I stumbled into this game through retroachievements because next to no one had played it and it turns out this game owns. they have leaderboards for each stage which explains the pop-up at the end of each level; it's clearly not in real-time. a lot of things are now outdated as I edited this & the next two posts a lot after finding more sweet stuff. incoming long post I had to break in two

Rumble in the Jungle

if you jump at the right time you can not trigger that very first cutscene, though it doesn't save any time. you can sort of strafe through the (back of the) fuel can tree to save .x seconds but it's not a guarantee. blowing the first QTE saves you 5 real life seconds, and it takes 1 or 2 to get the AK manually. the jump after the last demo spot is real hard with all that lag, and you can crash the game when the cutscene loads if you haven't killed enough guards? to the best of my knowledge/testing. sadly even if you could clip through the mansion door, you would still have to plant all the demolitions for the mission to end

Finders Keepers

not continued from the above run, otherwise you have to equip the AK yourself, get the SMG later, empty one to get the other, try to survive make your time. otherwise nothing special about this level, though it's dangerous! and the last guard likes to spawn far away !

Rigged to Blow

imo the hardest level, lots of health and ammo juggling & lag suffering. for some reason you don't need to interact with any of the hostages for them to be considered rescued + the objective considered complete at the end of this level & the next one. I don't think going for the HMG is worth the few seconds

thankfully you can ignore the middle 3 bombs as long as you can ultimately reach the final bomb before the previous bomb's timer runs out; its timer will pause during the defuse. HOWEVER!!1!! I found out a while later, the previous bomb's timer will still tick down as you're ending the level, so you need a good 20+ seconds after defusing the last bomb to beat the level real quick! and if you don't skip the final cutscene, the failure scene will play out after you've beaten the level and you could still lose after you win I think. careful!

bonus: I wasn't recording it (-_- ) but one time the entire big room with the broken elevator fuse box didn't spawn anyone at all, even the hostage, and I could still complete the level just fine. no other room was affected; I found out in other levels that there are triggers to spawn each room I assume, but just knowing they exist is the extent of my knowledge. this particular case was back when I would turn the steam valve, and I was messing around with turning sounds off

Caution: Curves Ahead

very dangerous route health-wise; if you're not (near) full you should not risk the first chump jump™, both of which I'm very glad work, and head down the ladder hole for a few more seconds. emptying the sniper rifle will keep the first two guards from deviating. if you could just clip through the card door.... (read ahead 10000 words ^_~)

bonus: for a few days I only tried jumping off the left side of the turret room and learned that it despawns the next 3-4 guards - their trigger is falling down the ladder spot. but with red health vs. a turret - Yikes !!

Dangerous Discovery

there's an SMG right there ! (although you could save like 3 seconds getting the one in the locker room after emptying out the pistol.) you don't have to protect the uplink whatsoever; I think the enemy stays aggroed the whole time. if you could just clip through the frozen door....

Frozen Assets

ah my pride and joy. I've since changed my mind and pick up the HMG instead; I think it's like 1 second faster. I'm very glad you can chump jump® through that ceiling, saving a lot of time ammo & health, but you have to be far into it otherwise you will be considered inside the wall/out of bounds and Die!!!

now the last section is miserable if you take it normally: not enough ammo, a guard up there can shoot you off the ladder (you can hold O while being shot off of things and you won't lose all of your balance), it's laggier than usual.

enter the 7-Up (patent pending): there's a white 7 on the rock wall I use as a landmark so I can jump up to the sadly only possible spot in this area. unless I'm mistaken it will always take 2 jumps to do.... for whatever reason, your second consecutive jump when standing still is higher than your first

month later update: it's easier safer & faster to do this on the furthest top-right wall by using a barely visible U as your cue, after you shoot a few dudes along the way. hopefully it'll be on video one day

one last thing, if you have low health and fall & grab the chain right as you'd splat, you'll "die" but in "reality" actually be invincible. unfortunately you cannot use the equip menu, just the pause menu. further unfortunately it goes away once you watch the crystal cutscene; any cutscene that changes the aspect ratio will do that. even more still unfortunately I found out in Countdown to Danger that even if this carried through the end of the level, the end of the level will never actually trigger, you'll just stand there forever. (you can do this on Dangerous Discovery too by falling off the first elevator & grabbing a ledge but you get softlocked on the uplink cutscene)

