I'll Invaligate Your Aid!

Favorite Game Genre

Rea asks you what your favorite genre of video game, before cursing you to play a truly, er, "terrific" game set vaguely in that genre. In-game, these range from button mashers to hidden item searches to dice roll RNG. As an incentive, it's a fun but divisive poll that could stay competitive until the end.Options include:

All Endings

Upgrades the run to an All Endings run, requiring not one but three games to be played!

8-Color Star Guardians

Ward 40X

The long story short is that one of the bosses in the game attempts to take advantage of Dua's struggles with her own hyperphantasia -- a condition of having extremely vivid mental imagery, sometimes so vivid that it seems part of reality. The idea that she and her friends are Star Guardians who have special powers and can save the world is yet another one of her flights of fancy.Losing to this boss unlocks an otherwise optional section of the game, where Dua is trying to escape "Ward 40X." Her fellow Star Guardians take the roles of guards or fellow patients. During the battle to escape, Dua is able to manifest her supposedly "imaginary" powers, and her "real world" associates see her do so. After defeating Doctor Zojimbo, the guards unlock the front door, allowing Dua to escape back to the reality we're familiar with and continue the story of the game.The extra content is fun, and the fight aginst the Doctor in particular is pretty clever. The game as a whole is a positive, feel-good story, and any gaslighting or trivializing of mental health issues is very quickly squashed (indeed, that's the point of this bonus content). My only concern is that I'm someone who doesn't struggle with this particular issue, and am here trying to blitz through what some might consider serious or sensitive content.

Watch (some?) Cutscenes

There isn't a ton of text and plot in this game, but what's there is pretty fun! There's a wedding, lesbian buff catgirl flirting, cheesy one-liners, bad jokes, and even banter between the heroes when you fail a boss fight, though the banter would mostly be left off the table. It's not a lot, but it's a lot for a speedrun.

Costume Poll

Sentai is the default outfit.Casual is the outfit the characters use in most of the cutscenesWrestling is a special set unlocked by defeating Dwayne The Rock LobstahCatgirls turn all the gals into catgals, and the one Catgirl alien into a human. Unless you want the Catgirl to stay a Catgirl. The problem with this set is that most of the cats don't wear clothes, but one character does which makes the fact the other cats are nekkid stand out even more. Don't get it twisted, this is "why doesn't Donald Duck wear pants" levels of nudity, but still.

Wrassle a Lobstah

The fight istelf isn't optional, but -winning- the fight is optional. The speedrun would normally lose this fight as quickly as possible, the incentive would require actually winning.This fight is -really- clever, especially given the otherwise somewhat limited confines of the game. If your character is pinned, the referee will start counting to three. If one character gets pinned, you lose. You can bump the ref, Roman Reigns style, but if you do it too many times and get caught, you'll get DQ'd and the ref will one shot your entire party (the speedrun strat).You have to balance protecting your party members from being pinned, dealing damage to the boss, and interfering with the referee.

MindMaze

No Matches

Lighting a match temporarily reveals the entire mini-map for the current floor, letting you plot a route to the stairs. No matches means, well, no matches.

Topic Poll

Choose from any of the following topics. This IS an Edutainment game, but you may wish to keep the Religion or other topics off the list. This can be a 'rolling' or 'ongoing' incentive throughout the run, with the topic changing every time there is a lead change.By default, an Any% run with no category incentive does the Sports/Hobbies/Pets category, as it is by far the smallest question pool.

All Topics

Play the run with "All Topics" selected, putting the entire question database in play. How much can I memorize while prepping for the marathon?

LIT

Dark Mode

Dark Mode is unlocked by completing the Good Ending. You play as either Protagonist-Kun or Girlfriend-Chan in their "shadow" form, presumably what happens to them if you fail to attain the Good Ending. Everything is darker, and your character sort of blends into the shadows which is what makes it tougher.Additionally, each room now has a strict time limit. The less time remaining, the darker the room becomes. Speedrunners should find no additional challenge here, but there's a room or two where we're surviving by the skin of our teeth, especially in a Good Ending run.

