Reasons why the current Sapphire WR is potentially bogus

As of late there has been discussion in the Sapphire speedrunning community regarding the legitimacy of the current world record, held by MexiricanBassMonkey (MBM) with an in-game time of 2:02:23. While certainly any Pokemon speedrun relies on some good luck to achieve a good time, or even just finish a run, it is my view that MBM's run consists of uncannily good luck, at times bordering on the extreme. Furthermore, the run was apparently recorded offstream before being uploaded to youtube, and though MBM claims that he "pretty much always" has wsplit open while doing runs, these splits were not recorded alongside the video, despite what a simple task that would seem to be. Additionally, MBM has claimed that his previous PB before this run was something along the lines of 2:26:xx (tying the current 9th best time), meaning that he saved over 20 minutes in one PB. In a game like Sapphire where nearly every major fight is a potential run-killer/serious timeloss, it is EXTREMELY unlikely that he did not complete any runs in the intervening time between the 2:26:xx and the 2:02:23, and even more unlikely that he would withhold footage of those runs when, until about six months ago, there were only four times on the leaderboards (MBM, werster, xGodlyke, and GreenMittenz). What's more, the argument that he simply "reset anything that wasn't perfect" holds no water in a run that seeks to kill the player at every turn, and if it actually were the case that he continually reset for perfection, he would have had to reset quite literally thousands upon thousands of times before achieving the kind of pure based RNG bliss that one finds in his current WR run.

Below is a list of things that I consider to call the validity of the current WR run into question. Keep in mind that, being a Pokemon run, and Sapphire at that, some very crazy RNG-based nonsense can happen in any attempt, both good and bad, and while any one of the following examples alone might not merit suspicion, taken in their totality they point towards not just a slightly improbable run, but an extraordinarily unlikely sequence of events that have birthed what we in the Sapphire community refer to as the "god run."

As a bit of background, much of these things may seem very innocuous to an unfamiliar viewer or an inexperienced runner--indeed, none of us questioned MBM's run when we first began running, and simply assumed that most of his timesave could be attributed to very clean Mach Bike movement and "countless resets" as he puts it in the description of his video, but having run the game for some time now and understanding the risks involved with many portions of it, having reset close to 1000 times and achieved the 3rd best time, my astonishment has instead been replaced by a great deal of suspicion. It's also important to note that many of his strats are riskier than current strats, but without any real timesave, again suggesting that he would have had to reset an absurd number of times for all those strats to actually bear this kind of fruit. Where this is relevant I will make note of it.

Examples are timestamped according to the only recording of the run on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwVBE-vvS2E). If you're interested in what this translates to in terms of RTA timing for the run, just subtract 11 seconds from the timestamp (he selects "New Game" 11 seconds into the recording).

2:55 - This is not suspicious, as all runners reset for good kips, but it's important to keep in mind his stats for the remainder of the run: Lonely 14 atk / 10 spatk / 10 spe. His spatk is slightly on the low side, while he has above average speed and excellent attack; however a Lonely nature means a lower defense stat which does matter at certain points in the run.

6:48 - He heals by talking to Mom. Again, not suspicious by itself, and in fact slower than present strats. Currently we withdraw the free potion from the PC in the upstairs bedroom and use that to heal before the first trainer battle; MBM leaves the potion but heals with Mom instead.

7:07 - Zigzagoon on the first encounter. Not crazy, as Zigzagoon has a 45% encounter rate, but so does Wurmple. Additionally, he has no potion to heal before the first trainer battle if he takes damage (not a death sentence, but as the first fight can troll hard, it's not impossible to get screwed here); however, the Zigzagoon's Tackle misses.

7:50 - This fight is extremely trolly. An ideal outcome is 4 turns, but this rarely happens. The Zigzagoon knows Tackle, Growl, and Tail Whip, so obviously the best pattern is all Tail Whip, and Growl is fine after the second turn because your first two attacks bring him into range where two more Tackles will finish him off even at -1 atk, but this requires that he only ever Growl a single time and ONLY after the second turn. MBM gets first turn Tail Whip, second turn Tail Whip, followed by one Growl into a final Tail Whip. Very lucky.

11:48 - Wingull encounter. The options for a Fly-user in this run are Taillow, Wingull, and Swablu. The latter is the most "consistent" as it has the highest encounter rate of the three on the route where it is found (route 114) and also has the best catch rate; however because it is found at higher level, it requires deleting a move to learn Fly, which wastes time. Still, it's basically never worth it to go looking for a Taillow or Wingull because they are hard to find, and you will most likely just end up wasting time on useless encounters in the same area (Wurmple, Zigzagoon if you already caught one, etc.). Here, not only does MBM find a Wingull immediately where we would ordinarily use a Repel (he conveniently waits to Repel until entering Petalburg Woods, where only Taillow can be found at a 5% encounter rate), but he catches it in the first ball. Notably, Wingull has the worst catch rate of the three Fly options. Very lucky.

