Hi, I'm considering attempting a speedrun of this game in the future! I'm very familiar with it having played through it many times, and with a little practice I might be able to make a time that's at least not completely embarrassing.

I noticed that the rules don't state that the run has to be glitchless, even though it looks like the world record run is. Many years ago, I recall finding an out-of-bounds glitch in Jade Fields--but I haven't played in a long time, and I currently don't have access to my Wii to make attempts to recreate it, so unfortunately I can't provide instructions on how to do it right now.

It got me thinking, though--if a runner were to successfully get out of bounds, would it be possible to get to the loading zone leading to Lonesome Park without needing to be able to push the rock, thus tricking the game into thinking you're on the mission to find Bartholomew near the end of the game? Or would Bartholomew be counted the same as quest-specific items and NPCs and not spawn at all?

I'd test on an emulator with cheats or something, but it looks like nobody's torn the game apart and made any kind of moon jump or something that I would use to make sure I wouldn't be wasting my time trying to glitch my way in legitimately. I assume you guys know more than I do, since I haven't played in years and I haven't done all the math, but I think it might save well over an hour if it does work. Do you think it's worth testing?

At the moment, we haven't actually looked too far into glitches in this game. If a glitch is used for a run, we'll make a new category and label the current board as glitchless. But, as it is, I don't actually know of any glitches or how to execute them, so having a glitch would make this run more interesting, if it's useful that is lmao. I definitely think it's worth testing though.

I'll look around Jade Fields at some point and see if I can work out how it works!

I mean, I'll screw around with it a bit and try it out.

Off the top of your head - Do you remember being near a wall or anything like that?

oOPS sorry for the late reply! I completely forgot about this for a while and came back to see if anyone ever found anything, I guess not.

I think I did it by running into one of the corners (I think the northwestern corner?) of the second bridge in the area--I don't remember if I was doing anything special since it was a long time ago, I just remember suddenly clipping under the map and freaking out until I popped back to the surface somewhere nearby after running around for a bit.

If it helps, this was on Catz 2 on Wii--only version/console combo I've ever played.

I have PS2 and Wii so I can screw around with them both. I imagine the inputs would be easier to have be consistent on the PS2 controller, though.

Will check it out. Thanks!

A skip there would be the god skip for sure, it seems, as you can access that area very soon after the game starts, and at that point I don't think you would need to do anything else besides fight the final bosses, right? lol

Yeah, I been testing it the past few days. Can't recreate it but I can get some weird stuff to happen. Maybe there's a way even if it's not the same way.

Essentially you make it past the rock and you only have to throw rocks at Tornados and then final bosses.

However, it's extremely possible the rock isn't removed once you make it past it. If you think about it in the regular game you push the rock to the right and it remains in that position for the remainder of the game. I bet it has to be glitched past any time you need to move past it.

That's not even counting the fact that if you make it past the rock in the first place that the game might not load any of the stuff since you're not there story-wise yet.

I'll keep testing it out

When you get the brother dog/cat you get teleported back to the wizard I think, so no need to get back through the rock. Plus you can use warp points too, right? so even if it doesn't I think the warp points are still able to be used, and there is one right in the sand tornado area

Unless you make it past the rock and then the game sees you are in the certain zone and gives you everything you missed as a result, we wouldn't have access to warps. You don't learn about warps until obtaining the warp ring which would be skipped. So not sure if the game fills those slots and missing pieces when you zone into the later section of the game.

Even still, only one way to find out.

Truuue, but I could be wrong, but I think you do get teleported back to the wizard dog/cat right as you finish the quest for the brother dog. either way you are definitely right about warp stuff

So I just went and looked at my playthrough, and you definitely get teleported back after you are done doing stoning the tornadoes. So you would only have to make it through the rock once, assuming everything else would work fine on the other side.

So I have been trying to find a way OoB while playing for hours lol, hopefully someone can find a way to the other side of that rock. It almost seems like the model of the dogs are just a little too big to slip behind it. Not sure if catz is different, but man if only there was something that could give us hope lol

Yeah I tested it for a few hours myself on the Catz version.

Considering taking an emu on the PS2 version and seeing if I can just mod warp myself to the other side of the rock. It would let us know if it's even worth testing if stuff loads correctly or if it softlock or whatever.

Yeah, I was thinking that even if we do make it on the other side, there's a decent possibility that it'll just force us to turn back, like how the game does at the beginning. Might try and learn this game though, route is kinda complicated but it's a neat game lol

Yeah there's about a minute and some change that can be saved on the Wii u version

Hey guys. don't mind me, just dropping in a year or so later, but it's just occured to me- that even if you get past the boulder blocking Lonesome, you don't know how to Pick Up and Throw yet. You might be able to get to Bartholomew this way, but you won't be able to fix the whirlwinds since you can't pick up the rocks.

Therefore, if we were to find a skip like this, you'd have to do the skip after dealing with Augusta's fields the second time.

Hello! I have more news. I'm in a discord server for these games and someone has started trying to mod and dig into the game. One thing they've managed to do is shift around items and rocks, which means they could get to areas like lonesome park early.

When they got there, there was no cutscene or whirlwinds. Bartholomew's statue is there but cannot be spoken to. Similarly, they've gone to Inferno Cave and Polar Fields, and you can't activate the quests for the clothing. Percy and Hugo both speak as if you already have the clothing, which you don't - I assume that's just set as their default dialogue, since the first time you go there would be when the quest is active.

So, unfortunately, it seems like you'll have to go through the whole game unless we find a way to get around the quest system.

Dang that's a huge breakthrough and good info. Very unfortunate

Just another quick post to say that I've now managed to do this myself and have video of it here (laggy, but gets the point across):

A shame, but at least now we know.

I'm sad to see that this particular skip isn't possible. But with the quest system in mind, I can't help but wonder if there's anything that doesn't depend on the quest system to bypass. Like, what might happen if you were to somehow wrongwarp to the final boss? And could it be possible to activate some story quests out of sequence?