Good Ending upgrade

Some classrooms have phones in them, and your significant other will call you periodically throughout the game. In order to unlock the best ending, you have to catch every phone call in time. After a certain number of rings, they will hang up, forcing you to reset the level. These phones are usually far out of the way.The phone calls themselves play through the Wiimote speaker, which...is AWESOME for immersion, like seriously that was the coolest thing ever when I first played this game, but it does mean the -easiest- way to capture that audio is holding the Wiimote up to the mic. The audio can also be extracted via various third party non-official methods, or I could pre-record a clean capture from the WiiMote and they can be played manually as needed on cue.

There May Be Ninety-Nine Of Us But We Have To Win In Ninety-Nine Turns!

Nuzlockeish%

Enforces the rules listed below. This requires me to show off more of the 99 characters and prevents me from relying on power picks, but it does add quite a bit of menuing to the run (as every fight requires essentially a full reset)

Don't One Shot The Dark Lord

Don't use Asim or any other one-shot strategy against the Dark Lord, and make it something of a fair fight. I haven't started to route this as an "in-run" incentive, and it's intended to be done after the main run (in order to "reset" the Nuzlocke restrictions). If I ever get it routed out, I'll update the incentive.

Link's Awakening Incentives

3-Heart Challenge

The speedrun will be completed on a romhack that disables the effects of Heart Pieces and Heart Containers, making Link stuck at a maximum of three hearts while still enabling 100% item collection.

Live A Live - IL Incentives

List of ILs/Chapters

Here's a list of all the chapters available, as well as a rough estimate. You can pick and choose what to include in the poll based on the maximum time slot available, or combine them in any way you see fit. I have an end-game save and because of the way chapters work in this game, whatever you want me to play I can play from a clean, 'New Game' start no matter what.I don't reccommend adding any of the Final Chapter options to the list, but if you do, only choose one of "Sad" or "Good" ending, as there's about 95% overlap between the two.

Live A Live - Good Ending Incentives

Character Names

All characters can be renamed and have pretty forgiving character limits. If we're doing Tiltify polls that don't allow for free-form entries, we can do a list of "themed parties."We can name the Caveman, Robot, Cowboy, Ninja, Street Fighter, Psychic, Mecha Anime Protagonist, and the Medieval Knight. You can also name the style of martial arts that one character is the master of, but importantly not the character itself (unless you want to be the master of Sabin-Fu).For themed parties, I recommend:

"All Major Endings"

Adds all of the endings stated below to the run. You can also take them 'a la carte' fashion which is why I broke them up.
Regarding the estimate: A big chunk of the Sad Ending has to be done to see the Annihilation Ending. Because of the overlap, the estimate change for adding "all endings" is less than the total for them individually.

Sad Ending

The last ~7m can be skipped, but it means skipping the cutscene behind the credits and the big sad text at the end, which is kinda what you're paying for here.Play as the Final Boss and defeat all six Protagonist-Kuns and -Chans. The world doesn't end. Far more cruelly, only the villain remains, left alone in the universe to wallow in his hate and misery.

Annihilation Ending

Play as the Final Boss, but still get defeated by one of the Protagonist-kuns or -chans. World ends in a glorious blaze of white light and fire. Tap WWBU and cast Supreme Verdict. etc.

Never End

Choose to defeat the Final Boss before he absorbs Androids 17 and 18 to turn into Perfect Cell. Because you cannot defeat the True Evil, there is no way for our adventurers to return home. True Evil continues to exist, lying dormant and awaiting its next victim.

