I am willing to do all that tedious menu-ing if you want. Same for XL. Do console versions have any stark differences, save for the disc-swapping?

I wonder if Xu Shu and Yukimura are the characters that jump the highest?

Wow. That's insane. I'm sure there are several places in the game you could do that to crush speedrun times. Maybe it works on the orb-gate at Koshi Castle?

I would assume "Any%" is used simply as "fuck doing the side missions".