I first ran MegaMan Legends a few months ago, and though I was aware of an easy mode run, I really didn't find it particularly interesting. Unlike most easy modes, the Easy mode in MegaMan Legends is something of a reward for beating hard mode (or, alternatively, scoring a time of under 3 hours in normal mode.)
But, a few days ago before this run, I saw a rejected run that utilized a new trick, and had several holes. While it was faster than the submitted run, it had poor video quality and I decided that it was interesting enough to try my hand at it.

After my normal mode run, problems with my game disc caused me to stop running Legends 1, so this features a new game disc and a new PS2, and even a new controller for good measure.

I know this game inside and out, and after all the crap I dealt with in normal mode, all the bosses that gave me trouble, I was looking for revenge! And then... I found even dumber tricks that were just as hard if not harder than their normal mode counterparts. Personally, I think this run is far more optimized and impressive than my normal mode run is, and as my third submitted speedrun, I think it's by far the best in terms of technical quality as well; I've learned so much about timing, comparing, and routing that it makes a real difference in final time over me just a few months ago. Most of the tricks in Normal Mode aren't really important for easy. I still utilize diagonal running since it's faster than walking, as well as the fact that most reaverbots don't do contact damage if they're just standing around. Onto the run!

- Opening/Intro Ruin -

The opening ruins kills about 90% of my runs because of how good one of my earlier runs did it. Thusly, losing a second or more here is a reset. Considering how early it is, I do mostly blind jumps, and a frame perfect jump right at the start out of a pause. If I'm a frame late, it enters the text without me covering the distance in the jump. Anyway, the pause is to equip the jetskates (which are given for free in Easy mode) and the max buster, which maxes out your buster's stats.

There are lots of triggers, and I do the fastest movements into each one. Because of how their triggered, the jetskates are actually slower after the ledge grab for some reason.

The Two power generators are extremely hard to hit fast, I basically don't even check if I hit them and go to the door, if it's not down, then I reset. This was a relatively average opening, probably lost half a second on my best run of it.

The Boss is easy to take down, running toward him just gets in more hits faster allowing the cutscene to trigger. The rejected run jumped at the end, which actually loses time because the cutscene will not start until you're stationary. This is true in almost every case.

- Cardon Forest - Junk Store -

This is a surprisingly hard little part here, because of how tight it is to talk to gramps. All the trigger locations are memorized and I let go of the jetskates before them to allow cutscene skipping at the optimal time. This doesn't go perfectly and I lose about a third of a second from being slow on talking to gramps. Everything else about this section went well, and you can talk to the junkstore lady first frame by holding circle through the transition.

- Junk Store Man Rescue -

I hate this part of the game. This is where randoms come to kill your runs. Considering how high my standards are for the opening, they drop significantly for this part. Also, I have cancelled looking for him too many times to admit.

Have I gotten a perfect setup on the snakes at the end? Yeah. Have I gotten the zakobon to stay out of my way on the way back up? Sometimes. But getting both at the same time is nearly impossible, and considering how many randoms are in the run, I let this one go a little bit. It's just out of my control and I hope maybe a little badluck here will be rectified later.

I thought it went perfect this time, then as I was going up to talk to the junk store man, I saw a little snake at the bottom of the screen. It somehow dodged my spinning buster of death and lived. I saw it in time and it probably only cost me 2 seconds, but still. I woulda reset at the end of this segment, but then none of the zakobon hit me and I called it even.

- Miscellaneous running around -

Unlike my normal mode run, the buster completely obsoletes the mines and makes them completely useless. I use them for show in a few spots though, so yay?
Jet skating through the city goes okay, and I get through the "secret meeting" of the boys relatively fast. It's very hard to hit start while jetskating back and forth, so I do lose some time on skipping cutscenes. If only I had a few more fingers...

Anyway, after I go to townhall, I rescue Tron and get another obscure glitch during the cutscene with the dog. For some reason, if I mash start, it skips after the dog is in the final screen, but if I hit start rhythmically, and slower, it skips far earlier, saving a good two seconds. I very rarely get this, and am not complaining that it happened this run. There's probably some science behind skipping the cutscene, but, I haven't figured it out.

- BloomBears - Bon Bonne -

Bloombears are easy, shoot the yellow one to trigger the key being thrown, and kill blue before it catches the key. The key's collision detection is complete crap, so, I lose a good two seconds on that. I'm not happy about it one bit. Hopefully the two seconds is an exaggeration though.

Feldynaught went perfectly. As long as you don't shoot her right away, she won't drive, and it goes really easy.