This game rules and I can't believe it only has one run, <40 reviews on steam, and not 100% positive at that. Rising Dusk, here's some attention you deserve

For starters, here's a rough run-through of Tanuki Town that saves at least 30s The secret double jump works wonders here; you can use it for the kappa if you so wish, on the drop-down 1 block with a precise jump, and in this case on the 12 box. I highly recommend only holding D/right as you're coming down grazing the side of the roof or you'll have one less box. You can always retrace your steps if the box falls off The last coin in the way is not so big a deal since you can bump into the nearby tanuki if you grab it. On a few attempts I skipped the recoil animation off the right one on the roof, I guess by moving left the second I bumped into him. neat!

other minutiae -- "restarting from last checkpoint" after the first checkpoint in the Mine level will spawn the lantern friend further in; the more offscreen you are when you trigger it the better

• for the kappa that pushes the rock, you want to get between him and said rock and walk into him 1 or 3 times, before he starts moving it. That way he will be further along in his push distance so our lantern friend won't stop and wait for kappa to katch up twice, just once. You can do the checkpoint trick again at the end of the rock segment too

-- Daitengu is real tricky but the second half is more manageable if you restart at the checkpoint

• Some Things to Note: you can double jump on the shove dudes!
• try not to get 5 coins!
• for the mudmen, jumping on the left side of its sludge when it sinks into the ground usually won't trip you up like the right side almost always does (video got lucky). More often than not you should wait in the middle of the second one before jumping
• (for practice) making it to the checkpoint pre-explosive punch guys and restarting without having previously restarted/died in the level will stick you to the floor for a beat, which helps to gather your bearings since it's such a small platform

-- you can just stand here for the last boss skeleton

• other than some double jumps in places, not much else I can think of at 1:37 AM

I was real let down when using a big coin for the mine level and ringing the bell didn't work ,'/ There are some other cool moves throughout the game, like jumping over the first undead vikings in their level and disabling the auto-scroller like it's Yoshi's Island, but that's a non-any% matter. If it's possible to do so in the mines & last boss then I haven't found it

I had an idea today that I really can't believe actually worked but I was wondering how ethical it is to other (future [hopefully] and former [come back]) runners' eyes

enabling Midas Mode in the Extras does this in the full run:

.... sometimes. it works more often when you drive straight through to the next ring without doubling back and aiming for more dudes, I guess provided there are a decent amount in the way. the video isn't the perfect line but it was the second time I tested it out of like 7 times as my confidence in this wavered back and forth. from what I could see it has no effect on the beach group route, which was already not an issue in losing more than like half a second in the run.

my original thought was that hitting a dude and turning them into a statue would count as 1 hit and them then falling and hitting the ground would count as another. that or it's because I hit dudes before the ring that turn into statues that then hit other pedestrians on- and offscreen while the counter is up.

to make a long post longer I was wondering how skeezy this seemed to be for the full game. personally I'm in favor of it (even though I love the zoom boing ding no violence noises more and the two can't be enabled simultaneously) since this is the only thing outside of bad terrain in the game that can be considered RNG & so it's a reset heavy spot normally. if you were to get the perfect alignment of people along the way without this enabled it would have no extra effect or bearing if that makes sense, but that never happens without having to double back and lose time. basically it's a backup plan that makes the game nearly fully reliant on the player's skill. and all you gotta do is press A on an option ! but I can see why it would be frowned upon for not Playing the Game As Intended.

I want to document this to be fully transparent when it comes to this game so whoever comes along in the future, uhh, is aware. and can weigh in. or to flesh out the speedlore episode of this 20 years from now. I'm going to run with this enabled because I don't get out of the suburbs some nights and it sucks nards

SUPER EDIT: i've run with this a bit and even if the people are in line it's still every bit as random as usual so sorry for reading a big chunk of text from a dork

Hey you!!!!!!!