12:30 - This is an example where MBM's strats are actually slower, but they somehow miraculously work out for him. Fighting Bug Catcher Lyle allows Mudkip to reach lv. 9 before fighting the first Aqua Grunt, making that fight potentially 4 turns instead of 5 (under ideal RNG); however, because the Aqua Grunt fight can troll you hard with Sand Attack anyway, the one turn less is usually not worth it. Fighting Lyle also allows you to reach lv. 10 before Rustboro Gym, which means Mudkip learns Water Gun earlier and can OHKO the first Geodude in the gym instead of doing it with 6 Mud-Slaps. The problem with that is that the Lyle fight is so inconsistent that it normally takes more than 6 turns anyway, completely nullifying any time saved against the Geodude just because you have Water Gun. Currently we avoid fighting Lyle for this very reason. More specifically, fighting Lyle requires using the 2 X Attacks from the first shopping trip in Petalburg to more quickly knock out all the Wurmples; however, only the last five are OHKO'd by a +2 Tackle, the first requiring two Tackles even at +2 because you level up off of it. This would normally be fine, since you naturally outspeed all of them, but because it takes two turns to set up plus another turn on the first Wurmple (since you don't OHKO), and because all the Wurmples know String Shot, you can only get String Shot by the first Wurmple once or else you will get outsped by all five remaining Wurmples and lose a significant amount of time. Conveniently for MBM, he gets just one String Shot and two Tackles from the first Wurmple, allowing him to outspeed and OHKO the remaining five.

14:27 - It might seem stupid at first, but this fight is nontrivial. This Poochyena WILL Sand Attack you and WILL laugh maniacally over your cold corpse after it blinds you and murders your run. Though it is a 4HKO for MBM instead of the usual 5HKO due to the exp gained from Lyle, his fight showcases why we don't fight Lyle anyway despite the potential turn saved--he gets Sand Attack first turn, and not only that but gets Sand Attack twice more after that. Normally this would mean a slow fight at best, and certain death at worst. The best thing the Poochyena can do is Howl, but despite the three Sand Attacks, MBM only misses one time (his only miss in the entire run as far as I know), giving him a 5 turn fight; the Poochyena Howls on the last turn and he takes no damage. Very lucky.

17:43 - Interestingly MBM skips the second gym trainer before this fight. Fighting the second gym trainer brings Mudkip to lv. 13, while MBM starts the Roxanne fight at lv. 12. This is nontrivial, as with his spatk stat at lv. 12 (18; I checked), Roxanne's Geodude is a very bad damage range:

0 SpA Mudkip Water Gun vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Geodude: 28-40 (75.6 - 108.1%) -- 6.3% chance to OHKO*

However, had he fought the second gym trainer and leveled up to lv. 13, the OHKO would have been guaranteed (assuming the highest spatk IV possible, which with 18 spatk at lv. 12 is a 16 IV--pretty mediocre).

Also, as a speculative sidenote, there is a way that this fight can go very fast--the fabled "magic crit" on the Nosepass. Roxanne has two potions, so since Water Gun is a mere 3HKO on the Nosepass and since she will heal anywhere below 50% HP, the fight is drawn out by her healing; however, if you crit the Nosepass on the second turn, it will KO her outright and not allow her to heal. In my opinion, if the rest of the run in all its godlike RNG glory were combined with a magic crit, it would immediately arouse suspicion. Thus, what better way to counteract this than by just taking an average, run-of-the-mill Roxanne fight? Just a thought.

*Note that all damage ranges here will take into account all relevant EVs and badge boosts, but for this particular example neither are applicable since he has gained no spatk EVs at this point and the spatk boosting badge isn't acquired until the seventh gym.

25:37 - Here I want to talk about Granite Cave as a whole. This run requires an Abra to complete quickly, as its Teleport allows the player to traverse large sections of the map instantaneously before acquiring Fly. Because Abra has a 10% encounter rate and only about a 40% chance to be caught in a Great Ball at full HP (and must be caught at full HP due to its ability to flee with Teleport), you can imagine that this is quite the reset-heavy segment. I want to emphasize that though this is arguably the single biggest choke point in the run outside of maybe Tate and Liza, any Sapphire runner who has reset enough times has gotten all manner of Abra catches--first-encounter-first catch, third encounter, tenth encounter, 21st encounter, etc. It's somewhat of a joke in the community that "the whole run is Abra", and that's not exactly an exaggeration. So, in the same vein as the Nosepass magic crit aside that I made above, I want to point out that, if combined with the kind of luck that I will outline for the rest of the run, a first encounter, first catch Abra would be EXTREMELY suspicious. However, MBM does us one better and gets second encounter Abra. Keep in mind that this virtually only loses him about ten seconds--if that--as he has to gain at least a little bit of experience in the cave in order to evolve before leaving Dewford Town. It effectively accomplishes the same ideal scenario as a first encounter Abra, which is that he is then able to Repel through the rest of the cave after getting enough exp, then Escape Rope to the entrance after talking to Steven. Very, very lucky.

