It's been three and a half months since my 2:16 run, and nothing's really happened in the game since then. All that's really happen is I've improved my luck, fixed the rolling, and used a couple new strategies to improve my time, nothing too major. (end lame intro)

Obviously, I have to start by thanking a lot of people:

Pika9323 for discovering the Ocarina glitch in the first place. Without it, all interest in this game would probably be non-existant.

Greenalink for the dungeon ILs. The reason for this is self-explanatory, I hope.

MrGrunz for his continued (failing) effort at trying to break this game, and for just being awesome in general. Though, at the same time, I'm pretty sure he enlisted his army of guays to try and screw me up in the Palace of Winds, so I'm not quite sure if he deserves his own shoutout. Oh well, he gets it anyway.

ZFG wrote the original route for this game, which I based my route around.

And then, of course, the ZSR community, for just being awesome in general. Swordless, Tompa, Blizz, Zero, Ani, Jiano, Petrie, Ringrush, Sparkle, Cosmo, Slowi, Parax, Unreal, Runnerguy, MP16, Acryte, Venick, Pokey, Maxx, Jer, Kazooie, Elminster, Klyde, Cerpin, Morgoth, mzx, Toes, coolkid, Sylux, Alice, and tons of other people I've forgotten. You guys all rock.

Finally, thanks to the SDA staff for making this site completely awesome.

Since the 2:16 run, I've been playing this game very on and off. In fact, as of writing these comments (July 6th), I haven't touched the game since I completed this run. It was actually only a couple days before the run that I actually played the game again (it was the first time in around 3 weeks). The night before, I got a 2:30 practice run, with multiple breaks, an extra death, and general bad play all around. I figured I was ready for more attempts, Elminster and Ani, I swear I thought they were joking when I said that. Then I got this run the next day. I'd say take that, but I sure as hell wasn't expecting a run like that that quickly.

When I first started doing runs, the goal was sub-2:25. This was brought down quite a bit when I got a 2:21 where I lost 4 minutes on Vaati's final phase (I wasn't aware you couldn't mash the energy balls -_-). At the time of my 2:16 run, the goal was sub-2:18. After I requested a reject on that run, I went through, looked at all the mistakes, added the slight route changes, and picked a new goal. I told everyone it was sub-2:15, but it was actually sub-2:14. Thankfully, I beat both of those. As with my last run, this run is meant to generate interest in the game. The run is not unbeatable by any means.

Indepth Comments:

This run takes advantage of the Ocarina glitch to go out of bounds and skip huge parts of the game. It's a complicated glitch , so I won't bother going too far indepth. Just know that it stops your theoretical "z" (height) variable from decreasing, and you should have a decent feel for the glitch. It's done by playing the Ocarina the instant you go through the doorway to go down stairs. It also works with entering buildings, but it's a bit more complicated and isn't used in this run, so I won't bother explaining it.

We start off in the boring intro. Text speed is set to fast, and I never save at any point in the run so creating a new file isn't necessary. No mistakes in the festival part, except for my rolling being too good in the beginning so I roll into the side of the castle entrance. I actually considered restarting, if you can believe it, but obviously I didn't. I grabbed the 20 rupees at the start to pay for the bottle later in the run.

So, Vaati breaks the seal on some sort of epic chest, turns Zelda to stone, then vanishes in some odd darkness effect, so we have to go to Minish Woods and ask the Picori what to do. And no, we have to send a kid, because Picori are scared of adults or something like that, so they won't show their tiny little faces to them.

So we get to the Minish Woods, no mistakes, save some green blob. He follows us around for all of about 5 - 6 metres, then decides he's better off as a hat. Thanks. So we turn smaller (first of three unskippable shrink cutscenes), then make way for Minish Village. It IS possible to get on the first lilypad, but it's frame perfect, so I don't bother with it. In Minish Village, my roll route was wrong at the start, so I rolled into the dock in front of Festari's. Nothing too major, but it's a stupid mistake. Apart from that, no real mistakes in this section, so we move on to Deepwood Shrine.

I get hit by a slug pretty much right away, but that's not too big a deal. However, after lighting the second torch, I jump down at the top somehow instead of the side. This costs a couple of seconds because I had never done it before, so I had no idea what I was doing for a bit. I also went on to miss the second small key chest by a couple of pixels, no big deal. I make a couple of movement errors going to the mini boss, but it's at the mini boss that I almost lose the run. If you watch carefully, I start swinging my sword a little early when frozen in the second phase, so I bounce off of him. If I had been out of my sword's range, the run would have been over, just like that.

