Taz Wanted any% info

Taz Wanted run info

There is no main level music because this is my old burned copy which is weird and glitched out and so doesn't have music anywhere except the hubs and bosses. I'll reburn the game properly on a better disc soon so that i can actually get music.

This game has 3 main hub worlds with 3 levels each, i need to beat every level in order to unlock the boss stage that progresses me to the next hub. The first hub boss, Elephant Pong, is an RNG game of pong with Gossamer, who has scarily good AI and likes to waste minutes. This stage can either go really well or horribly wrong, and you can either save or lose 2 minutes here. Don't be surprised if i end up resetting due to a bad Elephant Pong.

Every level has 7 signs i have to destroy in order to finish the level. Because of the super intricate/elaborate and open sandbox nature of all the levels, getting all the signs in an optimal route requires clever routing and memorization using all kidns of shortcuts and/or exploits. The blue switches i spin on are to deactivate the purple boxes with eyes. If i don't deactivate them, they'll punch Taz as soon as he gets near them, blocking the path for signs or other parts of the level.

I try not to get caught by the blue catchers most of the time because their cage placement often puts me in inconvenient spots and thus wastes time. In stages like Taz Haunted, for example, i can't get caught at all through the entire level, otherwise that messes up a deathwarp right at the end of the level. In some stages i'll get caught on purpose to respawn closer to where i want to be, such as in Cartoon Strip-Mine at the very end.

The thing i'm trying to do with the boxes in Cartoon Strip-Mine (assuming i get a run that far) is to clip OoB through the floor and into the drill tunnel, skipping activating the minecart and a bunch of other things. The clip is based on lag and positioning, but most of the time it's just extremely random so it may take a while for me to get it. Don't be surprised if i reset here due to wasting too much time trying the clip.

I'm playing on Advanced difficulty also. There are 3 difficulties: Standard, Advanced and Expert. The spin switch timers last a bit less, but the lack of tutorials in Zooney Tunes ends up making Advanced faster by about 30 or 40 seconds. Standard has about 30 seconds of textboxes in the first level, and Expert is simply too hard because the spin switches and other timers are much shorter, making certain signs completely impossible to get back-to-back, such as the rafters sign followed by the clock sign in Loonigdale's. In Expert, the spin switch timer will run out faster and you will get punched off the rafters before being able to break the box and get to the clock sign, wasting time.

I'm playing on the PS2 version, which is faster than the GCN version by quite a bit due to loading times, but not as fast as the original Xbox version which has 1-2 second load times. The PC version is theoretically the fastest, but the game is so incredibly old and getting it to run on a modern PC is a nightmare. The game is also forced fullscreen, fucks up splits if you have them running and messes up your second monitor if you have one, and all our attempts at windowing it failed, so PC is pretty much out of the question. One day i miiight get an original xbox and a copy of the game for the fastest version, but that's probably not happening any time soon.

The final boss has 3 phases. The 1st phase is very easy. 2nd phase is hard, can waste a bunch of time if not careful. 3rd phase is RNG, can make or break the run depending on how you handle it.


For the full any% sign route, check out this: http://www.speedrun.com/Taz_Wanted/guide/iz3pm

For more details on difficulty differences, check this: http://www.speedrun.com/Taz_Wanted/guide/t1d92