Title asks it for me.

This is a legitimate question, as I am very unfamiliar with this game, and I'm learning the speedrun starting today. I'm just curious as to what the reason is. Seems that any% would allow any difficulty, would it not?

Any% has a bit of a different meaning here than it does in the other games in the series. In the other games, it usually means any difficulty / any tower. Here, it means you don't have to collect all abilities or defeat Demon Shinnok.

For what it's worth, I was taken aback by the difficulty requirement at first too. Then I ran this game last year on both difficulties, and honestly, "very hard" didn't make this already ridiculous game any harder.

Hello!

As TKK said, this game is very hard already and increasing the difficulty does little to it, a couple of points:

• The game will allow you to finish it only in Normal or higher, easy or lower it ends on level 5.

• So for full game runs we are fighting between normal, hard or very hard, like other classic MK games, playing on the hardest difficulty will reduce the RNG of the run as the AI will try to counter your inputs more often, in this case it also allows you to perform tricks or strats that otherwise wouldn't be feasible.

• The only thing that really becomes harder is the robots in the prison/bridge, they have twice the HP, other than that the game is almost identical.

This doesnt mean that there cant be a Normal difficulty run or lower, its just that no one has bothered doing it and we dont want to fill the leaderboards with empty categories. MK Moderation tends to be very flexible with categories, someone runs it and we make a cat basically.

Good luck with running this game, if you need any help please ask us here or join the MK Speedrun Community discord!

Awesome! Thank you very much for your help, everyone! I'm new to the game and so I'm learning as I go (your tutorial is helping a LOT btw!)

I do have another pair of questions: for runs, are passwords allowed in either: -The scenario of a game over (also, would a controller pak on N64/Memory Card on PS1 save be allowed, provided it comes from the same run you game over'd on)? -Using extra life codes (this one I assume is not allowed, but never hurts to ask)?

I'm getting better as I'm learning, but I'm 7 hours in and struggling to get through level 2 without a game over (the controls are not coming very naturally to me haha). I suspect this will not be an issue eventually, but I was hoping that, if I do game over, I could load a save and at least finish the run?

Im glad that guide is seeing some use, its quite outdated on some stuff so feel free to ask about any strat as there are easier ways than what the guide recommends.

• Sure! any save you make on the run is allowed

• At the moment we dont allow passwords but, if you didnt check, the game allows to increase the number of lives and continues, going with the default settings is very difficult, make sure you are using both at max.

The wind level for me is one of the hardest and the main reset point, there is no amount of playing that is going to make me feel comfortable with the jumps on the platforms that move towards and away from the camera, so if you struggle here, its one of the hardest levels, it should get better from here

A couple of tips for the wind temple:

• Make sure you jump while holding Run, jumping while holding run has more reach, if you are playing on n64, moving with the stick will cause sub-zero to run BUT YOU STILL need to hold the RUN button for it to affect the JUMP. Its not something crazy, but sometimes it makes the difference

• You can buffer a jump out of block, the easiest way to jump from platform to platform is to stand on the edge by walking slowly, then hold block > hold the input for your jump and the run button >release block while holding everything else. This causes sub zero to jump from the spot, with 0 risk of falling. If you are falling on the same spots, maybe try this there.

The main cause of timeloss is deaths, it doesnt help that the wind temple has no room for error, 1 miss step and back to the checkpoint, if you are on playstation add a 10sec loading on top of it. So specially for this level make sure to go slow and steady until you get used to the jump timings