Speedrun Tutorial / Explanation

Hello!

This is a guide for both Any% and No Major Skips (NMS) categories. I used 1.01F version of the game in high resolution mode via CM_HI.EXE and I have no knowledge if any other versions exist.

CyberMage is mostly a linear shooter of its time with lots of enemies, keycards, and elevators, but uniquely mixed with some RPG (magic spells, inventory, basic stats upgrades, shops, one city hub, etc.) and cinematic (lots of in-game cutscenes with speechless protagonist) elements.

Movement controls have some quirks: you can't rebind forward and backward movement from arrow keys, so I got used to numpad controls (F1-F3 keys are hard to reach though) with right mouse button as my primary way to run forward, but if your keyboard doesn't have numpad I guess the only good alternative is to use DosBox feature to remap keys.

You can skip in-game cutscenes with backslash and backspace buttons. This is not a hidden feature and it is explained in the manual or in the Help screen with ? button.

Don't forget to pick "Novice" difficulty and "Mouse" input in options menu. Higher difficulties seem to only increase damage to player and decrease damage to enemies - I haven't notice more enemy spawns or less money in bags.

LEVEL 1 - ESCAPE FROM THE LAB - 00:05 (Timestamp from my NMS run for reference)

The first important movement technique to learn is how to do extended jumps at the beginning and at the end of this level by using DosBox fixed cycles control feature to lower framerate (I used ~200000 cycles for normal play and ~120000 for jumps) to slow down falling speed. A native way to lower framerate exists by playing on a slow PC that can't handle max resolution at decent framerate, but you have to switch to low resolution for most of the playtime and it looks ugly, so using DosBox features is a nice compromise for better player/viewer experience.

The second movement technique is jumping on moving up elevators, which saves a lot of time in this and 4-5th levels, but sometimes if you jump too late you will clip through elevators with no way out except reloading the last save.

A noticeable difference from Doom-like shooters is that hit-boxes of enemies and switches are much more narrow than in Doom, but at least you can shoot more rapidly (except for magic spells and they're mostly terrible at hitting things). Ladders also have narrow collision and enemies can shoot you away from them, but you may switch to low resolution with [ and ] buttons to increase vertical velocity, which is also a very fast way to climb long ladders.

Random drops by enemies can cause some problems. The first level can be scary, cause enemies may drop a lot of mana refills instead of health, so I suggest picking up extra medkits for safety. Random drops include +1 max health or mana upgrades and getting more health upgrades in early stages is beneficial for safety in later more chaotic levels like Level 3.

Next is the most powerful glitch in Any% run: entering broken vehicles (EBV). To do EBV in this level, quickly break your tank by shooting rockets close to a wall and try to enter it again. As a result you will start the next level inside some enemy far away from the usual starting point. I don't have a solid explaination of why EBV works, but I assume it teleports you to the object with the same ID as the vehicle and it might be related to the way aircar repairment works in Level 3. EBV is also useful in Level 6, but in Level 3 it teleports you to locked rooms with no way out.

LEVEL 2 - A HOT TIME IN SLUMTOWN TONIGHT - 02:54

The premise of this level is you need 2000$ to enter arena fight and there are 9 apartments with various stuff, but 1 apartment already has 1600$ (and in Any% you start inside it), so take the rest from some other apartment (you can find some cash in Level 1 too). Annoying thing here is that money bags have slightly random values too and in Any% there is a 10% chance you will not get 2000$ from them, but reloading a save resets the amount of cash in bags, so for extra safety you can simply save right before picking them up then reload until you get the required amount of money.

Fun fact, the levels are composed of 3D cubes of the same size, but indoor areas are rendered differently to feel smaller in size. EBV breaks this by teleporting you to a small apartment and that's why you have to do an extra jump to press a button in the wall in the first apartment.

For the arena fight I use hover bombs from Level 1 and I throw them to the far right corner to reduce potential damage by unexploded bombs when riding this elevator after winning the battle. Other apartments have various guns, armor, attack magic spells and so on that can improve this fight, but hover bombs are very easy to get.

LEVEL 3 - NIGHT LIFE IN THE BIG CITY - 06:11 then 15:43 and 27:11

This is a fetch-quest hub level with lots of characters to visit. Sadly this level is also painfully difficult due to swarms of hit-scanning enemies and blazingly fast police aircars with very little time to react to use your medkits. Buy ammo and medkits with the money earned by winning the arena fight and make sure to buy ammo for submachine gun in Any%. You can easily win lottery for more money by rerolling with save/load, but high price items like guns and radars seem worthless.