Town Hall goes poorly, the yellow bot randomly goes to either side of the map, the other side is faster because I can hit it at a better angle after everything else is dead. I also fall down the sloped street, which is totally my fault. I probably lose 3 - 5 seconds here compared to my practice segments. I handled what randoms I was given well so despite me wanting to reset (I figured that even beating my previous best was impossible at this point.)

Bon Bonne doesn't go perfectly, I probably lose a second or so on him. I'm not terribly upset about that, as he can go into an attack where he refuses to die until the animation finishes. The key to doing it perfectly is to step up as little as possible per set of missiles to stay out of melee range. I get a little too close and pay the price, but it probably doesn't cost that much time.

- Marlwolf - Cardon Refractor -

This goes absolutely perfectly, I use the pointy tip of the rock for angle and estimate the higher angle. In practice, this strat works about 60% of the time. The attack he does depends on the success ratio, because the flying bombs steal shots and make it very hard to hit. He does that attack this time, but, luckily my shots are already in position and it kills them as they spawn.

The weirdest glitch comes after this... one I can't really explain. For some reason, I don't skip the townhall cutscene despite mashing start, but I do somehow regain control. Thus, I leave the room while the cutscene is playing. I'm so thrown off by the glitch that I lose time on the next two door transitions.

Now for the out of bounds glitch. It's easy to just jetskate through, but if you hit it at an awkward angle, you need to go backwards before you can go forward. I am careful not to do that and go right through. For everyone's information, this is the only wall in the game you can get through.

Cardon Forest goes very, very well. I'm playing as hard as I can since I had a subpar opening and play risky. The route through the breaking platforms was carefully considered, and this was the riskiest, fastest route I have. The route through the ruin is pretty simple and grabs all three keys as fast as possible. I have some trouble getting the elevator to go up at the end, but, that's okay considering everything else was good.

- Boat - Balcon Gerald -

After a quick trip in the support car, I equip the jump springs and use the car to skip the long walk across uptown. I get to the boat as fast as possible and start the turret shooter segment. I try to shoot to the music here, but with the shot lag and animation hiccups, it's pretty difficult to do it with any accuracy. I also use landmines on the water to some success. Yay.

But, the boss of this area is actually one of the biggest do or die moments in the entire run, I used to get it about 15% of the time in runs until I got really serious and learned a bunch of visual cues to setup my shot. I'm sorry about all the excessive shooting, but the height of the shot is very important the walls allow me to get it very precise. The key to the Balcon Gerald is to hit the far arm with 2 - 5 shots before moving to the turrets, this allows me to do a 0 cycle and kill it before the battle even truly begins. That orb on the back will not come up if all weapons aren't dead before the second sound on the drill attack. You'd have to wait 24 seconds for the ship to go all the way around again to get it to come up, so this was a run ender if I failed it.

- Lake Jyun -

This is an interesting ruin, the Zakobon at the beginning are random, and despite me getting through this area almost perfectly almost every time... I get hit a bunch. There's really nothing I can do when they're in that position. The rest of the ruin goes okay, I get a few bad jumps out of the jetskates, but they make it anyway and I don't get ledge grabs.

The Boss here features another of my new strategies. I've known this for quite a while, but this guy doesn't get stun frames when he's in middle of an attack. I spent several hours in emulator just playing this boss over and over again seeing if there was a way to abuse it and finish it way faster. This is the result, it saves about 3 seconds over playing it perfectly, and loses a second if I mess it up. It works out here and I save some time with the stupid strategy. Though, after the fact, it was really stupid to do my fast strat with the amount of health I had... if I had been paying attention, I would have played it safe. Oh well. Leaving the ruins goes perfectly.

- Clozer Woods -

This is usually my strongest point of the run. After I get out of the boat shop, I go to Roll and promptly forget to skip her dialogue, which costs half a second before I realize it. After that I zoom through the flutter's cramped quarters near perfectly, get the required grenade arm, and then have her fly me to the ruin.

In the ruin, things go very well up to the boss. This is my favorite ruin to zoom around, and the fact I start with lock on disabled worked out in my advantage in the grenade wall room.
The boss gives me bad randoms. Normally the one on the left charges at me and I can get it through the invncibility stun and then zoom across. Here, he jumps back and does the fire attack. Costs 3 or 4 seconds, but I handled it pretty much as perfectly as I could. The damage doesn't matter because of all the health they drop.

I get out of the ruins just fine, though I could have optimized movement a little bit. I guess I was nervous after the boss gave me weird randoms. All I have to do is open the main gate and leave.

Also, the elevator trick is slower in Easy mode by 4 seconds, because of the max buster. I break even despite not getting the randoms I wanted. If the dog didn't jump back, I could have skated across while they were in their invincibility state, and killed them as they chased after.

- Flutter Air Bosses -

After I leave the ruin, there's a trio of bosses to fight on top of the flutter. The first one is easy as long as you have lock on off, just follow the first airship and you can knock it down.