After the miniboss, I have a bit of trouble falling into the basement, and my lilypad movement could have been improved. I also manage to roll off the lilypad too early and fall into the water. I get the boss key, grab rupees (which take a while to get, unfortunately), and then go to the boss. A small mistake at the start of the second phase, and he did 5 hops in his third phase, but apart from that, the fight goes well. I probably should have restarted my run after the Deepwod Shrine, but I didn't, so on we go!

I grab bombs, kinstone fuse, get the spin attack, buy the bottle, grab 20 rupees for the grip ring, nothing too interesting here. My Crenel ascent was very well done though. I get the second unskippable shrink cutscene right before the hot water. Overall, the first section goes well, no mistakes to mention. The second section was also well done. I use a trick near the start to skip going through the cave, which I believe saves around 45 seconds. No problems getting to the grip ring, and I manage to take no damage on the wall, pretty good considering I don't even try to avoid the boulders. No hits on the very random raindrops either. Two long and boring pushing puzzles later, I turn in the Picori Sword and I'm off to the Cave of Flames.

I hate grabbing those hearts, but I do it anyway. I take a couple hits here and there, and I roll in the wrong direction go to the mine cart, but no big mistakes. My battle to reveal the shrinking portal was terrible. Not on account of me, but I had horrible luck for it (well, except for not sucking up the last masked guy, but whatever. And then comes to the stone chu chu battle, which was even worse than my portal battle. I was very, very close to restarting at the point, and I probably should have done it. But I didn't, and I guess the game was being nice to me, because the rest of the dungeon went well. Even the dreaded room with the switch on a pillar was well done, probably the fastest I've done it in an SS. I grab the 100 rupees (fastest place to get the Wake-up-mushroom 60), get the boss key (the waiting happens every time, not a mistake), and go to Gleerok, who goes very well, no mistakes to mention except using the Cane of Pacci late on the final stage, nothing too major.

More boring between dungeon questing. The first split at the top of the Sanctuary is required, Ezlo will yell at you if you try to skip it. Outside, the Moblin fight isn't perfect, but it's still pretty darn good. Then two cutscenes, me firing that Cane of Pacci like a pro, a mandatory Castor Wilds visit, and then the Pegasus Boots quest. I start rolling the wrong way after talking to the Minish in the shoe shop, and the Mysterious shell text pops up after I buy the Wake-up 'shroom. Buying drugs to help some guy stay up, isn't this game supposed to be rated E? Anyways, rest of the Pegasus Boots quest goes fine, so off I go to my least favourite part of the game, Castor Wilds.

Castor Wilds was very well done for me. First Darknut goes beautifully. A little bit of trouble getting to the bow in the swamp, but my bow battle was fantastic, no complaints there. The rest of the Wilds go by with nothing of importance to mention, so we go to the Wind Ruins, which also go pretty smoothly. I came somewhat close to dying at the end and had a little trouble with the enemies before the dungeon, but other than that nothing to note.

Not a great run through here. My main mistake happens pretty much right away, where I get owned by a keese and accidentally roll down back to the main floor. It looks horrible and costs around 10 seconds. Small mistake in the Stalfos room as well, but that's out of my control, so it's no biggie. No major issues with the rest of the first key, however. And thankfully, the second key goes a lot more smoothly. The armos at the end goes wacky, but no time loss.

Just so you know, me getting 3 damage boosts in a row, all in the proper direction was definitely planned. The darknut doesn't give me the dash attack right away, but it's still a very quick fight. Then I get the Mole Mitts, which are like TP's Dominion Rod when it comes to uses. I go back to the split, and now go right. Over the bridge of doom, kill the floormasters very quickly thanks to OHKO arrows, then open the door in the next room in due time. The next set of floormasters I just went for it, and thankfully I managed to roll clip through and continue on. The rest of the dungeon body, AKA getting the big key then getting to Mazaal, goes well.

Mazaal loves to screw me over whenever he can, and this run was no exception. Before I say anything about the fight, in a single segment run, pillar locations ARE RANDOM! They are determined the first time you load your file, NOT on file creation! Because for an SS, you must start from a new file, you can't know the locations ahead of time, so you have to guess. And of course, cycles 2 and 3 had horrible locations. Oh well. Also a mistake going to his head in cycle 3, but nothing too bad. I grab the Ocarina, and we now have to do the book quest...

