I'd like to propose two new categories:
Lil' Kid Mode: Warpless%: Start the game on Lil' Kid Mode, proceed through the first five levels. This took me about 25 minutes on my first, unoptimized attempt; with a couple rounds of practice, I got to a 22:24, with plenty of room for the time to come down further.
Lil' Kid Mode: Any%: Start the game on Lil' Kid Mode, activate The Warp Zone, then finish level five. This takes me about 7 minutes.
Memorizing the Hyperfunk Zone patterns is not necessary for either of these runs and also the length is reduced considerably (but not so much to make it trivial). Both of these factors make this game far more approachable, in my opinion.
One minor detail that ought to be worked out: when does the run end?
- When Toejam or Earl says "Ready" to the spring operator (this is the last button press before the "ending sequence")
- The fade to black as you blast through the air and leave level 5 (this is what I've been using)
- During the end sequence, when you initiate dancing with Peabo, Lewanda, and Sharla (and get the "Press any button to reset") sequence.
I'd recommend this be the same as the current "100%" and "Any%" rule categories, except those categories today don't seem to have any rules defined for them, which leaves it somewhat ambiguous.
I've done a few lil' kid mode runs and they're fun. I'd post a time if this was a category.
If I had a choice in the ending, I'd pick the dancing as the endpoint.
Is there a reason we have made the Lil'Kid Mode runs "Misc" rather than a regular category?
The lil’ kid categories are in misc. because they aren’t the full game and I didn’t want the leaderboard to get too cluttered, but if people want that to change I’m fine with that.
In my opinion it isn't any different than the many of the "easy mode" stories for many games from this era of Sega Genesis.
A couple of examples: Golden Axe - Beginner mode is only the first couple of levels. The Punisher - Easy mode is also only the first couple of levels.
I can find additional examples, but those are off the top of my head. I would be in favor of the "Lil' Kid" categories as being regular categories based on observation in other comparable era games on Sega and how they are handled in Speedrun.
I did a bit of research today to provide some further examples where the shortened easy/practice/lil'kid type mode only plays through a shortened portion of the game, however still has its own dedicated category for runs rather than being labeled as "misc" runs. I have kept these examples limited only to other similar era Sega Genesis/Mega Drive games, however I can certainly find more examples if I pull from other consoles from the 1990's.
Bio-Hazard Battle Ex-Mutants Golden Axe Golden Axe 2 Spider-man Streets of Rage 3 The Flintstones The Punisher
Road Rash - the primary run category is "Level 1" which is only the first 5 races of the game. Similarly the other "main" category is the same "Level 1" 5 races but using a code for the fastest bike. Both of these categories ignore the other 20 races in the game.
Additionally, consider that there are currently twice as many runs in the Lil'Kid Mode "misc" categories than there are in all of the "main" categories combined. That doesn't seem normal when compared to any game on speedrun.com that I could find.
If there is no opposition to the Lil'Kid categories being fully fledged categories rather than "Misc" I would like it, if possible, for them to be fully recognized categories.
