I think I tried this before and basically wrote it off as not working when everyone turns hostile, looks like it does work though. Even better would be if we can kill the guy we initially talk to about Anakin, this would also save a bit of time on PS1.

Wanted to make a side by side but we already know its a 30ish second saving. Even with some minor mistakes I barely made the cycle. You must keep the first droid alive (0:16) so Panaka wastes time killing it, allowing you to push the box in a straight line. Next we also must skip the health pickup (1:39), you could maybe try landing on the small health pickup in the room (1:06) otherwise don't waste time getting it.

Skips that DONT work on PS1 JP:

Swamps of Naboo Jar Jar Skip (Tree not clippable). Otoh Gunga Guard has invisible wall (must be killed). Gardens of Theed Cannot jump forward from exploded pillar, must do PC strat. Mos Espa Arena Junkyard after Watto has a different layout, can still get down there but can't seem to jump over wall. Coruscant Wall collisions in "Underworld" fixed, can't skip first "elevating platform" or fight the boss from above.

Gameplay changes:

Rolling distance is increased. Padmes Lighting gun has a much greater distance. No Japanese dubbing so dialogue isn't faster. Some textures/railing added to the ceiling of Mos Espa Arena room with "thief".

Probably a bunch of other stuff was changed/added, will buy a JP copy at some point and do a proper playthrough/comparison. As it stands there's no way this version is competitive unless it has skips of its own.

Very easy no risk - just jump inbetween the doors and go diagonally. There's a chance of falling back into the elevator but that's all.

Can't do it on the earlier elevator because its too high up and you'll die. Maybe you can still get on top of it and get to the room below a bit earlier though.

Using Princess Heart on the stairs (GOING DOWN) to the right of the turnstiles. Freezes after leaving Hospital, likely to be trying to find the Motel Trigger, or trying to set the new Trigger to go see Vincent at the Motel.

Posting this for future reference, or other people wanting to test this.

Here's the Older Skip from last night which takes you to Heaven's Night instead (going UP the stairs).

I tested this a few months ago and forgot to post it, but I made a highlight of it on YouTube. So I read on Quidrex's guide titled "Star Ranking and Unlockables Guide", and found this part very interesting and don't recall it being mentioned anywhere else:

"If no shot was fired during the whole game a bonus of 100 enemies defeated by shooting is granted; because the last boss of the regular endings require you to either shoot them or get rid of all your ammunition by shooting this bonus is only possible with the UFO ending"

https://www.speedrun.com/sh1/guide/25hhp

So before we go any further, 10 Star is impossible to achieve already because we can only go for the UFO ending, so ultimately useless, however I was still curious, and with our knife strats on the first Airscreamer, this is easily achievable. Here it is from start to finish:

Results Screen: (I was surprised that it actually just removes the Shooting Style stats entirely, considering it doesn't do that if you don't save, continue, kill by fighting etc.)

I had to switch to Katana for Split Head because there is no way to do the "stab in the mouth strat" and get out in time, its impossible, and using a NG+ weapon may have messed up the test. You would have to stab him in the body with the knife and using Unlimited Health cheat enabled. As of now though it seems you don't get 100 Shooting Kills by not firing at all.

So I randomly come on SRC to find my runs from over 2 years ago suddenly rejected with the reason:

"Does not live up to the new ruleset agreed on by the community."

What exactly is this new ruleset and decided by who? I didn't see much info in the forum here and there's no discord to my knowledge? Seems kinda shitty to not just make a separate category and just flat out reject my runs out of the blue which have been there for 2+ years.

EDIT: Okay so its to do with prebuilt houses and already unlocked stuff, still don't see where this was "agreed on by the community", I certainly didn't have any input on this despite having runs here from way before a lot of the current community even started running the game.

Again make a separate category for prebuilt houses/unlocks since you even have a Cheat% which I'd consider even less legit.

This was found way back when the game was still new, just making a video on it anyway for reference. An invisible wall was added to all later releases at 0:28, you can still do the clip but you can't go any further. The reason they did this was because if you go through the storage room you can easily clip through from the other side (why the player would try to do that just to go all the way back through the level again makes no sense).