The Gesselschaft is easy. I run toward the skull at the end because it saves some miniscule amount of time.

Fokkerwolf is easy, but my shield by the bad luck in Clozer, so the missiles really hurt after the end of the fight. Lack of Lock On lets me just lead the shots and kill her before she can do anything. I've been killed after the fight several times, so only taking splash damage from the missiles was a welcome change.

- Maingate - Bruno -

Okay, talking to Barrel there is iffy because of the fact you can hit Triangle before he talks and waste time kicking. I'm aware of it and don't do it. I leave, go to maingate through the support car and skate down the ramps to the door. That's pretty much the fastest I've ever gotten down, I hit the corners as well as possible despite the camera glitching up. I activate the subgates successfully this time, I've lost 10 seconds being an idiot and selecting the wrong options and panicking.

Bruno's 1 cycle is very very difficult in easy mode. I just barely pull it off as it is here. I then use the grenade arm to blow up a wall to save a second later on. I try to show off some glitches in explosion positions, but without full health I'm not willing to get hit by one of the explosions, so you'll just have to trust me on the fact they hurt.

- SubCities -

The first two subcities actually feature brand new strats that shave seconds off, even if they aren't much. I shoot the reaverbots in a different order in Sub City 1, plus I found out that if a reaverbot gets close, using the grand grenade is faster than buster. The first two go very well, maybe missing a few shots in the first one, but it happens. But the third goes absolutely perfectly, so I can't complain. The trick to get four shots in on the boss in the first two phases is actually more difficult in easy mode because of how fast the shots come out. Notice how when everything goes right I have less to say?

- Final Stretch -

On the way down the main gate, I chicken out of jetskating between the first pair of gorubeshus because it's very precise and I rarely get it. Somehow I got it in my normal mode run, so check that out if you're curious!

Other than that, things go well, I get the throw a bomb glitch with the dialogue boxes that I enjoy so much... but that's pretty much it. The only thing left is the final boss...

- MegaMan Juno -

I have no fear for Juno, I didn't in normal mode, I don't now. The only way to get a fast, consistent Juno is to be absolutely fearless of him. The moment you think about dodging, or play it safe, he's going to hit you. First Phase goes well enough, only one of the invisibility attack. He jumps more than I'd like too, but it still goes very well.

Phase two on the other hand goes perfectly. The attack I don't want is the jumping around attack, and he doesn't do it very much here. Again, as long as you don't care about what he's doing and just fire away, you're going to be okay. I think this boss fight is an absolute treat to watch, because of how perfect it goes.

- Possible Improvements? -

Get better luck in Junkstore Rescue, City Hall Defense, and Clozer Woods Boss. Good luck getting all of those with getting such a friendly Juno fight though. I'd think humanly, it could go under 39 if all the random AIs worked together in one run. But... then you'd have to do all of the very difficult tricks, boss strats and inconsistent things I did here on top of it. I think this record is pretty stout, and far better than my normal mode run in terms of optimization.

Special Thanks

I didn't have much help on this run in particular, but thanks to everyone who helped me on my other runs, plus my viewers on Twitch.tv (See me at http://twitch.tv/JMC4789)

Speed Demos Archive and MegaMan Legends Station are always helpful. And the previous runners, who laid the ground work and routing for this run.

Speedrunslive is always worth checking out as well because I wouldn't have gotten into serious speedrunning without them!

Well... I certainly got my money's worth out of MegaMan Legends. This is my fourth category I've attempted, and the third one I've completed. I also feel it's the most beatable, yet most impressive of the runs simply because of what the final boss does to me.

Hard Mode is mostly, and I say mostly because of two huge exceptions, normal mode where you do less damage and enemies do more damage. In MegaMan Legends, it isn't that big of a deal mostly because there are very few cases where enemies can do damage to you if you don't screw up. The bigger issue is killing the bosses fast when you do a pittance for damage.

I'll highlight the major differences between normal and hard, but for the most part, assuming my normal mode run is up, things are true between the two categories. Money route is slightly different, but I'll tell you why when I get there. Mindset wise, it's similar to Normal mode in that you're always fearing Juno at the end, especially so now... but there are a few other areas that are incredibly difficult as well, making getting to Juno that much harder.

Important Tricks:

Stutter Shot: Tapping up cancels the shooting animation and allows you to shoot again immediately. You're still bound to the rapid limitation on the number of shots out at once though. Saves time later.

Diagonal Running: All but necessary in hard mode... but it's faster than running straight.

Landing Canceling: Not exactly a glitch, but if you do a running jump, you can immediately jump again when you hit the ground as long as you're still holding a direction. Necessary in hard mode.

