Yes, we have finally come to this moment. Any form of manipulation is hereby banned. Every category will be merged together with it's appropriate category. The reason behind this are as follows.

First, As of August 3rd, 2024, the world record for both categories of any% do not use the manipulation. The other categories are not as optimized so it does not matter.

Second, over the last several months, there have been a lot more no manipulation submissions than manipulation submissions. To me it appears that most runners of the game prefer to not use it.

Third, the manipulation uses a save state for quick resets. This is not allowed under the rules of speedrun.com and therefore should have never been allowed in the speedrun.

Fourth, through findings by Exonym while he was working on a TAS for this game, it is absolutely possible to beat all the manipulation times on the leaderboard. Now is perhaps the best time to ban the strategy. Basically, preventing an impossible to beat run from appearing on the leaderboard because of the one second saved from the manipulation and all the new techs.

Fifth and final reason, this will keep the integrity of the speedrun by keeping the playing field the same for all runners.

The timing rules will remain the same as you are to show the previous runs conclusion or the start up. All runs submitted before August 3rd, 2024 will remain on the leaderboards. It's only fair because those runs were accepted during the time the manipulation was acceptable. I do have to note that a run can no longer be restarted from a game over screen. That is a new rule to prevent any inconsistency with the first level.