I picked up All Mushrooms again recently and I realized that I had been doing Mouser skip even though it's banned in All Levels on the main boards. Which got me thinking whether it should be allowed in this category or not.
Stewie and I talked about it a bit and I think the goal of the category should be 1) collect all the mushrooms and 2) beat the game. Not necessarily clearing every level or beating all the bosses. Currently, Mouser skip is the only thing in question here (and I'm not even sure it's faster, I've just been doing it because it's fun, haha). But I think with some more research there may be other bosses/levels that can be skipped (Fryguy is almost possible to skip but it doesn't quite work out).
This also brings up the question about whether mushrooms collected before a game over need to be collected again. If you game over and have to replay a level, the mushrooms respawn and are able to be obtained again. I propose that you don't have to recollect them, mainly because in the case of Mouser skip and co., a game over is part of the skip, but you shouldn't have to go collect the mushrooms throughout world 1 again.
Continuing on, this also brings up the question about save+quit in the All-Stars version. SMAS has always been an accepted version for the category (and this board in general I believe). However, not requiring levels to actually be cleared in conjunction with not having to recollect mushrooms means that save+quit is incredibly beneficial and can shave minutes off of the run (from not having to fight any bosses basically). I've done a run of this, and both versions of the run are fun and interesting, but they are very different.
So, all in all, my proposal:
- Clarify the rules that you only need to collect each of the 38 mushrooms once at any point in the run, and to beat the game. Game overs and level skips are fine.
- Split the board or add a variable or something for save+quit.
