[WORLD RECORD] Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex 106% Speedrun in

PLEASE READ BEFORE ASKING ABOUT THE CHECKPOINTS! FAQ Below!

Holy. Dicks. The first 2;10 in the game's history, and yet, there's more to be done. It took over a year and a half to finally beat my old PB, and it just came out of nowhere. I didn't expect this today, and it's gonna be a pretty arduous journey to get the record even lower.

My current goal for 106% is 2;10:3x or lower. Obviously, it could go much lower than that (around a high 2;09, actually), but I'm thinking about retiring from speedrunning, and I want my record to be actually difficult to beat. Whether or not I wanna try to get the any% records back is something I'll have to think about once I'm done with 106%, as this has always been my priority since I started running the game.


FAQ:

Q: Why are you skipping checkpoints?
A: In TWoC specifically, checkpoints are designed so that hitting a checkpoint farther ahead in a level results in all the previous ones breaking at the exact same time. Also, breaking any boxes that appear before a checkpoint that you already activated will stay broken upon respawning from a death, thus allowing for easy death-abuse strats with otherwise out-of-the-way boxes (see The Gauntlet, Eskimo Roll and Crash and Burn).

Q: Why do you keep angling Crash into a wall?
A: Much like Crash 2, TWoC has a movement tech called wall-boosting, which is done by angling your character (Crash, Coco and the Mech) about 45 degrees into any flat wall. However, unlike in Crash 2, where its use is mainly in a handful of levels, TWoC's wall-boosting can be done in any place where there's a flat wall. Doing a perfect wall-boost makes your character go nearly twice as fast as they would normally, matching slide speed. Wall-boosting typically helps with maximizing distance while in the air and generally keeping the speed up while airborne.

Q: How are these loading times so fast?
A: I'm playing the game via a homebrew program called Open PS2 Loader, which is a program that loads ISO files straight through the PS2. Essentially, it's an emulator that runs off the actual hardware.

Q: Why are you playing on the Japanese PlayStation 2 version?
A: TWoC was originally made to be a PS2 game, and as such was optimized to fit the PS2's hardware, which in turn made it the best performing port of the game. The Japanese PS2 port reduces lag in certain levels (Sea Shell Shenanigans and Coral Canyon), it makes skipping cutscenes easier by mapping the cancel button to △ (remapped from the Start button which tends to drop inputs), and it retains the Red Gem Path variant from black label PS2, Xbox and GameCube (Greatest Hits PS2 and Japanese Xbox have a harder variant which makes the path nearly impossible without damage-abusing). Funny enough, this isn't even the most optimal port of the game anymore, as recent information points to the NTSC Greatest Hits/Korean 1.0 version having a strat that saves about 9 seconds in The Gauntlet's relic visit. I just play the Japanese version because I'm used to it.

Q: Bruh are you okay
A: I was tired and not feeling very well during this session. Sorry for the subpar commentary.

Twitch:   / mchooper