No, this game doesn't track any items in memory. It loads levels based on the stored password. The stored password tells the game what level is loaded, how much health is available, and how much time has elapsed.

The only temporary item that might be stored in memory is the sword, during level 1. If you start level 1, you do not have the sword until you pick it up. If you start any other level, you automatically have the sword.

We have established here, and on the TAS forums, that you can legitimately use Exit & Continue as a strategy in this game for saving time. For the 100% category, it would make sense to use it on Level 11 to quickly restart and move to the secondary route.

Any checklists would be strictly outside the game, and subject to peer review, as to whether or not all items were acquired. Therefore, I don't think it necessarily matters whether they are acquired once, or multiple times, depending on unintentional deaths. Seems like an unnecessary obstacle to require re-grabs.

If I had a vote, I would say the rules could clarify that every bottle and guard must be checked off just once, regardless of when any unintentional deaths occur. So if a death causes you to go back, you don't need to redo everything from the previous life.

However, I suppose we must defer to redos if that is standard practice for other games. (I know consistency across the community is important.)

Bumping for MODs! :O

Ah, ok. That makes sense. I think that's a bit more accurate too, since Guard skipping might be considered a "minor" glitch.

• "Any% (NMG)"
• "Any%"
• "Any% (Warpless)"

That looks good.

For the rules, the main distinction between "Any%" and "Any% (Warpless)" would be that "Any% (Warpless)" requires the player to complete each of the 20 levels during the run. Otherwise, both categories can use any Exit Glitches for Sprite Manipulation & Kill Button activation.

Also for "Any% (Warpless)," Warping is not specifically banned in the sense that you can temporarily warp as part of a glitch combo. It just won't be used to skip levels, since each individual level must be completed during the run.

And as I mentioned previously, I think Skinomarsh & Zotmeister's Warp-8 runs should be merged into the "Any%" category, and the distinction between gate skipping or no gate skipping should be discontinued. Especially now that Challenger has demonstrated that Gate Skipping can be done in the context of "minor" glitches (using a Guard Fight to bump you through).

Hello all. So, if you guys have been following this particular thread, you know that I've been working for a long time on this concept for a "Warpless" Any%, where any glitches can be used, as long as all 20 levels are completed. As my individual level runs have been perfected, I've been steadily bringing down the projected completion time for a theoretically perfect human run of this proposed category. The one hold up was that, for a long time, I never did put together a complete run that I was satisfied with. Part of it is my perfectionist mentality, and also having wanted to demonstrate all of the main important tricks in a single run.

However, today, I came across a perfectly suitable run that I performed in April of 2020, some 3 months after I originally proposed the category in another thread.

I think that for the time being, I'm no longer majorly concerned about waiting until a flawless run comes along before submitting it, mainly because all of the important tricks are now well documented here in this thread, especially with the new Compilation video I posted here in the previous post, above.

So, I would like to submit this 2020 speedrun for the new category. My previous category recommendations had been based on some obsolete ideas. Now, I think it's best for the two main glitch categories to be distinguished by Warp vs No Warp. (Warpless).

This translates the best with other games -- trying to reach the end as quickly as possible, vs. trying to beat every level as quickly as possible.

At present, this can all be executed by moving all of the "no gate skip" runs into the main glitch category, which is called "Any%." This would allow my 11 minute run to be obsoleted, in favor of my 7 minute run. I would change the main competitive category name from "Any% (No Warp)" to "Any% (NMG)." [No Major Glitches, as per GMP's suggestion.] I think this label is more clear, as the intention is to bar any type of exit glitch, regardless of its effect. Not all glitches are specifically used for "warping," so calling them all "Warp Glitches" isn't exactly accurate. And "NMG" allows for acceptable minor glitches, generally associated with guard fights.

In short, I think these should be the current categories:

• a main Glitchless category called "Any% (NMG)", for all of the classic competitive speedruns;

• an "Any%" glitch category for beating the game as fast as possible with the use of Exit Glitches (including warping to skip levels);

• an "Any% (Warpless)" category for using Exit Glitches to beat All 20 Levels faster than the classic glitchless category.

I think this would clear things up considerably, and is the best focus for the various speedrun types. Of course, once the 100% routes are figured out, those categories can be added as well, as variations of the "100%" label.

Here's a link to my "Any% (Warpless)" Speedrun, recorded on April 22nd, 2020, and completed in 84,832 console frames = 23:31.54200055873. A brief level by level commentary will be provided in the YouTube description.