I've been getting records on the main story missions over the last month and I didn't want to keep the routes in the dark. I tried to show the best way to start each run (where to orient the limo & red cars, or where to bunch up the pedestrians in the first Ranger Stacey level) but some might be cut off too early. some of them have the sound glitch from restarting while mid-crash explosion and I didn't know what caused it at the time & I wasn't listening to game audio. I'll put them in story order out of professionalism

Mickey (intro) - https://streamable.com/1ol7q - took the longest out of any record, approx 4 hours total, is so much better with shadows off

Kids - https://streamable.com/dsuja

Coach - https://streamable.com/lns73

Date Guy - https://streamable.com/g5e4h - idk why the audio desynced but if you start the second cutscene as he finishes saying "ruined" you're good

Elizabeth - https://streamable.com/uaajj

Priest - https://streamable.com/vd1jd - -.04 (cut off too soon)

Ronaldo - https://streamable.com/tahdg

Charles Maximillian - https://streamable.com/obski - -.03 but who knows why

Beth (mall ride) - https://streamable.com/iw74d - last one I needed to become Suburb Champ (except for dmv instructor :| )

Ranger Stacey - https://streamable.com/q4tvf - this one left me sour because it's not a Pure style of level

Swedish Tourist - https://streamable.com/7rgi7 - the ledge after the construction site blows to get off safely

Beth (to city) - https://streamable.com/htync

Mickey (to city) - https://streamable.com/mevti

Mickey (to Chinatown) - https://streamable.com/iss6s - lucky end jump, -.01

Charles Maximillian 2 - https://streamable.com/tvpx0 - skip the middle jump by shrinking at the right time & angle, don't think it's a 100% consistent thing

Beth (first Ronaldo challenge) - https://streamable.com/uwrbw - you have a better chance of avoiding the first falling car if you shrink before its uhh spawn plate, also the terrain up is pretty annoying

Danny Stephens - https://streamable.com/oljn4 - note the little wall before the streetlight that has no collision; I didn't bother trying to set up a soccer ball in the goal if that would even work. I did in fact do this the day of the world cup final

Disco Sylvain - https://streamable.com/dlecy - found out if you activate the dive mid-jump you can fall a scooch faster and it can help you line up the limo better. the jump near the shipping container is hard enough without bonking but all this being said this was only -.06 better than a run with a bonk and no sweet dive move

Mickey (rooftops) - https://streamable.com/k39xf - save a jump from the street to the first platform & third platform to the roof. driving off the last roof is rough

Challenge Ronaldo - https://streamable.com/csdhk - squeezing past the tree at the start is a pain, the jumps too; the red car at the bottom of the screen at spawn had just stopped at the other end of the street iirc. didn't realize until I rewatched that you go off-road right when Mickey says to (and shrink to avoid the little bit of terrain jutting out there)

Jeffrey - https://streamable.com/w4pfp - retrying this mission almost always results in crashing because of the uneven terrain

Priest 2 - https://streamable.com/5ihmb - the ending was so nice that I didn't want to bother trying for a third day (jumping after the second coffin lines up the next one better than waiting around). you don't have to shrink at the first spot I bonk, maybe not the second one either, but this guy's missions suck hard to do well. southwest red car at spawn

Not Mickey - https://streamable.com/mub1w - I think this was the first time I noticed how high the ring hitboxes are. shame about the end

Charles Maximillian 3 - https://streamable.com/6eb1h - "work in progress" because I think you can cut out the first jump and maybe even the second and be fine. the propeller for the plane at the right of spawn has to be southwest for most things to line up

Canadian Tourist - https://streamable.com/6kweo - hardest mission in the game!!! not sure if the red cars near the ice northeast of spawn are close enough to judge without getting camera whiplash. innovative jump moves & barrel bounce save my hide

Mickey (to the fairgrounds) - https://streamable.com/264av - first one I ever recorded, hard to tell but the limo looks like \ at the start. I thought I got insanely lucky with two police cars blowing up before I saw the SGDQ run and apparently that's supposed to happen. jump saver

Ranger Stacey 2 - https://streamable.com/n6bir - lucky bonk that didn't lose any time(?). jumping as soon as you can is the key for this and many others as is crossing your eyes and getting through trees

Beth (finale) - https://streamable.com/pukaz - saving the :beth: for last. thought about jumping into the cutscene and wiggling around after somehow but it didn't result in anything. cruel hand of god that gives me the url pukaz

if no one reads this and gets inspired intrigued impressed (and if the videos stay up forever) I'll be happy regardless. this game feels extremely good when things line up and I wish more people knew about it! as buggy as things get and as overshadowing the story and theme are to the speedrun portion of the game (for good reason), there's a really great movement style and finesse to Roundabout that I've had more fun with than any other game (outside of surfing in Counter-Strike: Source). I hope you made it this far to read this: thanks for reading