I wasn't even testing anything here, just getting all the endings. Basically went through a door (the one leading into the Pyramid Head chase sequence at the end of the Hospital with Maria) and was loaded OOB. I then soft reset the game to start a new game for the next ending, every single save had the same room corruption to the point where I had to actually restart the game fully. From what I can tell, this can happen randomly, and it seems to be quite useless anyway because the room that loads AFTER the current room, seems to have no hitboxes.

Had this happen during a run, somehow clipped up onto the top deck and AI wasn't loaded (they weren't shooting at me). I tried to replicate it but couldn't, thought I'd post anyway.

This would save a little time climbing the ladder and also avoid getting killed if it was consistent.

There's no progression flag made when dropping off Yasmin at Charlie's, so you can take her to the Crackhouse which will be open, and it still makes a checkpoint too.

I'm guessing because there's no cutscene, which is how the game makes progression flags, that it's all just one "level". I tried it on other missions (for example, going straight to the warehouse on "Filthy Business" and even clipping inside the police station, but because there's a cutscene when you get into the van, or when you kill McCormack, it makes a progression flag, so both places are closed until the flags are triggered and those areas become available).

~10 seconds faster depending if you get shot etc. if you don't take the Crane.

I previously thought knocking the guy out at 0:14 softlocked the mission at 0:38 because that guy will never move until he has talked to the one that goes down the stairs, however it seems you can just shimmy behind him and somehow he won't notice you.

You have to go over the threshold (0:51) to make him spawn first, then use free aim. Haven't tried with AK or shotgun but should work (probably faster too).

Either this Scratcher respawns an infinite amount of times or its extremely high chance, but I found this last night while testing the rifle on Scratchers and noticed this guy seems to just respawn A LOT.

He IS dying because I did a few test runs and the kills matched up on the Results Screen, so its probably a good idea to just get most of your kills right here, even for fighting kills with the katana, its like a step forward, slash twice and then run back and repeat but watch out for the other one.

The only issue here is actually your rifle ammo, on the current route we get 3 boxes before this enemy (2 in jewellery store, 1 in 1F sewer + 6 rounds in the rifle to start with, that's 114 rounds total), so now we might want to go into the police station after twin feeler to grab that extra box, making it 150. In addition, NOT using the Hyper Blaster besides the Cafe Airscreamer to save those No Aiming Shots, and use the shotgun on Floatstinger (meaning shotgun for ALL bosses) and save those rifle rounds specifically for shooting kills in the sewer. So basically, don't use the rifle UNTIL the sewer, kill enemies like normal until you get to this guy, then try to have 80-90 shooting kills before the end of the sewer + switch to katana and finish getting your fighting kills. If this really is as consistent as it seems, I wouldn't even bother killing ANYTHING in the school besides Split Head, maybe a few creepers with HB since you won't be switching to the handgun at all. Basically, Any% Hard +150 items until you get to the hospital where you'll begin killing stuff.

Also the distance on this enemy is Middle Range, handgun seems to miss a lot so don't bother trying that.

UPDATE: Further testing has shown this is a thing with ALL Scratchers, not just this specific room/Scratcher. This is still the best/fastest Scratcher to use however (there is actually only one other that is close to being just as fast, which is the one right before you leave the sewer, it is a little further away making fighting kills on it slower, but its distance isn't enough to make it a long range kill either, still, if you somehow have the first one despawn its a good backup).

Getting fighting kills can be difficult, the safest thing to do is to kill the other Scratchers, wait a few seconds so that the game actually unloads them, then you can focus on the specific one you want, otherwise its a risk each time trying to slash twice with the katana and quickturning before the other one is hitting you.

This is sort of useless for speedrunning because of the amount of time you'll be wasting doing this (I did plan on maybe just using Hyper Blaster for like 90% of the run and then doing something like this, but you'd need to literally stand there firing hundreds of shots to counter it). Also, when Harry reloads (which he doesn't in the video because I had Unlimited Ammo + No Reload code enabled) he will no longer aim at the enemy.

You can still do this by mashing the inventory button between shots, seems to be a specific frame where you can open the menu between shots, manually reload and then exit, still holding Aim+Shoot.