If the MODs will consider my category proposals, please let me know when things might be updated, so that I can go ahead and submit this run for the new "Any% (Warpless)" category.

Another way of phrasing the problem is that the throttle point is the first lower gate. You must pass through it in order to access both the lower guards and the button to open the Big Bottle cage. Once past it though, you can no longer get back through it to access the top part of the level. And as you mentioned, once you drop from the top side to get the secret bottle, you can no longer access the lower part of the level, being past the final gate -- and if you drop from the top side early, you are past the throttle gate, and can't get back to the top side again.

So the focal point for the route is that the secret potion, and Big Bottle, must be obtained on different lives. We would have to determine which is faster, to do the Big Bottle segment first, or the secret bottle segment first. At a glance, I think it'd be faster to die after the secret potion, and obtain the Big Potion on the 2nd pass-through.

A glitched category solves this problem by having a Gate Thief who could go back through locked gates, and do the whole level in one life. Also, an Invincibility glitch from Level 8 could possibly expedite things by falling down the long pit, and have the loose panel knock you back up.

There's only 20 collectible Big Life Potions in the game. The 21st would be the one the Ghost grabs on Level 7, which is unobtainable unless you perform a warp glitch to activate kill button, or allow debug mode code input.

I have documented a very simple warp glitch that activates kill button without sprite corruption, and only takes a minute. So after performing this quick task at the beginning of the run, you could go through the game using kill button on all enemies.

Now, if we were going to allow simple glitches, like the one mentioned above, which only activates kill button, and does nothing else (like sprite corruption or warping to later levels), we could also use the Invincibility warp glitch on Level 8, and make it a 100% + deathless category, so you can drink the Big Kill Potion without dying. lol.

Anyway, without glitches, it'd be 20 bottles for All Life Potions, and 25 bottles for 100%, including the 2 upside-down bottles on level 14.

I'm a little skeptical about the attractiveness of a category where you have to climb to the far corners of every level, looking for every single guard everywhere. Seems tedious. But on the other hand, I could also ask, why not make it more tedious, and also drink all small bottles, both health and poison?

I might be interested in seeing a Thirsty category where you have to drink all bottles, large and small. lol.

I'd also say, if kill button glitch was allowed for killing all enemies, we'd still want to specify that collecting the sword is mandatory, as 100% implies collecting all collectible items.

Shauing, have you thought about taking back the record? If so, I have some advice. If you've seen my "spliced" videos of all-20-levels in under 23 minutes, you know I spend a lot of time playing the levels individually. This is actually fantastic practice for a full run. If you take the time to map out individual levels, you can get as close to TAS as possible (for almost all tricks). It's pretty easy, because of the effective 15 fps input timing, as opposed to a game like Super Mario Bros 1, where "frame perfect" really does mean at 60 fps. After I spent days and days and days on a single level, recording video after video, and using the password system to quickly confirm my progress, I could really piece together a lot more detail for a full run, instead of just "winging it" in certain parts.

If you spend a few months building up a private archive of Personal Best videos for each level, that will translate to better performance automatically. I know nerves can be a big deal towards the end of a run, but the timing system in this game is very forgiving, and if you put enough time into it, inaccuracies due to nerves can still fall within the margin of error after enough practice.

After I built up a full archive of recent PBs for every level, then I started do groups of levels, like 1-5, 6-10, etc., and then finally start doing full runs again, when everything is fresh and sharp. Some may argue that this method is not necessary -- but I say based on experience, it is a guaranteed plan for success. lol. One of these days, when I'm not so busy, I will definitely try to do all my PBs for the all-20-levels under 23 minutes glitch route, and see if I can finally put a good run together that will justify redoing the categories, as I proposed previously.

====

In response to your post, I think you make some good points. Perhaps I overestimated how easy it is for other people to find all the TAS and RTA info for this version of the game.

lol. I guess my point is, there's so many fingerprints from the TAS's in his performance, of things which do require lots of practice to remember and do correctly. So it's just kind of funny to me how this Japanese guy was just kind of selective, and learned a lot of the tricks, but also didn't bother to learn a lot of the others that are readily available from the same sources (the same TAS videos).