The aircar section is also hell. It's very easy to take a lot of damage and break the car with no fast way to repair it (a slow way involves going through glass bridges with slow elevators and paying 1000$). Kill all ground enemies around every time you leave your car or they may damage it down to 2% armor. Using a remote to teleport the car to the base before Level 5 is pretty much required to survive, although you can try to jump out the car to the roof while your car drops down to the ground for you to pick it up right after finishing Level 5, but it is risky and only saves a few seconds.

LEVEL 4 - WHERE'S A COP WHEN YOU NEED ONE? - 08:37

This level is easily skippable in Any% with a tricky jump right at the start, although it has some helpful items like jumpjet that allows to fly above the ground (don't forget to turn it off on ladders) and two nice guns (the rifle has an enormous swinging though and it's hard to hit anything without wasting bullets).

The codes from your allies are randomly generated, so there are no memorizing or brute force solutions. Be cautious to not hit backslash instead of backspace, which only skips lines of dialogs and not the whole speech.

LEVEL 5 - IN THE CLUTCHES OF CORPORATION - 17:19

This is the level where I recommend to start using guns instead of magic for pretty much every enemy you see. This is also the longest level of the run and it would be nice to find a way skip it, but without damma-cron weapon from this level you can't finish the next level. Funnily enough, you can see the exit through the window in the first room of the level.

With use of jumpjet in NMS category some elevators that look like flying platforms are faster to skip while they are moving down than doing usual jumps to moving up elevators.

For extra safety I always pick +25 health upgrade in the room with three laser barriers.

The dark room right at the end is actually randomly choosing on which path you'll end the level and the upper path is 5 second faster. It is easier to see which path has opened with minimap on.

LEVEL 6 - DEAD MAN'S ZONE - 28:39

The turrets are less dangerous with jumpjet, but in Any% be more careful and at the beginning don't jump out the window of the tower with a rocket gun and go back the way you have entered.

The amount of rebels killed in the fight before you meet the rebellion leader will determine whenever the room with medkits, rockets, and armor will open, but this fight is mostly random with a 30% chance of losing, so for safety it's better to keep some backup medkits.

Another large EBV skip works the same way as in Level 1. There is actually two tanks, but only the underground one is useful and the other one will crash the game, although if you use EBV on both tanks then you'll teleport to a different spot, but this path is slower.

Make sure to end Necron's speech when you are near the door to prevent enemy tanks going outside to kill your allies instead of you, because otherwise your allies will drop negative health refills all over the place that damage you.

LEVEL 7 - WHAT YOU CAN'T SEE CAN HURT YOU... REAL BAD! - 33:49

Just a huge maze with some magic and weapons you can find if you want. In Any% this level is almost skipped due to EBV. You should use a secret wall with a button as an elevator (but it has a bit laggy collision, so practice it) to get to the 2nd floor faster and if you need some health items then dwarfs (in Any% their AI is turned off conveniently) around drop health and there is a room with medkits, but beware of magical invisible dwarfs.

LEVEL 8 - NOT A GOOD DAY FOR A PICNIC - 37:08

It is a very safe level if you utilize a save/load glitch to keep Earthmother's speech repeating itself - it prevents human enemies from attacking you. It is important to keep the speech playing until the end of the level, cause the guard of the last switch of the level is super dangerous with top level spells, super healthy and can block you easily in the doorway. Beware of spiders, which are still active and quite harmful.

As a side note, you can go out-of-bounds if you run back after picking magic wings and get smashed by a fast trap door that moves up with jumpjet on, but this way you still can't save your flying ability to the next level by not using the wings as a key. There are other doors in the game that close by moving up, but they are much slower, so it's much harder to replicate out-of-bounds trick on them.

LEVEL 9 - NOW I KNOW WHY PEOPLE PRAY - 40:13

Very obnoxious, but pretty straightforward maze level.

At the beginning you can do another extended jump to get ice stone faster, but it barely saves time in comparison to Level 1 jumps.

Firemother can kill you instantly and you can prevent her from attacking by utilizing the same glitch from level 8, but usually this is not required if you are fast enough.

LEVEL 10 -  THE SHOWDOWN - 46:01

Try to hug the left wall for a bit on the second turret to avoid damage. This strat is also useful in the second apartment on Level 2 in NMS category with same turrets.

You can pick up helpful magic icons faster by pressing keyboard numbers with # after F1.

The final battle is fairly simple, so that's all! Also there is a training stage and It's quite cool actually, but I didn't find any skip for it, unfortunately, so I don't see any reason to record it.

14.01.2018 First Draft

19.01.2019 Small Rewrite

02.03.2025 Large Rewrite