First and foremost, I'd like to thank my fiancee, Angela Cronmiller for being supportive of me during this run. I also owe a HUGE amount of credit to my best friend, Nick Street, for the development of the strategy used to complete this run. My friend Tom "Gzus" Barnett was also of much help with his massive knowledge of move base powers and accuracies, type advantages, and etc. Thanks also to Matt Dahm, Shaun Homrich, and my brother and sisters Matthew, Kelsey, and Jasmine for listening to me ramble about strategies and being supportive. And of course I have to pay my dues to Radix, Mikwuyma, and Nate for making all of this possible for speedrunners like myself today. Thanks also goes out to the folks at serebii.net, Jade at gamefaqs for his warp tile solution in the silph co. building, and the rest of those who talked to me about and supported this run. Finally, thanks to Tom "Slowbro" Batchelor for posting the bounty to get me motivated and re-interested in speedrunning.

This run, as I'm sure you already know, is a single segment run. For those of you new to this speed running sort of thing, that means I sit here in front of my Gameboy Player playing Pokemon for 3 hours straight, without saving and quitting. As a result of which, there are some mistakes in my run which are unable to be avoided completely. There are also a couple of things where you'll watch and say, hey, you're an idiot for messing that up. (Such as my accidental fly to Celedon instead of Lavender) I've found out that it's pressuring to play while recording! (Plus drinking a can of Monster energy, and then not ending your run until after 2 am doesn't help...)

This run is a whole 6 minutes faster than my previous, messed up, unsubmitted VHS run.

I named the character, as well as the obtained pokemon, "U," for the sake of conversations where I am addressed, and every time I did an attack, it says, for example, "U used mega punch!" I felt this would add a neat effect for the viewer of this run.

I tried to abuse Squirtle's "Torrent" ability to boost his water moves whenever possible by keeping his HP low. I died a couple of times trying to do so, but overall it helped out a lot. I've found that it goes much slower without this key factor, applied whenever possible. Made a mistake on that bug catcher and allowed one of my other pokemon to get experience. Had to fight an extra battle to get back on track, in order to have bite by the time I got to fight misty's starmie.

Accidental fight on the SS Anne, right after acting retarded trying to get my sitrus berry. I switched to a different GCN controller as soon as the boat took off =P

First time on Surge's trash cans, which in of itself can be a run breaker. I postponed surge until later due to the randomness of fighting raichu under leveled. Cost myself at most 30 seconds.

Silph co and cinnibar mansion: The vitamins are necessary, believe it or not. It makes the difference between blaine healing his pokemon and his pokemon dying. Same applies to Sabrina and Giovanni. And makes the difference in number of X items used in the E4.

Outro:
Overall, yes, there were some avoidable mistakes in this run, as well as some unavoidable ones, but overall my luck with mega punch and mega kick prior to X items, I feel, more than makes up for them. I'd have to say that I'm VERY pleased with the outcome of this run. I hope to be working on the Elite 4 Round 2 run in the near future. Thank you all for your support, and for watching my run!

Off the bat, I'd like to point out that this run is also on YouTube With Live Commentary if you prefer to watch this over there.

Straight into the thankyous...

The SDA Staff: Again, you wouldn't be on this page if it weren't for them. Thanks for maintaining a great site guys
Puchiedarcy: Racing me at this game some, making the E4R2 tracker, and all round being awesome <3
The Metroidhunters Crew: For always being awesome.

A little back story...

I actually never played Fire Red at all, until hearing a story about how Shadow Jacky picked up Bubsy because there was a bounty for it on SDA. So I went to the forums and looked for any games I could run. Only one pokemon game showed up, and this was it.

I had no idea at all what I was in for...

Now I'm not the biggest fan of this game. But this category is so fucking legit to run, to watch, to anything. I wish every pokemon game had this in it, because it's amazing. Something is always happening, you've always gotta keep thinking, stay sharp, and it's incredibly intense from start to finish.

The premise, in case you don't know, is that you beat the second round of the Elite Four. To do that however, you need the National Pokedex. And to do that, you need 60 pokemon registered in your Pokedex. So there is a bunch of collecting in the run, and the routing and diversity of this run is pretty insane.

As a final note, this run was done during a 24 hour stream, in which I appeared on The Sunday Sequence Break straight afterwards. I had done nearly 20 straight hours of resets of this game, and finished with 8 minutes to spare before the show began. My aim was Sub 4 hours, by the way ^_^

Opening: Name myself I as always, U as the Rival since we're back in Kanto. Main reset point is obviously Squirtle's stats. For this category I don't put such a stress on the starter stats, since so much of the time loss/gain is from things outside of the battles. My conditions: 11 attack and 11 special attack. Let's have a closer look at what we got

Nature: Lax (Up Defense, down Special Defense. Not useful, but not hindering)
HP: 20 (IV 12-31)
Attack: 11 (IV 24-31)
Defense: 13 (IV 10-29)
Special Attack: 11 (IV 20-31)
Special Defense: 10 (DV 12-31)
Speed: 9 (DV 0-13)

Garbage speed, but got the 2 stats I wanted. Rival fight went better than expected.

Route 1: Encounters man... Even after getting poke balls I still don't want encounters here, as I can catch higher level Rattatas/Pidgeys with Ultra balls later on.

Viridian Forest: However, this is the only chance to catch the bugs. Rubbish encounters, but the infamous Weedle guy goes down without any trouble.

Pewter Gym: An extra trainer is actually fought here for experience, it ends up being overall faster to do so, as it makes the rest of the game (especially Route 3 coming up) much quicker. Brock was really nice.