27:57 - Another very trolly fight. With current strats, we actually evolve in the cave itself, allowing us to skip this fight until later or, at the very least, fight it as a Marshtomp. This is largely due to the fact that we assume we're not going to get perfect Abra, that most of the encounters in Granite Cave are easy OHKO's for Mudkip, especially in Torrent (Aron, Geodude, Zubat), and that fighting the Battle Girl in the gym is faster later when you come back to fight Brawly and can OHKO her Meditite with a single Mud Shot. For MBM, not only does he take on the Meditite as a Mudkip, with dangerously low HP, but he tanks one Confusion, doesn't get confused, and gets Bide on the very next turn (when another Confusion would have killed him), essentially giving him the fight for free.  I want to emphasize again that none of this is exactly crazy and could totally happen "for real", but when combined when everything else in the run it just makes you wonder. Also of note is that the Meditite can waste significant time by using Detect, which is especially worse when you only 3HKO her (like MBM), since she could technically alternate turns with Detect to avoid it failing (this has happened to me). None of this befalls MBM.

As a point of reference for anyone actually familiar with the run, MBM gets on Briney's boat to leave Dewford at 29:12 RTA, and that's WITH fighting the Battle Girl AS A MUDKIP. It's hard to say that this is totally unheard of (my best Briney 2 split is around 28:45, but I skipped the Battle Girl in that segment), but it is an absurdly good time that happens once in a blue moon. Combined with his rather lackluster Roxanne split (fighting Lyle honestly wastes a bunch of time), this means that his Briney 2 split is based almost completely on Abra. Just food for thought.

29:40 - Nothing exactly happens here, but I want to point out that MBM picks up nothing on the beach here. There are two hidden items on the beach, a Revive and an Ether, the latter of which we stopped picking up in favor of instead getting the Leppa berries before Rustboro, but the Revive is very important because it serves as a crucial run-saver in the event that you get screwed really hard on any one of a few different potentially run-killing fights. In the same vein as a lot of safe strats throughout the run, MBM skips it completely--almost as if he knows he won't need it. It could be argued that he simply "yolo'd" as you might call it, saving the time he would take picking it up (~10 sec if that), but that's honestly just blatantly stupid in a run like Sapphire unless you want to reset 10,000 times or have a death wish. Of more serious note is that he doesn't get the Soft Sand either, an item that plays a crucial role in a few later fights, at least the way the run's strats are currently conceived, that he just conveniently doesn't end up needing.

32:26 - The first shopping trip. This is very important because I think it quite succinctly sums up just what's so fishy about this run. The current "official" route suggests buying at least 8 Super Potions at this mart. That's because there are several major fights before the next healing item purchase in Lavaridge. It also allows you to skip the center before fighting Wattson. MBM only buys 4, which some runners have suggested is better. This is problematic because it requires near perfect luck on Rival 2, Mauville City Gym, and the first Archie fight, which is kind of a lot to ask. Pros and cons aside, MBM buys 4, and this plays into a bit of what I consider to be the most suspicious part of the run.

33:27 - Once considered the premiere run-ender, the rival 2 fight has been made significantly less scary by new strats which utilize Soft Sand. By evolving in Granite Cave and getting ~100 exp points more (possibly even slightly less than that I believe), Marshtomp will have just enough exp to grow to lv. 18 after KOing May's Wailmer. At lv. 18 with Soft Sand equipped, Mud Shot is a 2HKO. This requires you to tank one Absorb from full HP (a crit will kill), hit a Mud Shot, then due to the speed drop you will be able to outspeed on the next turn and KO.

MBM, however, uses the old strat: Rock Tomb. The principal is the same: Set up 2 X Attacks and 1 X Speed on the Wailmer, heal to full, then 2HKO with Rock Tomb. The problem is that at 80 acc, you only have a 64% chance to hit both of them and not die, while Mud Shot raises the odds to ~90%. That's the first very lucky thing about MBM's rival 2 fight.

The second thing to note is that May's Wailmer knows Growl. This is very problematic, as getting Growl completely wastes one X Attack so you have to use an extra (we usually have one backup X Attack just in case this happens). But if she Growls twice, you're sort of out of luck. Now, this would be damning if it weren't for the fact that Wailmer seems to only use Growl if Marshtomp is at 2/3 HP or higher; anything below that and she will use Water Gun, or the best option, Splash. For this reason, we NEVER enter rival 2 at full health. Usually around 1/2 HP is safest so that even a first turn crit Water Gun won't knock you out. MBM on the other hand uses 1 Super Potion right before the fight, which ordinarily means certain death. But of course, being MBM, he gets superb luck despite this apparent blunder--2 Water Guns and a Splash. All things considered, he uses only 1 Super Potion on the fight, which I want to emphasize is VERY lucky, because after he heals to full in preparation for the Grovyle, he's lucky enough to get yet another Splash from the Wailmer at just the right time. Again, this is far from unheard of, but combined with the rest of the run is almost hilarious. Then, as stated earlier, he still has only a 64% chance to actually hit both Rock Tombs against the Grovyle, but encounters no difficulty there. Keeping count of Super Potions, this means he has used 2 of his total 4--one before the rival 2 fight and one during.

As another sort of sidenote, I could comment on his outdated shopping route, as he takes the mart in Mauville and a few other places that we have since cut out. This would be purposeless since it doesn't exhibit any seemingly game-breaking luck or anything, but should serve to underscore the fact that he is using older, slower strats across the board that would require many more resets than current strats already require (e.g. Rock Tomb strats on rival 2).

36:43 - Here he takes a center that we skip, allowing him to avoid burning another Super Potion, which is vital for his run because otherwise he would be dangerously low.

