Oh, right, I said I was going to update with some ideas for speed strategies, didn't I? Well here goes!
*You probably already guessed this, but the Luk-E-Day machine isn't random at all. It always pays out when your remaining number of Lino Dollars is 1, 25, 30, or 35, never at any other number. Thus the maximum you can ever carry is $84! The guaranteed payout at 1, along with the game's refusal to let you buy anything unless you have at least one more dollar than the price, is to keep you from running out of money. The higher ones are so that it doesn't take too many more tries to get another fifty dollars after spending some of your prize money, although it kinda assumes you'll get the post office supplies first, which makes good sense anyway. What's interesting is when there are some things you're allowed to buy or collect multiple times even once you don't need them anymore, such as the photos and the gunpowder in the post office. It would be worth testing whether it's faster to waste money on extra gunpower than on failed tries of the Luk-E-Day, since with the SupaVend you won't be waiting for the slots to spin around, but you do have to take the time to scroll back up from the new gunpowder to your money again every time. At any rate it would be cooler than the player acting as if Linus really was just waiting for a lucky pull of the slot machine.
*You've also probably guessed that you don't need Old Lino Town's teleporter's side effect to get through the Secret Tunnel. Yeah, it's one of those places, where you COULD get the glowy thing to see in the dark place, but you don't HAVE to, so the viewers will likely be subjected to a sprite jumping up and down a blank black screen, but oh well, the light didn't illuminate very far around Linus anyway.
So really, you don't need the Old Lino Town Telekey at all. You can even teleport there without it if you go to Dodgey City's teleporter: They had to leave you a way to get back out in case you didn't pick up any other Telekeys, so if you simply choose "Use teleport machine", you'll go back to Old Lino Town regardless of what keys you're carrying. Not that I think you'll even need to teleport to Old Lino Town...
*Um, you get to pick up the Linoville Telekey before you enter the action stage between No Man's Causeway and Linoville. So you could just turn around right after grabbing the telekey, take the Old Lino Town teleporter over to Linoville so you can use its status effect to reach the camera shop, and
never play that action stage. Is this an intentional sequence break, or just a very bad design oversight? Whatever, it makes sense to do it unless playing that action stage and teleporting out from Linoville is quicker than all that backtracking, which I doubt.
*On Detroitica, there are sequence breaks through the special action scenes in the factory that also may be intentional, or not. In case you didn't fully understand how the car-jumping section works, there's a key you collect before the last car that operates the computer in the previous area. By turning on that computer, you can solve an easy password puzzle that deactivates all the robots that were zapping Linus and booting him out of the room, so you can pass by them freely. So about the only point of the key is if you got most of the way through but got zapped by the last robot, you can do a puzzle to skip having to try to pass all the robots all over again. But if you pass the last robot successfully, then the key isn't necessary and you just move on without deactivating the robots. I don't know if the programmers meant for the last robot to be impossible to dodge, or just very difficult, but either way it is possible to dodge, so there'll be no need to use the Computer Key in a speedrun.
Similarly, the very next section has giant robot Vork throwing junk at Linus to knock him out and then throw him into the Scrapyard, where Linus can collect a fire extinguisher that will put out Vork's power source and go through another action stage to get back. Again I don't know if Vork's tossed scrap was supposed to be impossible to dodge, but those of us used to fighting GutsMan can manage to jump enough of the things to sneak past Vork without turning him off (especially if it's Cosmic Spacehead with his improved jumping ability), thereby skipping another whole action section. I think at some point the developers must have gotten fed up with this sequence break, though, because in
the Amiga version, Vork doesn't throw anything for you to dodge. Instead you're set on a higher walkway leading directly into Vork's waiting hand. I guess I can understand if they realized too many players weren't figuring out the fire extinguisher puzzle and thought they HAD to jump over all the thrown blocks. Another drastic change in the Amiga version is right after that, where the towers aren't electrified, but you now have to deal with bottomless pits and enemies from the previous Detroitica action sections. Also it replaced the flying dodo bird things in the surfing section with more of those "Tubeflies" or whatever they're called that fly around No Man's Causeway. What's up with that?