With a game like this, learning the right patterns and tricks just saves soooo much time. And when I say "universal," I guess I do mean specifically what is laid out in the various TAS's. Because that's a pretty easy resource today, for anyone in the world.

lol. This is such a bizarre performance. The plan behind his route is strange. He's incorporated so many specific events that should be considered universal by now, but ignores so many others. Like, someone who can do this has obviously been studying the game, and probably studied Challenger's TAS. But it's just so weird to blatantly make so many choices for slower patterns at certain places. It wouldn't even make sense to say he's playing conservative in some places, because it's just wrong. And meanwhile, throughout the run, he's doing lots of insane guard skips that go way beyond dangerous. If you have time to practice all these guard skips to the point where you think they aren't going to ruin your run, you should be implementing the easy stuff too. Easy example is the music pause at the magic mirror in Level 5. How does he not do that? And yet he knows about the music swap at the Level 19 super boss fight? And how is he gonna miss one of the kill jumps during the super boss fight, but nail the zombie finish on Level 17? lol. Then in some levels, his precision is remarkable, and in others, he's making ridiculous mistakes, or again, skipping easy tricks as if he doesn't know about them. Very very strange.

It's kinda like Niftski going for a lightning 454, but then using the coin block in the pipe jump room on 8-4.

This japanese guy's run is pretty much incredible, but he could easily be shooting for a sub-35 if he'd just do it right. hahahaha. He's done the impossible stuff, and skipped the easy stuff. XD

Ok, I'm done being critical. And I'm not one to be talking, because I'm unable to do this route currently. I haven't even started trying to learn all those guard skips. My mind is too full right now, trying to remember all the little details for the sub-7 warp route, and the sub-23 warpless route. XD

ok! it took long enough, but I got some better video editing software, and finally put together a better compilation video in 1080p60, to include the wall-clip improvements from levels 3, 16, and 19. The splices aren't exact, but are within a second or two of each level transition. I still have to work on improving the GT1 setup at the beginning of the run. Once that's been done (which may save up to 10 seconds), the next compilation video will more precisely replicate real speedrun timing during level transitions, as was done with the previous video.

Youtube description includes accounting for each level + level transition.

81,344 console frames = 22:33.5042494984243.

Here's a follow-up to my previous comment. I've just done a decent speedrun for the new route, and submitted it for the Any% leader board. I've got quite a bit of cleaning up to do. This was just a 7:01.0399234. I'll be shooting for a 6:55 or below in the coming weeks. I'd love to see some other people try it!

As I suspected, another major discovery has obsoleted these routes. Challenger found a better warp directly from Level 1 to Level 16, without having to go through levels 4-5 first. Now that the route has been simplified, we're looking at something like 6:50.4 for TAS, and 6:53.9 for Humans. The thing is, this will be TONS harder, as the Warp gives us the clunky Guard Sprite, which has very difficult, slow, frame-perfect inputs to skip each gate, with the potential for grievous time losses or death in some cases. I'm looking forward to the challenge this new route presents. It'll be truly amazing if some other people start grinding it with me, and see how low we can push it. It'll probably be quite a while before I can post up a worthy demo or record. But in the meantime, Challenger's work has been coming along nicely, so we may finally see an official TAS before too long, which could demonstrate this new route. (He's already put up a great test video on the TASvideos forum.)

Update: The new projection is all the way down to 22:33.50425, thanks to massive saves on Levels 3, 16, and 19, with Wall Clips! They're similar to Gate Skipping. With the right spacing, timing, and inputs, you can run or jump through a 1-unit wall if you have gate skipping glitch unlocked. In the case of these 3 levels, the route was significantly improved by allowing these clips. For those interested in checking them out, here's the direct links: Level 03 -- Level 16 -- Level 19 --

I'll be reexamining the GT1 setup next. Challenger found several different ways of getting this sprite set. Some are a bit faster, but hard to tell whether they can be applied to this route until I do some further research. I expect some 10 seconds may be coming off. If so, the projection will dip below 22:30!

FYI, a slightly more optimized version of the "setup" used in the "blind" video above is about a quarter second faster, and gets rid of all video corruption. So basically, I just used the slightly less optimized setup for the purpose of creating the "blind" conditions as a challenge.

The better setup can be used for the current "no gate skip" route. It's about 17 seconds faster than the old one (used in the 11:10 video in the "No Gate Skip" category), so the theoretical best human time for that category could be as low as 10:40, with best play.

However, I feel like the "No Gate Skip" category should be phased out. Gate Skip Vs. No Gate Skip is not the best way to divide the categories, as both produce extremely similar videos with the current optimized Warp-4 + Warp-16 glitches. I think a better way to divide it would be Warp Vs. Warpless, while preserving the "original" category as "Glitchless." I demonstrated what a Warpless GT route would look like in the other thread, where my best individual levels were spliced together to show the game being beaten in 22:59 without skipping any levels. With all this in mind, I don't really feel motivated to make a new "No Gate Skip" video to get a 10:xx. I may do it anyway, just because it should be easy. But I would rather get back to work on the GT1 Warpless 23 minute run. We'll see.

