I see it kind of like all squares are rectangles but not all rectangles are square. Anything you can do in 2 character can be done in any% but 2-character% has its own limitations to get creative with. My vote is to put all 2-character runs (besides like if someones doing rockstar or something with only 2 for some reason) in that category and if someone has a really hot strategy on it, encourage them to reproduce it in the respective normal mode and leave the third character idle.

Edit: I didn't consider the difference in lag on the two modes. Much to think about. Those new Niss runs are wild.

Really thought I'd have had dinner by now but here's what I came up with instead:

1. Green Tentacle Skip & Tele-Strength 0:09
2. Weird Ed Dungeon Escape 1:43
3. Despawning Edna 2:30
4. Unlock New Kid Menu in Lab 2:55
5. Super Hamsteak Ending 3:52
6. Triple Threat Ending 7:28
7. Final Fortune Ending/Weird Edsel Extra Turn 9:43
8. Meteor Police/Hamsteak Ending 12:00
9. Hamsteak/Talkshow Ending 13:53

Sounds like an alright idea. In general do you think a written guide or a commentary tracked vid would be more effective? So far I just got a commentary guide to the Meteor Police run, but that's a few weeks old and doesn't reflect the stuff discovered most recently.

Got a little off topic on Niss' more relevant question and it reminded me of this even less useful tidbit:

you cannot give the Cold Can of Pepsi to Sandy or Dr. Fred during an extra turn (they can't accept it in the lab during the main game either). Even though they spawn on the porch during the apologies cutscene, there is no known way to park collected items to survive into the post-game, so you still need to get past Purple Tentacle/where Purple Tentacle was in the main game a second time to collect the can from the vending machine in the lab. Once you enter the inner lab on an extra turn Sandy and Fred will be respawned there and missing from the porch if you go back there again. The self-destruct timer will also restart so it goes from a dead end to an impending loss at that point. Pretty sure I deleted the b-roll that showed this to save disk space though.

One thing that also seemed like it was happening on some of the recent TAS runs was a quickness filling and redraining the pool. Tentacle might not be meant to react after the Glowing Key is picked up but perhaps the fill and re-draining in quick succession overrides the normal way. Maybe someone else is more qualified to talk about what happened on those. When I tried the pool/utility room Fred skip I didn't question it too much but in any case you've inspired me to try and see what happens when I try to feed the Cold Can of Pepsi to the Red Tentacle (probably nothing).

Edit again: Meteor on the other hand won't acknowledge cold pepsi but trying to give it regular pepsi is kinda hilarious

Hey Niss. I've had the same problem most times. I think its timing, going into the lab too soon after turning off the power/draining pool seems to cancel the tentacle investigating the utility room. I haven't put this through the scientific method but its my best guess anyway. No idea what the threshold is if this is correct.

Not as fast as it could be clearly, but if you skip the max amount of cutscenes you can get the meltdown faster from the porch during an extra turn than going for the Keypad immediately from Ok, Lets Go Rescue Sandy. Not really the point you were bringing up but good way to ride out the momentum of the endgame. This was on top of an attempt to figure out some of the strats you've all been coming up with lately, so you could probably save Sandy and melt the house down in the 7:30-8:00 range the way it's been goin.

Yeah, we gotta actually have runners willing to attempt something to make room for it on the leaderboard. I hope once there's enough runners submitting any% with the new strats that they'll use the same tricks to go for the real strange stuff. If something's gonna remain uncontested though, I agree it would be kind of a waste to recognize here.

Regarding glitchless, your proposed door code restriction seems reasonable. Michael run vid title updated.

Now that a good amount of us seem to be getting the Dr. Fred skip down, the playing field seems to be about ready to go for contesting some new alternate endings that require it. Pardon any redundancy here from other threads, but here's a compiled list of proposed additional speedrun categories:

Michael Ending/Glitchless (There's enough waiting built into the Michael ending that glitches seem to save a negligible amount of time)

Triple Threat (Talkshow/Meteor Police w/ Weird Edsel launch)

Talkshow w/ Weird Edsel Launch (no Meteor Police)

Super Hamsteak% (any% w/ extra turn and Hamsteak ending)

Meteor Police/Hamsteak%

Talkshow/Hamsteak%

Final Fortune (any% w/ extra turn & meltdown ending)

Dead End% (Unwinnable w/o game over)

Feed Meteor to Plant%

Dave Solo %

100% (we'll have to iron out how to define this)

With the Old Rusty Key in hand this new Circuit Breaker strat will probably break Dave Solo% too if it becomes a ranked category since New Kid is off limits on that one.

