Pokemon HGSS Any% FAQ:

Q: What are you playing on?
A: An original DS phat w/ a Capture Card.

Q: What is this category?
A: HGSS Any% is as implies, beat the game as fast as possible. Thanks to a well-known glitch called Tweaking, we can finish the game in a little under 2 hours optimally with only 5 badges.

Q: What is Tweaking?
A: So think of Minecraft for a second (don't act like you've never heard of it).
In Minecraft, chunks are a section of the map that gets loaded/unloaded as you approach them. In the Generation 4 games, the overworld is loaded in a similar way. The overworld is loaded in 32x32 "chunks" that load/unload as you get close to them. The game knows to load/deload specific chunks whenever you cross the what are called loadlines, which intersect in the middle of each chunk. However, if we are to quickly move across the loadlines, we can effectively confuse the game into loading chunks out of order, i.e. a chunk that's supposed to load to the right of you actually ends up loading to your left. The bike lets us cross these loadlines at very high speeds, which lets us cause the overworld to get loaded out of order. This lets us get over major roadblocks such as Tojo Falls, which requires us to get Waterfall without beating Clair, and beating all other Kanto Gym leaders before unlocking Blue. 

Q: So what does the route look like then?
A: We play the game fairly normally until we get to Ecruteak, where we B-line it to Burnt Tower to manip Raikou, then after beating Morty for Surf, we essentially B-line it to the E4 and Red afterwards. Blue is required to unlock Red so its why we need a 5th badge. To get into Blue's gym early, you do a tweak. 

Q: What kind of RNG Manipulation does this run require?
A: In HGSS, you need a seed with a good Cyndaquil and the Master Ball from the Lottery in Goldenrod to catch Raikou. During the early game manip for no encounters, I will encounter a lvl 3 Sentret to use for HMs. I will also manipulate Pokerus off Youngster Mikey. Ideally, I will hold manip up until Goldenrod, where things will soften up a bit. I still don't want to dilly dally anywhere or burn too many extra steps. Once I get to Eckruteak, I will identify where I am in the RNG using the Pokegear radio and advance RNG up to Raikou, so if I'm too slow RNG-wise to get to Eckruteak, I will not get the Raikou I want. Once I am re-algined in the RNG, I will release Raikou to have good stats and attempt to manipulate its location to be just south of Eckruteak for a quick encounter/catch. If that goes well, Pokerus will also immediately spread to Raikou.

On top of that, there will be two battle manips required: Blue, and Red. While Raikou is the best Poke by far to finish the game, the lack of resources we have will make Blue and Red near impossible without some kind of battle manip to make the fights winnable. I will be doing a S+Q to hit a cluster of battle seeds that will let me win after identifying them. The clusters are all about 9 frames big, with a couple of them having 'god' seeds that are significantly faster than others.

Cyndaquil is 4/23/21/28/5/31 Rash
Raikou is 16/4/22/31/17/4 Rash

Note that while using the same seed as the Glitchless one, this Raikou is different than the 'Raikou 0/Raikou 1' used in the glitchless route. Since we manip the Blue and Red fights and enter them under-leveled, we don't need nearly as good of an all-around Raikou, and instead get one that's more offensively built. This Raikou is a little later than Raikou 1 in the RNG. Dropping manip in/before Ilex forest gives you a less than ideal chance to get Raikou, depending on what encounters you get.

Q: No Whitney Identifiers?
A: No. The reason is multi-faceted. 
	- The route Im using gets the Charcoal and tries to get Blaze off Rival 2 for Whitney, and just clicks Fire Blast. Because of this, there's no real need for me to identify anything because FB one shots with Blaze. The reason to not get FB is to save having to shop both before and after Whitney due to money constraints. 
	- This route does not skip getting the radio card. To get into Whitney's gym normally, you have to get it. You can skip it by tweaking, but the tweaking introduces risks to wasting steps and variable lag. Radio manip on average is faster than using encounters to identify your RNG state. Also, too many wasted steps from failing tweaks will break location manip used to get Raikou quickly.  
	- All in all, getting the radio card and doing Charcoal + FB only loses roughly 20s to not doing so. 20s is not worth enough to route Whitney identifiers and add all the extra risk at this time (or at my skill level). 

Despite this route being a little slower than the current record's, survivability is much higher (even though we're Fire Blasting a bunch of shit), and is still WR capable.