...which is so boring, I know you'll probably skip it and go on to the Temple of Droplets. So, I'm lazy, and I'm not going to bother writing comments for it. Just know my Scissors beetles were a little sloppy, but other than that, no mistakes were made worth mentioning.

Apart from one large blunder I made, ToD was fantastic. The fact that we actually put the Ocarina Glitch to use helps matters. This particular use skips the big key, and allows me to take the small key there and use it later, skipping all the backtracking required to get the second small key later. I pull off the glitch first try, which is expected at this point.

So, I have to go flip the first switch. I have a little trouble rounding the corner when I treat swimming mechanics like lily pad mechanics, but other than that I get to the small key without much trouble. What happens afterwards is easily my biggest mistake of the run. My next trick is the ice block puzzle skip. I fail it TWICE, once due to Pestos ruining my day, the other one due to me mashing A too much and using the gust jar too much. It's a loss of around 20 seconds, which isn't all that bad, but it looks absolutely terrible. And then, I stop killing the final scissors beetle too early and lose another 3 - 4 seconds. Not a great first half if you ask me.

Second half of the dungeon is pretty simple. I have to get the flame lantern (which would be completely skippable if it wasn't for the damn octorok), kill myself, use the Ocarina glitch to skip almost straight to the second switch, then kill Octorok. It sounds simple, and it is. I take my sweet time in the ice maze room, and go against hitting the spike traps while trapped inside them, on account of what happened in the last run. The miniboss was fine, but I could have taken a bit more damage. Regardless, the deathwarp is fine, as is the glitching and stuff to the second switch. OCTOROK TIME!!!

Wow, what a fight. First phase was as expected, and second was pretty average, but the third was spectacular. He didn't go to an ink phase, which takes 30 seconds, and on top of that, he could do it twice. The chances of him not using ink? I estimate around 5 - 10%. Regardless, this fight alone made up for the rest of the temple, so I was pretty happy at this point.

So, now we go to fuse the sword and the new element. One complaint from my last run was the guard strats, so I found new ones that save 40 seconds throughout the whole run, and they're a good deal easier than the old, normal strat. I fuse the sword, go to the school, grab a kinstone piece, and then fuse it with that guy in the house to open up a portal to the top of the clouds. Thanks to the ocarina glitch, I can get past the chicks guarding the stairs, granting me early access to the Palace of Winds, skipping the entirety of Royal Valley, Veil Falls, and Cloud Tops in the process.

The Palace of Winds is my favourite dungeon in the game. Roc's Cape, awesome music, and a difficult boss make for a fantastic dungeon. As always, the first room is slow because of how difficult it is to do. My Wizzrobe fights were all really well done, especially the second one. I also skipped cloning myself by using a bomb and a well-timed slash, but opted out on the faster jump in the next room because it's too difficult for an SS, or at least in my opinion. In the next room, it is possible to land on the moving platform on it's first pass to the left, but it's extremely difficult, so I don't beat myself up over it. Guays fuck up my day, I clone myself, push some pots, grab a key (again getting owned by keese), jump over some pits, and kill some ball and chain troopers. I also do my disc switch here, which is why I pause.

Things don't start out too well after the disc switch. The stalfos decides to land right on one of my clones, costing a good amount of time. I also get frozen by an ice wizzrobe, and take an awful lot of damage. Thankfully, the darknut goes smoothly, as does (most of) the remainder of the dungeon. I use the bomb strats to skip cloning again, use the roc's cape in the room with all the whirlwinds to cut straight across the room, and rush right past the Gibdos. However, the stalfos screw me over in the next room, and I screw up jumping over the bomb enemies the first time, but nothing else really happens until the dreaded Gyorg Pair.

On Gyorg Pair, I screw up the second phase on red Gyorg and it requires me to 3 cycle it instead of 2 cycling it (the minimum), but the third phase goes so well that it more than made up for it. I got knocked off the red Gyorg by the dying blue one at the start of phase 4, but it's not a huge deal, I wasn't that far into my charging sequence anyway. I grab the final heart container, and make way for the castle. Past the guards, to the sanctuary, get the LEGENDARY FOUR SWORD, a near repeat of the opening sequence, Vaati appears and adds more time onto the run, you know, storyline stuff.

Well, it's Dark Hyrule Castle Time... After I cancel my clones too early trying to push the switches to exit the sanctuary. Yeah.

