Specifically these are meant for ICO and Nordanix but anyone who has an answer is free to respond.

I'm looking to start running this game! I tried it once and made it to magic world before shelving it. This post will also be on YT, so feel free to answer either and/or both.

I have a couple questions:
1. How did you walk through the castanets in music world? Is that a frame perfect damage cancel by jumping?
2. Any reason you zoom occasionally? Does it help with precision jumping or maybe a glitch to help land?
3. You seemed prepared for the weasel to spawn at the north, how many spawns are consistent after the first?
4. In arctic world, can you jump across the steam pipes or do they have no hitbox? (too lazy to test atm)
5. Were you trying to manipulate the giant hamster into hitting himself as fast as possible? Is that consistent?
6. Are there more skips like ostrich skip w/ the cactus in desert world worth attempting that you know of?
7. Are you manipulating the moon or is his attack pattern really just that consistent?
8. In the long run, double jumping loses time on landing right? Is this significant enough to avoid non required DJs?
9. Is there a reason you hit music world second over desert world (and cycle right) or just personal pref?
10. If you could give a tip to new runners, solo or coop, what what that be?
11. What is your biggest gripe about this game/run? Personally my problem is the depth perception is not all that great.
12. Was using an emulator advantageous in anyway? or was this run faster because of skill more so than loads.

Congrats on the run, some of those jumps were really tight and pretty cool to see done!

Hey dude, It's great to see someone new being interested in this underrated game. This reply is from both me and Nordanix. If you need more explanations, just let us know.

1. You can avoid all Castanets attacks by walking around him so he cannot hit you. This is performed by walking straight towards him and when he misses his attack you then walk around him. This can also be done from either side, and can jump but it doesn't make a difference, he just did it for some reason.

2. We use the zoom to make it easier to see our characters better, which can help for some certain spots.

3. He always spawns 1st in the top right corner. Then he will always shift to the opposite side of where he got hit, so keep that in mind. He will always be one of the Red/Orange colored ones. But it's always RNG after the first hit.

4. They do have a small collision, so you can land on them. It's hard as you can slide off easily so you are at risk of losing a lot time just to save minimal. It will probably save time but it's more suited for IL's than full-game runs, as it's not worth the high risk-low reward. You might be able to make it consistent, but I at least think going for all 3 pipes is not worth it. Mixing the pipe and ice platforms can also be a possibility.

5. We always try to do the perfect strat, but it requires rather precise positioning and will not always consistent. There's no real alternative, you will have to try stand in the right spot and hope it works.

6. There are no other major skips like the Cactus one but there are smaller time saves due to optimizations. If you want to find out more I suggest watching all our IL's as we did them after our WR run, and use more faster strats.

7. He will always come down in the middle for a free hit, after that it's RNG. However, the 2nd phase is always the same pattern.

8. It does lose time so only use it when necessary, but of course do it if you don't feel comfortable with some jumps. When you first run this game it doesn't really matter but as you improve and get more comfortable you should try to avoid it as much as possible. There are times where you might mess up a jump and reacting with a backup Double Jump can save yourself.

9. The main reason is because the Stage 4 in Music World has a RNG based sound puzzle (the piano) and having that at the end of a run would be too risky/annoying. We prefer to have it early on as if we mess it up badly and kill a run, it's not that big of a deal. In the end, do the worlds in the order that you prefer.

10. We cannot speak for Solo as we haven't tried it. However for Co-op the most important thing is teamwork and communicating with each other. For example letting the other one know when you're ready to clear a jump like at 1:09 (in our WR video), I say to Nordanix "Now!" when he can start run off the button that holds my platforms up. This is one of many examples, but you can figure out what works for you.

11. Generally the worst part are the boss in the Water and Arctic World. Other than that it's mostly skill based and a solid speedgame.

12. It makes the loading faster for sure but we use IGT anyway, which removes the advantage of faster loads. If Emulators affects IGT in levels, I don't know but I wouldn't think so. It can be useful for practicing certain jumps and finding new strats with the help of save states.

We hope our answer will help you with getting into speedrunning this game. We have also created a Discord Server for easier communication in case there's any more questions 🙂