First ever Golden Sun Any% with ACE run TL Plexa 2026-09-19 | First ever Golden Sun Any% with ACE run
Command Swap Glitch - New Dark Dawn Glitch, New Dark Dawn Route TL Plexa 2023-08-08 | Shoutouts to Valyssa for the initial work for both the glitch and the new route idea, and shoutouts to everyone else in the GS Speedrun community for their work in making this happen. Command Swap effectively allows us to self-target attacks and certain abilities. Typically this would be a bad thing, but the speedrun wants efficient deathwarps and this gives us an avenue to make it happen (even when the game tries really hard to stop us). Music is from OC Remix "A World Reignited" - reignited.ocremix.org
The Most Painful PB Ive Ever Had: Golden Sun: Dark Dawn Any% in 3:59:06 TL Plexa 2023-08-02 | Doing the Umbra Gear djinn swaps with Djinn on standby caused this.Was the World Record at the time of recording (July 30, 2023) until August 4th 2023.
Alhafra Cutscene Skips with Sand Glitch TL Plexa 2023-07-12 | Should be No S&Q legal! Full credit to Zadeta for the idea, DriftingPancake for Sand Glitch.
TLA No S&Q Potential Tech - Trident Quest / Avimander / Poseidon Skip?? TL Plexa 2023-07-09 | Will have to debate this one for legality. But very cool work by Zadeta and DriftingPancake. Zadeta's video: youtube.com/watch?v=Iz_rN5PfqjMOriginal idea for Fall Storage on the world map is due to DriftingPancake, the Gaia Rock escape is due to Zadeta.
Worlds First Sub-4 Hour Golden Sun: Dark Dawn Any% Speedrun (3:59:21) TL Plexa 2023-07-03 | The grind pays off! So many hours sunk into understanding every little trick in this run ... and I still managed to mess up a few of them lol. This run is still exceptionally good - RNG was generally good across the board and was my second fastest time coming out of BC ever. It's possible to bring this down another 2-3 minutes but I am not sure if I have that grind left in me. This was the world record at the time of recording (July 3rd, 2023).
Golden Sun: Dark Dawn Any% Speedrun in 4:02:22 TL Plexa 2023-06-25 | Don't know how to feel about this one. Generally good RNG across the board, with some notable exceptions (Roc, B&C) but my execution left a lot to be desired with multiple tries on some of the tricks in the run. There's enough time to be saved that makes sub-4 realistic - that's the goal!This was World Record at the time of recording (25 June, 2023), bopping Raphi's 4:03 set last week. Was WR until July 3rd, 2023.
Golden Sun: Dark Dawn Any% Speedrun in 4:04:46 TL Plexa 2023-06-18 | Perfect endgame is pretty fast I guess. Extremely lucky to have bopped Raphi's 4:04:57 - basically those 11s came from Reg's brand new puzzle skip in R3 of Apollo. Not satisfied with this time, pushing for 402 or better.Was the World Record at the time of recording (18 June, 2023), lasted 2 days lmao
Xenoblade Chronicles 3 Any% Normal w/ DLC Speedrun in 7:46:59 TL Plexa 2022-10-12 | This is a partial reroute of the end game following a Chinese runner coming out of no where and doing a ton of novel strategies. The Chinese runner collected the Shackle Ring (+effects on arts) and used healer lucky7 during Z. This run draws inspiration from that by getting the Chain Ring (the lesser version of the Shackle Ring) from Navigator Helios (a UM outside the Relay Base). A lot of things didn't go according to plan here, still 20 minutes of time save to be had!There is a single break between 3:33:33 and 3:42:33, this single break is permitted by the category rules :)
Xenoblade Chronicles 3 - Any% Normal w/ DLC speedrun in 7:50:57 TL Plexa 2022-10-03 | Set myself a goal of Sub-8 a while ago, feels good to have hit that milestone already. This category is going sub-7:30 for sure once all the optimizations are done, but this frees me mentally to work on RPGLB prep without guilt. Shoutouts to Quadraaceps, UnclescotII and Bowie for collabing on the route with me. They're all absolute legends.
Xenoblade Chronicles 3 - Any% Normal w/ DLC in 8:04:45 TL Plexa 2022-10-02 | While I am disappointed this didn't sub-8, and as bad as Z rng screwed me, there were enough self-inflicted mistakes that could have pushed this over the line. Sub 8 should come soon enough, and maybe a 7:4X in the future.
Xenoblade Chronicles 3 - Any% Normal with DLC speedrun in 8:20:24 TL Plexa 2022-09-25 | My first decent run of this category. TONS of improvement to be had all over the place but its good enough to upload for now.
