UPDATE (9/1/2022): Qwill has since updated his guides and there are several new strats since this was written. I'll leave this up since it is still largely relevant and some might still find it useful but definitely watch his tutorials. Also, learn the new 4 kids strat!

My goal with this guide is to document the current RTA strats, especially the things that aren't mentioned in Qwill's tutorials, or have changed since then. In particular, I want to provide video examples of all the levels with current strats.

[section=Version Differences] Japanese (1.0) is faster for Any% due to a ~5s faster boss fight in bomb land, faster candle rooms in Ghost Castle and a more consistently fast final boss kill. Overall, up to 10-15s faster in Ghost Castle (this is hard to quantify precisely). I would say up to 20s faster over the course of an entire run.

English (1.0) is faster for All Levels since you lose ~40s or so in Ant Land waiting for a door to open on the Japanese version. Also, the quick kill strategy on the Desert Castle boss is made much more difficult, if not impossible. Again, taking into account the aforementioned things which are slower on English, I would say that English (1.0) is up to 30s faster over the course of an entire All Levels run.

English (1.1) is undesirable because the Training glitch which allows you do to the Kid's Land boss much faster is patched. So be careful when buying an English cart that you get 1.0.

Although the differences are not that significant, I would recommend anyone that wants to focus on Any% to switch ASAP to the Japanese version. If you want a top time, it is essentially a necessity and the “difficulty” of running on JP is overstated.

[section=Jungle Land]

[big]** Japanese: **[/big] [center] [/center]

After spinning around the first pole it is faster to manually run to the edge to spin off the far pole rather than immediately trying to spin off the near pole, this lets you cut corners better and get a small boost off the slope. The entire cave section of the level is skipped by clipping through a door as soon as you enter, which takes you straight to the boss (see the input display below)

[big]**Cave Skip (Tutorial): **[/big] [center] [/center]

[big]**Cave Skip (Alternate Example): **[/big] [center] [/center]

[section=Bomb Land] [big]** Japanese (with "1 spray" boss kill): [/big] [center] [/center] [big] English: **[/big] [center] [/center]

The main differences between English and Japanese for this level are the boss and the second pillar room enemy spawns, refer to the respective videos for how to kill the boss as quickly as possible on each version. The pillars which cover the X and O tiles can be blown up by shooting two missile enemies from up close with an off-perpendicular angle.

[section=Kid's Land] Kid's Land is largely cycle dependent. How fast you do certain sections of this level will determine which cycles you can catch in the 3 chocolate bar rooms. The 3 main cycles you can catch are the so-called normal cycle, early cycle and TAS cycle. Although the level layouts are slightly different for English and Japanese, all of these are doable on both versions.

[big]** Normal Cycle: **[/big] [center] [/center]

This is the most basic cycle in Kid's Land. Before the first "chocolate bar" room you can make mistakes (probably up to 6s or so of wiggle room). In the second chocolate bar room you will jump from the near platform to the far platforms as they are coming together, which depending on your movement and RNG often involves waiting on the near chocolate bar. In the final room, you usually catch the chocolate bar moving towards the pole. A typical normal cycle enters the boss room at 3:06 or 3:07 segment time.

[big]Early Cycle:[/big] [center] [/center] This is the first more advanced cycle in Kid's Land. As with normal cycle, you catch the same cycle in the first chocolate bar room (~6s or so of wiggle room). Between the first and second chocolate bar rooms, you need good movement and decent RNG. In the second chocolate bar room, you jump from the near platform to the far platforms while they are moving apart. If you have good movement thru the final room, it lets you catch earlier platform cycles and enter the boss slightly earlier. This is only faster than normal cycle if you catch the platforms early in the final room (refer to the video). This cycle saves roughly 7s over normal cycle.

[big]TAS Cycle:[/big]

[center] [/center] This is the most advanced cycle. TAS cycle requires nearly perfect movement up to the first chocolate bar room and good RNG in the first shining platform room. From the first chocolate bar room til the end the movement is similar to normal cycle. This saves roughly 4-5s over the early cycle.

[big]Early Pause Cake Skip:[/big]

[center] [/center]

After you enter a boss room (this works for any boss, but is only relevant in Kid's Land), you have one frame where you can input a pause (or any other button press). Therefore, if you mash start as you enter the boss room you can sometimes pause immediately (rather than waiting out the boss cutscene) . This is not really something you can practice since you either get it or you don't, but it saves up to 11s over waiting out the cutscene.

To perform the cake boss glitch, after you enter the boss room, pause and save your game. Enter the training area and immediately exit, now load your save file. You will enter the cake boss cutscene but be able to move freely, after the chocolate kids land in the cake take out up to 3 of them before it closes up. Note: it's now possible to get 4 chocolate kids in one cycle, but it's VERY hard to do in real time.

[center]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_6yIdrgDRg[/center]

[section=Ghost Castle] [big]Japanese:[/big] [center] [/center] [big]English:[/big] [center] [/center]

[big]CusVault:[/big] [center] [/center]

This is the most significant optimization in Ghost Castle, it saves up to 10s over the next best strategy (which you can see in the English version example above). The difficulty in executing this trick is starting a pole vault on the top of the small pole. It was originally thought that you needed a peak height vault, but it was later found that if you vault at a specific angle (s/o to Bakonoe), you can essentially clip through the plank allowing for much more lenience in your vaults. Basically, you always want to start a vault with an inward angle as shown in the video. A good CusVault saves roughly 17s over navigating the room casually.

[section=Ant Land (All Levels)] [big]Main Level: [/big] [center] [/center]

Ant land has no global cycles, however, each room is on it's own cycle. In particular where the small ants are depends on how long you've spent in that room, so be aware of this. The spinning rooms are RNG, if you happen to let any of the ants through, you're subjected to more RNG spin cycles. For the rooms with ants marching along narrow walkways, it is fastest to jump and walk along the very edge, however this is very risky so you can opt to eat ants to clear a path.

[big]Boss Fight: [/big] [center] [/center]

After each hit, the ant queen spins an extra time before she is vulnerable. The goal is to not let her spin any extra times sine they are extra costly deep into the fight.

[section=Desert Castle (All Levels)] [center] [/center]

This is another stage that is on a global cycle. I'll add more detail about this later. For the quick boss fight, do not move at all at the beginning of the fight. Wait for him to jump and his shadow to move toward you then stick out your tongue. You will pick up 5 sand crabs which is enough for all the hits needed to defeat the boss. Simply shoot him as he pops out of the ground.