Games where any% is not the most popular run
2 years ago

I'm looking for games where speedrunners would rather not do the any% run because the glitches make it way too easy or it gets too technical for people who just want to do some gameplay. Pokemon Gold and Silver comes to mind because the last part of that any% is basically typing names as fast as you can to exploit a glitch, which is why "any% glitchless" is more popular.

Edited by the author 2 years ago
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Minecraft: Java Edition

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Madrid, Spain

In the original The legend of Zelda the No Up+A category is more popular, in smb3 its the any% no wrong warp, in GTA V the any% category is considered boring so most play any% no mission skips or classic percent and in Minecraft Java the most popular category is 1.16 random seed glitchless while the fastest category that beats the game would be 1.16 set seed glitchless

Edited by the author 2 years ago
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Canada

Super Mario Bros. 3 - Any% uses a wrong warp glitch. 100% is the default category. Geometry Dash - 1-21 is the closest thing to Any%, beating all 21 official levels in the game. Still, 1-8 is the most popular category.

Skylanders: Giants - All Story Levels is the most popular category in the game. This is essentially beating every level from a completed file in any allowed order, which is why it is preferred by most runners. Skylanders: SWAP Force - Similar to Giants but to a greater level. SWAP Force Any% has unskippable cutscenes and hub missions between every level. Skylanders: SuperChargers - All Story Levels is more popular. Skylanders: SuperChargers Racing - The Land Cup is the most ran category in the game, possibly due to its accessibility and short length. Any% is much longer and isn't fully optimized, so there's little interest.

SpongeBob SquarePants: Creature from the Krusty Krab - afaik Any% is based on RNG. All Worlds is the default category. SpongeBob SquarePants: Obstacle Odyssey 2: Time Trouble - Category rules got redefined, leaving Any% with 0 runs. The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie - Any% uses a glitch that duplicates tokens. Very repetitive. No Mindy Skip is the most popular category.

Edited by the author 2 years ago
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In Super Mario 64, the 0 Star category seems to be the least popular.

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United States

To add onto the games listed here, pretty much any game with an ACE credits warp usually has Any% be less popular. Credits warps are cool to see, but rarely as engaging as normal gameplay. I know SMW is like this.

For a different case, the Hobbit on PC and 2nd gen 3D consoles has a glitch that lets you auto-end levels, being the fastest way to beat the game. Despite being faster, it's really no fun, so most people run the category that bans it.

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Australia

Cuphead's menu glitch is like, a frame perfectish trick on every boss. No thanks!

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United States

Any% for Mario Party 2 is not the most popular category. In fact, it’s on the category extensions and has no runs. The game only has one save file, and it takes a while to unlock everything, so people don’t want to completely restart for only a minimally different category than all boards.

Canada

Right now the individual levels section of Tom and Jerry - Infurnal Escape are absolutely on fire (no pun intended)

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Finland

Ocarina of time definetly and i think luigis mansion any% might have been an unpopular one not sure

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Madrid, Spain

on some smaller web and mobile games the IL categories tend to be a lot more active and optimised than full game

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European Union

I run two games where this is the case

Assault Android Cactus Any% is basically playing all bosses level + 1, this in itself isn't too bad, the fact that the bosses level are down to very hard to pull off IL strats is bad enough but the one level you have to do is extremely punishing and has a ~10 seconds time potential variation if you don't make any real mistakes (whereas all the bosses are down to less than a second variation) but it has a section where making any mistakes can easily cost you 20 seconds, and then the worst part is that it's the second to last part of the run. And the cherry on top is that you can lose a bunch of time to menuing due to the navigation between levels is done in that specific run being unorthodox, using the mouse and being rather precise The most run category is "Campaign" where you simply do all levels in order, and there even the absolutely most optimized run still gives you ~4 seconds off leeway per level vs the best IL times (though it's technically easier to lose a lot of time in regular levels)

Space Invaders 1999 That one is special, Any% only works on one platform (N64) because it's the only one with the glitch that allows for it. The glitch in question is that basically you can start the game from the level that last played in the attract mode demo, problem is the most optimal demo is the third one of 3 (iirc could be wrong) so every reset would be sitting for a few minutes minutes doing nothing on the title screen. And you could be forgiven for thinking "well just allow emulators and reset from a savestate", N64 emulation for that one specific game has an issue where the IGT passes faster than it should, and since timing is IGT only due to platform parity concerns that mean you're never gonna be anywhere close to competitive. The cherry on top here is that you start at the absolute hardest level with 0 powerups, in any normal run that's basically a reset since the fast consistent strat is not possible and any single mistake is very punishing on top of being easy to do (imagine dodging bullet hell without having vertical movement and a hitbox that's actually the size of your ship), getting powerups is RNG and not even guaranteed depending on the situation so you end up with a big chaotic first few minutes, anything after that is a good deal more consistent though so that's good.

The most run category is all levels (coupled with a difficulty level as the first has less levels and the latter two are significantly different in how they play), which is easier to get into, though now the runs at the top are at such a level that competing with them might actually genuinely be harder than just going for Any%, though as good as they seem they're still a good 10 minutes behind TAS, TAS which does not skip anything and mostly doesn't use anything you couldn't do real time besides some luck manip for the bonus waves. As a reference WR TAS

Edited by the author 2 years ago
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