Memory overflow by mashing B / game crash documentation TL Plexa 2022-08-15 | Found by DriftingPancake. Uploading for documentations sake. Each time the menu is cancelled with B, 6 bytes of data are written to a specific register. Write to that register enough times and it overflows into the next one (which is in IRAM) and the game crashes.
Golden Sun: The Lost Age Any% in 1:15:03 TL Plexa 2022-07-25 | I am back after my brief hiatus! This run utilizes the Arbitrary Memory Writes tech in Airs Rock to beat the game very quickly. In particular it is used to write three things - poison onto Isaac, turn on a debug function that disables encounters, and setting the epilogue state in Prox. Everything else about this run is getting to Airs Rock as fast as possible with all the tools needed to beat the game. This is quite a good run, it probably should have been a 1:14 if I didn't hesitate in a bunch of places. There's a few optimizations possible to the route that I explained at the end of the video which make me think that 1:13 or faster is possible.Run was retimed to 1:15:03.984.
Golden Sun: The Lost Age Any% in 1:23:27 TL Plexa 2022-06-05 | This route is not optimal and there are some mistakes, but its sufficient to show off a proof of concept for a route that leverages the Arbitrary Memory Writes tech discussed in this video: youtu.be/nqBgfYE5RrINot sure how much effort I will put into this category as there isn't much to it, but I won't rule out really trying to optimize it when I return from LA. True Any% probably saves 4-5 minutes over this route by being able to exploit Teleport and not needing to set the no encounter flag (due to lv99 Isaac allowing Avoid through the western sea)
Arbitrary Memory Writes in Golden Sun: The Lost Age TL Plexa 2022-06-04 | Music is from "A World Reignited" a collection compiled by OC-Remix: reignited.ocremix.orgNone of this would be possible without Teawater's insight and knowledge on these games. He was the genesis for both the breaking of GS1 with his Tret Tree observations and now the breaking of GS2 with this tech. Thanks also to Regenetreis who has been in the trenches with me trying to figure out how to best abuse this tech. The tech allows us to write certain values into (almost) arbitrary locations in memory by leveraging a few things. 1. The fact that 0x50, 0x51, 0x52, and 0x53 tiles write values into memory to represent a 'depressed tile' state. 2. The fact that Cyclone, Sand, Hover, Cloak, etc. layer 3 interactions are present on _every_ map in the game even if they are unused. 3. Using Cyclone via unused layer 3 tiles to raise our Z-coordinate to 331. Leveraging how the game converts (x,y,z) coordinates into tile addresses to bring critical memory addresses into range to being written to. 3. Using junk data written into memory by encounters in Slot 2 to manipulate where 0x50, 0x51, 0x52, 0x53 tiles are written. This culminates in the ability to change quite a few things by directly editing things in memory (including retreat pointers, sanctum pointers, acquired djinn...). The most important of this being directly editing quest progression flags to allow the game to end almost immediately after entering airs rock.
Golden Sun: The Lost Age True Any% Speedrun in 1:50:04 TL Plexa 2022-05-16 | I repeat: You cheated not only the game, but yourself. You didn't grow. You didn't improve. You took a shortcut and gained nothing. You experienced a hollow victory. Nothing was risked and nothing was gained. It's sad that you don't know the difference.True Any% is distinguished from Any% by allowing the use of any password. This in combination with Early Isaac results in a very silly speedrun. Timesave from previous run is pretty much entirely because of Doom Dragon skip.
How Doom Dragon Skip was Found (with Live Reactions) TL Plexa 2022-05-13 | Dedicated to Valyssa who taught me that jank is just tech waiting to be realized.This is the live discovery of the Doom Dragon skip, with some cuts to improve the flow. It shows the initial observation of jank, the testing of the jank in order to better understand how it works, and then finally being able to turn jank into useful tech that culminated in a huge skip.
Doom Dragon Skip for Golden Sun: The Lost Age TL Plexa 2022-05-09 | Well this wasn't on my 2022 Bingo card.Music from the "A World Reignited" compilation by OC Remix reignited.ocremix.org
Golden Sun: The Lost Age True Any% Speedrun in 1:55:26 TL Plexa 2022-05-01 | You cheated not only the game, but yourself. You didn't grow. You didn't improve. You took a shortcut and gained nothing. You experienced a hollow victory. Nothing was risked and nothing was gained. It's sad that you don't know the difference.True Any% is distinguished from Any% by allowing the use of any password. This in combination with Early Isaac results in a very silly speedrun.This run was obsoleted by Doom Dragon skip.
