Pokemon Stadium 2 Speedrun FAQ

Pokemon Stadium 2 Speedrun FAQ by Zewing

Gym Leader Castle FAQ

Q: Why are you playing on Japanese?
A: I have 2 cartridges for Pokemon Stadium 2.  I use a Japanese one for my GLC R1 attempts due to the category being easier and the cartridge being cheaper.  The English cartridge is for testing purposes so I don't have to constantly deconstruct my teams.  Once I get to Round 2 I will use this cartridge as well.

In addition, Pokemon Stadium 2 is one of the only Pokemon games that has equal competition opportunity among the English and the Japanese versions, which opens up the board for Japanese runners to compete on even grounds.

Q: What about PAL?
A: PAL unfortunately runs at 50HZ, which means it runs at 25 fps (NTSC runs at ~30 fps).  It's not a version you want to run the game on.

Q: Do you use imports?
A: No, all categories for this game ban imports; rentals that the game give you (regardless of their bad stats and movesets) are the only allowable pokemon.  This in turn helps put everyone on an even playing field.

Q: What does Round 1 mean?
A: This game is split into 2 separate Rounds, AKA "difficulties."  Round 1 is your basic form of the game.  Round 2, however, is a significant difficulty increase.  Because of this, Gym Leader Castle Round 1 is the more ran category

Q: Round 2 speedruns when?
A: idk

Q: What is WR?
A: This is the leaderboard: https://www.speedrun.com/pkmnstadium2

Q: Why did you reset?
A: Losing any fight is devastating as Gym Leader Castle doesn't provide continue tokens.  For a terrible example, let's use the Rocket Takeover segment.  Losing to Rocket Executive Male, who is the fourth member of the fight, makes you have to re-do every fight in that segment again from the beginning.

Q: Why are you resetting for Brock and Misty?
A: Venusaur needs to KO all of Brocks team whereas Zapdos needs to KO all of Misty's team.  This saves a lot of time early and Misty alone saves team slots, enabling better strats in other fights as this game only allows for 10 registered teams.

Q: What are the run enders?
A: Most fights are potential run enders whenever the difference is power is close.  The Kanto Gym Leaders and Elite Four make up the majority of the run enders.  Everything else is extremely unfortunate circumstances.

Q: What route is this?
A: The order (route) I use is what I call Early Manip route, ordered Misty -> Brock -> Blue -> Erika -> Preference for rest.

It's not really an official name but these 4 fights use teams designed to win against specific combinations.  Not getting those combinations is a loss.  Once these fights are done, the order doesn't really matter, though it is highly recommended to finish Kanto and the Elite Four before doing any other fights.

Q: Why are the gym leaders using pokemon that's a completely different type than their gym?
A: It's to counter pokemon that have type advantages against the gyms themed typing.  This game would be boring and not challenging if you knew exactly what your opponents whole team would be, tossing away strategy and crafty team planning.

Q: What is your goal time?
A: Unsure, 2:03:xx seems nice for now