Any% guide

This guide will  be split into each component that goes into the run.

**Driving**: make sure to take the shortest line through a corner. Apart from that, the driving physics of MCR are very forgiving, so unless you're trying to get an absolute perfect time or whittle down a time trial, there isn't much complexity here. Note that driving in reverse is just as fast as driving forward, and it's often faster to just reverse instead of trying to turn around.

**Cancelling**: when you cancel a race, if you haven't passed the finish line on your fourth lap then you will be placed in 8th place and get 0 points. The other positions will be filled depending on the opponents' positions as they are when you cancel. If you cross the line for the final time, your position is solidified and you can instantly cancel instead of waiting for the game to put you into the race menu. Money earned is also instantly added to your total when you earn it - $100 for cash pickups, $150 for destroying an opponent and $500 for lapping someone.
Note than navigating the pause menu to cancel is fastest via keyboard - Esc, up, enter, then enter twice more for the stats pages; if not upgrading, then enter to start the next race, and repeat. 

**Winning**: on easy difficulty, you only need to place in the top 4 to pass onto the next league. A large majority of the time, 3000 points/winning 3 races is enough to secure a 4th place. For the Moon League, 6000 points/winning 6 races *can* secure a win, however it's fairly common for one other person to get just over 6000 over all 10 races, although this generally requires them getting 1st/2nd on the last race (see **Route**).

**Racing**: completing a lap requires you to pass through all checkpoints in order. These aren't shown in-game, so please refer to the **Checkpoint Positions** guide to see placements. Due to some funky placements, this allows you to use the jump-jet to skip parts of a track to get to the next checkpoint, or it may be faster to reverse through a section of the track. 

**Money**: while getting as much money as possible is good, the gain from playing an extra track to get more money for upgrades is outweighed by the time it takes to complete a track, so we rely entirely on the money we get from the minimum score route (3000 in normal leagues and 6000 in moon). Luckily, MCR nets you $500 for lapping, so if you lap everyone that nets you $3500, lapping everyone twice nets you $7000; this is on top of the first-place prize of $1600, so races where you lap everyone net you a minimum of $5100. Due to the races we choose, we do a *lot* of lapping!

**Spending**: since this is a speedrun, the main upgrade we're concerned with is engines. Tyres will reduce your time, however the amount is very small and not worth the investment until we have a full engine upgrade. Speed boost on vehicles that have them are also welcome; apart from that, the only other upgrade we care about is the jump-jets for doing skips. 
While there are a vast amount of possible routes in terms of buying cars and when to upgrade, through a lot of testing the fastest option appears to be buying the Micro, fully upgrading its engines ASAP, then buying the Stallion ASAP (a Stallion with no engines is faster than a fully upgraded Micro). However, the Stallion point is reached roughly around league F, and due to the reliance on jump-jets to complete F2 it's faster to stay with the Micro for the entirety of F league as the Stallion doesn't have jump-jets and therefore cannot do the skip.
Therefore, I personally wait until G league and buy the Stallion then along with however many engine upgrades I can afford.

**Route**: due to only needing 3 wins per league, we choose the two fastest tracks out of the five in a league, and do the fastest one twice. The various skips for the tracks played are shown in my Any% run, and are fairly self-evident, so I'll just list the tracks played: 
A4,5,4
B4,5,5
C1,4,4
D1,3,3
E1,3,1
F2,5,2
G2,3,3
M2,3,4,2,3,4

Moon league however is different - to win the game we need to come first, which requires roughly a minimum of 6000 points/6 wins. It isn't as easy as that however since second place usually goes above 6000 points in the last race if we cancel it - so it's necessary to note the position of second place, and how many points they need to get to win, and which position that corresponds to:
1st 1000
2nd 600
3rd 400
4th 300
5th 200
6th 100
7th 0
8th 0

Since positions are wonky before the race starts, it's best not to cancel instantly and hope for the best - instead, if we need to force a position on them (i.e. there's a fewer than 1000 point difference between your scores), start the race. If their position is 5th or below, waiting 'til the first 4 people have crossed the start line then cancelling will ensure they get 5th or below for the race and thus 200 or fewer points. Otherwise, start the race and try to bully/block them into the position you want - remember, you'll be placed 8th if you cancel so they'll take your place if you're directly in front of them. It can also be useful to buy weapons to try and destroy them, however they'll likely have full armour upgrades. The simplest, albeit longest, method of bullying their position is keeping pace until one of the crossroads, then knocking them into the crossing road. The AI will try to get them out, but it's fairly easy to box them in until enough people have passed.
Of course, the easiest option is to restart your runs until there's a >1000 point difference between you, upon which you can just cancel like normal, which is also the fastest option.

Checkpoint Positions

https://i.imgur.com/rfe6F3k.png

This is an image of all the checkpoints, sorted by league per row and the order they appear in per column. The number indicates how many checkpoints there are per track, apart from the start line. The green dot indicates where the start line is.

Checkpoints have to be activated in order, including the start line; checkpoints are activated when your car touches them, you don't need the entire vehicle to pass through to activate.

Setting up Mini Car Racing windows 7-10

Here is a guide to setting up the game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQ-CDAAmX6k

Time trail (Routes + Tips & Tricks)

This guide is for everyone interested enough to run the timetrail category.

It's still in the making as i'm doing runs. 

The complete guide can be found here: 
https://docs.google.com/document/d/10xws1HLP7NWb0Kl6I6HpODBjpQFPBgdHwBsE3Hy7vZA/edit

Nome	Autore
Any% guide	reddagger 6 years ago
Checkpoint Positions	reddagger 6 years ago
Setting up Mini Car Racing windows 7-10	Bert_wert 3 years ago
Time trail (Routes + Tips & Tricks)	Bert_wert 3 years ago