The last Golden Sun: The Lost Age Any% speedun without Isaac TL Plexa 2022-04-29 | Forgot to upload this. At some point will need to reroute everything to take advantage of early Isaac.
Golden Sun Any% No S&Q (No Cutscene Patch) Speedrun in 2:17:08 TL Plexa 2022-04-24 | Of all the absurd runs that I have had, this is the most absurd. This run is such an extreme statistical outlier it's hard to imagine how you can reasonably beat it. Fair play to anyone who can get a 2:16:xx [looking at you, Ollie ;)].This is my commentary over the run, trying to give as much insight into my thoughts as possible. The raw recording can be found here: youtu.be/7loMXZvZgZgThe previous WR was Ollie's 2:17:32.
EARLY ISAAC (we found him in Gabomba) TL Plexa 2022-04-08 | Shoutouts to Kari and Rele who were on call with me when this was found. They hadn't seen the other early Sol Blade which lead me to show it off after my run died after failing the Gabomba puzzle of all things.... never been so happy to mess up a puzzle before!0:00 Live Reaction to Discovery2:10 Explanation StartsMusic is from A World Reignited by OC-Remix reignited.ocremix.org
Worlds first Any% Speedrun of Golden Sun: The Lost Age WITHOUT Isaacs party TL Plexa 2022-03-28 | This is the first time a run of Golden Sun: The Lost Age has been completed using Death Storage, which enables early Lemuria (Poseidon skip) and early Magma Rock (Reunion skip). There are still a lot of rough edges on the route, but this milestone should still be celebrated even if the time is going to drop a bit over the coming weeks.
Cloak Skip for Early Lunpa TL Plexa 2022-03-26 | Massive shoutouts to SolidifedGaming youtube.com/channel/UCj5N5yb6BbLAAl_ta2EDPsA and DriftingPancake for doing the technical work to enable this tech. This enables Lunpa to be completed after getting Reveal but before going to crossing the Karagol Sea. Music is from "A World Reignited" by OCRemix -- reignited.ocremix.orgSpreadsheet with the setups and information: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YGaoeVxHO-HHzqdBUUrfGI7m8FwJxcjzyiOar5EOhb4/edit#gid=0
Golden Sun - Any% No S&Q (No Cutscene Patch) Speedrun in 2:18:03 TL Plexa 2022-03-24 | No Cutscene Patch is a patch which enables the inbuilt Debug Mode cutscene skip by default. This basically the majority of the text from the game and is ~1 hour shorter than the regular game. Otherwise this is exactly the same as Any% No Save & Quit that you see us play elsewhere.Ollie has been putting down monster times on emulator for a while and ever since the leaderboards were split I've wanted to compete with him. I chose to compete on NCP since it's different to what we experience on console. I've been grinding this for about ~6 weeks or so at this point and every time I have got close to Ollie he has dropped his PB by another minute or so. I've been close to putting together a good time myself but things have kept going wrong. This is the first time I've got my nose in front of him, but I suspect he'll bop this time back (he's just that good). You can see Ollie's runs here: youtube.com/channel/UC-Zc7-Ij17H6qShAtnLTfdwThis was WR until April 14th 2022 when it was bested by Ollie
Golden Sun: The Lost Age - Glitchless Any% No S&Q Speedrun TL Plexa 2022-03-21 | Never again. This was a mostly-blind race between a handful of people (myself, a_raphi, zadeta656, ifzbelkari, phuturex and pokemariosun). There were no real routes, just poorly thought out ideas.
Golden Sun: The Lost Age Any% No S&Q Speedrun in 5:27:11 [PB] TL Plexa 2022-01-31 | Following my performance at last weeks relay (youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8PZB25uZuZ61I7TtoXnKoAllo6vizQ-S) I was feeling pretty good about my overall TLA form and wanted to give PBing a crack. First run of the weekend and bam, there it is. This run is still improvable - there's a good 2 mins to be saved prior to Gaia Rock for instance, let alone some time savers in Jupiter onwards - but it's a good showcase of my new end game tech and what it can do for the run.Was the world record until June 16, 2023
Golden Sun Series Any% Speedrun Part 3 (GS:DD) [World Record?] TL Plexa 2022-01-09 | Part 3 of my Any% Speedrun of the whole GS series - Part 3 covers Golden Sun: Dark Dawn. My goal was to complete all three games under 14 hours (including 20 minutes of breaks between games).