Opening Ruins

This is identical except for the boss, The Hanmuru Doll. He has so much health and I do so little damage, it's faster to stick him in the wall and stutter shot. This goes as well as possible, considering he's random. The ruins themselves don't go perfectly, but considering that most of my runs are going to end anyway, I don't reset over half a seconds worth of mistakes.

Town Stuff

I need to do all the stuff I do here. I grab some stuff to sell for money because I can't use my money maker in normal mode in hard mode. Not much interesting, getting the junkstore guy goes okay, but, Those Zakobon can be incredibly annoying; if they go into the snake zone, the guy will complain about them as well.

Blumebears

Boring; same as normal but with more health. Get a really good zenny drop.

Feldynaught

It doesn't drive, which means it's a good battle. One of my fastest ever; though I could have been more aggressive with the landmines.

City Hall

The flying things go AMAZING. Like, considering my power down from normal, it's supposed to take WAY longer, but they go so fast. I feel like Hard Mode is actually easier to hit those for some reason.

The tanks go okay, I mean, I have time to spare because I want city hall to get destroyed to make Bon Bonne easier. The reason I don't bomb all the tanks is because I need the ammo for Bon as well. Missing one shot is annoying, but, it was utterly perfect otherwise. Downright amazing.

I hate how rewatching my run for this commentary makes it look unbeatable, but the final boss from this run is burned into my memory from being so painful.

Marlwolf
You can't one cycle him in Hard Mode because he has too much health, but my research on how to make this fight faster actually lead to something that could improve normal mode by a good 5 - 10 seconds as well. Good stuff!

I climb up as quickly as possible, and jump near the big tank because I need to lure him away or else he'll shoot me off the marlwolf later. I don't have time to destroy it, so simply turning it has to do. I miss the two cycle by a few hits, I feel like it's possible, but I've never actually done it. It'd require 25% randoms to get the servbots twice as well.

Cardon Forest And Ruins

Cardon Forest is still a joke. The ruins have a change that cuts nearly 9000 zenny out of my run. The nests are invincible in hard mode... which kind of makes this run way harder because zenny is an issue. Hard Mode seems to make zenny drops worse overall, so getting enough money in a run is incredibly rare. Out of the runs that made it to the end, this is the first one where I didn't have to grind for money.

Anyway, I'm a little cautious on the platforming in the breakable platforms area; the run before this I failed to drop the treasure chest and had to reset.

Transitional ruins and town

Same as normal, grab stuff I need, grab money, get screwed on zenny drops, grab an extra chest, etc. I buy the same stuff as normal except I skip the hyper cartridge, because Bruno takes forever regardless, and I can't spare the money this time around.

Boat Section

In normal this area is a joke. In hard, one of the people who were running the game Segmented told me this is why they quit running hard. While I believe that is an over-reaction, this section is very difficult to survive. I've had many runs ruined here, and other times I miss the proper cycles on the boss at the end.

You need at least half your health for the boss fight because it has an attack you cannot dodge in hard mode; at least with my poor buster stats. It only takes four good hits to take me below half health, or a single plane crashing into me, or a missile hitting the front of the boat; since only the explosion does damage and stays in it longer.

It's a horrible section, and requires me to have mines, because I need to destroy some of the boats before they fire multiple shots. Other times, I need to get lucky, because there are spots where a red boat can fire that I cannot shoot down the torpedos! Gah... just... it was a mess. I'd say a good 50% of my runs end here, but, I got more consistent as things got down to memorization, only the worst luck putting me in critical health.

Balcon Gerald

Easy has a zero cycle, Normal has a one cycle, and Hard has a two cycle. It's by far the easiest of the early cycles to get with this route. The problem is the orb at the end; with my current stats, I'm always two shots away from killing it before it gets out of my range. There is a trick to shoot between the upper and lower body to get early hits; and I get one here, but I need two. I feel like it's possible, but this one I just couldn't get. The Orb cannon fires so fast you can't stun it most of the time and that's why I need so much health coming in.

Lake Jyun

This ruins is the same as normal. Zakobons are still annoying, still grab the jetskate part, still takes almost no time to go through.

The boss here though, is actually different. There is no stun pattern unlike normal and easy. So, the way I save time here is to abuse his glitchy hitbox and just never stop firing at him to get extra hits while he attacks. It's somewhat related to the abuse I do in my easy mode run that saves 1 second, except it saves way more here.

Clozer Ruins

Yeah, I'm not commenting on the stuff before this. I actually discovered why the elevator trick is inconsistent, and found a way to always get it to work because of how long I need to be on the elevator in hard mode. Of course, this run I manage to botch it. The rest of the ruin is just me getting the active buster, money, and stuff. Normal Commentary applies except I'm more nervous on money.