Here's another fun video. This will not be submitted, because it uses a Game Genie Code. This route is interesting because Levels 4, 5, 16, 17, 18, and 19 are all completely DARK / BLIND. This means I spent a full 6 minutes & 20 seconds straight, during a tough speedrun, with zero visibility of the floor, walls, or obstacles, while performing many frame-perfect jumps and glitches.

This route is about 20 seconds faster than the new GT1 route, so this run is 20.06695 seconds faster than the World Record video linked above. I went back through and found about 100 frames worth of small inaccuracies in this video that could be improved. So it looks like I should be able to get an 8:04.9xx if I keep working at it. The human limit for this route should be around 8:04.5, with the TAS limit being pretty close to 7:59.9xx.

Hah. Leave it to Challenger to find a completely new route while focusing on the new Any% TAS!

He discovered a new step in the Gate Thief #1 setup to allow this glitched sprite set to gain access to Level 1 immediately, without the need of the time-consuming trick on Level 2. Under normal circumstances, without the trick to manipulate the Prince's sub-pixel position (or something like that), the over-sized squatting Guard sprite gets clipped and killed by the gate at the beginning of Level 1, making it otherwise impossible to access the level. The new step comes in the 4th level 1 segment, where the Prince does 2 standing jumps towards the warp hole, instead of a running jump. The slightly different spacing here does the sub-pixel trick while activating the GT#1 sprite set.

Challenger also found a different approach to the warp hole in Level 5, making it possible for the stubborn GT#1 sprite set to successfully warp to level 16. This time, you have to climb down, facing right, instead of facing left.

Last night, I recorded a demo for the route. Since there were no major mistakes, I decided to go ahead and submit it for the new low time in the Any% category. The "Fat Gate Thief" route is now officially obsoleted. I had projected that the FGT TAS would be somewhere around 8:31.541. However, my initial survey of the new GT#1 route suggests that the GT1 TAS should be pretty close to the 8:20.500 mark. I'm not sure if an 8:19.x will be possible. I think Challenger may need to find a few more tricks to save another half second.

Here's a link to my new video. Check out the YouTube description for more details.

by the way mods, is there a way to add milliseconds to the Any% submission? Since I have an official console frame count, I'd like to go ahead and document the time accordingly, as 8 minutes, 39 seconds, 844 milliseconds. I'll wait on submitting the video until I hear from you. thanks.

I normally wouldn't make a forum post about this, but I thought this would be a good opportunity to announce that Challenger has come out of hiding, and will be making a new PoP SNES TAS for the Any% Warp category. I expect it will be somewhere around 8:35 in length.

In anticipation of this new TAS, I've been grinding the category to get a proof of concept for best human strategies. Last night, while working on a demo recording, I made a small mistake, and decided to see how low I could go if I just kept playing the rest of the run. Magic happened!

The new World Record is 8:39.84387 = 31,242 console frames.

Console + TV setup and all cables shown at 12:10, and I say hello at 14:52!

I'll be sure to update you guys when Challenger drops the new TAS!

This simple compilation video was made up of previously uploaded segments, that were already available on my youtube channel. The original recordings were in 1080p60, and the top quality of the youtube videos is 1080p60. But for this compilation, I decided to use the 720p60 versions of the clips, which were auto-generated by youtube during the processing phase of the upload.

Therefore, if you want a closer look at any particular segment, all of them are available in full 1080p60, and much better overall quality, collected into this playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2IdN8AnNyUS4Utl0kWUlqklDLk-rcKxS

One important note: for the Level 16 video on that playlist, 1080p60 plays perfectly with no video corruption or playback issues. However, if you manually adjust the quality setting to 720p60, you will find an unfortunate corrupted section, from about 0:41 - 0:47, where video playback is temporarily disrupted, and video data has been corrupted and lost during those few seconds. This corruption was created by YouTube, and I didn't notice it until after I went to the trouble of making this whole thing. So, the same video corruption is present in this compilation video, although the audio continues to play without interruption. (This happens at about 18:11 - 18:16.) After a few seconds, the video continues with no further issues.

I may go back and redo this project later. But for now, this one sufficiently and conveniently demonstrates the full route as it would appear in a real run.