Helpful Tip/Hint: Positioning And Timing Can Go A Long Way (Level 2)

Here is what I do for the mini-bosses/bosses in Level 2!

4-turret Blimp: With this fight, I opt to use the green weapon for this over the red weapon. The minimal testing I've done with the red weapon is negligible when it comes to how fast you beat it. It tends to boil down to the amount of things you can hit. When you destroy a turret the hit box of what you can hit gets smaller requiring you to get closer to the boss potentially losing more health or a life. Green allows me to keep my distance, keep my health, and put consistent damage up. I will position myself at the far right of the screen because the far left turret will fire at you first and go down the line. Timing your jumps when firing your weapon, you should be able to take out the far right turret before it fires at you. Adjusting your position to just right of the line closes to you on the floor, fire at the next turret. You should be able to destroy the next turret before the next wave of firing happens. After the second turret, adjust yourself to just left of the line on the floor you're closest to. After the third turret goes down, move to just right of the center line and attack the final turret. When that is done, fire straight up and take out what's left of the blimp. Two-Face will come down and throw some dynamite at you. Go to where the dynamite isn't and you'll be golden!

Tri-Copter: At the start of the 13 minute long shmup stage (yes, 13 minutes) I switch to the red powerup. The clearing of all the waves of enemies combined with the potential charge shots dropped from the enemies that are random make this stage (and most of Level 3) easier to get through. This mini-boss is no exception. Based off of the what formation the orange planes give you right before this will alter where you're positioned at the start of the battle. Regardless of this, I will always attack the top turret first at the start. When the copter starts to move down, I will switch to the bottom turret. It will pause at the bottom of the screen for the moment before going back up. I will switch from bottom to top turrets while the copter is paused ever so slightly at the bottom mostly to dodge the blasts from the turrets (they do a lot of damage). When the copter starts to transition up, I go back to the top turret and destroy it. When that is destroyed I will attack and destroy the bottom turret leaving only the middle turret remaining. Try to leave the middle turret last because it only fires rockets at you and the bottom and top turrets blasts will get longer and increasingly harder to hit because of it. The rockets can be a nuisance since there will be a lot of them and will do 1/8 damage to you. The red powerup will help with clearing them out though. Once the final turret is destroyed, the copter will start to ram into you dealing massive amounts of damage. It has rubber banding properties to it, so use that to your advantage. Now you can lock the copter in the top right corner before it charges at you. I position myself to the right of the health counter at the top of the screen. Now very rarely you can lock the copter in that corner and it won't charge at you. I haven't been able to do this consistently, but play around with it and see what you can do with it!

Spaghetti O's Turrets 1-3: I'm VERY aggressive with these fights. There's a lot of turrets that will do a lot of damage to you here in this mini-boss gauntlet. Health Management is key! #1: I will place myself right in front of the mini-boss and keep myself there for most of the fight depending of what blasts it will fire and how much health I have. If it's doing it's lengthy blast, I will back off and dodge it for the most part, because you will run out of I-frames before the blast ends hitting you multiple times. When the turrets fire the rockets, I will wait for the last moment to move straight back to get hit by a lot of rockets at the same time effectively only counting for one rocket hit instead of multiple ones. If you are low on health, the turrets firing the rockets will have plenty of hearts in them when you destroy them. I opt not to do this because that wastes time and I want to go fast in my speedrun ;}) The mini-boss will also give you a plethora of hearts when defeated, too. #2: Before the second mini-boss, the turret beforehand that moves up and down will have a charge-up powerup in it. Destroy that turret and wait for the last possible moment to grab that powerup to maximize your damage output for this fight. Clear out some of the more peskier little turrets in this area to help you out. After that, just go HAM on this mini-boss regardless of what it or the rocket turrets do. #3: This last turret can give you one of four patterns. What fires at you first will determine what pattern you get. The best one is where the two closest rocket turrets open and fire at you first. You can pretty much plant yourself in front of min-boss and just fire your weapon without any fear...depending on your health that is. The next best pattern is a combination of a turret firing 3 rockets at you followed by the min-boss firing at you. It will do that 4 times so each rocket turret has a chance to fire. This pattern is manageable, but you'll have to dodge the mini-bosses attacks for the most part. The next pattern is where two rocket turrets will open up and fire a lot of rockets followed by a lot of attacks from the mini-boss. It will repeat this for the other two rocket turrets. Not the best pattern and a lot will be coming at you. Keep your composure and you'll be good. The final pattern starts with the mini-boss firing at you. After this, all four rocket turrets will open fire at you twice followed by lengthy attacks from the mini-boss. Like the pattern before, Keep your composure and attack the mini-boss when you can. The boss will cycle through these four patterns if the battle goes on too long.

