Georgia, USAJust dumping useful info and curios for speedrunners here. Will add more to this over time.
PerfectTaste in the MSUSA discord: "All of these suggestions [for which characters to use on which stages] are based on the previous strategies, before the use of Ludwig (on levels you really aren't meant to play him) and/or Huey (it took me years to unlock him and only did so when Weatherton unlocked him and started to beat my WRs)
For instance, the 1:12.280 on Everglades with Dewey set by Björn is perhaps even better than some WRs out there
Here's the best available video: https://web.tresorit.com/l#PJNK9R_cHhX8-hQfJxPVbA
Link to the Pete Oregon WR: https://web.tresorit.com/l#dZ9120_Vn1t8-ZaAx408mQ "
maps and walkthrough for every area can be found here: http://www.angelfire.com/games3/ShadowTower/
additional snippets of maps can be seen here, including the official 3D map of shadow tower region that used to be hosted on from software's ST page: http://imgur.com/a/W0eWW
going forward, i hope to acquire some of the japanese guidebooks for the game, from which the other imgur scans were pulled. if i can do so, i'll make hi-res scans of the maps
I love this game and am working hard on optimizing the run. That said, It's somewhat demoralizing knowing I have next to no chance to challenge the world record without buying a copy of the NTSC-U game ($50+ for disc only, $100+ for complete) or a PSTV and a copy of the game.
With that in mind, my initial suggestion would be a simple category split between native disc speed and copies of the game played via PS2/PS3/Vita/PSTV with FDS enabled. I'd be putting runs in both categories eventually, so if we can't make it happen for whatever reason, I won't be totally gutted.
I just want to compete on the merits of speed as opposed to hardware!
FYI - I need to do more testing, but my rough estimates put loading speeds in native at ~30% slower per load.