*And what's up with the asteroid-"dodging" section before you stop at space station 59-C? I found that in order to end it, you actually have to bump into a certain number of asteroids, I don't remember exactly, but I think it's 10 or less. If you keep dodging them successfully, they'll just keep coming for many more minutes until you finally fail and bump into enough. Despite that, Linus always says afterward that he "guzzled gas" dodging the asteroids and needs to stop at a space station to refuel. Not to repair all that damage from the asteroids that the game forced him to hit? I think either there was a last-minute rewrite of the asteroids scenario to make it easier, or the game designers were having a bit of fun with us. Interestingly, some ports of the game don't let you move your spacecar at all, so it's basically just a movie where you watch Cosmic get pummeled with asteroids while he sits passive until he complains that he guzzled too much gas "dodging" them, and versions with more advanced graphics actually lack the battle damage that accumulates on the car in the original. So instead of a cool minute of perfect dodging, a speedrun will just hug the right edge of the screen to soak up all the asteroids immediately as they appear.
*Can the door in Formica City be opened without a helper? I notice I can start moving the cursor right after pushing the first button, and the door starts opening right after I issue the command rather than when Linus actually reaches the button, so I can redirect Linus back to the left shortly after the door starts opening, but any action to direct Linus away from the button immediately starts closing the door, so Linus always ends up blocked by the time he gets over there, even if the door looked about high enough to pass under. Now maybe I'm not timing it right and it just doesn't work at head-pinning height, or maybe the "door closed" status is set immediately rather than in the middle of the closing animation, but one thing worth noting is that I can't get this to happen at all in Cosmic Spacehead, so I guess that's another version difference. If they bothered to fix this, does that mean they discovered it actually worked at some point?
*You know that letter from Linograd you have to wait for? I did a bit of testing to see what actions I could take to make it arrive, and I discovered that simply standing still in that same spot in the post office for about 159 seconds was good enough. So you want to spend at least that much time questing for other stuff after sending your own letter, plus whatever time the timer is frozen in some places because some section "doesn't count" towards it.
Now for route planning... I think everyone realizes that Detroitica is a very straightforward sequence, just use the sequence breaks I mentioned. The space station doesn't seem to give you any real alternatives to solving it, either; just visit the ends in the correct order (
425631) to grab everything efficiently without backtracking, and remember to pick up all your stuff again except in the last room. The parts on Linoleum after using the missile seem straightforward, too: Backtrack to Old Lino Town after grabbing each new Telekey to use the effects of the Linograd and Linoville teleporters, and make sure you've obtained another 50 Lino Dollars by the time you teleport into Linoville. So it's really the early part of the game where you're juggling a few different goals and have several possible routes to try to intertwine your quests efficiently.
I suppose you could say the two main goals are obtaining a ticket to Detroitica and clearing the path through Linograd. For the Linograd part, there's the secret tunnel you have to open to access Linograd by sending and receiving a letter (reading it is unnecessary in the NES version, just having it in your hands is good enough), and then there's the 4 missile parts to collect. Two of them are found in the post office, but one of them can only be collected after you gather the other three. Another, the fuse wire, is far west of Formica City, requiring an item you obtain during the driving/ticket quest, so you definitely need to work that one into the middle of the quest for the driving license somehow. One more part is in the cave west of Linograd, so that means there will be 2 trips to Linograd before you can down that wall.
For the bus ticket, there's a pretty clear sequence of places to go once you start opening up areas. You've got to get more money at Cape Carnival to buy passport photos to get your passport at the post office, where you should also get your letter made and delivered at the same time, so you probably might as well get your helium balloon from the Cape Carnival attendant at the same time as the first batch of money. Then you go South from Old Lino Town to show your Passport, East to collect the Icing Sugar, then back to Old Lino Town to go East to Give your Helium Balloon and Use Icing Sugar, so you can go further East to collect the Dodgey City Telekey. You have to teleport in and out of Dodgey City with the Telekey to get the Plug to use in the bathtub, so that gives you some options. Then after you repair the Bath Tub, you get the Surf Board and the chance to buy your Driving License, but you would have needed to work in another trip to Cape Carnival before that to have more than the $50 required. Hmm... And then remember you have two routes to get back to the west from Dodgey City because you can just fall down the little cliff thing in if you want, so test both ways for time, though I'm leaning toward the right/south way because you'd probably be going for the surfing section next.