Two-Face: The search light from the copter and the rubber banding properties makes this fight trivial. Start with firing at the boss. I will follow him down to the bottom of the screen (there is no real benefit to this it's just what I've always done lol). As he charges at you, backup and do a dosey-doe around him to avoid getting hit (he'll do a quarter of your health if he rams into you). Follow him to the right of the screen and try not to move up and down. Try to keep in the middle of the copter. When he fires his first attack, he'll start to move up. If you just only make a slight adjustment up when he does this, you won't make him move up and down; just back and forth. Play teeter-totter with him. By the end of the first attacking phase, he should be around 20 HP left. He'll start to charge at you in the second phase. Just move backwards when this happens. Although he should be defeated just as this phase starts. That should be level 2 down!

Helpful Tip/Hint: Positioning And Timing Can Go A Long Way (Level 1)

I've noticed in this game that mini-bosses/bosses in this game act/move/behave differently based on where you stand and how much health you deplete from the boss when fighting them (one example can be my fight against Joker and compare how Joker does his movements to when Miles fights him). By no means do I think I have the best method for fighting them, but this is what I do for for my fights.

Clown tank: Before fighting the tank, it is imperative that you get to the fight as fast as you can with the charge shot that's in one of the trash cans beforehand. At the start of the battle, I stand close to the doors of the building in the background and crouch fire 9-11 charged shots at the lower portion. I will then double jump backwards and crouch fire as many charged shots as I can before the powerup runs out. For a point of reference, the charge up shot lasts around 13 seconds. In a perfect fight you will destroy the lower portion just as the tank hits the center of the screen which is where the next phase will begin. If it's past the center of the screen, the tank (once it hits 59 HP) will move backwards to center. The further away from center the tank is the more time you lose. If done well, you should have more than enough health to tank (pun intended) the hits for the second and third phase. The second phase is the middle portion. Nothing exciting to report for this other than holding the attack button. The third phase has Harley Quinn popping out of the top that explodes and will throw bombs at you at various heights. I position myself to where Batman's/Robin's legs are splitting the middle line in the 2nd window from the left on the top floor. I wait a little bit after the top explodes to start attacking Harley, because it seems like she has some I-frames at the start of that (but I'm not entirely sure). If done correctly, you can defeat Harley before she hops to the left and repeats throwing bombs at you. It saves about 2 seconds. If you don't get it, just turn yourself and finish her off that way and be sure to get as close to your pose spot to get to the next stage faster.

Harley Quinn 2: This is for the final time attacking Harley starting when the boulders fall from the ceiling. The boulders seem to be random where they fall from above. They do 1/8 of your health each hit. From full health, I don't want to take more than 2 boulder hits (essentially having 75% health left) or else I will have to adjust my positioning for the final phase. I will position myself at the second dark diamond on the left after the rocks. As the Vectorman-looking claw comes at you, I will double jump to the right and position myself to the fourth dark diamond from the right. At this point, the rubber banding effects of the crane will hit you back and forth to where you can fire your weapon to the top left corner of the screen to attack Harley without having to do anything else. Even with Harley throwing bombs at you, you should have enough health to tank every hit. Side note: Harley will move herself to the opposite side of the screen if you get too close to her. She will not do so if you do this strat properly.

Joker: (You should start this battle with no less than 50% of your health) The start of the battle I will position myself to where my legs are splitting the center dot of trailer you're on. I will crouch fire straight up at the beginning. Stay crouched until Joker moves to the left. Joker's balloon basket's hitbox isn't as big on the bottom, so you can get away unscathed. Stay in the center and follow Joker with your weapon. The first two passes Joker makes should barely miss you. He will then slide on the trailer going from left to right and then right to left. Tank those hits and continue to follow him with your weapon. After this, he will slam his balloon down to the bottom left corner. As he slams the corner, double jump towards Joker continuing to fire your weapon. He will slam his balloon straight down in front of you. By this time he should be defeated. Get to your final pose spot and get ready for level 2.

