There isn't a formal guide, but I suppose we should make one now that there are people running this (I would love to run this if I can ever get some free time), and it would be a good place to put my research notes together from when I TASed it.

The initial pattern of the wisps in the sword cave can be manipulated if you do the same input from power on and path to the cave since the RNG starts from zero. The level grinding requires practice to get used to the enemy movement and how to avoid being in the front of an enemy when attacking them.

By Virtual Console I mean the HD Collection. Jaguar_King was attempting the Green Beret skip on stream, but was unable to get it real time because the timing is tight, and the setup for each attempt takes a while. It would be easier to test on a Playstation emulator to see if the skip is possible on that version.

I found a way to save four minutes off the Green Beret jungle section by alerting and desyncing the Green Beret: This may be able to save time for a speedrun of the Virtual Console version, but I am not able to test that version on emulator. Can someone else please test this since it is a bit difficult to test real time? There are two things here: 1) Moving to the next screen must be done at the same time as Green Beret. 2) The punch in the upper left screen(second punch) must be done right before he changes direction in that corner. That is what causes the Green Beret to desync. The first and last punches are done so that Green Beret does not outrun Solid Snake.

I also found a way to save a couple minutes on the egg by using a deathwarp, and also the deathwarp can be used in quite a few places to save multiple minutes.

I have been busy planning the route, but because drops are on a running timer that does not reset, I am unable to make a test TAS that will reflect what the final will look like. So I decided to start the actual TAS and hope everything works out. I just got done with the Black Color fight, which looks cool.

I found some other miscellaneous stuff as well: I can make a guard float off the screen. The game gets confused when doing a double KO at the end. Speaking of getting confused, how about a game crash? Here is a glitch in the swamp, but is not useful unfortunately.

Allowing TASes to be linked here (I am okay with mine being linked here), and in a resource section because a leaderboard makes no sense given the nature of being able to improve an input file works because there are a number of categories that will be rejected for various reasons at TASVideos (I have one), and it would be nice to have a place for them, as well as the ones that are accepted.

I have been planning to buy a Japanese MSX2 and cart (the ¤original¤ version) for a long time, so I have put off practice since I would rather play on console. But now that I finished the TAS and it will probably still be a while until I get the console, I may as well just play on the emulator. Since I used openMSX for the TAS, I will use it for speedrunning since I am now TASing Metal Gear 2. I suppose blueMSX would be okay as well; I assume it would be as accurate, but I don't know much about it.

As for route planning, I imagine it will be as close to the TAS ( http://tasvideos.org/2974M.html ) as possible. Obviously ration usage and item drops will have to be different, and of course the scorpions.

I am TASing the MSX2 version, and am currently researching the game. I found a way to speed up the end of the Green Beret section (the upper left screen in the second pass where the beret goes up to where Dr. Pettrovich is) by alerting him (not at the very start of the screen or he will go the wrong way) and going to the next screen at the same time as him. He will appear on the next screen still running. This can be done at the start , but he will run the wrong way at the end. For a speedrun, a punch is possibly necessary after the alert to ensure that there is enough time to get to the end of the screen before he does. This is the reason for the punch on the following screen.

I am not sure if this is possible on the VC (unfortunately death warping won't work on VC, jaguar_king checked), and I don't know how much time it will save since the VC runs fast and also taking damage here might interfere with Running Man, and the alert will probably count for those running Big Boss Rank, but it is something worth looking into. Here is a video: (out of date) I am still researching ways to be able to alert earlier and even a way to get the green beret to desync; both would speed the section up quite a bit.

I did a quick and dirty spot comparison between puchiedarcy's video and one of the accepted emulator runs (all using PAL) a week ago, and I also noticed that Snake's movement (and also the music) in puchiedarcy's video move at the same pace as the accepted, which matched the movement and music in the video in this thread. I did not see any difference in game speed, and am therefore sure that puchiedarcy's run and at least one of the accepted videos that are now removed were run at the correct speed.

I agree with showing the fps if it is that easy to change in the emulator, but I think that the current accepted emulator runs (which were PAL) and puchiedarcy's were run at the correct speed.

For any%, the only restriction is that passwords cannot be used. Everything else is fine.

For deathless, the only added restriction is no deaths.