~Torrent~ I'd like to take a moment here to talk about Squirtle's ability, Torrent. It ups his Water attacks by 1.5x when his health is below 1/3 of it's max. It's a really cool mechanic for speedrunning in my opinion, as the risk reward factor becomes huge. It is a huge part of what you're going to see coming up

Route 3: First battle here is so important, being in Torrent after it will save a full minute. I manipulate well, and it goes really smoothly. I grind here for a Spearow, because it trades for Farfetch'd, which learns both Cut and Fly, and is a Pokemon you can't get otherwise. It's one of the few places you will see me actually grind.

Mt Moon: Thank god for repels!! Again, everything here can be caught later on. Pick up some Mega moves and move on.

Cerulean Gym: This fight is dicks on a plate. Went about average...yeah that's right, that's average. Fuck this fight.

Nugget Bridge: First rival fight took a while, but the torrent manipulation was perfect.

Road to Vermillion: Torrent still putting in work. SS Anne got some nice upgrades, including a free heal, and some real nice berries

Vermillion Gym: Are you fucking kidding me? Who's idea was it to add the trash cans back to this piece of shit? AND PUT IN SPINNERS? One of the hardest fights in the game too...so many runs die here.

Route 9 and Rock Tunnel: There are a million ways to get fucked over here too...sleep powder, stun spore, mega miss mega miss mega miss blah blah blah. Oh, and did someone say spinners in the dark??

Rocket Hideout: Unfortunely, you have to do this place in the remakes. However, the spinners at least make you go fast, so it's all good. Evolving before Giovanni is pretty much a must, otherwise Kanga wrecks your shit.

Celadon City: Jack up on items baby, they all play an important role.

Lavendar Tower: Skip the free heal in here to maintain Torrent. The abuse of this ability in this game is awesome, really.

Safari Zone: Now the real catching begins. Place is a bag of dicks honestly, since you can't hurt anything, everything can escape.

Fuschia City: Surf plays a major role obviously. Koga fight is really technical, torrent strats go in hard.

Cinnibar Mansion: Pick up more exclusive pokes here. #fuckditto

Silph Co: All according to plan

Power Plant: Blastoise can't really take on all of Elite Four Round 2 himself in good time. So we get Zapdos to sub in at this point. Get some other cool exclusives along the way.

Side Note: I was trying to name him I. H was a complete mistake haha.

Keep in mind, at this point, if Zapdos has bad stats, this is run over. And I mean if –any- of it's stats are bad. Bad attack, or bad defense, or bad special attack, or bad special defense, or bad speed. Any of them can result in an instant death at various points coming up.

Cinnbar Gym: Now that we've got Zapdos, you can clean up Blaine and do the sidequest. Blastoise rapes, as expected.

Three Islands: Battles here go fine. There are tons of pokemon to catch here, and Thunder Wave is an awesome tool for doing so. The catching isn't always easy though...

Celadon Gym: And now we get to see a little of why Zapdos is subbed in. He goes in hard.

Saffron Gym: Real hard...

Viridian Gym: Ok not that hard. Blastoise does still cameo a few times. Battles do still become much more manageable with Zapdos on board though.

Victory Road: Still not done catching, need to get my numbers exactly right.

The road to 60 pokemon: And now we do the fetching around we couldn't before. Doing all this during the first part of the run is impossible (no money, no pokemon for certain trades etc) so we do it all at once this late in the run. It also helps get to exactly 60, as evolutions and trades can be counted on, random encounters can not

Elite Four: And now that we've finally got that out of the way...right into a bag of dicks. Every fight here can kill you, and it sucks ass

Lorelei: Probably the most likely, Ice Beam does over 50% and you ideally want 3 turns of setup to sweep. So yeah, bad AI here (and especially if you have bad Special Defense) and you're fucked

Bruno: Those fighting types got some bulk, and the moves to take you down. Good thing H is a beast

Agatha: Luckily her AI generally derps, this fight ends up being easier than it should be

Lance: Hyper Beams hurt bad, and Thunder can miss

Champion: This dudes Arcanine is a cheat and I know it. The amount of times he fucks me up is ridiculous.

Dang that was intense. Oh shit, there's another round???

Sevii Islands: Oh my goodness son, you'd think sidequests like this would be easy. Think again. You're down to minimal healing items. A spinner every step you take, packing Golems while Zapdos is still your lead. And some balls ass executives to fuck up your shit at the end. This place sucks ass. Yet it went very, very well

Elite Four Round 2: Spend remaining cash on more healing items, they are gonna come in handy.

Lorelei: Now what's meant to happen here is she gets stuck in Agatha 1's AI and spams Double Team. Sometimes though, you gotta end up PP stalling Dewgong out of Ice Beams. There's just no other way... good thing Zapdos has Pressure

Bruno: Even more bulk, Steelix is ass too. Did well to not die here, honestly.

Agatha: Ugh this fight... special defense falls are the worst.

Lance: I'm a big fan of this fight, to be honest. Ch'Ding strats ftw

Champion: It's a really really nervous finish, I'll tell you that. Incredibly intense till the very end. Check out my healing items by the end of it by the way. Actually no, I'll just list right here any item I had remaing that could heal HP, including revives:

1 Potion.

And that's all folks!

Final thoughts: This run had a lot of things that cost time. A lot of fights that didn't go optimally. A lot of catches that didn't go the way I planned. However, overall it was by far the cleanest run I've had, and the cleanest I will have for a while. This run is so fucking hard just complete, let alone get a good time in. I put in over 800 attempts into this and only 2 ever finished. I will probably come back one day to beat this run...but god damn

Thanks everyone for watching, reading, and listening! Hope to see you again on another pokemon speedrun ^_^