So the new tech in this run I was excited for was the quick-turn glitch. You can sometimes turn towards your next destination for free instead of answering certain questions. This only ended up saving 10 frames and only was faster in 1 spot in the entire game in the end.

In theory the only thing in this run you can't be ready for and buffer an input for completely is the 2 times you're forced to use the item menu. I knew from my last PB I could save 31 frames between the two of these so I could definitely use those two timesaves to take the run from 37:09 to 37:08.

Then the run finished at 37:05.

Super cool.

What I think gave me the extra 3 seconds over the course of the run was delaying buffering inputs.

I tried to only buffer inputs close to where they were needed instead of just holding them the entire time.

The thought was this would give the game less to process while it was loading scenes and maybe reduce lag?

Well I guess it did, because I know there was only 41 frames left to save, I missed 10 frames on the item menus (so technically this isn't TAS-level perfect) and still saved 112 frames over my last PB.

It's an intriguing discovery coming at the end of what I thought was a fully-understood route.

That said, in theory this is a perfect run. Even saving the 10 more frames possible in the menuing, with nothing new added this run doesn't ever see a time below 37:05.

Pretty rad.

Blindfolded next. Then back to the original (because I never knew you could buffer inputs in that one.........sodumb...). THEN we'll see what a time looks like for a run of the entire series.

OMG! Almost frogot to mention! Did you notice my Sega Saturn reset itself and then black screen a few seconds after the end input? I didn't do that. The system did, lol. No idea why. Hope it still works. And if it happened 10 seconds sooner...ugh...