Karumuna Bash

Right, the elevator trick. They can actually hit you if they're standing on the elevator, but if you stun them with grenades, they won't do their fire attack, and you can't get hit... if you're not standing on the edge like a dumbass! Ugh, watching the run, I can see it so clearly, but at the time I wasn't fully aware of it. It still goes okay, I collect the money, probably lose 10 - 15 seconds. Damn it.

Gesselschaft and Fokkerwolf

Unlike Easy and Normal, it's not really consistent to kill all the ships in the first go. The first little ship gets away unless he goes straight up or down, and it doesn't here. I try to conserve as much ammo as I can while killing them quickly. It goes pretty good.

The Gesselschaft itself is actually identical to in normal mode time wise, it's just incredibly difficult to make sure you get the good pattern by taking out the cannons. If they hit the flutter so much, you don't fly down, and you don't get to hit the wings!

Fokkerwolf

It goes relatively well; I'm in redlife, so this is always something that can kill me out of splash damage alone. I mean, could it go better? Sure, because the tips of her wings can block shots for some dumb reason! And the stupid active buster doesn't reach, so I can't even quickly kill her with that.

Bruno

Main gate is identical, so whatever. Bruno on the other hand has so much health that I honestly have no idea what to do with him. This is all I could think of; powered up buster + all my active buster ammo. I couldn't afford to risk grinding for minutes to buy a hyper cartridge; though on this run it probably would have been faster; usually I don't even have enough zenny, but this time I was only 900 off of affording the hyper cartridge.

The lock on makes this fight incredibly difficult, my shots have to be amazingly precise, or else it will try to aim for the other weapons. This is why I cannot stutter shot him here.

I roll when he fires at the fence because 50% of the time the shot will go through the fence. Seriously. What the hell.

I get combo'd pretty awesomely at the end by Bruno, but it literally costs me nothing since I refill active buster.

Also, glitchy explosions!

Sub City 1

I can't stun any of the reaverbots that matter, so I have to memorize their health. Active buster does variable damage based on explosion position, so part of it is a guessing game as well. Got some weird enemy placement, but it goes okay. I could have been a little faster, but I messed up a few of the jumps midway through.

Sub City 2

25% I get the good pattern on this section. If the first pink thing turns toward me, the Sharukurusu will destroy me while I try to destroy it. I need to be facing things one at a time because of the lack of hit stun and huge health bars.

First green one was in a weird position, but that was because I take longer to kill things in hard mode. My fault for not looking in the right position.

My viewers tell me I missed a Sharukurusu when looking at the end, and then he blind sided me, but I swear I do not see where he was until after he hit me. I'm more than pleased with how it went though, if a Sharukurusu hides, then I an waste several minutes.

Sub City 3

The amount of health of the enemies it drops makes it harder to do the 1 4 4 3 3 pattern that is optimal to kill the first two phases. I let him drop enemies to get the extra hit in which saves time.

I get the bad pattern for hard, so I end up having to skate a few more seconds, but it's not a huge loss.

Pretty much the same as normal and easy.

MegaMan Juno Phase 1

This is pretty much the same as Normal Mode except he has more health, and I think he feels a little faster at times, but, honestly, it doesn't change the fight at all if he is. Because he has more health, I have to be careful on my ammo. Again, Juno Phase 2 is resistant to special weapons (or at least, the ones I could get in a speedrun) so it's faster to use all my ammo now.

MegaMan ****ing Juno.

This is actually where the fight begins.

I lied, it begins when he reaches half health, and pulls out one of the most bull**** moves I've ever seen in a commercial video game boss. It feels like something that would be put in a romhack of MegaMan Legends to make it incredibly difficult.

It's literally a hacked move, too, Capcom was lazy enough to put no effort into hard mode to this point, and the one thing they changed was probably a few variables on health and this one attack.

Juno's critical attack, when I first discovered it in a joke run for my viewers, was undodgeable for me. I spent over an hour playing through the boss over and over again just to get a good look at this attack, to see the utter bull**** for myself.

I almost feel like Capcom didn't want you to dodge it, they wanted it to be undodgeable, or they were aware of glitches in the movement physics and didn't fix them solely to make this attack dodgeable... I don't know.

Juno ended all but two runs that got this far, the other one being about a minute slower than this one, but having a much better fight. Let me explain:

Juno's attacks are kind of like a roulette. The first half doesn't really matter because the critical attack isn't in the roulette. But after it is, he could use it as many or as few times as he wants. The problem is that I can't exactly hit him during this attack. I try to get a few hits while doing my messed up circle strafing, but that's not exactly the same as pumping in ten - fifteen shots during his other attacks.

