GermanyThere is a BLJ you can do to skip the Star door to DDD and the second Bowser fight (side-BLJ or SBLJ). That's only done in 0 and 1 star runs (you can look it up on the leaderboard). This rule in 16 star basically means that you have to get 15 stars and use Mips to skip the 2nd star door. After the 2nd Bowser fight you're allowed to BLJ into the last Bowser stage.
One option could be to set up all the splits but just compare against nothing. Then you have all the "data" but don't know how the run itself is going
Whether you wanna copy existing routes is up to you, that's not considered to be bad or anything, though I highly suggest not copying the WR route because it's really hard for beginners. There are some good tutorials in the "Guides" section, you might wanna check that out. Otherwise you can also use the route used by the runners who got a 2:20 - 2:40 pb. With this route you can get pretty good times and it's not really hard to learn.
How many good runs have you watched before?
If you look at the Top runners and see their movement you might think that you can just try doing the same and it will work with some practice, but remember: The people have put THOUSANDS of hours into the game. It's natural that when you are used to watching high-level runs you will be frustrated when you see that it doesn't work at all when you are the one playing. I myself do not run SM64 (at least not seriously) but I feel like this a lot when I watch WR runs of other games and then I see that copying that movement isn't easy at all even though I already am an experienced runner in that game.
Now some things you can do: There are a lot of guides for beginners (Some show a whole run with beginner routes and strats, others show individual tricks). I would also practice the individual levels, especially those where you really feel insecure about. If you feel like the strats are too hard, then do some easier ones. At the beginning it's better to go for the safe strat than risking a death. Also (please correct me if I'm wrong here) I would not focus too much on actual movement ("just run around in the courtyard" etc...) instead I would focus on getting good times at the individual stars. Good movement should come with enough practice and experience (Again, I don't really run this game but that's something I noticed at other games as well).
In general I wouldn't compare myself too much to others. Even if your runs are far away from WR it's important that you improve step by step. You should compare your runs against your own past runs. When you for example get a 4:00:00 time on your first 120 star run and then improve it by 20 seconds in the next run then that's perfectly fine because while you are still far away from the WR you have improved so you're on a good way.
The rules don't specifically say you have to collect 16 stars, they just ban Side BLJs
I expierienced from other games as well that it helps to mix individual practice and doing normal runs. At the beginning of learning a game I would do more runs since it should be pretty easy to pb at first and then start doing more practice of the individual stuff. When you're more experienced you should mix it. At least that's how I do it :)
Am I allowed to submit a run for Hero/Dark Story New Game (+) if it was part of an All Stories run?
When I run Any% No Telejumping I get a better in-game time than a friend who is also running VVVVVV even though he has a much better Real Time. How can this be? And is there any way to somehow manipulate or decalerate the In-game timer?
