[World Record] Mario Party DS 100% (

This is my full 100% speedrun done from September 24th to 26th, 2024.

Finally, after 4 years, I have improved my old run on my 6th attempt of this category. The previous 2 unsuccessful attempts were done in 2022 and literally the day before I started this run.
This is also the very first finished speedrun of this category that was done in a single segment, without any breaks or timer pauses.

Between my 4th and 5th attempts I slowly worked on a new route that consists on doing some Story Modes much later in the run, while doing other stuff like the Minigame Challenges earlier. I used to do all 8 Story Modes in a row, which is slower overall, because there are Badge Board Features that are not available until much later and that required doing additional parties on every board. This can be avoided by doing Story Modes later in the run. However, you'll need to have enough Mario Party Points by then, which means having to farm points earlier in the run as well. Even with the additional time spent farming the points, this route is about 1.5 hours faster than the previous one.

So, this run beat my sub 32 goal that I had back when I finished my second run, while also beating the estimated timesave of the new route by just over 10 minutes. The run went about how I expected when comparing to my estimated times. Although the splits were behind (and inaccurate) for most of the run due to the reroute, I had an idea of my actual pace throughout the course of the run.

Some Story Modes went very well, like Mario's, Wario's, and Yoshi's, while others were terrible, like Luigi's and (of course) Toad's. I had to intentionally lose time on Peach's because I was starting to worry that I would not unlock all the Event Board Features by the time I had to do DK's Stone Statue for 50 Stars, because that's when I expect to unlock the Toad Fountain. Had to do the same for Daisy's, although the timeloss wasn't as big. The least I want to worry about is still having to grind for Event Board Features (and the Toad Fountain) in the last 2 Story Modes of the run. Waluigi's started off very well and it went that way for at least the first three boards, but then the last board went downhill, with a real scare in the last few turns, putting a big chunk of the run's timesave at risk. Fortunately, the odds were in my favor, and the end result was an average Story Mode, while also improving a bad gold. My average Story Mode time for this run is 2:48:13, which is a bit better than my estimated time of 2:50:00.

Other parts of the run went pretty smoothly, although losing 18 minutes on Rocket Rascals was very annoying. Point farming went up and down, but that's what happens when you play Mario's Puzzle Party and just drop the blocks without looking.

To be honest, this run is still very improvable. Considering that the Story Mode WR is 25 minutes faster than the best Story Mode I had in this run and 14 minutes faster than my fastest Story Mode ever, a much better time is possible for 100%, even when going out of the way for the Board Features. The amount of luck required to get that level of optimization not just for all 8 Story Modes, but also for the Minigame Challenges and the point farming is just ridiculous.

Regardless of what I mentioned above, I'm happy that I was able to finish an entire run of this in one sitting, pretty much without any major breaks other than during the first credits or during slow minigames like I did in this run. Only time will tell if I will be able to attempt another run.

Be sure to follow me on Twitch to see what I'll be playing or speedrunning next:   / dj_tala0