Earthbound Incentives

Character Names

There's 4x character names, 5 characters each. There's also Pet Name, Favorite Food, and Favorite Thing that are six character each. Only the four main characters get real screen time; it may be worth leaving the others off in order to prevent diluting the donatations over too many polls.In Pokey%, Ness isn't in the party, but his name is still the file name. Add or remove him from polling as you deem fit.If using Tiltify or some other system where viewers can't enter their own options at time of donation, then we should come up with "genres" or "topics" for people to choose from, then pick names that fit the winning option.Examples include:

Buzz Buzz's Revenge

Bring Buzz Buzz (and Picky and Pokey) along for the ride when you go to fight Giygas!

All Sanctuaries

The current Pajama% speedrun only requires taking on one of the eight Sanctuary Guardians. This incentive would require using the older Pajama% route that would take on all eight major bosses in the game before Giygas.

Post-Game Showcase (Pajama% Version)

After the Pajama% speedrun is over, I can showcase what happens if Pajama% hops on a bicycle. The showcase itself is only a few minutes, but there is a bit of a travel time to go and get the bicycle because of the route used for the speedrun.

Post-Game Showcase (Pokey% Version, Romhack Required)

There's a huge laundry list of things that I can show off, but all of them require a romhack to access the debug menu (or we have to add roughly 45 minutes to the speedrun). All of this could be completed on a vanilla cartridge if time was not a factor, though.After completing a Ness-less playthrough of the game, you have Paula and Pokey in your party for the post-game. You still have the option of walking Paula home or not; if you do, she will naturally leave the party. What happens if you have no active real party members in your party? Well...it depends, but something ridiculous is bound to happen!Assuming that that first ridiculousness doesn't crash your game, what if you then decided to walk home to roll the credits? Well...which home? You're playing as Pokey, so do you go to Pokey's house? Or do you go to Ness' House? What happens if you do? Let's all find out together!

Game Swap / Setup Screen Showcase (Romhack or Flash Cart Save Change required)

For the first time ever (I think), a donation incentive to do something not in the post-game, but in the post-post game. On the screen between the screens, show a game between the games. That's right, this is content for the setup block between the games!Why? Because most of the 25m time here is spent literally waiting for NPCs to move into or out of extremely out-of-bound positions. If you finish a Ness-less speedrun, then decide to do Ness' prologue without him, nobody is in the right place. Some of the NPCs are programmed to walk up to Ness...who isn't here. So they run off-screen to find him.Now, well, yes. This means that my SNES would need to be taking up an input, so if you have a SNES run after mine, that might be difficult! But this wait has -checkpoints- so if the tech side can make it work, the time block itself can be divided up so it isn't a full 20 minutes of waiting.The first NPC takes about two minutes to get into place, the second takes about 3, then you've got a nice big chunky 15-ish minute block of time to wait. Sounds like the perfect way to spend 5 minutes of setup (watching the first two NPCs), for a 10-to-12 minute interview block, before going back to the setup screen for the next run while showcasing the finale of this glitch.

Guest Character Poll

Earthbound allows you to have two guest characters with you at any time. Pokey is required (hence Pokey%) but this does leave the other spot open to add Picky with Buzz Buzz, The Dog, or a single Flying Man to the party (though the safety of said Flying Man is far from guaranteed).Picky does come with Buzz Buzz, which does mean, yes, -three- guests, which would seem to be more than two guests, but in this specific situation it's OK.

Choices:

Guest Character Poll (Rom Hack Required)

Earthbound allows you to have two guest characters with you at any time. Pokey is required (hence Pokey%) but this does leave the other spot open.It's easy to add Picky, Buzz Buzz, or Bubble Monkey, The Dog, or the Flying Man to the group in this way. It's extremely difficult to add Tony through 'legal' means, to the point that I wouldn't even try to showcase it mid-run and use a modded debug menu to add him in. Same goes for Dungeon Man, who is normally impossible to bring to the ending.The use of a modded item to pull up the debug menu quickly is not necessarily exciting gameplay, so marathon organizers may prefer the "No cheating" version of this incentive.

Choices: