Speedrunning in 2018 and for 2019

First, I'm going to talk about my speedrunning achievements and plans for 2018 and 2019, since some people might be more interested in that over myself personally, which I totally respect. The personal stuff might be kind of lengthy anyway, since I never know how to express myself in short notes.

Speedrunning has become a big part of my daily life, it's become a hobby that I cherish and almost always keeps me busy from real-world stuff that I would rather ignore (for the time being of course, you can't ignore your responsibilities and problems forever). I got myself a DS capture card in late 2017, and have been doing a lot of DS-speedruns in 2018, which has also become my favorite kind of speedruns. So let's start off with the first speedruns I did for 2018!

Pokémon Emerald: Any% Glitchless (2:49:36):
Going into this speedrun, I wasn't expecting much. I had done Pokémon Sapphire beforehand, and I honestly didn't like the run too much, and Hoenn was never my favorite region (I still like them though, and still spent a bunch of time on it when I was younger). Though I have to admit, that I was totally wrong about the run, I actually really enjoyed Emerald - a lot more than Sapphire, that's for sure. I really enjoyed doing runs, despite rarely getting on good runs because I kept losing them to RNG or just messing up myself. At the end of the month when I had planned to move on, I had to finish a run with safety-saves to get a free PB, because I just wasn't able to finish a run in 2 weeks. Of course, everything went fine for the whole run, and I only died once to an Archie-crit. I lost a bunch of time at the E4 too, from getting unlucky with Drake, and only got a PB of a few seconds.
Not done with this run, I want to come back to it at some point to get a much better PB, and I can hardly wait.

Pokémon Diamond/Pearl: Any% (59:16):
This was my first speedrun on the Nintendo DS, and it was a really cool introduction to gen 4 speedruns, who arguably are my favorite generation to speedrun, both by doing them myself, but also watching. It was a long learning process, but I managed to get decent at it, and also got to show it off at ESA Winter 2018, where it ended up becoming my best run at the event. Later in the year, I came back to this category and pushed my PB from 59:50 to 59:16, then I just got impatient with the run again, with a higher desire to do other speedruns.
I will come back to this someday, but it's prioritized pretty low on my list.

Pokémon Crystal: Any% Glitchless (3:21:28):
My first speedrun I ever did and completed, and another run I got to show off at ESA Winter 2018. The run at the marathon wasn't too good, with too much bad luck and spinners, and also failed to show off the (at the time) new Entei manip, and had to rely on my backup cartridge. When I got home, I managed to get a new PB I was happy about. A bunch of improvement still to be made, and a bit of dumb timeloss, but I'll come back someday, since I really like this speedrun. I also want to learn the new Raikou-manip, and hope it doesn't burn me out in the process, since it's quite an annoying manip.

Overwatch: Retribution (7:14:190):
This'll be short since it's not Pokémon, but my love for Overwatch is huge, so I wanted to try speedruns of this event-gamemode, and so I did with a bunch of different people. In the end, Yumetoro, Petruska, Toggu and I managed to get a pretty good 7:14:190 in our very last attempt!

Pokémon Platinum: Any% (2:48:35):
Oh boy, here we go. My speedrun-highlight of the year. I was originally told to play this by Underscore_PoY, who supported me for my trip to ESA Winter 2018. This category became an obsession of mine, since it was a ton of fun to learn and do runs of. Platinum in itself is a great game, and I even went so far that I went for world record in this game, and eventually got it for 5 days before Underscore and Werster came back with their new double Tentacruel-route and took the record away from me. I eventually also learned the double Tentacruel-route myself, but I was scared of burning out from the game if I grinded the game even further. I managed to better my PB by about a minute with the new Tentacruel-route, but lost about a minute by missing a dumb range and getting crit on the last gym fight. One thing I learned from running this: I will never grind as hard again for a world record, or never intentionally go for world records. Like I've always said: If it happens, it happens, but I won't stress about going for them.
I also got to run this game at ESA Summer 2018, and I was extremely happy with the run. Not too many mistakes, the game behaved and people seemed to enjoy the run.
I want to go back to this category at some point, but it won't be for a while.

Pokémon Platinum: Any% Glitchless (4:15:21):
I decided to do a glitchless run to round off this game before I moved on to another game, and this was my first finished run. Pretty happy about the time, but it can be improved massively, since my memory of doing parts of the game outside of any% wasn't too fresh, mainly the Distortion World. Will come back to this some day, probably before I go back to any% again.

Pokémon HeartGold/SoulSilver Any% Glitchless (3:50:42):
My favorite game of all time. I was looking so much forward to learning this run, not only for being my favorite game, but also for having such an awesome speedrun. It lived up to my expectations, it was fun to learn, fun to do, and I definiately will come back to this sometime soon. I got 3:50:42 on my 4th finished run, which also included me doing the gym-order from Pokémon Crystal, lol.