Helpful Tip/Hint: Tea Party Checkpoint Skip

I remember when first learning the speedrun of this game I was getting to a point where I was consistently getting 49 minutes on my run. At that point, King_iOpa had WR at 47:20 and I was mostly on pace with him up to that point with what I was timing out before I started streaming. The more I deciphered his run I saw that he was completely skipping a checkpoint I would normally be doing. After figuring out what was going on, I made a change with what I was doing to help cut a huge chunk of time for me. I'm not sure how this works or what the actual science is behind this happening, but huge shout outs to King_iOpa for this find.

It all starts after the 2nd checkpoint in the Tea Party stage (it's the checkpoint with the large circle of dolls you have to destroy). Even though the sign tells you to go, wait for a small stack of dolls to come in from the right side. As it approaches you, jump over the stack of dolls and have it closely follow behind you by stutter stepping towards the right. DO NOT DESTROY THE DOLLS! The dolls will eventually break apart to just several single dolls. Keep at least one of the dolls on screen at all times (you can probably take larger stutter steps at this point) and wait for a teacup to come in on screen. The teacup can come in from either the left or the right side of the screen, so be aware of that. When you see the teacup, that is your cue to go as far right as fast as you possibly can. When you can't travel to the right any further, destroy any enemies that are still on the screen. If done properly, you will get a checkpoint that will have 3 sugar cube jars coming at you (first one from the right, then the left, and random side for the third one) instead of two large stacks of dolls and 3 teacups. This skip saves about 40-60 seconds.

Helpful Tip/Hint: Memorizing Powerups

One offer of help I can put here is to memorize where powerups are. This game is not kind when you die for it will knock you down levels of your weapon depending on where you are in your weapon progression. For instance if you are at max power and die, you will go back three levels. If you die again without picking up a powerup from that point, you will go down another 2 stages. Knowing where your next powerup is can make or break how the rest of the speedrun goes. So memorizing where those powerups and health is will help!

Now, ideally, you don't want to die; however, there are two areas where I find it acceptable to die and you can still get a decent time. The first is in Wonderland with the little caveat that it happens during the mini boss...which is easier said than done with the gauntlet of machine gun flowers that you have to jump past happening right before it (I've personally dubbed that section/transition phase as "Murder's Row"). The next stage after that mini boss is the first jet pack stage which will have a plethora of rotating weapon powerups to build yourself back up to max power if you are able to destroy the flying Tweedledum toys (the first two Tweedledum toys will always have weapon powerups in them...after that it seems random what gets dropped).

The second stage where I find it acceptable to die is the Laboratory stage in Mr. Freeze's level. The tanks you encounter will fire a lot at you. It will hurt and each shot is spread out far enough to where your invincibility frames will run out and be damaged even more. Yet those specific tanks and the ice machines later in that stage will drop a weapon powerup when destroyed (just be aware of the grayed out token that will show up after the green color in this stage because it will knock you down one stage of your weapon).

It's weird how there still isn't the shmup stage. Seems like there hasn't been anything found to really skip it. With the Wonderland stage, it looks like they're time shots and kicks to get rid of enemies before they come on. Damage boosting in the Backstage stage is helpful, but probably not practical since you'll be at a disadvantage for the cheshire cat (at least solo anyways). I'm curious if attacking the cat like that would be better than what is currently being done. Good findings nonetheless!

Hello, everyone! I hope all is well. I'm posting here to see what all I can do to help either get more times on the leaderboard or to lower any existing times on the leaderboard by providing any information that I know that I use in my runs. Information on this game is scarce when it comes to mechanics and just general guides to speedrunning this game. And while I do have a good time for this game, I certainly don't know everything this game has to offer. Most of what I do know has come from constant playing of this game, watching previous runs of runners past, and scrounging up what little info I could to make the run what it is today. While I've heard talks of a TAS being done on this game in the works, there is no TAS of the full game just yet (although I do believe there is a two-player TAS of the entire Joker Level on YouTube). Slowly I'm creating a guide for this speedrun, but life sometimes gets too hectic and it gets pushed to the side. With a thread like this I'm more than happy to answer any immediate questions I can here. I will try to be more present on here, too. Gonna aim for at least once a day or once every other day. You can also shoot me a whisper on twitch or a DM over Discord. My username is still the same on both. Happy Running!

Hey, runners! I hope we are all doing well. I just submitted all but the Magneto% Solo run times I did. I guess what I wanted to ask is what would entail a "Magneto%" to get a tab on here created? What I did was I took any% strats up until you defeat Magneto in Avalon. From Fortress 1 to the end of the game I would then only use Magneto. Would this be an adequate rule set for this particular run? Any input would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!