Yearly Speedrun Review | 2024

2024 is coming to a close, so it's the time of year where we look back on everything I accomplished. This year has likely been my quietest yet, but there's still some solid stuff in here. I always enjoy writing these, but there aren't many of these retrospectives left for me.

All PBs are listed in chronological order (if I improved multiple times, it'll be placed in related to the most recent PB).

--Pokémon PBs--

Pokémon Battle Revolution
Any% Round 1 in 3:38:58 (First runs in 2024) | 16/05/2024
- Fun game! I never really pushed this much as I was still working when I was doing runs, so I didn't get much time to dedicate to doing runs. That being said I got a relatively decent time without much effort. My main sticking points with this were Waterfall and of course, Neon. I'll definitely return to this!

Pokémon Diamond
Any% Glitchless in 3:41:33 (From 3:44:09) | 05/11/2024
- This is really my only notable achievement from this year, and the run itself really isn't even good. I hit the Snowpoint Gym spinner and I also died to a crit on the final rival fight, costing about a minute and a half overall. I can see myself improving this down the road, but the Snowpoint spinner just makes the thought of this category seriously unappealing.

--SM64 PBs--

16 Star in 15:45 (From 15:56) | 24/07/2024
- Another really nice improvement this year in 16. My quality of gameplay went up dramatically during this grind, and I had multiple really solid runs get quite far this year. I had multiple 15:3x pace runs into BLJs, one into Sky, and I had a 15:2x pace into Fire Sea as well. 15:3x is my ultimate goal for this, hoping 2025 is the year I can put down 16.

70 Star in 49:58 (From 51:16) | 28/07/2024
- I only did 2 sessions of 70 to give myself a bit of a break from 16 as the grind was getting to me a bit, and got 2 PBs in back-to-back streams. I really didn't expect to get a 49 in this at all, but it was my goal when I started 70 years ago. Even if I never PB here again, I'll be happy with this, even though I died twice!

--All Other PBs--

Prince Of Persia: The Lost Crown
Pit of Eternal Sands in 37:54 (Loads Removed) | 20/01/2024
- Rough start to the year for me, did this for the SRC $10k challenge. Actually not the worst game, had some really annoying movement tech in it though. The SRC challenge was fun but I ended up giving up less than halfway through, impossible to compete when working versus people who stream for a living. Won't ever go back to this.

Octopath Traveler II
Galdera in 1:46:06 (First runs in 2024) | 06/02/2024
- Another category I only did a few sessions of. I actually really enjoyed the learning process for this category, probably more-so than running it. Happy I got record when I did, but this run isn't anything special. A new route exists for this category now too, so its likely I'll come back to this in 2025 and maybe finish off my OT2 Switch domination plan.

Need For Speed: Most Wanted (2005) (GBA)
Career Any% in 3:23:54 (From 3:27:55) | 27/07/2024
- I actually had the motivations spark for this when I was on holiday strangely. There had been developments in this between my old PB and this July that had me interested in improving my time, given Emu runs had beaten my 3:27 by multiple minutes. Really happy my re-evaluation of the route ended up paying off with a mostly well executed run. I only had 2 bad segments in this run, which is pretty nice given how horrendous and costly the traffic RNG can be. I think I finally constructed the best possible route for this game, so I'm not sure if I'll ever return to this.

Mario Kart 64
All Cups (Skips) in 28:45 (First runs in 2024) | 04/10/2024
- I had a LOT of fun with this game! I had never played it until 2024, and quickly fell in love watching Kazn and Abney do runs. To get a 28 in the small amount of runs I actually ended up doing is something I'm super proud of, but I can definitely do better. Missed a couple SCs that I went for and had a really awful second half. Want to eventually beat Abneys Emu time.

Stray
Any% Glitchless in 1:17:25 (From 1:17:56) | 16/11/2024
- Yearly attempt at Stray yielded a really nice improvement. This run is actually a LOT better than the final time makes it out to be, I lost almost 1min on the penultimate chapter, so most of my gameplay from before was really good. 2025 will hopefully bring me my 1:16 and then I'm done with this one too.