Digimon World - any% (no s&q) FAQ

Digimon World Speedrunning FAQ by Sparsie - any%(no save & quit)
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WHAT IS WORLD RECORD???

...feel free to check out the leaderboards at "http://bombch.us/lrD" or "http://speedrunrecords.com/digimon".


Now that that's settled: What is this game?

This game is called Digimon World, a game for the Sony Playstation, first released by Bandai Namco in 1999. You could best describe it as "Digimon meets Tamagotchi meets RPG".


What is the goal of the game?

The goal in Digimon World is to recruit various Digimon scattered across "File Island" and make them go to the city in the center of the island. Every Digimon you recruit rewards you with a certain amount of Prosperity Points (PP), of which I need 50 in total to unlock the final area and complete the game. The maximum amount of Prosperity points is 100.


How many Prosperity Points (PP) does Digimon X give you?

The PP-system is fairly simple: Every Rookie and "filth" (Numemon, Sukamon, Nanimom) Digimon gives me 1, every Champion 2, and every Ultimate 3 Prosperity Points.


What about Megas?

There are no Mega-Digimon in this game. The game was made before the show, and they simply didn't implement a Mega-level back then, even though a small amount of Digimon, e.g. Phoenixmon or Machinedramon, were made Megas later when the show got released. The classification of those in Digimon World is simply "Ultimate".


You can only start the game with Agumon?

No, but Agumon is the better choice to start with. The alternative would be Gabumon, who is very lackluster compared to Agumon. Picking him would be comparable to running Bulbasaur in Pokemon Red/Blue. And no, starting with Gabumon is not a different category. There is an alternative route though, that involves picking Gabumon, letting him die at the start of the run and manipulating the Bakemon-Digivolution.


What does any% (no save & quit) mean?

It essentially says: Beat the game as fast as possible without saving, resetting the game and loading. A Single-Segment run.


What's your strategy for this run?

The usual route is to digivolve Agumon into Birdramon. Then I will try to get one of the stronger moves in the game which can be obtained relatively early: "Spinning Shot", from fighting SandYanmamon/Tsukaimon, or "Promincence Beam", from Birdramon. If I am going for a decent time, one of these moves is absolutely mandatory and I will probably reset if I didn't get one. After I got the move, I will continue to work on fulfilling the 50PP requirement, unlock Mt.Infinity and defeat the final boss Machinedramon, which marks the end of the run.


What are the odds of learning a move?

Assuming I'm using Birdramon and assuming the move I want to learn was used in the battle, the chance of learning Prominence Beam is 17% and the chance of learning Spinning Shot is 14%.


Why do you digivolve Agumon into Birdramon? Isn't Greymon the better choice?

Birdramon is a beast in this game, and that's why we use it. Greymon isn't bad, but is simply slower and harder to digivolve into, which is why its highly preferable to use Birdramon in a any%-Speedrun.


Why can Agumon digivolve into Birdramon anyways?

In this game specifically, every Rookie-Digimon has several Champions it can digivolve into after 4 days of it's life. For Agumon, those would be Greymon, Birdramon, Meramon, Centarumon, Monochromon, and Tyrannomon. To decide which one I get, I have to meet 3 out of 4 digivolution-requirements for the Champion Digimon: Number of care mistakes, weight, stats and "special requirements".


What are Birdramon's requirements?

Agumon needs 20 weight, 3 or more care mistakes (5 get me Meramon though), and more than 100 speed.


I noticed your Agumon-fight at the beginning is similar almost every time?

This is due to the games' nature of resetting it's RNG (Random Number Generator) every time it's restarted. It allows you to consistently get the same Agumon-fight, assuming you move and train in the same way. Due to lots and lots of factors that advance the RNG, further manipulation is not really possible in a Single-Segment run. Also note, that the RNG is dependent on the platform the game is played on: Even if you move in exactly the same way, an Agumon-fight on emulator and an Agumon-fight on Playstation 2 are gonna be different.


What's with that Bakemon-route you mentioned earlier?

Every time your Rookie-Digimon dies, theres a 5% chance for it to digivolve into Bakemon. This can be used to learn "Thunder Justice" very early, one of the strongest moves in Digimon World, and beating the game with it. The reset-point is about 10 minutes shorter than Spinning Shot/PBeam and you can definitely get a decent time with it (sub 1:40), though I'd still give a strong edge to Spinning Shot/PBeam.


Can I run this game on emulator?

Yes, as long as you don't use an emulator that has faster loading times than "Fast Disc Speed" on a PS2. Use ePSXe 1.7 and you will be fine.


When do you start and stop the timer?

Timer is started on confirming the first textbox after the first loading screen, and stopped after the last hit on Machinedramon.


Wouldn't the Japanese version be faster, because of less text?

Not exactly. Text in Digimon World is displayed "at once", so you don't gain any frames by having less characters show up. That said, there are indeed a few instances where the Japanese version has less textboxes, and would therefore be faster text-wise, by a few seconds. The reason we don't play on Japanese is, because the Digimon have a different "Poop-Pattern": As stupid as it sounds: In PAL and NTSC-J, Digimon poop a lot more than in NTSC-U. So you not only lose time due to the Poop-animations, but also because you have to take more loading screens in order to avoid care mistakes during digivolution-training. This adds up to the run being around 2-3 minutes slower on the Japanese version.


Any word on version differences between PAL and NTSC-U?

PAL is outright slower due to running at 25 FPS (frames per second) as opposed to the 30 FPS of the NTSC version, which kind of disqualifies it from competetively speedrunning this game.
Some other differences include the use of a different font, different English translations between NTSC-U/C and PAL-UK/AUS and different bugs/glitches (none of which are relevant to speedrunning as of yet though).
What's also important to mention is, is that not every PAL version is exactly the same: Some specific PAL-Translations (German and Spanish, e.g.) "glitch out" when talking to the Agumon-guard in front of Ogre's Fortress. This results in the player not being able to enter the fortress and access a huge part of the game (and also a major part of the current speedrunning route). Meaning, an any%-speedrun of those versions of Digimon World would require specific route changes to even be possible.