37:59 - The second Battle Girl of the run is just as trolly. Though there's virtually no fear of death in this fight, the Meditite can waste time and PP with Detect. Best pattern is first turn Bide--which is exactly what MBM gets.

43:07 - Another potential run-ender is Cooltrainer Brooke, aka Crueltrainer Brooke aka CTB. This fight requires 1 X Attack to net the OHKO on her Roselia, which you must set up on her lead Wingull. Similar to rival 2, you don't really want to enter this fight at full HP or the Wingull is highly likely to use Growl. In this case I won't say that MBM got SUPER lucky, as he does have 3 backup X Attacks to use in the event that he got Growl, but at the same time, he gets lucky enough not to have to use them at all. Wingull Wing Attacks twice and MBM wins the fight.

48:45 - The Archie 1 fight is not particularly foreboding, but perfect luck is hard to come by. Under ideal RNG, you lead with Zigzagoon and set up Guard Spec. on the first turn. Mightyena will always Bite to knock it out. Then the ideal pattern is all Sand Attack from the Mightyena, as you want to be at as high of HP as possible for the last Pokemon, Sharpedo, which can do over half your health with Crunch. Guard Spec. protects you from the accuracy drops, but Bite will do enough damage to where, combined with the damage taken from the Golbat, you will potentially need to use as many as 2 or 3 Super Potions in this fight.

MBM uses what would have been his second to last Super Potion to heal to full before this fight--if it weren't for the fact that the item that his Zigzagoon picked up was an extra Super Potion. That alone isn't completely insane, but because of the kind of luck he gets on the Archie 1 fight (1 Sand Attack from the Mightyena, while Archie conveniently doesn't use any Super Potions to heal the Golbat, which he frequently does), he only ends up having to use one Super Potion during the fight. That leaves him with EXACTLY 1 Super Potion left after the fight, which he needs to use to heal to full before fighting Flannery--the Super Potion that his Zig picked up. Very, VERY lucky. Note too that he had enough money in Slateport to buy more Super Potions but simply chose not to…almost as if he had planned ahead for the Super Potion count to be perfect.

What you have to recognize here is that this is not just about one event going well. I think this example quite effectively underscores the nature of the luck in this run. That is to say, not only did one thing have to go just right for the Super Potion count to work out, and not even two things, but THREE--he had to get superb luck on Rival 2 (even though he went in with a suicidal full amount of HP), AND get a Super Potion pickup, AND get just the right luck on Archie 1, which has been known to troll just as hard as the rest of them. This example in particular is something that makes me highly suspicious of the run.

52:17 - The Flannery fight is normally not much of a problem, but it has the potential to be scary if you end up in the wrong situation. You require an X Attack to 2HKO the Torkoal, which is important because it knows Attract. Thus, the only way of getting attracted, provided you don't miss anything, is for the Torkoal to use Attract on the first turn that it's out, which is definitely far from unheard of.

First of all, here's another example of old, unnecessary, and in this case very risky strats. MBM heals to full with his last Super Potion (the one picked up by Zigzagoon), then equips the Pecha Berry, which is a self-cure for poison. The only thing that Flannery has that can poison you is her FIRST Slugma, which knows Smog, but the second one doesn't. Thus, since you can OHKO both Slugma's even without the X Attack, you can avoid getting poisoned altogether if you only set up on the second Slugma, which can only use like Light Screen or Sunny Day or something. MBM apparently doesn't know this. That's bad, because we equip the Cheri Berry here instead, and that's because we really want the Torkoal to use Body Slam rather than Attract, and Body Slam has a 30% chance to paralyze. I'm completely baffled by what happens next.

Because of when he took the center (before Wattson), he only has 1 Mud Shot PP going into this fight. Note too that, as I said earlier, he skips the Ether on the beach, which is hidden, but he also skips the other Ether that we used to pick up, which is in plain sight in Petalburg Woods and that I know he had to have known about. This means that he's required to conserve PP in this fight and KO each Slugma with a Rock Tomb instead, both of which he hits without missing. On the Torkoal, he Rock Tombs once, gets paralyzed by Body Slam, cutting his speed and forcing him to tank one more hit. The second Body Slam leaves him at 3 HP, after which he proceeds to not get fully paralyzed AND not miss the final Mud Shot. It's worth noting that if the Torkoal had paralyzed him and then attracted him, he would have almost certainly been completely screwed. Also, the ONLY reason that he has a single Mud Shot PP left is not just that he didn't miss any up til that point--that alone isn't THAT insane--but he didn't get Detect from the Meditite either. Combine that with the fact that he didn't even pick up the Ether that he HAD to have known about just as backup in the very likely event that he would miss at least one Mud Shot or get Detect at least one time, and you have yourself a very puzzling Flannery fight.

It's things like what I discussed above that make me really question the run. It's not JUST that he got insane luck--that would be required for any WR run in this category that was worth its salt. It's that he played as if he KNEW things were going to work out for him and that he wouldn't need to use any backup strats. One might argue that he just did that to save time, that he avoided getting the Ethers because it would waste time, etc., but I call bullshit. It takes 10 secs tops to pick up one of those Ethers. Not buying it.

