First of all I want to thank the SDA staff for running this site, you guys are awesome. I also want to thank all the people over at pokemonspeedruns.com, without them running these games wouldn't be as fun.

I also want to specifically thank Werster for being the guy getting me into Pokémon speed-running in the first place, MKDasher for finding that Chimchar manipulation, Pokefluke for giving me actual notes for this run and GarfieldTheLightning for helping me out when I was first running thsi category, you guys are all awesome.

Also I must ask that you do NOT upload this run anywhere else unless you ask me permission first, I can be contacted either on the SDA forums via PM or on Twitch, my twitch being www.twitch.tv/playe

Now that I'm finished with all those thanks it's time for explaining what goes on in this run, in no particular order until I explain the actual run itself.

First off you'll notice that the capture is directly from my DS, you can go to Loopy's website http://www.3dscapture.com for regular 3DS capture boards and DSPhat capture boards (I used a DSPhat in this run)

Also no, it doesn't matter if you use Pokémon Diamond or Pokémon Pearl for this speed-run as you don't get far enough into the game for it to matter.

Pre-run explanation: Okay so first of all you'll notice that I set the date to Janurary 6th, 2026 at 22:30 (that's 10:30PM for those that don't know anything about 24 hour clocks), this is so that I can manipulate a Chimchar with specific IV's, Nature and a specific Hidden Power (Which is incredibly important otherwise Chimchar would not be as viable)

Chimchar will have the following IVs:

HP: 24

Attack: 31

Defense: 28

Special Attack: 30

Special Defense: 31

Speed: 31

The nature is Rash (+Special Attack, -Special Defense) and the Hidden Power is Grass with a power of 66

You can watch this video for more information on how this RNG manipulation works https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALG_MI_3uBk

This manipulation also comes with a nice perk, by having very specific movement before the catching tutorial I can manipulate the game so that I get no encounters, that's right not a single encounter. Unfortunately this only applies to before the catching tutorial because of how the RNG advances during the tutorial which makes further manipulation inconsistent.

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Run Explanation:

Intro: I choose the girl because the male counterpart becomes Rowan's assistant and he talks less than Dawn does. I name myself and Barry "I" and "U" because it's faster to have only 1 frame for the names (I do this with Chimchar as well later on)

I wait at the Red Gyarados scene because that's when the Trainer ID is determined for RNG manipulation. (It's frame perfect and I need the ID 24961 to continue attempts)

Obviously fast text speed and battle animations off are faster, I choose frame 18 because it's the better looking frame.

I have to walk in specific paths in both Twinleaf town and route 101 to get Chimchar's IVs correct. (Actually the path doesn't matter as long as I waste 2 steps in Twinleaf and go 4 steps north on route 101)

Battle vs Starly: Crits are disabled in this fight so no 1 hits are possible against this Starly, with my IVs though it always goes down in 2 hits. (I have no idea if Tackle or Growl is faster to get from this Starly, it seems to be about the same time though.)

Before Catching Tutorial: Luckily like mentioned before I can move in a specific path and manipulate the encounters I get so this is pretty uneventful.

Catching tutorial is boring so I tend to talk to my stream chat during this part.

Route 202 (Encounters 3): I get unlucky and get an encoutner straight away after the catching tutorial (And it happened to be a Shinx with Intimidate, the worst possible encounter), this tends to happen a lot so I might look into seeing if I can manipulate up to the youngster fight, speaking of which...

Battle vs Youngster: I hate... hate... HATE this fight so much, if Starly uses growl too many times it's a reset, if he criticals you too many times, you die. It's just one of those fights that SHOULDN'T be hard but can be. Lucky for me I only get Growl once in this fight but I get a quick attack so I need to heal before the next fight.

Battle vs Lass: This went pretty standard, so not much to say. (And no Blaze ember doesn't kill the second Bidoof in 1 hit.)

Getting a couple encounters before the next Youngster though... ugh that was just horrible. >.>

Battle vs Youngster #2: Went pretty standard again, I also take note of my HP after this fight to determine if I need to heal before the Abras or not.

Jubilife City: Not much goes on here at the moment, this is important later on though so I'll bring it up when it gets there.

Battle vs Abras: These Abras only have Hidden Power fighting so it's not that big of a worry, critical Scratch can kill them in 1 hit but if that doesn't happen I need to have 9-10HP for the first Abra and 7-8HP for the second Abra to survive the HP. Unfortunately I don't get the critical against either of them.

Also I have no idea how the menu was on "Pokémon" instead of "Bag" after the second Abra, the movement errors afterwords was cringe worthy as well.

Finding the clowns... boring but story required. (The pokétch is useful later anyways so I'm not complaining)

Battle vs Barry/U: Starly CAN be a bit of a pain but it's not often, same with Piplup.
The reasoning for hitting Piplup with Scratch first is so that Barry doesn't talk during the battle, if I went Hidden Power then Scratch he would've said something about his pokemon being low on HP.

Also the encounter is annoying after this fight.

Oreburgh cave: 1 encounter here as well, annoying.

Oreburgh city: I was a tile up and didn't know that going down instead of up after the guide was faster. Hiker was also in the way en route to the mines. >.>

Oreburgh Mines: Wow... just wow... I can't believe I only got 1 encounter in here, this is the BEST mines I've ever had in a run and also brings the final encounter total to 6, only 1 more than the current World Record.