Yeah Niss, you got it right. Also sometimes forgetting if I got it right the first time and doing unnecessary repeats. Its so easy to zone out while trying some of this stuff over and over.

What a phenomenal route upgrade you've worked out. Mindblowing efficiency

With the Pepsi Pause, and I guess the 0000 door code too, the line blurs. They seem unintended by the devs but are too easy to come across in casual/novice gameplay to be classed with the dungeon doorbell skip or Tele-death glitches for example. Would it be less fun if there were separate, tiered strictness categories (any%>pepsi required>meteor mess required>100%/all obstacles)?

We could carve out a lot of space on the board for different configurations but where to start?

Well done NeSs7or9

Good idea using the 2nd Weird Ed cutscene instead of the first to get past Tentacle. Less lag and action interruption the way you did it. After he answers the door or captures someone, I think the downtime before he'll respond to the doorbell again is about 35 seconds, which I found to be one of the biggest challenges to plan around.

nice

To do this you need to do the Weird Ed capture glitch to unlock New Kid in the lab. After Meteor Police come, use the switch like normal but quick change to another character and hit New Kid again. It fast lets you bring up the menu during the Dr. Fred cutscene and if you get the timing right after he's done with the control panel you can get one more revenge out of Weird Ed to get a third gravestone and WIN the game. You can outright skip the Dr. Fred cutscene but I find that it does help get the timing more accurate at first. You gotta wait for 12 button pushes before giving the hamster to Weird Ed. There's a few directions you can take this in:

Lose Then Win

In this version Bernard's gravestone was doubled and so Razor is still alive and present during the apologies cutscene, which occurs after the "All the kids have died" game over screen appears, but before the "Congratulations, you won the game" screen does.

Walk Past Graves and Lose

In this version Bernard's gravestone was doubled and so Dave is still alive and present during the apologies cutscene. I go for the extra turn here (hit New Kid at the last possible instant before the game would normally end, hit start to bring up the New Kid menu during closing cutscene) with enough time to walk by the three gravestones before losing (going for the extra turn when you would otherwise win off a Hamsteak ending will automatically set you back to losing). If you regain control immediately at the start of the post-graveyard apologies cutscene, the bad ending screen seems to always come on no later than when asked how Dr. Fred can repay you for your troubles. If trying it during the Razor version of the apologies ending it seems to come up even faster.

These endings are hard to get, but as far as winning off a hamsteak run, Meteor Police seems like it would be the fastest because of the downtime you have anyway that you can do additional Razor/Syd steps and you don't have to wait for the Contract, etc.

I'm not planning on speedrunning these endings anytime soon but I'd love to see it happen so if anyone is interested in trying I can maybe put together a new alternate endings tutorial vid or something.

Good running!

Hi Sathdresh. Most of my bad ending experiments were a little later into the game than this but I think the mid-level Keypad is probably the fastest way to get to a meltdown in the game. There are alot more ways to end the game than I had long thought until the last week or two and I agree, adding some more categories seems in order.

Bad and bad adjacent endings to add...

• Meltdown% -Hamsteak% but win instead (w/o extra turn) -Final Fortune % (Take Extra turn & then get meltdown ending) -Super Hamsteak (any% w/ hamsteak ending during extra turn) -Dead end% (unwinnable w/o game over)

see also : the Misc categories thread

sorry if i'm hogging up the forum lately, just don't know who else this would pertain to as much. i was kinda joking at first when i thought of this but i figured out that you can actually get the full graveyard before you win the game, unlike the Super Hamsteak thing i brought up before which requires the full extra turn glitch. this is getting the gravestone screen followed by talkshow/you win cutscenes instead of the bad ending. it'd be great to see some runs of this sort.