Golden Sun Series Any% Speedrun Part 2 (GS: TLA) [World Record?] TL Plexa 2022-01-09 | Part 2 of my Any% Speedrun of the whole GS series - Part 2 covers Golden Sun 2. My goal was to complete all three games under 14 hours (including 20 minutes of breaks between games).
Golden Sun Series Any% Speedrun Part 1 (GS1) [World Record?] TL Plexa 2022-01-09 | Part 1 of my Any% Speedrun of the whole GS series - Part 1 covers Golden Sun 1. My goal was to complete all three games under 14 hours (including 20 minutes of breaks between games).
Golden Sun Any% No S&Q Speedrun in 3:23:25 [World Record] TL Plexa 2021-12-29 | SchubertWalk no idea how this PBd. Probably will be beaten soon?
Unload the boat almost anywhere in Golden Sun: The Lost Age [Found by DriftingPancake] TL Plexa 2021-12-20 | Trick found by DriftingPancake, I'm just documenting it because its cool and people should know about it.
Golden Sun: Dark Dawn 100% Speedrun in 7:41:04 [World Record] TL Plexa 2021-12-13 | Welcome to this crazy speedrun where almost nothing is done in the intended order. This route was developed by Regnetreis (youtube.com/channel/UCbfMmyJNu2JOW1xtnOJ0Tyw) and as soon as I saw it I knew I had to get a run in of it before the end of the year. 100% is defined by getting 83/83 entries in the Djinn Guide, 179/179 entries in the Encyclopedia, and collecting all Summons. The run ends on creation of a save file that has "clear data" (seen the credits) and has met all requirements. Every glitch that we have found for DD gets used. This route delivers an unholy amount of punishment on this game that will leave you dumbfounded. Currently I have no plans to refine this time yet, but it's certainly an option for 2022.
Golden Sun 100% No S&Q Speedrun in 4:19:14 [World Record] TL Plexa 2021-12-06 | After some struggle, we cracked the 4:1X and reclaimed the WR from Blueser (go follow him at twitch.tv/blueser). This is not a perfect run, but there's a lot to like about this run. Most 'milestone' splits turned out pretty well; like 1:30 Tret is definitely a good early game, and a 2:44 Colosso is definitely a good midgame. So pretty hard to be unhappy with this. I'll be watching Blue's runs and judging whether I can reasonably improve this without too much time investment (I have Dark Dawn for ESA to worry about!)
Golden Sun 100% No S&Q Race - Plexa vs Blueser TL Plexa 2021-11-29 | This was a really close race between me (right / large game feed) and Blueser (left / small game feed). Blueser is one of the top runners in Golden Sun and you should follow him at twitch.tv/blueser -- he does near daily runs of Golden sun and is one of my biggest competitors for GS1.
Golden Sun: Dark Dawn Any% Speedrun in 4:05:54 TL Plexa 2021-11-28 | First 4:0X and a pretty decent run at that. Things started out less than great with up to 3 mins of timesave before Kaocho. But then almost all of the boss RNG went my way and all of the tricks were performed with minimal fuss. Perhaps sub-4 is on the cards in the future, but it will take one heck of a run to pull that off.Was World Record at the time of recording until May 20th, 2023
Golden Sun: Dark Dawn Any% Speedrun in 4:10:46 TL Plexa 2021-11-22 | Even those CC denied the 4:0X right at the end, this run had too many mistakes to really warrant hitting that milestone. Nevertheless, it's an improvement - and capped off a successful weekend (setting two WRs across two different games on consecutive streams). But this can, and will be improved.This was the World Record until November 27th, 2021 when it was bested by my 4:05:54.
Golden Sun 100% No S&Q speedrun in 4:26:56 TL Plexa 2021-11-21 | Nice to reclaim the WR back from Blueser (who held a 4:28 prior to this). Still not a very good run though - as best illustrated by the awful early game. Will keep at improving this time and it's entirely likely that Blue and me will trade records back and forth for a while.This was the WR until Nov 27th when I beat it during the race with Blueser.
Golden Sun: Dark Dawn Any% Speedrun in 4:12:00 TL Plexa 2021-11-17 | FINALLY. My first good run using the "Dry Heist" Route that I came up with about a month ago. This clips out of Lookout Cabin at the first chance to go get Rief. Rief is then used to steal Isaac / Garet's djinn which, in conjunction with Moloch (the djinn) provides us the firepower to get through the game in blistering speed. The "Dry" in "Dry Heist" comes from the fat that it ends the run with 0 Mercury djinn. Read more about that here: pastebin.com/8mLFR8qpThere are still timesaves to be had in this category; notably most bosses didn't cooperate. Nevertheless, this is a huge PB and a time I am satisfied with for now.
