Hi guys, I'm on a mission to speedrun childhood games and I really want to run this one. Unfortunately I didn't find any proper guides, explanations, splits, discord server, nothing. Could you please share anything that might be helpful? I appreciate all types of help 🙏

I believe there is no autosplitter, if there were they would be in the resources tab, I believe it is necessary to create a split with segments and do it manually. Sorry I wasn't much help.

Heyo. Unfortunately we have none of the resources you describe, and there is no autosplitter as ItsBRN said already.

Hercules is a very straightforward game to speedrun. Most levels are either sidescrollers or autoscrollers and you don’t necessarily need any prior knowledge to run them, but of course there are tricks and glitches that saves time - I’ll try to list them (it’s been a few years since my last run, so feel free to correct me if need be):

Timing: As we have no autosplitter for loadless times, we do that by hand. Any fully black frame and frames with “LOADING” on screen are not counted towards your final time. Luckily PC runs are very consistent (~3.5-4 seconds of load per run), so it should be fairly easy to determine whether you set the new world record or not.

General movement:

• Jumping is slow. Or rather, the landing animation is slow. So when a cliff has multiple “steps” you can save some frames by jumping across the entire thing, thus landing only once instead of multiple times. It’s done a couple of times in level 1 and 3.

• After a power punch you can jump to cancel the animation when the obstacle is destroyed. Do some practice to get used to the timing, as you can jump too early and cancel the entire thing.

• Sometimes after a jump your sword can hit two targets at once. I’m not really sure exactly how that works or if there is a way to do it consistently.

• In autoscrollers jump at the end of your power boots duration (I don’t know what to call them, but the ones that make you go fast) to extend it by the length of the jump.

• If you get hit during the power boots they will stop after a short damage animation. If we time it just right we can abuse this to squeeze a few more speedy frames (saving 0.2 seconds if done perfectly) out of power boots. However if the damage taken makes Hercules do a full stop a lot of time is lost, so it might not be worth the risk.

Level 1:

• The first couple of sections involve a lot of dummy targets. It’s probably easier to watch and copy from others than for me to describe exactly what to do.

• After those you get a lightning sword and invincibility helmet. Collect them, but don’t use the lightning sword and conserve the energy of your helmet as you need it later.

• You then come across some water patches with “jumping” sharks in them. If you do your platforming without mistakes you can just run or jump past all sharks. For safety you can use the helmet for the final 3 sharks, as those can hit you if unlucky. When you’ve crossed the falling plank and face a pillar, use your lightning sword to burst through the pillar until it breaks. Normally a power punch would have done this faster due to the lightning sword’s slow casting animation, but there is a second pillar just off-screen but within reach of lightning, so if you keep firing for a few seconds in the same direction you destroy the second pillar as well, saving a second or two in total. The timing of when the second pillar is destroyed is a bit tricky. Unfortunately there’s no visual cue, but you'll get a hang of it after a while.

• In the next section you need to carry a boulder across a field while under attack by “birds”. Luckily they have terrible aim and you can mostly ignore them. The last bird may hit you, so quickly use invincibility for safety. I drop the boulder when Hercules has reached the last group of the fire shooting target thingies in the background, exactly when Hercules is aligned with the second one from the left. This should leave you with enough room to fast jump (short runup, then jump) and reach the cliff. Birds will attack so use the helmet for safety.

• On top of said cliff you need to jump off fairly close to the edge, do a mid-air animation (punch or sword), and successfully hit the second pole while falling. With some practice you'll get this every time. While in the air and between poles use your invincibility helmet when near birds.

Level 2:

• Autoscroller. You lose time (~0.5-1 second) for every hit you take. Two times in this level you can choose between a left and a right path. I go left-left, but actually I’ve never tested the other directions, so maybe you can grab some free seconds here.

• We’ve found a glitch to go out of bounds in this level (found by either TegoSamego2020 or Soldado, can’t remember), but it appears to be useless.

Level 3:

• In the first section the enemies are mostly consistent, so we use the same movement pattern from run to run.

• When facing the first two centaurs, we jump at a specific timing to hit them before they hit us. This is faster than grabbing the lightning sword as its animation is slow and centaurs have i-frames after each hit. The timing between the first and second hit required to put a centaur down takes some practice.

• Straight after we face a flock of birds attacking us. You can choose to kill most of them at first encounter or to run by them. They will follow you down the road to the second centaur, so unless you’re very lucky, you’ll have to deal with them sooner or later.

• After some platforming, you get rewarded with an invincibility helmet. Pick it up, it’s important.