54:20 - He buys 8 Energy Roots, which is pretty standard, but doesn't buy a single Heal Powder, which we use in the current route to wake up from Slaking's Yawn as well as potentially Lunatone's Hypnosis. He has enough money to buy at least two and could sell Overheat to buy more, but choose not to. We used to buy Awakenings in Petalburg instead, but as I'll point out later, he doesn't even do that. Very fishy.

58:07 - Another shopping trip that we've since cut out. Here he stocks up for the Norman fight but buys not a single Awakening.

58:40 - The beginning of the most unforgiving gym in the run outside of Mossdeep. The current strat is to equip the Chesto Berry for this fight, as a Sing from Delcatty means you waste a turn waking up (presumably with the Awakening…that he doesn't have) which just gives her another chance to use Attract, a huge timeloss (read: a FUCKING HUGE timeloss). Instead he gets the Sing miss which, while not unlikely given its poor accuracy, is just really goddamn lucky for him.

59:30 - Another potentially rough fight. The Linoone uses X Defend on the first turn, which means you get a free Mud Shot. The reason why we take the Defense room now instead of the Zero-Reduction room is because if you're not able to drop Linoone's speed with Mud Shots, then he can potentially lock you down with Headbutt flinches. The problem is, even on the best of speed, the Linoone usually can still outspeed you after one Mud Shot, meaning he has at least one turn where he has a chance to waste time (and HP) with a flinch. A second Mud Shot will make sure you have priority. Now, MBM's kip had very good speed at lv. 5, so he has a high IV; however, after doing the calculation (factoring in badge boost), it seems that with the Linoone at -1 speed, it's actually a speed tie. Luckily for MBM, he doesn't have to worry about getting flinched…because he just so happens to win the speed tie on the second turn, allowing him to get off another Mud Shot and ensure he will outspeed for the rest of the fight. Very lucky.

1:00:38 - This is where his Lonely nature comes into play. This Zangoose is particularly dangerous because it will essentially always use Slash on the second turn after setting up a Dire Hit first turn. This gives him a very high likelihood to crit. With good defense, this isn't too problematic, and a 3HKO works out perfectly fine. However, because of the fact that a crit can kill a Marshtomp with bad enough defense, this is another scenario in which current strats utilize the Soft Sand--on good enough attack, Mud Shot with Soft Sand will net a 2HKO on the Zangoose, stopping him from attacking at all. However, MBM doesn't have Soft Sand, so his best bet is a 3HKO with Mud Shot followed by two Strengths. The downside is that, given his Marshtomps defensive stats (75 HP and 39 defense), a critical hit Slash is a guaranteed OHKO:

0+ Atk Zangoose Slash vs. 0 HP / 0- Def Marshtomp on a critical hit: 88-105 (117.3 - 140%) -- guaranteed OHKO

This means that if he takes a hit from the Zangoose, which is very likely to crit him, his run is dead. Recall too how I mentioned it's nice to have the Revive from Slateport beach as backup, the same Revive that MBM just skips right over. In this situation, without Soft Sand, I would say MBM's in quite the pickle…except he crits the Zangoose with the first Mud Shot, allowing for an easy 2HKO, no damage taken at all. Very, very, very lucky.

1:01:35 - Not much to say about this fight except that it just goes perfect for him. Any crit you take means death, so it goes without saying that any single segment run would have a critless Norman fight. His low defense makes this a somewhat slower fight because for some reason he only brings 1 X Defend, while we make use of 2 on a -def nature. This forces him to burn 6 of his 8 Energy Roots. He also wins a speed tie with the Vigoroth and  manages not to get critted by Slash where it definitely would have been much wiser to heal. Misses nothing, even the Rock Tomb which he uses to avoid putting the Slaking into heal range. Otherwise, standard deathless Norman fight.

1:07:00 - I just want to point something out here. The spinner that he passes here, Bird Keeper Chester, is not exactly a fast fight, and as far as spinners go he's decidedly difficult to manipulate. That requires dismounting the bike. At the very least though, with the run already being spinnerless (at least with MBM's route--he hits Lyle on purpose), I find it really hard to believe that he actually went all out past Chester without stopping and waiting. He was already looking upwards, but could turn on any frame, and waiting a moment would just cost a few seconds on what he had to have been aware was godlike pace. Similar to using more consistent strats that would cost mere seconds but save the entire run in the event of an emergency. Speedrunning isn't about playing to the best case scenario, especially when it comes to Pokemon.

1:10:21 - The rival 3 fight, while much safer than rival 2, is still potentially dangerous/slow. On good speed, Marshtomp can outspeed the Grovyle with just one X Speed, while 2 X Attacks are necessary to net an OHKO with Strength (sometimes 3 X Attacks). Setting up on the Numel isn't always a walk in the park though--it's damage output is highly variable, as Magnitude can range anywhere from 4 to 10. Combine this with Focus Energy, and a crit Magnitude could ruin your day, especially with a -def nature. It's also not just about potentially dying, but also that taking heavy damage while setting up wastes time and resources, and at this point in the run MBM has only 2 Energy Roots left due to all the damage he took on Norman. He cannot buy more healing items until Mossdeep. Despite this predicament (or perhaps because of it), he gets very lucky on the Numel--Magnitude 6 into 2 Take Downs, one of which misses.