Oh right, did I mention how you're supposed to dodge it? He fires two shockwaves with glitchy collision boxes that extend far behind their sprites, one then another. You can't jump over both, even with the jump springs, and you can't jump up and down in place because the landing animation takes too long for you to jump to dodge the second one. So, I have to jump toward Juno while rotating the camera away, hold back in midair so I don't run into a wall (which is certain death, btw, because of the second part of the attack.) When I hit the ground, I have to hold up again, and jump during the landing animation, but not too early that it fails the
cancel, but not too late that I get hit again. If I manage to do all that, I can dodge the first half of the attack. Oh, but it's not over.

In Normal mode, the lasers falling from the sky is harmless, just run around in circles. In Hard, I have to be running diagonal to get far enough away from their explosion radius to avoid damage. If I touch a wall, I get hit, comboed and can be one hit KO'd if I'm unlucky. If he's in the center of the screen, this isn't too bad, because I can keep him in view and just use the walls as guides, but if he's in a corner, I'm completely blind and have to position myself incredibly carefully with the two jumps so I can run unimpeded long enough to dodge the lasers.

So, when he does that attack, the moment I see the warmup, I have to be planning not only my safe area, but where I need to land with both jumps, as well as remembering his position and spinning enough that when the attack ends, I have him in sight so I don't get hit by a cheapshot during his next attack. He does this attack at least eight times during this fight. If he touches me, I'm instantly at zero health. The lasers can do enough damage to bring me to red life in two hits, or combo me there immediately. The shockwaves do two damage if I have my shield, or redlife me if I don't.

Just watch it, I nearly run into Juno during one of them even, and my heart skips a beat.

And after all of this, I do one of the most retardly gutsy things I've ever done in a speedrun.

I kamikaze Juno when he does the attack at low health. The speed of the attacks mean that if my last shot does not kill him, I die. I didn't realize how stupid it was until after it was over... and that is why; despite the bad luck, I think this run is worthy of being submitted. When everything was on the line, I played with incredible recklessness to save a few seconds; and to me, that's what speedrunning is all about.

Where do I start with this one? Honestly, I don't know what to say about this run. Everything finally went right. This is a culmination of hundreds of hours of practice, examination, and well over three hundred run attempts from my first accepted submitted run May of last year.

So, a bit of run history before I go into specifics. I switched to Japanese because I thought the U.S. version had a crash bug on the scene where you fight Bon. It turns out the Japanese version has it as well, but, I didn't discover that until I had already grown accustomed to the superior Japanese controls (which actually screw me over in one of the subcities. You'll see what I mean.)

The Crash Bug is caused by having mines out after you defeat Bon Bonne, and skipping the cutscene to the Gesselschaft. I don't think the bug happens on Emulator or PS3, but on both of my PS2s, it does happen. Because not skipping the cutscene would cost 15 seconds, I basically am not allowed to miss a shot or take an extra shot after he's defeated, or else I crash the game.

Despite the version differences, I honestly believe that this is a full minute, if not more, faster than my previous World Record. New strats literally everywhere, a faster, more aggressive zenny route, AI manipulation and more make it superior. From a ridiculous strat on the Feldynaught that saves maybe two seconds to new buster parts that save a minute on the Gesselschaft. Unlike last time, where I had the framework of a run to work from and stayed within it's bounds, this time I completely studied the game, every possible route and strategy. There's another, different zenny and item route that comes within five seconds of the route I used! I was so disappointed it was slower! There are also different buster part combos that can be gotten, but none of them amounted to anything.

Detailed Commentary

-Opening Ruins-
This ruin went pretty well. The boss didn't go perfectly, and honestly I could have been at least a second faster. Hanmuru Doll usually gets stunned twice at intervals, but missed shots threw off what should have been even faster. Oh well.

-Around Town-

Precision cutscene skipping is a must when you first go around. I was a little off on a few, but I was tired of losing runs to pausing the frame before a cutscene starts. I grab an item to sell off later in Apple Market and go through the necessary story stuff.

-First Dig-

It went pretty good. I wasn't behind my old run, so I didn't reset.

-MegaMan: Animal Abuser-

From here, I go through the town, I have to use the slow walk to sneak up on the kids. Then I can skip the cutscene and keep going. Then I have to skip another cutscene, and grab another part to sell. For some reason, that grab is deceptively hard and close to 20% of the time I screw it up. I do here, and lose another couple seconds, but my previous run did too. Oops.

Continuing on, I go to city hall, talk to people, and head out. And now we get to the best part of the japanese version. Instead of going through a lengthy cutscene talking about treating girls right, we kick the mut in the frickin' face! Awesome. Also saves like twenty seconds over the English Version. Beautiful.

