Here's a first pass at routing a glitchless category for NES:
By "glitchless," I basically mean "do all the mandatory steps in the main quest." That would disallow currently known glitches like:
- No item change glitch
- No walking backwards to skip mandatory events
One thing I do still do in this route is use teleport wraparound (e.g., teleport 3 steps east from 14,2 to reach 1,2). That could theoretically be construed as a glitch, I suppose. But given that it's possible in every version of the game I've checked, it's arguably intended behavior.
The route I use is basically derived from this DOS run by Septimus1993:
Added the category though I'm curious about the wrapping teleports. Is it purely a convenience or is it used to reach places that you otherwise couldn't? Seems fine assuming it's not used for sequence breaks.
There's a somewhat similar thing in MM6. The overworld is a grid of maps where you can walk into the boundaries to travel between them. It's possible to travel diagonally which some people claim is a glitch but even if it was it doesn't affect anything.
Well, here's a representative example.
This is the cavern under Sorpigal, where you enter at 14,0 and need to pick up the scroll quest at 1,2. So you can walk north to 14,2 and warp E3 to get over there. This allows you to bypass several forced encounters in the hallway that leads there. So it's not a sequence break, exactly, but it does allow you to skip encounters. I'm not aware of any way you could actually sequence break with a teleport like this; most critical locations seem to be guarded against teleport anyway. (But maybe someone more clever/patient than me could find one.)
That said, now that I look at the Sorpigal cavern map, you could just as easily walk to 9,2 and warp W8 in this case (the first encounter isn't until 7,2). So it's not really critical to use the wraparound here anyway; it just saves a little bit of walking. (And less walking of course means less chance of random encounters ruining everything.)
I'm pretty sure all the other wraparound teleports I'm currently doing are similar to this—you could line yourself up to do a teleport within the map bounds with just a little bit more walking. So if you'd like to define wraparounds as a glitch, I'd be fine with updating the run to not make use of them. It would reduce the risk that someone might find an actual meaningful sequence break with them later.
I think it's intended behavior for the game as well. Like you said, it's in every version, and the only place it doesn't work is the overworld map, I think, for obvious reasons. I'm really interested in watching this, GG and congrats!