Even so, this proves that shooting dead enemies DOES count towards aimed shots and is a good backup if Harry has missed a lot of shots and you want to guarantee 10 Star, you can empty a fully loaded rifle into a few nurses in Nowhere for example. This video excessively uses this as an example:

I think its time to clean up the mods for some of these games a bit because there really only seems to be a couple of people actively verifying runs, a few people don't really run/care for SH speedrunning anymore or aren't even around, so maybe time to remove some non active people and the ones that are actively running the games and are trustworthy given the position instead?

Not trying to be an ass to anyone, just suggesting there are some mods that aren't really active in the community anymore.

Activated using L1+L2+L3+Left Dpad+Left Left Stick+Left Right Stick on PS2 and HD Collection versions.

This lets you open a save menu anywhere except during FMVs. A lot of PC only skips/strats can now be performed as well as other glitches where the PC disables quicksaving.

Here we can post different findings (even if useless in a speedrun such as stuff that requires a save/load - remember this is only allowed in the Bug Room). One nice glitch is the ability to despawn Pyramid Head in the Hospital Basement chase scene - wait until he spawns, open the save menu, soft reset and continue).

Finally, you don't actually have to save, or even have a Memory Card inserted, simply opening the save menu will create a checkpoint right there, allowing you to quit to the main menu, then continue - see my Bug Room skip where I don't have a Memory Card.

#Useful in a Speedrun Plank / Radio Skip (this is now useless because the game will freeze upon re entering the area after the hospital). Opening the Debug Save menu while picking something up from the ground which requires a bend down animation, puts the game into a softlock state allowing you to run through barriers. Guarding will unsoftlock the game in this case (note the car reappearing).

Woodside Apartments Scream Skip (slightly less time save; you need to aim twice or aim+shoot)

Bug Room Skip You don't even need to save, just go into the Debug Save menu (which makes a checkpoint), soft reset and Continue. As you can see I didn't have the Memory Card inserted.

Hotel OoB This probably doesn't save any time because you have to pick up the thinner, go into the Debug Save menu to softlock, and then do the setup on the stairs which is hard enough on PC with full 360 control. Here it is in action on PS2 anyway. You only have one chance at getting the fall in the wall due to there only being one thinner and falling unsoftlocks you.

[PS2] 44:22 using Debug Save Menu Example of a run using this so far, stamina refreshes when opening the menu, which is pretty difficult as you can tell lol

Also fall animations are cancelled (Apartment pool and exiting the well).

Unsoftlocking the game seems to depend on the area. When doing the Hotel OoB, I was hit a few times by the mannequin which managed to unsoftlock me, and also falling, which is why you only get one shot at the OoB before the stairs trigger reappears. So from this, some animations (aiming, guarding, falling, getting hit) depending on the area will unsoftlock you and sometimes won't. Quitting and Continuing will unsoftlock you everywhere although I did have the game freeze doing this at Rosewater before meeting Maria.

If you open the menu during a ingame cutscene, it will stick on either a black or grey screen for like 30 seconds, then the menu will open allowing you to close it and the scene will continue, albeit glitchy and with a fixed camera, like SH1s Amusement Park cutscene. Also the game seems to freeze if you let the cutscene play until the end, this might be specific to some and not all.

Audio plays in the save menu, if SH3 works the same, you could probably do the Borley Mansion thing, because IGT is paused while in this menu.

Also nothing for Abstract Daddy yet.

#Not Useful in a Speedrun Laura & Maria Cutscenes Skip Can also be done on PC by QSing using the Apartment door text (trying to go back). The game will lag and become unstable as it tries to load items/enemies/triggers and will soft freeze at Pete's Bowl-O-Rama (trying to load the cutscene with Maria).

Rosewater Sign Breakout I never use this even on PC since IGT is ticking, you might as well just skip it. Here it is working on PS2 using the Debug Save menu anyway.

Hospital Text Breakout IGT Runs.

Cube Room OoB This is possible on PC and serves no purpose, many rooms can be found including the hallway right before the Eddie boss fight. No hitboxes will be active outside of the Cube Room if my memory is correct.

Hotel Elevator Breakout Fun but Pointless.

Since this game was never officially released on PlayStation Network; playing off of a memory stick or PSTV via CFW should either be banned or separated into a "Emulator / Backup Loader" sub category because the load time differences are huge vs UMD loads (like actual minutes of difference overall).