-Boss Rush Already?-

Now we get to a streak of three bosses in one segment. Blumebears are first up. I use the old strategy because it uses two less mines than the faster strategy. That's just a controlled loss, it makes Feldynaught safer.

The Feldynaught has a new strat that saves close to three - five seconds determined by how it goes. It goes perfectly and I get the big damage boost.

City Hall goes very, very, very, very well. Out of hundreds of attempts that got this far, this was the best. The unfortunate thing is that the flyers don't even go perfectly, it could have gone better.

Bon Bonne has been the source of many ended runs thanks to the crash glitch. But now that I'm aware of how to avoid it, it goes smoothly.

-Super Digging Robot-

As soon as we're finished with all that... ANOTHER BOSS. The Marlwolf ended up being the biggest run killer once I decided that I would reset on anything but a one cycle. I use a new strategy to get more zenny during the one cycle. By running to the right, I manipulate him to go left, which puts him closer. That allows me not to have to run so far to get the one cycle. I just discovered how to do that about three hours before this run, so, it was fresh in my mind.

Running up to the back of the Marlwolf after the jump is necessary for the one cycle. If he fires out birds, you get knocked off and reset. Thankfully, he doesn't do that this time (like my previous four runs that got this far... fifty/fifty odds my ass!)

-Ruined Forest-

After some cutscenes in city hall, I go to Cardon Forest and Fight some more tanks. I pick up as much zenny as possible and go into the ruins. This is where the biggest errors of the run occur.

After I kill the first nest, I fall off the side of the platform and grab a 2300 zenny hole. Only, that's not in this route! Thus, I waste about 2 - 3 seconds getting it, since I adapt the route because I skip other holes. Then, something happens and I somehow miss the long jump, costing another five seconds. Yuk. But, I get lucky and none of the Jakko's nests actually knock me over... so... I guess it evens out? But yeah, I wish I would have played better here.

The rest of the ruin goes as planned, great key pickup, updated route that saves about eight seconds on my English record.

After grabbing the refractor, I leave, make the jump springs, and continue on my route. This time, since I grabbed extra zenny, I skip several smaller zenny drops and an enemy. Maybe I broke even on the route considering how bad my luck is with money in this section. I grab the buster unit in a chest and head on my marry way after some suspect mine placement.

-Sea of Monotony-

A trip to the junk store yields me three necessary items, the same items from my previous run, only in Japanese. Hyper Cartridge (Refills special Weapon energy), Laser (Power + 4), and Turbo Charger (Energy + 3)

I do some precision equipping and continue to the port.

As a quick aside, I never realized how much faster my menuing would be if I simply memorized exactly what I needed to do rather than quickly reacting to options. Running a Japanese game has forever changed how I do menuing, because what I was doing before was far inferior.

The boat section is an autoscroller, something MegaMan games are famous for. Who can forget Cossack 1, or... Duff McWhalen, great stages in MegaMan history. So of course DASH needed one. Anyway, I don't shoot to the music this time because I have splits that tell me I'm about twenty-five seconds up on WR. Yeah, I'm locked in.

-Balcon Gerald-

This is the boss of the boat section. I mess up the opening shots. I figure the run is over. Then, for the first time in a long time, lock-on only messes up about half my shots. I manage to kill everything just in time, because Capcom was too lazy to have an animation for their ultimate weapon. You see, as soon as the arms do their second drill attack, the orb shooter on the back WILL NOT SPAWN for fear of the player being able to see it just instantly poof into existence. Thus a half second longer before the kill would have left me waiting at least twenty seconds!

-Lake of the boss with an annoyingly small hitbox-

I run through and grab three keys in the fastest possible order with very little in the way of errors. You'll notice a slight stop before I jump to grab the center chest in the giant room. That's because there's a 30% chance of me getting nailed if I instantly jump. Stopping for a fraction of a second prevents that from ever happening. If you ever watched me race other people, you'll see them get smacked by the invisible reaverbot all the time. I did great in this ruin overall.

Okay, yeah, I grab an extra ledge because of a bad jump and I get stuck on the stupid hitbox of the pre-boss hint, but, come on. The boss goes perfectly, with no missed cycles. I don't care that I screw up the instant zenny pickup. That costs almost no time anyway due to having to wait for the explosion if I don't go for it. So, good overall.

-Closing the door on Clozer Woods-

So, I turn in the giant refractor, talk to Roll, fix the flutter, grab the grand grenade, talk to gramps so Roll will stop being a coward, and make the grand grenade, jetskates, and triple access(allows three buster parts.)

Clozer Woods itself is a very stressful ruin. I thought the Japanese version was easier for a long time, with the boss AI, but that turned out to just be me playing differently, as the English version mirrored it during some emulator testing.