Pokémon Black/White: Any% (3:22:32):
My introduction to generation 5, a run I didn't expect to enjoy as much, but I sure did. I started learning this run when I was talking to Ætienne at ESA Summer 2018, where he told me that he wanted to speedrun Pokémon Black/White himself - so I said to him: "Let's submit a race of Pokémon Black for ESA Winter 2019, and then Pokémon White 2 for ESA Summer 2019!", and so we decided. We then got the race accepted for ESA Winter 2019, where we'll be racing it February 23rd at 7am CET! This is also with a donation incentive of making me cosplay N, by also dying my hair green...
I got a decent PB and decided to move on. I will come back to this game before ESA Winter 2019 to derust, so somewhere around the beginning of February 2019.

Pokémon Colosseum: Any% (3:49:07):
My second ever speedrun, I've been coming back to this game a lot, but these were my first runs with Espeon-manipulation. My old PB was pretty bad and I didn't even originally submit it because I thought I would beat it easily, which didn't happen, lol. I came back and got a decent 3:49, but lost ~2 minutes at the end to a dumb mistake on the final fight. Might come back to this at some point, but it's low on my priority list.
This is also another run I did at ESA Winter 2018 - it wasn't planned since this was a run I did to cover for a sick runner at the event, so I didn't even practice for the run, and this was also before Espeon-manip became a thing. I was asked to run this 4 hours before it was supposed to take place, so we rushed down to reset for Espeons and Croconaws, and I got to practice a bit of the run before it was time. The run itself was honestly a disaster, but I still managed to finish below estimate.

Pokémon Let's Go, Pikachu!/Eevee!: Any% (Eevee) (3:14:48):
BOI BOI BOI, I love this speedrun. I originally thought I would never do routing myself because I was awful at it, but with this game, I couldn't help myself, and I ended up doing a ton of routing when this game was released, and it's honestly already one of my favorite speedruns. I even managed to get world record for 2 days before Venlo took it, and this was without feeling like grinding too much for it. It was a decent run, despite losing about a minute from after last Giovanni-fight to the end, by getting put to sleep 3 times in Victory Road and doing too many safety-heals for the last two fights. I was happy with the run though, but I might come back and push this time even lower.

Honorable mentions:

Pokémon Crystal: Catch 'em All Glitchless (31:26:48):
As a thank you for the support I got to go to ESA Winter 2018, I decided to do a full run of Pokémon Crystal: Catch 'em All Glitchless, but this run was pretty frustrating where I wanted to give up multiple times due to things going wrong, which made me lose a bunch of time. Surprisingly, I never considered finishing despite being awake for 40+ hours (in total at that point), but I'm glad I managed to finish. I want to try this again to better my time by a huge margin, but it won't be anytime soon for obvious reasons (a lot to dedicate for a 24+ hour run)


Plans for 2019:
I honestly don't have many set plans for speedruns in 2019. I'm still looking for a job, so I can never tell when I'll start being busy  to really commit to anything. The things that are planned though are Pokémon Let's Go speedruns (1P2C and Co-op runs, and probably more Any%) as well as Pokémon Black Any% derust for the ESA Winter 2019 race against Ætienne, and then I'm also learning Pokémon White 2 to hopefully do a race with Ætienne for ESA Summer 2019.
Other than these, I really want to learn HeartGold/SoulSilver Any%, now that I got to do the Glitchless run. I do miss a good glitched category, so I can't wait for this one.
I'm also hoping to go back to Platinum Any% Glitchless and Emerald Glitchless to lower my times quite a bit.
Runs I also want to learn also involves Pokémon Yellow, Pokémon Gold and Pokémon FireRed/LeafGreen, with Yellow and FireRed/LeafGreen highest on this list.
I might also be getting a 3DS Capture Card for gen 6 and 7 runs, where I'm a huge fan of gen 6 speedruns. I will either purchase it myself, or borrow a 2DS Capture Card from wartab when we're both going to ESA Winter 2019.
Other than Pokémon speedruns, I'm also hoping to start learning other speedruns that aren't Pokémon. I've done GTA: San Andreas before, but never finished learning it, so that might be a good place to start. Other than that, Shovel Knight is also a run I want to learn. But time will tell if I ever manage to get myself away from Pokémon, since I really do enjoy running it.


Therefore, we have a ton of plans in store for 2019, I just need to figure out what to do first. In these cases, I'm really spontaneous with what runs I'm doing, so time will tell what I'm going to do.
I also want to give a huge thanks to all the people who stopped by my stream during my runs and supporting me in any shape or form, I have made some awesome friends through this, and I'm really happy every time I see the same people in my chat, but I also appreciate all the new people that stop by, as well as lurkers! If I can just keep anyone entertained just a tiny bit when they're doing other stuff/just mainly watching my stream, I'm really happy and feel accomplished.
I hope that everyone will have a great New Years, stay safe and watch out for each other<3