Pac-Man World Any% Blind Race Notes

So you're planning on doing a blind race of Pac-Man World 20th Anniversary for the Sony PlayStation™?  Well, before you do, I highly recommend checking out the notes below to increase your odds of completing the game without ragequitting! :D

---Versions---

If you're not planning on doing any of the major overworld skips, any version of the game is fine.  Japanese is recommended, as it has several quality-of-life changes that make the game more enjoyable and slightly easier in a few places.
If you do plan on doing any of the major overworld skips, PAL is not recommended, as these skips are impossible on this version.  Japanese is once again recommended.

The Japanese version of this game can be hard to find, but here is a link for a Japanese ISO that you can download: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0By8TL6wrSMC4cEs2Ymh0SkFJNzg/view

---Saving/Game Overs---

Getting a game over in this game is pretty easy and extremely punishing.  Game overs bring you back to the title screen, not to the start of whatever level you were in, and if you didn't save, too bad.  It is HIGHLY recommended to save after every level you beat and to collect every extra life in your way so that this is not an issue.  Some levels are very dry on lives, while others have loads, so keep an eye out.

---Useful Basic Tech---

Like Crash Bandicoot, this game has zigzagging, and it is absurdly broken.  In a blind race, it's probably not a good idea to do it very much, as you will likely die a lot, but it can be useful for saving yourself from a bad jump or some other nonsense.

When butt-bouncing, the 1st bounce is slightly higher, so if a jump seems too high and you're mashing X, just land normally and try a single bounce, it should be helpful.

When using helivators, keep holding square when you jump off, otherwise all of your momentum will get eaten and you will likely die.

---Beating The Game---

A true blind Any% run for Pac-Man World would actually fall under a different category - All Levels - but the glitch that is used to skip levels is extremely easy and useful to avoid fighting dumb bosses or playing some of the longer/harder levels.  A number of levels cannot be skipped with this glitch, otherwise you will have to re-enter them to collect essential items, which is slow.

The following levels are ones that you MUST enter and complete, as they have items that are essential to beating the game:

(1-2) Corsair's Cove - Key
(1-3) Crazy Cannonade - Friend
(2-2) Manic Mines - Key + Friend
(3-2) Far Out - Key + Friend
(4-2) Barrel Blast - Key
(4-3) Spin Dizzy - Friend
(5-3) Down The Tubes - Key + Friend
(6-2) Creepy Catacombs - Key
(6-3) Grave Danger - Friend*

*After you save the final friend in this level, you can actually just pause and exit level and the final boss door will open.  Doing this will make it so you cannot save right before the final boss, however, so keep that in mind.

The trigger to open the final boss door is to save all 6 friends, and to do that, you need to collect all 6 keys.  Keep this in mind as you progress through the game.

In order to bypass the overworld barriers, you can either do the skips for them or just beat every level before each one.

I don't want to spoil too much of the game in this writeup to try and keep it as close to a blind experience as possible while still giving people enough guidance to actually complete the game in a reasonable amount of time, but if anyone wants any sort of level route that uses the level skip glitch and/or utilizes the harder overworld skips, just let me know! If anyone has any interest in taking the game more seriously, you can join the Pac-Man Speedrunning Discord with this link: https://discord.gg/QtB8Tyy

Thanks for reading and best of luck!

-Joe