Golden Sun: Dark Dawn Any% Speedrun with Djinn Heist in 4:22:23 TL Plexa 2021-11-07 | First completed run of my Djinn Heist route, which gets 33 djinn (one less than other heist routes) and ends the run with 0 Mercury djinn. The premise of Djinn Heist is that we immediately get Rief, and then use him to steal Isaac / Garet's djinn from the tutorial. The combined power of Ground / Granite / Sap + 3 Molochs allows us to be ruthlessly efficient making this the clear fastest route for Any%.There is much to be improved on this run, but it's nice to have one finished. We should be able to reasonably save 5~7 minutes with a good run.This was the WR at the time of recording on October 6th 2021, besting Legrandgrand's 4:22:5X. This was the WR until November 17th, 2021 where it was beaten by my 4:12:00.
E Tundaria Islet - Reveal Freezes Ice TL Plexa 2021-10-27 | Neat little time saver, found by DriftingPancake.
Golden Sun Any% No S&Q Tutorial - Part 18 - Kraken Skip 2 TL Plexa 2021-10-18 | Thanks to SolidifiedGaming and FX, the Kraken can now be skipped in Any% No S&Q. This changes up most of the midgame but converges back into our usual understanding once we hit Altmiller. Part 2 of the Kraken skip covers changes to Lamakan Desert and actually doing the Kraken skip as well as what is needed to get things to converge with our previous route going into Altmiller. The Lamakan menus weren't particularly well explained, but the notes contain good instructions for those menus!Bridging Notes for Kraken Skip: docs.google.com/document/d/1TN1B25RygMx6T8_bUyIAzrLMzzvtYnR2OumpP7lp7jk/edit
Golden Sun Any% No S&Q Tutorial - Part 17 - Kraken Skip 1 TL Plexa 2021-10-18 | Thanks to SolidifiedGaming and FX, the Kraken can now be skipped in Any% No S&Q. This changes up most of the midgame but converges back into our usual understanding once we hit Altmiller. Part 1 of the Kraken skip covers going through Altin and setting up Poison for Kraken skip. Bridging Notes for Kraken Skip: docs.google.com/document/d/1TN1B25RygMx6T8_bUyIAzrLMzzvtYnR2OumpP7lp7jk/edit
Golden Sun 100% No S&Q in 4:30:00 TL Plexa 2021-10-18 | Retimed with a framecounter to get 4:30:00. Disappointing to not break into 4:2X given how strong the run was until Crossbone isle. The unfortunate happenings at that point have prompted a mini-reroute to refine menus and whatnot so I'm expecting to have a big PB next weekend.This was the world record until Nov 16th, 2021 when it was taken by Blueser with a 4:28
Golden Sun 100% No S&Q Speedrun in 4:30:37 TL Plexa 2021-10-11 | Technically only WR by virtue of Kraken skip, otherwise a trainwreck of a run :) Uploading for the sake of documentation. Will be beaten soon.
Golden Sun: Dark Dawn Any% Speedrun in 4:27:12 (now without Amiti!) TL Plexa 2021-10-04 | A pretty decent attempt with the new tech! This is a 12 minute improvement over my last 'milestone' run which is slightly below the full timesave offered by the two new skips (Barai skip / Paithos skip) so this run is still improvable. This is the first 4:2X on console which is a nice milestone for us! But 4:1X could be possible with a really good and refined run. The route here is still pretty rough and I'll need to do an optimization pass through of the route to clear up some of the inefficiencies (e.g. getting Fever is not optimal). This version of the route is still using an Early Sveta route - I'm committed to pushing this route as far as it can. Although the "Djinn Heist" route pioneered by Valyssa, Regnetreis and Fulgur is looking very promising.This was the world record at the time of recording, the previous world record was 4:32 by me. This was world record until October 28th where it was beaten by Legrandgrand using a Djinn Heist route.
Golden Sun: Dark Dawn Any% in 4:32:51 TL Plexa 2021-10-03 | This run was quickly obsoleted, but nonetheless briefly held the record for 24 hours. This run was the first completed run using the new Barai skip and was my first completed run using Paithos skip (both found by Valyssa). This was recorded with the aim of being a GDQ submission video. The run was really solid with a lot of positive takeaways but also some flubbed tech in the back 1/4 of the run which cost the 4:2X. All in all a time to be proud of. The previous World Record was a 4:38 by Legrandgrand, and this was the world record until October 3rd, 2021.