Off the bat, I go to the Ocarina glitch spot, fail the quick Ocarina glitch, go back up, and go back down the stairs with trying to Ocarina glitch again. I go to the castle entrance, and go for the first small key. No mistakes to it, and I even get the quick statue breaking to work! Also, I take my time when I'm going to do the next Ocarina glitch use (best one in the game IMO), and as a reward I hit it first try! I use the glitch to get to a second small key, so just two more to go until I can get the big key.

Anyway, my next and final Ocarina glitch use is the door clip. It requires me to roll, so I have to exit the room and come back in (rolling in the same room you activate the Ocarina glitch in freezes your game). Of course, it takes me 6 tries to get the Ocarina glitch to work (loss of around 13 seconds), and a couple tries to clip properly, but I eventually get through, then, I hae to do it again to get to the darknut I have to kill, so I do it again. Now, it's a more difficult one to pull off, so obviously I get it to happen faster. Ball and chain troopers are fantastic, and I make no mistakes up to the darknut.

The darknut was terrible. Not only did he not use his dash attack until late (which I wasn't able to capitalize on), but he hit me with both a regular slash and his charged stab attack, which together take off a whopping 5 and a half hearts! I had two hearts left to kill 3 darknuts, a set of Ghinis, and I had to dodge some Gibdos and some red, bone-throwing stalfos. After the darknut was dead, I thought the run was over for sure, but I went on anyway. It's a good thing I didn't completely commit to that thought, huh?

You start the next darknut fight in a very bad spot. I take a hit and lose another half heart, but he's still taken out rather quickly. The next room goes fine, and thanks to the Ocarina glitch I can walk on the pits to avoid having to dodge the fireballs rotating around. I lose the Ocarina glitch in the next room though, because by rolling I can fall down the pit, cancelling the glitch. I get the first key without trouble. The second key is a bit harder to get because the Ghinis suck to kill and you have to face two darknuts at once. The darknut fight goes alright. First is killed immediately, but second takes a little long for my liking. The flame lantern room is perfect (I would get a different key if skipping the flame lantern, as I mentioned earlier, was ever possible), and I get through the Ghini room fast enough (though I was being extremely cautious). I grab two more hearts when I get the big key, and I planned on grabbing more just before Vaati

So, now I gotta get to Vaati. First and second rooms were without issues and are optimal. The darknut battle was fantastic. I was slow at the start to grab health, but I listened to the verifiers and made an effort to counter attack and it worked out quite well. I took more damage than I would have liked, but it still went very well for only having 5 bombs (I didn't even use one of them!).

Onto Vaati. First phase was very nicely done. It started shaky, sure, but I got a fairy for health. I also used the gust jar at the start of the wrong stage, but he didn't teleport very much, so I'm happy. I even got hit by fire at the right time so that I could force him to teleport quicker. I'll even go as far as to say that getting hit by the fire there saves time. If it actually does, it was completely intended. :P

The second phase is home to the best music in the game, but it's also my worst of the three phases here. I ran out of arrows twice, and lost my clones twice. I guess it wasn't that that bad, especially considering that the eye locations for every phase with the exception of the first are random (first is always the front), but I misfired an awful lot throughout the battle.

So, we move onto Vaati's final phase. It starts out alright, I guess. I got the first arm vulnerable kind of quickly, but I jumped forward a stage briefly and started charging my spin attack. In the arm, the eye I needed to kill came straight at me, so it was dead very quickly. Second arm was brought down slightly slower on account of me having trouble finding the right eye to kill, but when I found it, it was in a corner, making it a quick kill. Then comes the part that can be tricky: reflecting the eyes back. Of course, he does it right off the bat, so I miss his first shooting, but I get the next three, and kill Vaati quickly, a great way to end a pretty damn good run.

So, there you have. Minish Cap in under 2:15. I'm probably done with this game unless I decide to come back and do the 100% SS, or if a new trick is found to push the SS under two hours. Hopefully this will show that The Minish Cap isn't as bad as everyone says it is. There's real potential with the Ocarina Glitch. All we have to do is exploit it.

Thanks for watching, hope you enjoyed the run. Props if you actually read all of the comments, and hopefully you'll watch the next run I make, which is shaping up to be Oracle of Ages any% segmented. If you want to contact me, you can PM me on here on the SDA forums, my youtube account (ShaddoD2, to which this run will NOT be uploaded), or you can come over to zeldaspeedruns.com and join in the zelda fun. I'm on the IRC quite a bit, and my username on the forums there is the same as it is here on SDA.

Again, thanks for watching, and don`t let dem Tokays be stole'in your shovels!