Given the platform I recorded it on I expect the video is lost to time. Fortunately I can say that the run for this record is nothing spectacular, used the now redundant stage order and lure choices, and the strategy for performing this run now in 2025 should basically be no different to an any% run just with an even higher RNG ceiling

I'll look forward to seeing your edit when you've finished your research!

The upgrade on Ferrinar r2 I think is especially worth looking at because it's very quick and very free to pick up because of the funny way the AI works for that stage, if you ignore flags and just go straight up to get it the AI will head to the flag in the top left section followed by the one to the right of it which just happens to be where you'll make a bridge to the upgrade. it seems the AI is programmed to try and keep a certain distance away from you because while you're doing this the AI will get confused and all but stop moving, giving you plenty of time to collect the upgrade and then go straight over to tag him without any fears about losing the stage. From my experience this is 100% consistent buuuut my sample size of tests for this isn't huge. You can see this one in action about 29 minutes into my Any% run as a clear example

Edit: looking at your research you can probably disregard this statement entirely if Virion 2 is that good for an upgrade then it's best to get level 3 from there. looking at your notes I suppose the optimal route would be:

• Lv2 Aquar IV r3
• Lv3 Virion r2
• Lv 4 Ferrinar r2 (is this available? Your notes say that Lv3 ends AND Lv 4 starts at Ferrinar which doesn't seem quite right) or trepidaria r3
• Lv 5 the Lair r1

I'll have to have a play around with this next time I get the chance

Ah that actually makes a lot of sense and would explain perfectly why there's a difference because I honestly never had any idea that the weapon upgrade in Solaria 3 even existed until reviewing your runs. if we assume this is the case then I would say there's an optimal routing for weapon upgrades as well, and knowing this I think the upgrade in Solaria 3 should just be skipped entirely as it's very time consuming to get, not only being very out of the way but also having to do this while your speed is at it's lowest cap. The Glacia upgrade for example is much faster to get requiring only some skilled ice stopping and a single platform.

The next step for this would be figuring out all weapon upgrade locations, because my understanding is that not every stage has them but I may be wrong about that. When we know that, and we can figure out how they influence each other we can route the fastest ones in.

I think any emulator is fine for the time being, a .5-1 second time loss doesn't matter so much in a game with so few runners, that will be something to worry about when runs are fully optimised and even then the unpredictability of the AI will lead to plenty of variance anyway, at this point in time I would be VERY impressed if any new WR or the like came down to a .5 second delay for loading sounds.

One of the things I've noticed through both playing this game a lot and reviewing Angie's submitted runs is that our copies of the game have weapon upgrades in different locations.

Take for example my current Any% 'WR' (although 100% is a faster category apparently so I really should try and fix this soon lol) run, the most notable example is the first upgrade I collect, which is on a lone platform on the south western side of Glacia 1. Compare this with Angie's runs, where that same platform instead has a orange power orb.

I assumed this was a version difference between the Sega Saturn version and PS1 versions of the game, but having recently gotten a PS emulator running the games as well I've found that my version of that also has the weapon upgrade in that place.

This now poses the question, why are there different locations, and which set of locations is faster? I'd love to have the answer to this for future reference, and then maybe details on this can be added to Angie's great guide later