How Speedrunners Broke The Fairly Oddparents: Shadow Showdown

You know when we were growing up we had it  pretty good with all the different cartoons and animated shows back then, especially over on  Nickelodeon. I’m talking Spongebob, Jimmy Neutron and of course one of my personal favorites  The Fairly Oddparents featuring our favorite average kid that no one understands. These  shows were absolutely goated, you know, until Nickelodeon ruined pretty much all of them in  older seasons and spin off shows, but I digress. This era of cartoons also spawned a g

reat era  of licensed games like Battle For Bikini Bottom, the Mis-Edventures of Ed, Edd n Eddy and of  course the Fairly Oddparents video games. In today’s video I’m going to be covering Shadow  Showdown, the second game in the Fairly Oddparents series and one of my personal favorite  licensed games ever from both a casual and speedrunning perspective. I hope you all enjoy. So for context this game is a sequel to the other video game Breakin’ Da Rules, but this game  actually has more to do wit

h the first Fairly Oddparents movie Abra-Catastrophe. In this film  Timmy celebrates his Fairy-versary for going an entire year without exposing that he has Fairy  Godparents, which does seem like the bare minimum, but I guess 10 year olds are pretty dumb and  most lose them pretty quickly. As a result a huge party is thrown for him where he’s given  several different magical items from all of the other mystical beings of the fairy world as  well as a magic muffin with the ability to grant rule

free wishes. Of course shenanigans  ensue, Timmy loses the muffin in a food fight, a monkey turns the world into the planet of the  apes and eventually the muffin falls into the hands of Crocker. Honestly these movies are great  and I would recommend giving them a watch again if you haven’t seen them in a while. But back to the  video game the game opens up with Timmy preparing to watch a brand new season of Crash Nebula when  just before it begins his TV stops working. No issue for Timmy though

since he can just wish the  TV to be fixed, but for some mysterious reason both Cosmo and Wanda’s wands aren’t working. Wanda instead grabs her emergency wand and learns that it isn’t actually a backup wand, but  is actually an instructional video of what to do when magic wands aren’t working. The film is  presented by King Oberon and Queen Titania who are apparently the old rulers of Fairy World,  although the characters only appear in this video game so I don’t believe them to be canon.  The

gang is then transported within the film which will serve as the tutorial level. Just like  most speed games the tutorial cannot be skipped, but this will be a good time to go over general  mechanics. This game is a 3D platformer so Timmy not only has the ability to double jump, but  can also sprint for short distances assuming he still has some of his sprint meter remaining.  Timmy is also able to jump out of his sprints to clear large gaps and maintain the speed boost  from his sprint without

costing any stamina. Later in the tutorial section we learn that in  order for Timmy to make wishes he’s going to have to do it the old fashioned way by collecting  3 wish stars. These stars sort of have a mind of their own and will either be asleep allowing  us to collect them easily but some of them will just run away from Timmy, but luckily there’s  usually a way to manipulate them in our favor. For example if we chase this first start around  until it runs out of stamina and begins moving sl

owly we can quit out of the game and then  upon starting another run for some reason the star will just be chilling allowing us to grab  it quickly. This is really nice because it keeps us close to this movable block. Generally we’ll  just try moving blocks as close as we absolutely need them to be able to space out double jumps to  reach ledges. Upon grabbing all 3 stars we’ll be granted a wish in the form of a new ability. For  example in the tutorial level we gain the ability to shoot a sling

shot to shoot targets with and  once all the targets are cleared we can finish the level. For some reason not all cutscenes  in this game are skippable including the one at the end of this section, but by standing  near the door at the end puts Timmy into the end level trigger essentially overriding the  unskippable cutscene with a skippable one. It’s pretty funny looking back on the  first speedrun of this game by Corovii, because the tutorial level gameplay looks almost  identical to modern da

y speedruns despite the run being performed 10 years ago. The only  improvements would be a quicker order for taking out the targets as well as having  the first star immobilized which funnily enough was known about back then, but Corovii  misunderstood how it worked initially thinking it required skipping the Titania cutscene  on a certain frame. For this reason for the rest of this video the tutorial level won’t be  included when discussing the run’s progression. Following the tutorial level t

he gang heads to  Fairy World to figure out what’s going on with their wands. As it turns out the Royal Jewel, the  second most powerful magic known to fairies, has gone missing and every fairy has lost their magic.  Although Jorgen Von Strangle suspects Quince, the former Jester for the old king and queen, to  be the culprit in an act of revenge for recently being fired for being unfunny. So the next task at  hand is to find the Jester and reclaim the stolen jewel. Looking back at the first spe

edrun of this  game by Corovii he first starts out by quickly grabbing 3 wish stars exactly in the same fashion  as modern day runs which is really impressive. In this segment we see really solid lines, clean  cuts around corners and even specific paths to manipulate the stars movements to grab them  quickly. I decided to line up Corovii’s run alongside the current world record and you can see  just how well they’re able to keep up even while picking up coins along the way, honestly super  impre

ssive. Coins are used for certain powerups later on which was more necessary in these  earlier runs, but we’ll get into that later. Normally after collecting these stars we would  then need to collect 2 more sets of stars with one of the worst sections of the entire game where  we need to herd these cows back into their pen, repair the color factory and eventually restore  the rainbow bridge leading to Quince, but Corovii has something better in mind. He jumps across this  gap skipping a small p