1:13:00 - Same as the other Bird Keeper. MBM just breezes past this spinner as if he doesn't realize what kind of ridiculous pace he's on. Any runner of this game this far ahead of any known time would never have just rushed past like that.

1:14:28 - Adding to the list of damage ranges that he doesn't miss, the second Zubat of the three in this battle can survive a Strength. This is the calc for MBM's stats:

0+ Atk Marshtomp Strength vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Zubat: 62-74 (96.8 - 115.6%) -- 87.5% chance to OHKO

For this reason we use Rock Tomb here. As always, it is not unusual that Strength OHKO'd in this situation, but it is still amongst all the other things in this run that could have gone wrong but simply didn't.

1:17:32 - Yet another damage range. For whatever reason MBM's Marshtomp is only lv. 32 here, whereas normally you'd like to be lv. 33, allowing you to use the three Rare Candies before even entering the gym in order to evolve and easily OHKO this Doduo with Strength. MBM, however, instead of even going for Rock Tomb strats, decides to use Surf. And the calc says:

0 SpA Marshtomp Surf vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Doduo: 54-64 (84.3 - 100%) -- 6.3% chance to OHKO

In this case, he could literally only KO if he got exactly the maximum damage possible. Pretty damn lucky. It's also of note that the Rock Tomb is a guaranteed OHKO.

1:19:53 - MBM uses his second to last Energy Root before this fight and also equips a Cheri Berry to guard against paralysis from Altaria's Dragonbreath, whereas we normally equip a Persim Berry to protect against Pelipper's Supersonic. Current strats use an X Attack at the beginning of this fight to guarantee a 2HKO with Strength on the Altaria and the Pelipper. Instead, MBM Strengths right away, critting the Swellow after getting a first turn Double Team (hint: would not have OHKO'd). He proceeds to Rock Tomb then Strength the Pelipper and doesn't miss. Pelipper can waste time by using Protect or could potentially have confused him with Supersonic, but neither of these things happen. He then 2HKO's the Skarmory with Surf, taking a Sand Attack in the process. This is problematic for him because he didn't X Attack and will have to 2HKO the Altaria with Rock Tomb instead. He now has ~28% chance to hit both consecutively, which is precisely what occurs. How lucky.

1:24:45 - Standard fight except for the lucky timesaving crit he gets on the Mightyena: 0 SpA Swampert Surf vs. 0 HP / 0- SpD Mightyena: 67-81 (77.9 - 94.1%) -- guaranteed 2HKO, meaning the crit mattered.

1:26:52 - Here he buys the minimum number of Max Repels, 4 Revives, and 4 Hyper Potions. I have no words for this except that that is an extremely low number to be buying before Tate and Liza, the single biggest chokepoint in the entire run. If you're on pace like nobody has ever seen, why on earth would you buy only 4 Hyper Potions?

1:28:42 - This fight is the bane of every Sapphire runner's existence. It is also the only real thing Castform is useful for, being that Tate and Liza are the only required double battle in the whole game. For starters, we normally take the Mystic Water from Castform and equip it to Swampert to ensure we're doing as much damage as possible with Surf. MBM has instead equipped the Chesto Berry (in the repel menu after leaving the Aqua Hideout), which he conveniently didn't burn against Norman earlier. He does this presumably because he has no Heal Powders or Awakenings, only a single Full Heal that his Zigzagoon picked up earlier should Lunatone put him to sleep with Hypnosis, which happens to be the exact move a runner is praying for when fighting T&L. What follows is a near perfect Tate and Liza fight. Solrock behaves and uses Sunny Day twice, which is the best possible thing is can do. Lunatone uses Calm Mind, which costs an extra turn to knock it out, but is better than Light Screen, or the worst thing and the thing that it seems to do almost every single time, which is use Psychic on Castform--a guaranteed OHKO no matter how bulky he is. After that, Lunatone uses Hypnosis twice and misses them both. Voila.

I want to take time here to note that though first turn Psychic on Castform is literally THE worst thing that can happen, it is by no means an automatic death sentence. I have seen runners not only recover from this turn of events, but even have a very fast fight by getting perfect luck from there on out. It is for that very reason that it makes no sense why MBM would only buy 4 Hyper Potions before the fight, as even with the slowest, trolliest, most near-death T&L fight possible, he might have lost all of about 2-3 minutes, and considering the pace the run was on at the time, there is no runner in their right mind who would have played so risky. Keep in mind too that at this point in the run, money is not an issue--the player has a bunch of unnecessary TMs they can sell for more money, so getting 4-5 extra Hyper Potions should have been no problem at all. Not to mention it's impossible not to pick up the NUGGET sitting in front of the Master Ball in Aqua Hideout. The only way you could justify buying so few Hyper Potions to me is if you had stocked up hard on Energy Roots in Lavaridge (we're talking at least 10) and had gotten good enough luck to where you still had half of them left by the time you get to Mossdeep. Seriously, this part of the run is just ridiculous. The funniest part? These are the last healing items he buys for the rest of the run.