Oreburgh Gym: I could fight one of the trainers in here but it's slower.

Battle vs Roark: First Gym battle and it's a tough one as well, for starters I don't have enough speed to outspeed Craniados, so I have to hope that he doesn't give me a flinch with Headbutt and I also need to hope I don't get crit. Luckily for me he only uses Leer but SOMEHOW he survived HP with a Rock Smash jab, which as far as I know only happens on the lowest damage roll.

And again, somehow the menu was on something I wasn't expecting, which got on my nerves.

Battle vs Galactic Grunts: Easy fucking fight, I ember the Wurmple first 'cause it has poison sting but they both go down in 1 hit anyways. (And no my menuing for the fight wasn't slow, that was as fast as it could be done.)

Uneventful after words, I don't teach Mach Punch because there's no need for it in this run.

Dodged both spinners before Floaroma town thankfully (even if the last one took forever to spin the second time >.>)
Battle vs Grunts: So piss easy with Monferno so I don't feel the need to mention anything.

Battle vs Gatekeeper Grunt: This I do have something to mention though, this Glameow has fake-out which is a priority move with a 100% flinch rate, however it can only be used on the first turn the Pokémon is out and is annoying to get, luckily that doesn't happen and Glameow goes down in a Rock Smash.

Oh and the spinner dodge here was really sexy.

Battle vs Mars: The Zubat doesn't really have anything mention worthy, but once again that move that I OH so love called Fake-out can come into play because Purugly has it, and unfortunately it uses it so a turn gets wasted. But I manage to crit with Rock Smash so that makes up for it.

Also why in the world does Monferno learn Fury Swipes?

So... about this spinner dodge... it turns out it's 100% unneccesarry as I could've just gone into the grass from the bottom, I didn't know this at the time but it at least gives me something else to improve on.

The ACTUAL spinner dodge though was REALLY good, which also makes the spinner count in this run 0, yes that's right there's only 3 spinners I have to dodge in this run which makes this category more appealing to me because spinners have to be the worst thing ever introduced in Pokémon.

Double Battle wtih Cheryl 1: Pachirisu survived on 1 HP, freaking stupid.

Double Battle with Cheryl 2: Chansey actually did what it was supposed to and hit the Abras I attacked, which will probably never happen again because this was the first time I fought these two togethor in an attempt.

Do I REALLY need to make comments for how easy this next gym is? It's grass type and my starter is fire type... you can do the math.

So after what has to be the easiest fucking gym in the history of pokémon speed-runs I get the cut HM from Cynthia and go fight Team Galactic for the final time, these are also the last fights in the game. And no I'm not joking the run is almost over at this point.

Battle vs Grunt 1: This is the last Glameow and ironically enough it has... you guessed it, Fake-Out, thankfully it doesn't use Fake-Out and goes down quickly.

Battle vs Grunt 2: Got unlucky with the damage range with Cut against the Wurmple, everything else goes down fast.

Grunt 3: Nothing to say here, he goes down fast

Scientist: Kadabra's no threat 'cause Flame Wheel

Commander Jupiter: This is the last fight in the run and it's not too bad, only thing that could go wrong is missing a damage range against Skuntank. (Which by the way does happen and wastes some time.)

So after this fight I go and get the Bike and the Explorer kit, and yes the Explorer kit is necesarry because the game won't let you leave without it.

Now the only thing that could waste time is movement errors or accidentally hitting any trainers on Cycling Road, which didn't happen.

Jubilife City: Remember how I said this place would be important later on? Well this is why.

In all Generation 4 games there's a glitch called "Tweaking", the way this works is that the game map is made up of 32x32 grids and inside these are smaller 16x16 load lines, by moving quickly over where these load lines intersect you can do 1 of 2 things.

Either 1. The game will crash, forcing you to reset or 2. It'll load areas ontop of the current area.

Now this might not sound important but what it also does is load the collision of that area as well, and I can use this to get inside the Pokétch company building.

There's two Tweaks I can do, one of which is called "Fast Tweak" and one called "Slow Tweak", the fast tweak method is obviously faster BUT is incredibly hard to do consistently on console and if you make a small misstep after words the game will crash making it very risky to save only a couple seconds so it's not worth it for me to do it in this run.

The slower "Slow Tweak" on the other hand is much easier, consistent and has no chance of crashing the game.

Now after I re-load the area (Done by going into a menu and exiting it) you'll notice that when I go into the building I'm on the wrong side of the door and in the void outside. This lets me walk (Or bike) straight to the Hall of Fame...

If only it were that easy, if you have a previous save file the game will crash after step 223 West which means this is ONLY possible from a fresh save file.

There's also several points in this void where I need to save and reset to actually get to the Hall of Fame, otherwise it'll crash.

Now I DO make a small movement error but it wastes a couple seconds so it's not that big of a deal.

And once I re-load the save-file the last time and go up into the cutscene time stops, overall this is a decent run, and I do plan on improving this in the future but I'm done with it for now. Next time I submit a run of this category it'll probably beat the current World Record (Which is exactly 1 minute faster than this run and has 1 less encounter) but like I said, I'm done with this category and want to move on to other games.