Anyway, the start is pretty much the same. After I talk to the giant computer, when I go backwards to the door, I activate the door glitch. It allows me to retain control during the cutscene. Because you can get stuck and possibly break the game, I immediately let it go before it actually costs any time. I just wanted to get it in a run.

Aggressive Zenny Route pays off here as I skip most of the stuff I had to stop and get in my English run. I grab an extra item before the second key, it'll be used very soon, so don't worry!

After fixing the elevator, I go to the Karumuna Bash. They're jackasses this time and waste about maybe nine seconds to optimal luck. But, since they all go down at once, and I get a quick zenny grab, it's not all bad. I grab another part on my way out and totally own the guarding Shak with a damage roll. That was awesome.

I open the maingate and stuff and then leave.

-Wings of Fate-

Now, when I go to Roll, instead of making one item, I make two, those two extra items I grabbed make the Sniper Range (Power + 1, Range + 5) and allow for a very, very important exploit coming up. Oh yeah, I also make, equip and upgrade the active buster, but that's all old stuff. It's still as important as ever, despite the buster differences.

The Drache Battle can't really go wrong unless you're stupid, just hold fire, but conserve enough ammo for the Gesselschaft's Skull.

The Gesselschaft itself is now challenging. With that HUGE range upgrade, we can actually take out the wings and perform the easy mode zero cycle! It saves a minute on this fight, and more than makes up for the time it takes to collect and make the parts. I perform it pretty well, it could be two or three seconds faster, but when the alternative is actually failing it and losing a ton of time, this is acceptable.

Fokkerwolf goes okay. For some reason, the active buster hits her armored hitbox and does crap damage. Luckily, the extra range allows me to hit her just enough to get the one cycle anyway. Still, with perfect active buster damage, it could have been even faster!

-That Hard Part They Like to Put Near The End-

Next, we go to the MainGate, unlock the subcities, and prepare for the final stint of the game. First up is Theodore Bruno, Tron's Masterpiece Robot. Unfortunately, the active buster plus very, very, very precise movement, placement and a little bit of luck are too much for the thing. It goes down with a mid one cycle. If I get double damage on the first few shots, he can go down before he starts to turn, but that's admittedly very rare.

Sub City 1 is bad, no doubt about it. I got blindsided on the aft end by machine gun fire, screwed up a few shots, and had enemies move into the wrong places. Then I get hit with a frame-perfect text box glitch to make mappers worse. Though, I must admit, it does look cool, so I don't mind it all that much. Costs another second.

Still, despite all that, it was only about eight seconds slower than the TAS I compared to, and six seconds slower than my absolute best.

Sub City 2 is brilliant. I don't know what possessed me to stand still and keep firing when the Shak burst through my defenses, but it worked. Probably the second most insane thing I did in the run. The most insane thing is yet to come.

Sub City 3 is also bad. I lost eight seconds do to some bullshit hitboxes. I have no excuse. It could have been worse, I discovered how to manipulate the boss patterns and saved a little time skating at the end, but still, six seconds overall lost, could have been worse.

-Abberant Unit: MegaMan(Rockman?) Juno-

We head back to the Main Gate with the three keys in hand and prepare for the final battle. Now, I didn't get nervous during the fight. The only way Juno can beat an experienced runner is through the runner getting nervous and frightened because it's the end of a run.

I show no fear and stand ready with my active buster in the face of being redlife for the second form.

-Combat Body MegaMan(Rockman?) Juno-

Juno Part 2 is nothing to fear, he can't pop you with lasers at close range, and if you don't repeatedly dodge roll the PS1 controller won't be stupid and get you hit. I basically do my best to stutter shot him, but after a REALLY good Juno 1, I knew this could be the erun. After a iffy start, my feel for the stutter shot returns and he goes down without much of an issue. Even though I don't do realtime, I still turn away from the explosion because it lags the game hard. Timing officially stops when I talk to Roll, as that is last player input. Then, unskippable credits. I love the Japanese credits, so catchy, I was dancing in my chair as I waited to see my time.

Even before I saw my time, I knew this was it for me. The credits are this weird cooldown after a run, I don't know how to describe it. I prefer it over the later games in the series, where skipping the credits are absolutely necessary for a good time.

Time if a 49:48; for some reason when I originally submitted this I somehow mistyped the time as 48:49 there, and nowhere else. But yeah, 48 would have been a way bigger deal, because it probably would have been as fast as the TAS. Simple mistake, and I apologize to any verifiers that I may have confused with the wrong time!

-Future-

I feel like I should be done with Mega Man Legends/Rockman DASH for a long time. I will probably return for 100% eventually, but for now, I have another thirty seconds to knock off of Mega Man Legends 2!