Thanks to a program shared to us by one of our community members (shoutouts to daft7), we're now able to consistently time runs without loads, thus evening up the playing field between the OG Xbox, the Xbox One, and the Series X/S!

The program to do so can be found here: https://github.com/nickbrick/SpeedrunLoadRemover

At the moment, if you would like times submitted loadlessly, you will need to either upload vods on Youtube (so I or another mod can download it and mark down the loadless time) or take your own recording and time it yourself (if so, include a link to the picture in your submission). If you're not able to do either, feel free to have your time with loads marked as a loadless time; some time soon I'll try to figure out how to download vods from whatever source.

For the time being, all current PBs have been converted to loadless times (where possible); obsolete runs would be a lot of effort that might not be worth it in my opinion.

I've wanted to speedrun this for a long time, to the point of routing it a bunch while the semester was still going

Got tips for someone starting out?~

Since there aren't any rules about it, what's the policy about submitting non-WR runs without video to the boards? Right now my recording setup is out of order and the parts to repair it haven't come in yet, so I was wondering if I got a new PB while practicing, would the run be accepted? WR runs I'd imagine would have to be recorded, so that's not really a concern on my mind.

So I've noticed that there hasn't been any other times besides mine being uploaded to the site, and though I enjoy saying "I got world record!" every time I PB, it's a little uninteresting with competition, so I'm interested in seeing some feedback on a couple ideas.

1. Allow any run with any time be submitted so long as either the splits or a video are uploaded. If the splits are WR worthy, then I'll look them over to make sure they're legit, but otherwise, everything should be fine.

2. Create a new category and separate the Platinum Hits version (normal any%) from the original game (Original any%, maybe?) or something of the nature to make the game more accessible to PAL players or those who can't easily gain access to a Platinum Hits copy of the game.

The first idea is mostly something I'm throwing out so people know that you don't need to record anything to submit a time, the second idea is mostly what I wanna know people's opinions about.

So now that I've gotten sub-1:50, I'm gonna take a short break from Blinx in favor of learning Blinx 2 (now that I have that with me). Before I do that though, I'm going to try to write a guide for the game so that it's easier for anyone to get into speedrunning the game. I'm going to go over every major level in detail, as well as talk about every smaller level a little, but since I've never written a guide, I don't know what I should focus on or what people want out of the guide.

So... what do you want? I'm already going to have sections involving gold management, time control management, tricks, and levels, but is there anything in specific that people might want me to go over?

http://www.speedrun.com/blinx2

Shoutouts to Gyro for getting an initial run in for Blinx 2!

Any% is playing through game normally, Unlocked% is where you play through all the levels in order after having completed the game, and All Medals is collecting every medal in the single player campaign! (co-op medals not required)

Here's a compilation of things that save time in a speedrun. If you have your own that you know of and I didn't cover, go ahead and post below!

-Trash Jumping (I dunno, it's easier to give it a name because of how much it's used): Using pieces of trash to jump to ledges you can't normally reach (examples: Time Square 2, Forgotten City 1, Deja Vu Canals 3 Backup Strat)

-FF Cancel & FF Invincibility Abuse: Intentionally damaging yourself at any time during a Fast Forward to either prevent the time control from ending (ex. Hourglass Caves 1) or to use the invincibility frames gotten from it to pass an area more quickly (ex. Forge of Hours 1 & 3)

-Start Gate Jump: Using the high jump from the start of a level to reach an otherwise inaccessible part of the area (ex. Deja Vu Canals 3, Forge of Hours 3)

-Long-range Bombing: Using bombs or super bombs to take out enemies from far away, usually because that part of the stage was skipped (ex. Deja Vu Canals 3, Forgotten City 1, Forge of Hours 3, maybe Temple of Lost Time 2 if I can experiment a bit more with it)

-Trash Stacking: This explains it better than I could: Most high ledges only need one tall piece of small trash, but it's helpful in Forgotten City 1

-Wall Clipping: Using a piece of trash (usually a furnace or something else that takes up a weird amount of space) to push yourself through a wall (ex. Hourglass Caves 3). In order to push yourself through a wall, you need to be in a place where the game can't move you anywhere else, so generally something like a corner. I've yet to do this in a run, though I'm working on getting the clip consistent in HC3 so that I can skip the whole record sequence and save a good amount of time there. WARNING: The game treats all out of bounds areas as an endless pit, which means that, if any clips are done incorrectly, Blinx will lose one of his retries and waste about 5-10 seconds recovering.

-After you pay for something, it saves a few frames to hit B and skip to the exit button rather than scrolling down to it, just because skipping to the exit is faster than the normal scroll speed.

And there's one last thing I found in Deja Vu Canals 3 (lots of stuff going on in that level, it seems). If you fall from the ledge with the two yellow Chrono Blobs into the top of the door below, you can go behind it and skip needing to press 2 buttons. However, it's impractical in a full game run because you skip a Spiker and two Octoballoons and you would need to buy extra bombs in the Deja Vu store. It can be done, but with how important money is early on in order to get the Sweeper to hold 10 pieces of trash. I'd imagine it's very good in IL runs though when you can get a super bomb to take care of those enemies pretty easily.

So after having played both the original game and the Platinum Hits over the course of my life, there are several "quality of life" changes between the two versions the game, most of which make the game easier to speedrun. The notable changes from the original to the PH version include:

-Water Slugs and Combustasaurs require only 6 hits rather than 10 before transforming into that lizard thing

-No yellow Spikers show up until Everwinter (world 7)

-No pink Spikers show up until Forge of Hours (world 8 )

-There is no Tom-Tom Biker in Time Square: Stage 2

-Clothes are cheaper, meaning you can get the bright set at the end of the game and style hard on the final boss (assuming you have gold)

-The silver Cat Medal in 4-2 is a little harder to find, but doesn't require you to go out of your way to get it like in the normal version (useful for All Medals/100%)

In case there were any confusing bits in my videos, this should explain why my copy of the game may differ from any of yours and why I personally suggest that people run the PH version over the original. Aside from getting a little more gold in Time Square Stage 2 in the original version (even though you lose a lot more time at the beginning taking out the biker), I don't believe there's anything that the Greatest Hits version has over the normal version. Thoughts?