Hello, I'm new to the community, so if I'm doing things wrong, just tell me. So, as I said I'm new to speedrunning, and as I searched for a game to speedrun (one I acquire and not too long to finish) I found my GBA cartridge of this game. After some quick search on this site, I was surprised no one actually run this game (even if it's clearly not a masterpiece). Therefore, I decided it would be my 1st speedrun game.

Thanks to some guides on the site and a bit of work, I managed to get the game on emulator (Virtual Boy Advance) and livesplit configured. For the moment, I prefer to play on emulator since I don't have way to record the game on my Nintendo DS easily, and it will be easier to practice with savestates. However, I'm playing with a Xbox controller to prevent some left+right inputs. I think I've talked enough about the setup, let's talk about the game itself:

The game isn't very long to finish ~47 min to finish at my 4-6 try (don't remember exactly). I haven't done any routing yet, so I kinda get lost sometimes. I wanted to do a record to manage to get a good route, but I totally forgot (woops). However there is some good strats to use, notably against the bosses, and a lot of time can be saved. However, I don't know if it's the place to list them, but I will: 1- Since NightCrawler goes faster and can tp through walls, it will be the best character to play (aside bosses) 2- Some easy strats against bosses involve Colossus and it's aoe attack (A+B) including the Juggernaut, X-23, and Stryker. 3- In the level where you're asked to break walls, you can just to the floor underneath and finish the level without seeing any enemy 4- The last level can be skipped to get directly to the last boss by using NightCrawler (it's a bit hard, but easy to train)

Well, until then, that's all I managed to do, I think I will try to make a decent route before submitting here, and since I haven't recorded anything yet, it might take a bit of time (but I have a lot of time to spend it on, no worries)

Thanks for reading this, even if there's not much yet, I'll try my best Have a nice day!

P.S.: I'm French and English isn't my 1st language, sorry if it's terrible to read.

There is also a TAS for the GBA version http://tasvideos.org/Game/gba-xmen-the-official-game.html

You may be able to get some idea from it to convert to RTA. The TAS is kind of insane though.

I just watched the TAS and wow, it's insane. I was surprised to see the game going down under 13 minutes. I will take some strats from it that's a 100% sure.

However, the game is totally broken by using the Nightcrawler teleportation glitch, which is frame perfect.(actually it needs two frame perfect inputs to work) The problem is that it has to be done every couple of tp, which makes it impossible to do with human brain (and hands).

At least, I know where to charge the rage bars, it will help me to improve some bosses (the Juggernaut or Stryker for example), but other bosses such as X-23 or Pyro are basically frame and pixel perfect strats.

I'm happy to have found the last level skip by myself though.

My actual best recorded time is 37:29, but I think it will go under 30 minutes easily with a proper routing thanks to the TAS.

Thanks Smelly_Mctroll for the TAS, it is already helpful.