Hello!

I've seen a bunch of speedruns of this game over the past years, and have always loved playing it too. So I figured why not get into both it and speedrunning in general? With that, I have a bunch of questions:

Note: This is for a 100% run

1. Is there a way to tell which version of the game I have? Its definitely NTSC (I'm from the US), but have no idea which version, and is it THAT big of a deal? I gave a brief overview of the stickied thread and it doesn't seem like much of an issue, but wanted to be sure.

2. Is FFM REALLY required before every single attempt? That seems like a massive pain to have to spend 3 minutes or so just to do a run, even if its minuscule to the 2.5+ required hours.

3. I'm not sure how much time I'd be able to put into it, considering working, and I've never (seriously) speedrun a game before. Is it a good idea to practice individual levels before attempting a full run? I already know about 80%+ of the game by heart, so it would mostly be learning specific routes and tricks. That being said...

4. It seems heavily movement based but not super technically intensive. Besides watching the 100% Beginner speedrun and going from there, is there anything else you recommend. Specific tricks to practice?

If I think of anything else I'll get back to you. I already have a capture card, by the way but haven't set it up. I used to used a separate one entirely to capture other games, so I just need to quickly learn how to use this one.

Thank you again for those of who you want to help!

1. There is an imprint in the back grey label of your physical cartridge. If it is two numbers, you have 1.0. If it is followed by a letter, you have 1.1. The main difference I hear about is termite skip, which does save a nice amount of time in Mumbo's Mountain.

2. No, but you will be (almost) required to backtrack to either Freezeey Peak or Gobi's Valley, as there are items that require the ability from the opposite level.

3. Both are viable methods, and it depends on what your short/long term goals are and how much time you have per day, I'd say. If you can NEVER set aside more than a few hours to do a run, practice will help you get your speedrun down to a comfortable single-sitting time. If you have plenty of wide open gaps but not much time to practice, maybe you'll be better off just doing runs, or at least enjoy it more.

4. You don't have to implement everything right away. If you find you struggle with something, be creative and find a workaround to avoid that specific trick or find a video from somebody else maybe near the middle of the leaderboard who found the same part tricky and chose to avoid it. You have options.

Disclaimer: I have extremely mediocre/bad times in this game.

I recommend you join the discord linked on this page to get more answers as that's where the conversations about BK happen.