Pokemon Puzzle League - 1P Stadium (Super Hard) speedrun in

If anyone likes Pokemon Puzzle League runs, or wants to get it, feel free to follow me at   / taymannd  . And feel free to join our Discord at   / discord  .

Watch the former WR video at    • Pokemon Puzzle League - 1P Stadium (S...  

Funny story, I wasn't even grinding for a world record. Just puzzle league things, I guess. /shrug

A lot of people are familiar with the puzzle league series of games, either via Panel de Pon, the original; Tetris Attack, the US Yoshi reskin of PDP for the SNES; Pokemon Puzzle League, an N64 Pokemon reskin; or Planet Puzzle League, an entirely vanilla PDP game with no stylized skin.

In the 1P Stadium mode of PPL, you fight against various characters from the anime. The way you win is by performing chain and combos to send garbage blocks to your opponents. If the opponent is topped off by garbage long enough, they die. Combos are when you match four or more blocks in a row, and chains are when blocks clear, fall, and clear again. This can happen for as long as you have blocks to sustain the chain.

The Super Hard category is the most difficult, and extremely frustrating to casual players. The AI's cursor speed is so fast that they'll basically always get to a clear on the garbage block; you basically have to grind it out and hope that the opponent eventually makes a mistake. In a casual playthrough, individual stages can last minutes.

However, speedrunners use an AI exploit in an attempt to quick-kill the opponents in under 30 seconds. The computer is programmed to go for a clear on the lowest garbage block. If they cannot find a clear, their cursor will spaz out until they die. In order to get a garbage block to fall to the bottom, we start out a chain with a four combo, then get another four combo in that chain. This will send a side-by-side pattern of two garbage blocks, with the larger chain garbage on top. Ideally, we want to send this garbage when the AI leaves an opening on either side of their screen, ideally with only one or two rows of blocks. This makes it more unlikely they won't have a clear on the small garbage block, and they'll die. The best speedrunners are able to monitor the opponent's screen while they're chaining, and then drop their chain when they see an opening. You can see this executed perfectly on many stages, but clutchly on the final two stages, Gary 2 and Mewtwo.

Another strategy we can use is go for the stop time kill. The first half AI cursor speed is not as insanely fast as the second half, and won't as often give us the opening for the traditional quick kill. In these instances, we can send the garbage as soon as the opponent raises their stack and go for the stop time kill. Stop time is an invisible timer that counts down when the screen is full of garbage. Once it counts down, they die. Stop time does not count down when blocks are clearing, or when the screen is shaking from falling garbage. Doing chains and combos extends the stop time. We can send garbage as soon as the opponent raises their stack, as this resets their stop time to the default. We can then hope they'll waste enough time looking for the clear on a small garbage block, and eventually die.

I love the Super Hard category because the best players don't have the fastest cursors or lightning fast chaining (though that certainly helps). To really excel at super hard, one must be able to play at a high level, extending chains to 15 if need be, while also monitoring the opponent's screen. Decisions must be made on the fly when to drop your chain in order to maximize the odds of getting a kill. It's all about striking at the perfect moment to catch the AI off balance. It feels a lot like sumo in this regard.

This run was utterly insane. Of course, even with the strategies we have, there is still a TON of RNG in this run. I got extremely lucky on Tracy, where he gave me enough time to top him off; Rocket, where I dropped my chain and Rocket took forever to find the clear on the garbage; and on Surge, who literally raised his stack to the top and killed himself. I'm so ecstatic at the end because these insanely lucky runs only come once in a blue moon. I wouldn't be surprised if this record isn't broken for years. Really happy to have this new WR, as it has a lot cleaner layout, and all the audio is synced!

And to everyone in the puzzle league tournament, apologies for wrecking the qualifiers board for S Hard. c: