Q: What are you trying to do?
A: Beat the Elite Four on a fresh savegame without the use of any glitches. Saving, soft-resetting and RNG Manipulation is fair game.
Q: What are you playing on?
A: I playing on a PAL-Gamecube with a Gameboy Player. My capture card is a gv-usb2 that I imported from Japan. I'm using my GBA SP as a controller.
Q: Why pick the girl? And why the weird names?
A: I pick the girl because it influences the 2nd and 3rd Rival fight (Brendan leads with Slugma, followed by Grovyle). 1 character names are faster, because the game draws each character in a textbox individually. I use different characters so I can tell the difference easier. M for myself (short for Mitsunee), I for Mudkip (because funny texts :3), C for Castform, A for Rayquaza.
Q: Why do you keep resetting after entering the first battle?
A: I'm trying to hit a certain frame (17.1 seconds after soft-resetting) to get a specific Mudkip. The checks I do during the fight are:
- Zigs gender: It is VERY unlikely (or maybe impossible) for the zigs to be female.
- Mudkip: Mudkip is male with 21 HP at lvl 5
- Nature: Naughty
- Stats: 14 Attack, 11 SpA and 10 Speed at lvl 5
Q: How do you know when to press A?
A: Stringflow made an awesome program just for this purpose called FlowTimer. I have offsets preset for manipulations for Mudkip and Abra (encounter+catching).
Q: Which Mudkips around the the frame you're trying to hit?
A:
| Frame | Nature | Gender | HP Stat | comment |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1023 | Bashful | ♀ | 21 HP | 3 frames early |
| 1024 | Timid | ♂ | 20 HP | 2 frames early |
| 1025 | Careful | ♂ | 21 HP | 1 frame early |
| 1026 | Naughty | ♂ | 21 HP | GudKip |
| 1027 | Quiet | ♂ | 21 HP | 1 frame late |
| 1028 | Naive | ♂ | 20 HP | 2 frames late |
| 1029 | Docile | ♂ | 20 HP | 3 frames late |
Q: Why Mudkip and what other Pokemon do you use?
A: Mudkip has by far the best movepool and doesn't need to evolve to consistently beat Roxanne. Abra is used for Teleport in various places (mostly Mauville, which is a nice central hub). Then I also catch a Taillow or Swablu for Fly and of course Rayquaza for a really fast endgame.
Q: Why do you enter a Pokecenter or city and leave immediatly again?
A: In Generation 3 it is enough to enter a Pokecenter to set your Teleport/Respawn hub. Entering a City is to unlock it for Fly.
Q: Why do you sometimes run or walk in weird ways around trainers or open your bag?
A: These are Spinner manips. Trainers that spin randomly or rotate react to running by looking in the approximate direction. Opening the bag or pokemon menu resets the random timer their spinning routine is based on, so I can pass safely (unless I accidentaly run).
Q: What other than failing manipulations can go wrong?
A: Quite a lot of things. Rival 1 crits can get tricky, because I skip the PC Potion. The lvl 10 Geodude has a chance to kill and it's pretty much never worth it to heal during the fight, because he's unlikely to hit. Rival 2 is a very tricky fight, because I can't afford to miss Mud Shot or get crit by Grovyle. Next up Flannery can troll with Attract. Norman's entire gym is hard. The last major trolls are Tate & Liza, followed by two boss Encounters. Or I can mess up movement...but let's hope that won't happen too much...
Q: What is WR? What is your goal?
A: see www.speedrun.com/pkmnemerald. My goal for now is sub3 and eventually will be around 2:45:xx.
