitches that were found so far. All findings are compiled in this document and are being updated with new tech as it's found.

Edit (Jan 15th, 2024): The full document containing all known glitches & tech has now been released!