1:33:25 - First Sharpedo is a damage range, but he doesn't miss it: 0+ Atk Swampert Mud Shot vs. 0 HP / 0- Def Sharpedo: 99-117 (96.1 - 113.5%) -- 75% chance to OHKO. The Mightyena can't be OHKO'd without a crit, which he (shockingly) doesn't get. He does break through confusion after two Swaggers, however.

1:35:36 - The second Archie fight is honestly often pretty slow. This is usually due to the fact that your PP is very low after several hard fights leading up to this point, though backup Leppa Berries can be useful in mitigating this issue--of course, MBM doesn't have those. What he does have is Earthquake after picking it up right before Archie, teaching it over Mud Shot. This is an option that seemingly few Sapphire runners take, mostly because it's not that much of a leg up over Mud Shot, and because it's mostly only useful against Sharpedo anyway, and only if you get Swaggered (Mightyena's Intimidate will drop your attack to -1, so the only way you'll be dealing any damage with either Mud Shot or Earthquake is if your get the +2 boost from Swagger). This is prime instance where the situation seems artificially concocted. Generally we Surf the Mightyena and the Crobat-- rather than Mud Shot or Strength--because of the Intimidate drop. This is problematic because a trolly T&L fight can leave you with low Surf PP, and in MBM's case, he used it in a few situations where we don't (against the Doduo in Winona's gym, second turn against the Xatu in Mossdeep Gym, etc.), so he only has 5 Surf PP going into this fight. Taking into account the number of Super Potions Archie tends to use, and it's likely he would have had a much slower Archie 2 fight…except for the fact that he gets Swagger first turn. This allows him to easily 2HKO the Crobat with Strength after finishing off the Mightyena, though it does waste one turn by healing (which is honestly unavoidable). Then, despite being getting Confuse Ray from the Crobat, he is able to break through confusion not just there, but also against the Sharpedo when he snaps out and it Swaggers again. If he had hit himself in confusion against the Sharpedo, he most certainly would have had to Revive. Here again we see another instance where the run wouldn't have even died if he had gotten just slightly unlucky--hitting himself in confusion once out of like four turns--but, miraculously, he gets just lucky enough that not a second is lost. Hmm.


1:42:59 - The last gym battle of the game is by far the most straightforward outside of Wattson and Brawly, but that doesn't mean it can't lose you time. Attaching a Persim Berry before the fight will get you out of one bout of confusion, but nearly every one of Wallace's Pokemon has a small chance to confuse you. First we set up an X Special to guarantee a 2HKO with Shock Wave on the Milotic, for those runners who don't use Thunderbolt strats (not worth explaining here because MBM uses Shock Wave anyway). MBM gets first turn Sweet Kiss from the Luvdisc, which luckily misses, meaning his Persim is still intact. The next attack from the Luvdisc is Water Pulse, which also luckily doesn't confuse.

The Seaking is a damage range: +1 0 SpA Kyogre Shock Wave vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Seaking: 128-152 (99.2 - 117.8%) -- 93.8% chance to OHKO. Of course, it goes without saying that MBM OHKO's it without incident. He also takes the Water Pulse from it without confusion. Following that, the Milotic is free, because the 2HKO is guaranteed and Water Pulse can't lose him time even if it does confuse, due to the Persim Berry still being left intact by earlier luck.

1:50:23 - Not much to say about this fight as nothing can really ever go wrong or lose you time in this fight, except getting outsped by the Gardevoir and it using Double Team. Only thing to note is that he uses Hydro Pump against the Gardevoir to avoid the Surf damage range and doesn't miss.

1:52:31 - The Sharpedo is a damage range on lower spatk, but after doing the calculation it seems MBM was guaranteed the OHKO in this particular case. Notably the Shiftry outspeeds (best I can figure this Kyogre has a Sassy nature, which is +spdef / -spe) and uses Double Team, but MBM doesn't miss the Ice Beam.

1:54:35 - Again, not much to note except that he Hydro Pumps the last Dusclops to avoid the Surf damage range and doesn't miss.

1:56:29 - Despite the E4 as a whole being fairly consistent, Glacia is by far the biggest potential timeloss. In order to net OHKO's on the Glalie and the Sealeo we set up our remaining 2 X Specials right away. Her lead Glalie always uses Hail first turn to nullify the rain, and after that she has two options: Crunch or Light Screen. The latter loses loads of time as it nerfs your damage output and causes your attacks to put her into heal range. Furthermore, because of this Kyogre's low speed, Glalie is faster and gets not just one chance to use Light Screen after using Hail, but two chances. Instead she Crunches twice.

As an interesting sidenote, consider what the best nature would be to survive on such a low number of Hyper Potions. Because the main types in the E4 are special (Dark, Ice, and Dragon), tanking hits like Glalie's Crunch is made easier by a Sassy nature. Since Crunch is the best thing she can do, you want to be taking damage, but of course as little as possible. This allows for healing once before Drake, and once before the Champion. Very convenient.

