twitch link - https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1047079552

Hello everyone, this is the MMX 100% WR speedrun I managed to get back today. I'll try and make this post informative about the speedrun as a whole to get more people into it. I'll write briefly about each individual stage in the run and what pitfalls runners can face on it.

Intro stage - A runner's success in this stage is both skill based and luck based. Most of your time save will be determined by how well you can mash the blue bumblebee looking mini bosses in the beginning, the faster you kill them the better. towards the end of the stage we also try and surf on the car enemies to propel X forward slightly (we call this trick "TAS cars"). At the end of the stage there is a ship that drops car enemies, you want to take them out as soon as possible, I do a trick we call "Baha Blast" that takes out the last one as he drops from the ship (hard trick). Finally we're at the boss "Vile", this is one of those boss fights you are scripted to lose so coming here with 3 or less health is key, I got an average vile this run.

Chill Penguin Stage - This stage is divided by the 1st half, the walking section, and the post capsule part where you get the ability to dash. Sadly in the post capsule hallway I attempted a tough trick and took a hit I didn't want, then I made a slight mistake climbing up to the snowball section near the end of the stage. I would consider this small time loss a bad stage, but really it wasn't that bad. As for the boss fight, he gave me good RNG, most bosses in this game are RNG heavy and Chill Penguin is one of the big ones. The good RNG offset my bad stage.

Boomer Kuwanger stage - This stage was damn near perfect but the boss didn't play so nice, he was a bit worst then usual with his teleports. Hes not a huge RNG boss but this was a particularly bad Kuwanger because not only did he teleport (which you don't want), he teleported to the other side of the arena frequently.

Sting Chameleon stage - Going to this stage as the 3rd Maverick boss defines the name of the infamous MMX speedrun route I am using called "C3" or "Chameleon Third". This is the most optimal route to take in the speedrun but it comes with the most risk. At the beginning I have to perform a glitch called a "Phantom Grab" using the boomerrang weapon I got from the previous boss in order to obtain the heart from the underground cave near the beginning. Normally the player would need to defeat Launch Octopus (which causes this cave to be flooded making the heart easy to grab) in order to grab the heart. However since I did not defeat the boss we need to use this phantom grab glitch to grab the heart. At top level you only get one shot at this glitch and you need the grass hopper enemy before the cave to drop an item. I'll put a full description of how the glitch works near the end of this post. To describe the level itself, I got 1st try grasshopper item, managed to get the phantom grab, but the mini boss (the green robot) didn't go so well for me. Aside from that the stage was decent.

Storm Eagle stage - This stage is another one where we have to use the phantom grab glitch, this time instead of a power up, we are grabbing an in game platform that gets stuck in our boomerrang that helps us fly across the stage (we call this glitch "magic carpet). Overall the stage went well. The boss himself is one of the big RNG gates of the run. An ideal storm eagle will never fly off screen and dive. Sadly for me he dived 3 times, while not good, its not the end of the world.

Flame Mammoth stage - This stage went well for the most part, I failed a frame perfect trick in the beginning which caused me to have to take the bottom route which is barely a time loss. I attempted another phantom grab to pick up the heart which I failed so I had to a backup strat which due to some bad luck with a big ammo drop costed me some time. The rest of the stage was good besides that.

Revisit/Spark Mandrill stage - Top players combine these 2 splits. Revisit is going back to Chill Penguin's stage to get the heart we previously couldn't get because we didn't have the fire weapon we just got from Flame Mammoth. Not much to say here, it turned out great. As for the Spark Mandrill part of the stage, very complex stage but turned out great, I think the boss fight could have been slightly better but this split actually was a gold for me.

Armored Armadillo stage - A huge time save in this stage is using the phantom grab glitch to get a sub tank trapped behind a wall that we normally have to wait for an enemy to mine out for us. I went against my better instincts and decided to NOT go for the trick this time (saves me about 3 seconds vs my splits I think). the rest of the stage went well and the boss gave me the 2nd best pattern which is good. Armored Armadillo is a big RNG gate, he could roll for a very long time, you want him to stop rolling ASAP.

Launch Octopus stage - The stage itself went very well for me, the boss fight gave me the best pattern but I missed two shots on him which costed me some time. I got lucky here but executed the boss a bit poorly. Most of the tech is pretty self explanatory.

Hadouken Dillo Revisit stage - What makes this catagory 100% is the fact you get the Hadouken from Street Fighter as an easter egg weapon which one shot kills every boss except the final one. Basically you have to visit the cliff right before the Dillo boss door a total of 5 times. I decided to elect to go for the aforementioned phantom grab glitch to get the subtank this time around and I got it, which is a huge improvement over my old PB. Everything else went well.

Sigma 1 stage - Most of the stage is self explanatory but besides the kuwnager refight trolling me a bit and the spider boss not being the greatest (lots of cris-crosses), it was a good stage.

Simga 2 stage - This stage pretty much goes the same every time, the main defining factor is the ultimate RNG boss in this game Rangda Bangda (giant face boss). In my case I managed to get the god pattern.

Sigma 3 - This stage is defined by skipping the armored armadillo boss refight at the beginning by pushing yourself into the boss door before the camera aligns properly tricking the game into thinking you've killed the boss. And the other big trick which is a hadouken in the air by sticking a charged ice sled into the wall vs Sting Chameleon. I managed to land both tricks. However I went the extra mile and did a very risky 1.2 second saving strat in the Spark Mandrill refight which payed off in my favor. The rest of the stage went as planned and even golded.

Sigma 4 stage - This is basically an upwards climb and the final three bosses. Dog, Sigma, Velguarder Sigma. Dog and Sigma are easy kills to the Hadouken, however I got a bit of bad luck on the final form by having him claw block me. Its also worth nothing this form cannot be insta-killed by the hadouken.

I finished the boss off and got my final time which the splits say 34:51.11, however upon retiming and frame counting it seems I started my timer early and I THINK I just barely got the 34:50. Sadly my goal was 34:4x, so i'm ONE SECOND OFF. Still an amazing run.

Phantom Grab - So there is a glitch used in MMX called the "Phantom Grab", What you see in Storm Eagle's stage is an application of the Phantom Grab. To explain a phantom grab: There are certain objects in the game that for whatever reason are programmed to be able to exist in X's boomerang from Boomer Kuwanger. Traditionally these objects are Health, ammo, 1ups, hearts, subtanks as these can be normally picked up by the boomerang. Apparently there are also items that can exist in the boomerang such as certain platforms and even boss doors. With that in mind, if you grab an object in your boomerang and let your boomerang come back to you at the same exact frame another one of the above items loads, it instead loads into your boomerang. To explain what you saw in Storm Eagle, I grab the heart at the exact frame one of the platforms to the right loads and it loads the platform into my boomerang. Since the platform is too big, the boomerang cannot return to X, X simply goes flying because the boomerang is trying to return to him but can't.

Thank you for reading, if anybody has any questions about the run I'll do my best to answer them for you. If you're an aspiring runner to this game please reach out to me and I'll get the resources to teach you.