• When reaching the where centaurs are in the background throwing boulders at you, use the power punch jump trick after destroying each boulder, this should perfectly time it so you won't get hit.

• Use your helmet energy when passing every monster (those looking like bewinged panthers or some kind of very small dragon, idk) and when birds are in damage range. Don’t kill anything unless it’s blocking you. Killing stuff is slow.

• Fighting Nessus: Stand on the platform to the far left until Nessus hits it. Then step off and immediately jump on top of him. You can use the start of Nessus’ punch/kick animation as a visual cue to know when to step off the cliff, except the very first time as he will always miss. Repeat this three times, power punch him (~half power is enough) and he’s done.

Level 4:

• Up until the minotaur it’s pretty straightforward movement. We kill the minotaur by power jumping (jump+down), which will drop big blocks on him. We need to hit him four times, first drop will always happen after one power jump, second to fourth will take between 4 to 6 jumps randomly. After he’s hit by the last one you can run up the stairs while he is tumbling down - but you take damage, so make sure you have enough health.

• A bit of platforming later you’re at probably the biggest glitch/skip of the run.

Unfortunately we haven’t found a way to consistently trap the three birds needed in the deathloop to clear the semiboss on the first wave, so we have to rely on luck. It saves 30-40 seconds if successful.

The only thing needed to perform this glitch is the lightning sword picked up just before the boss area. Land on the platform and jump straight to the fourth and final pole instead of taking pole three. NinjaCocktail recently found a nice trick to save some extra frames here:

• Run straight to the end, where a trash can guy awaits you at the final pillar. Unfortunately he will damage us when running and stop our power punch, so we need to wait for him to run away before starting. We’ve found that moving in a specific pattern the trash can guy spawns on the other side of the pillar, but it wastes more time than it saves, so for now we have to just wait.

Level 5:

• Hydra boss level. The heads will attack you one by one and you slash them off when they attack. It’s a timing thing and it takes a bit of practice to consistently kill without missing a few times.

• I’ve seen some jump to slash each head in what appears to be a few frames faster, but at high risk of taking damage. I haven’t tested this, so I can’t guarantee it’s even faster.

Level 6:

• Medusa boss. Hide behind pillars and wait for Medusa to turn herself into stone. No tricks here, but she can, seemingly out of nowhere, decide to chill for a few seconds before initiating her next attack. Not the most fun of times.

Level 7:

• Cyclops autoscroller. Grab fast power boots when you see them, avoid the stampede as best you can. Especially goats can be hard to spot before it’s too late. This level is harder than it looks, but doing it hitless is possible.

Level 8:

• Titan boss autoscroller. This is a classic autoscroller, so no time to win here. Once you’ve found the lightning sword, use it to obliterate every enemy. Hercules and Pegasus stop twice to fight some bigger bird, but they’re easily fought off by conserving some lightning energy and just blasting them until they’re done.

Level 9:

• Last autoscroller. It’s pretty tricky and hectic. You may not remember the final two levels - they only featured if you played on either “medium” or “herculean” difficulties.

• Much like level 2 you can pick different paths in this autoscroller. I pick left-left again. I haven’t tested the others again.

• You’ll face a lot of dropping obstacles in this level. The cone-shaped rocks (or maybe they're icicles?) will always drop in the same areas. That’s mostly true for the round-shaped rocks as well, but some of the very small rocks’ placement feels random and can sometimes be hard to see. There are paths that are safer, best found by peeking at other runners' paths.

• Keep good distance to the skeleton warriors. Their wingspan is larger than it looks.

• Just after the “L”-letter, you’ll find power boots to destroy the following rolling boulders with. But beware, they will run out just short of the third boulder if you don’t know the jump trick to extend the run. But you do, so it’s all good.

• Near the end there’s a big cliff. You can either jump thrice but safer on the far left or take the power boots hidden behind a pile of bones on the right and do two timed jumps across. The route with power boots are faster, so learn the timing to get a bonus second or second. At the end of these power boots you have the opportunity to perform the extra 0.2 second trick mentioned in “general movement” by jumping into the first falling skull. Just be sure to only hit it as lightly as possible, as you'll otherwise stop fully and lose a bunch of seconds instead.

Level 10:

• Hades boss. Chase Hades around and attack him with your sword. Upgrades drop randomly but are not worth it, as it takes 50 hits to bring him down regardless of method and he has i-frames after each hit.

• Hades spawns just next to you, so on fadein you can hit him once to start off the fight. Do that.

• Other than that dance a bit with Hades. Time ends when Hercules starts his winning animation roughly 10 seconds after the final hit.

Good luck and happy speedrunning :)