So we've got to work in another stop at the Luk-E-Day and a trip west through Formica to use the Surf Board to get the Fuse Wire... Maybe we should make a list of things you have to visit more than once in this game so we don't forget.
-Luk-E-Day Machine: 3 times, because you have to go from $1 to $50 to spend $12 of it on post office supplies so you can start getting more places and get your letter sent early so you can spend plenty of time waiting for the reply; the second time you're going from $35 to $84 to pay for the Driving License; and finally you'll go from $30 to $79 to get that camera in Linoville just before leaving the planet.
-Cape Carnival Attendant: 2 times, because you need the Helium Balloon to clear the way to get that Driving License you need to come back and play the bumper car race for the Bus Ticket.
-Enquiries Office: 3 times, twice in a row early on to get the Passport and buy the materials for your Ready Made Letter, and once more later to receive Cousin Linochev's reply letter. His/her buddy at Lost Property Office you should only talk to once, though, after collecting the other three missile parts; no reason to have that useless joke book stinking up your inventory longer than it has to.
-The Riverbank: 2 times, because you can only fetch the Icing there first, then you get to cross it later. Or you might also backtrack through it after the final trip to Dodgey City.
-Dodgey City: 3 times I guess, once from the left side to get the Telekey, once into its Teleport Machine with that telekey, and once from the right side to bargain with Shady Lionel.
-Linograd: 2 times before you can blast away the wall, then you end up backtracking through it a few more times later because of its stupid incoming-only teleporter.
-Old Lino Town, Cape Carnival, Passport Control...: Too many times for me to want to count, blech! Okay no more whole-area counts! Well the SupaVend might be the same way, depending on whether you end up using it to diminish your money to make the Luk-E-Day pay out right away.
So what I was thinking was, you have a mandatory teleport in to Dodgey City, and a mandatory teleport out from it. Where you teleport in from doesn't matter, so it may as well be Old Lino Town's since it'll be the closest. Then you may as well use the Formica City Telekey to get out, since you'll need that teleport effect to get through Formica City and the later teleporters aren't available yet. That's why I would go grab the Formica City Telekey right before going after the Icing Sugar. But at the point you teleport out of Dodgey City, you won't have the surfboard yet, so I was thinking you'd turn right around and head back east from Formica City after pushing the far button, since that button makes the wall stay open permanently. (Test whether it's faster to collect both characters on the left and then turn around from the action stage so you're not sending the characters that longer distance to the right twice.)
Now you have to revisit Cape Carnival before the final trip into Dodgey City to collect the $50 for Shady Lionel... I was thinking, maybe this could be done on the same trip as entering the Secret Tunnel for the Match and collecting the Helium Balloon. The only issue is whether enough time will pass for Linochev's letter to arrive before I want to take this detour to the Caves. If it's after the first trip to Dodgey City (meaning I grabbed the Helium Balloon at the first opportunity), that should be a safe bet. But if I want to save grabbing the Helium Balloon until after the Tunnel's open, so I'm only adding the distance between the hole and the Attendant rather than between the Luk-E-Day and the Attendant, well... I'm not sure if there would be enough action scenes to make enough time pass. After the first trip to the Post Office that would be the OldLinoTown-PassportControl stage, the PassportControl-FormicaCity stage, and the PassportControl-TheRiverbank stage. 3 stages, if they're much less than a minute each, they're probably not long enough for the wait. I suppose you could add the action stage from OldLinoTown-TheWilderness and turn right around, but that's adding backtracking between the middle of Old Lino Town and the entrance to The Wilderness, including crossing the world map, for what? That little space between the slot machine and the hole? Or there's that FormicaCity-CosmicCoast stage, but that's only possible after visiting Dodgey City, so, uh... I don't think it would... help...
Okay it's getting late and I'm getting tired now, so anyone else who's familiar with this game should let me know if I'm missing something that would make this easier to figure out. Thanks for reading!