1:59:09 - This fight is normally the easiest in the whole E4, but I'm interested by how it goes for MBM. The current strat is to OHKO the Shelgon with Ice Beam first turn, then set up an X Speed on the Altaria so you can outspeed all the rest of Drake's Pokemon, preventing things like his Flygon from setting up Sandstorm, which not only wastes time but also damages you. The Shelgon knows Rock Tomb, which is why we don't set up the X Speed on him anymore. Strangely enough, MBM doesn't use an X Speed and simply Ice Beams everything straight up. This is odd because a) it means he takes significant damage--a crit would Fly from Salamence would KO Kyogre, and even taking damage at all is bad since he only has one Hyper Potion left, and b) he loses time by not outspeeding anything after Shelgon. Luckily for him, his Champion fight is about to be perfect.

2:01:56 - Steven is completely free, but there are two Pokemon that you can't OHKO with Surf: Cradily and Metagross. Cradily can be OHKO'd by Hydro Pump sometimes, but the Metagross very very hard to OHKO. Given this Kyogre's spatk stat:

0 SpA Kyogre Hydro Pump vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Cradily in Rain: 153-180 (85.4 - 100.5%) -- 6.3% chance to OHKO

Of course, MBM goes for the Hydro Pump, doesn't miss, and manages to OHKO despite requiring virtually max damage to do it. Notably he does not go for the OHKO on the Metagross and opts for the conservative 2HKO with Surf.


CONCLUSION

Overall I hope this gives readers some sense of the astronomically minuscule probability that a run containing all the aforementioned RNG, especially at such often uncannily convenient times. I understand that it is very difficult to prove or disprove the validity of a single-segment Pokemon speedrun, which is why I'm looking to the Sapphire community as well as the Pokemon speedrunning community at large to examine the evidence and hopefully endorse my proposal that we ask MBM to explain the events leading up to this run and his mindset during it. Major points to take away from this:

-Setting aside run-saving RNG, there is a great deal of unfortunate RNG that can occur in Pokemon speedruns that simply loses time, and there is nothing that any runner can do about that. In MBM's case, we see that almost none of this "slow" RNG takes place. He misses exactly two moves in the entire run (I misspoke earlier): Once against the Aqua Grunt Poochyena after being Sand Attacked three times, and once against Drake's Salamence while it is using Fly. Any organically completed single-segment Pokemon speedrun will contain these types of timelosses, but MBM's run quite simply contains NONE.
-Not only does he get superb luck, but his decisions seem to assume that he will. This is evident in the godsend Super Potion that his Zigzagoon picks up just before Archie 1, allowing him just the leeway that he needed before fighting Flannery. On godlike pace he simply breezes past spinners that we know to be highly unpredictable, seemingly without a care in the world despite the fact that he is on pace to beat the WR at the time by over ten minutes (and there is no way he was not fully aware of that).
-This attempt was apparently captured offstream. When I posted on the video asking whether he had splits going during the run, he replied that he "pretty much always" has wsplit open when record runs locally. If this is the case, I see no reason why he wouldn't record the splits right along with the video of the run. This would make it easy to look back on and analyze later, as well as make it easier for viewers to more actively follow the run as it unfolds.
-He uses old strats that save virtually no time and instead introduce such unforgiving situations that it would take more than just "countless resets" to produce a run like this. In particular the fact that he skips Soft Sand requires that he play very risky at times and rely on Rock Tomb instead. Moreover, he uses Rock Tomb far more than current strats demand even when he doesn't have to, and the fact that not a single one misses is alone enough to arouse anyone's suspicion, I think. In addition, these many resets would undoubtedly have produced other, slightly less-unbelievably-godlike runs that he most certainly would have shared if they existed, whether or not they beat werster's WR at the time (as I said earlier, there were only 4 times on the leaderboards at the time, and also I have have found no evidence of any of MBM's pre-WR PB's).
-Finally, there are a few extreme situations that I have pointed out that really make you scratch your head in amazement once you crunch the numbers. In particular, if he did not crit the Zangoose in Norman's gym, he almost certainly would have died to a crit Slash. That's not just suspicious, it's downright obvious.

As far as my reasons for attempting to expose this: While I am determined to at least beat werster's time (the best realistic time on the leaderboards, even if it too is fake), I'm not hellbent on claiming WR, but find it extremely perturbing that one of my favorite games of all time, and the game that I currently have the most expertise in, could be being blatantly misrepresented as a speedgame to not just people inside the Pokemon speedruns community, but those outside who may want to join someday as well. The type of play in the current WR run does not show Sapphire for the kind of run it really is, rather showing it off miraculous luck in situations that should otherwise have spelled death for any runner who was playing as recklessly as MBM seems to have been playing. It also doesn't not speak to the integrity of the Pokemon speedrunning community as an organization of competitive gamers for a WR run so blatantly manipulated to be allowed to stand without scrutiny. As a group we must hold ourselves to a higher standard.

So what am I asking for? Just your support. If I can gather the support of at least the whole of the Sapphire community, and potentially even build from there, then I would like to approach MBM with these concerns and let him have a say for himself. First he would need to explain mostly why no other recorded runs exist between his claimed previous 2:26:xx PB and the current WR, as well as why no splits were recorded with this run (or with his 1:58 Yellow run, for that matter).

When I first started writing this I was still unsure as to whether or not I was jumping to conclusions, but after systematically going through the entire run and working through it all in my head, I feel very confident that this run is heavily manipulated in some way or another. It would take a lot to convince me at this point that it isn't.

-G_Heinz