latforming section and then after entering the center of fairy world he does  some platforming on these rooftops to jump over the barrier leading to the bridge. From here he  jumps onto the bridge and luckily even though it isn’t loaded in he’s still able to run across  it skipping pretty much the whole area heading straight into the Quince fight. This fight is  unique in that normally boss fight cutscenes begin upon entering the boss area, but this one has a  trigger that’s walked into instead

leading into a 33 second unskippable cutscene. But Corovii  figured out that if you pause the game on the first frame upon loading the cutscene the game  actually allows you to skip it. This does glitch out the fight a bit and Quince’s health bar won’t  be loaded in so Corovii has to run backwards after skipping the cutscene to load the health bar and  then quickly run over and ground pound this button to initiate the fight. Because the cutscene never  plays, Quince is never properly loaded in,

but his hitbox is still intact so damage can still be  dealt. The gnomes here can get in the way a bit, but by standing on the card dispenser they can be  avoided. After 4 rounds of damage are done Quince is defeated and the game is presumably over. Jorgen apprehends Quince, but finds no trace of the Royal Jewel… so it must have been stolen  by somebody else. Jorgen decides he’ll continue his investigation, but as a backup plan  sends the crew on an adventure to create the most powerful magical

item in existence,  the fairyversary muffin. Jorgen gives Timmy the recipe which requires Pixie Sugar, Mooncalf  Milk, a Phoenix Egg and Super Strong Hair Raising Flour. Timmy goes online and orders all of the  ingredients which only have one of each in stock, but upon the ingredients being delivered they’re  intercepted by Vicky, Timmy’s babysitter. She passes off the sugar and flour to Timmy’s parents,  steals the milk for herself and destroys the egg. The crew heads back to Jorgen who tells t

hem to  interact with each of the fairy control screens to retrieve the ingredients, create the muffin  and hopefully restore everything back to normal. But I don’t know about you guys, but if I had a  magical muffin that could allow me to wish for anything it’s pretty obvious what I’d wish for…  and that’s an entire delivery truck of Factor which just so happens to be today’s video  sponsor. Factor75 is basically the best meal delivery service out there. How it works is you go  to their website

factor75.com and choose whichever meals interest you the most from their selection.  They have a ton of low calorie menu items as well as keto and vegan friendly options. Once you pick  out what you want and complete your order in a few days they’ll ship out one of these massive boxes  that have some frozen gel packs inside keeping everything fresh until you get home. If you’re  a busy body like me and don’t always have time to cook 3 times a day I would highly recommend  trying this out rather

than having to resort to fast food, because not only will factor most  likely be cheaper than that but also faster because meals only take around 2 minutes in  the microwave to prepare. If you’re interested in trying out Factor make sure to use my code  EZSCAPEFEB50 at checkout for 50% off your first box as well free wellness shots for life if you  continue to stay with them, link will be in the description. Thanks again to Factor for sponsoring  my video, now let’s get back to the speedrun. So

at this point pretty much everything that’s  done in this original speedrun by Corovii is still done in runs today, so it’s really impressive  that they managed to find the most optimal route so early on. At this point in the run there are  two levels to choose from, either Dad’s Dream to retrieve the flour or Take it on the Chin to get  the Phoenix Egg and in this case Corovii decided to go with the latter. This is a Crimson Chin  themed level where the entire city of Chincinnati is submerged

in water from H2olga. Corovii starts  out this level by running across these cars and jumping onto this platform to cut off and grab the  first star immediately. They also grab the second star quickly, but for some reason this jump across  the gap can be pretty weird and hard to ledge grab, forcing them to have to do it again. After  climbing the ladder and grabbing the third star Timmy unlocks the Crimson Wing powerup allowing  him to glide for a short period of time. From here Corovii heads ba

ck down the buildings and crosses  to the other side of the level to begin collecting the next set of stars. Yet again Corovii shows  off some impressive movement as well as conserving good momentum off this box to jump onto these  platforms demonstrating a good understanding of game physics. After the third star is grabbed  Timmy is granted a pogo stick allowing him to jump to higher up areas. Corovii is not only  adept at switching between abilities quickly, but right here they show off a pret

ty cool  movement option by running off a ledge and jumping while in the air which can only be done if sprint  is remained held when running off platforms. Once the pogo stick is unlocked we’re then meant  to block the flow of water with these cubes to reveal a button granting access to the waterworks.  But in Corovii’s run they discovered if you jump in the water behind the waterworks entrance Timmy  will still hit the checkpoint trigger and upon reloading will immediately enter the waterworks.

  In Corovii’s notes they explain that “The rest of this level is mostly just a combination of  gameplay optimizations and small sequence breaks, most of which are pretty straightforward.” Which  is pretty accurate. The gameplay in this level is just going from button to button to fill  and empty water in different areas in order to progress. In order to defeat H2olga the  player must climb up the scaffolding while avoiding enemies and any water hazards before she  absorbs enough water to exting

uish the phoenix egg and harness its powers. Each button hit along the  way up will dispense sewage into her pool of water weakening her. After the third button is pressed,  H2olga is defeated and the egg is collected. Next Corovii will enter Dad’s dream where we’ll  need to defeat a giant robot in order to wake him up. After grabbing the first star Corovii  will head into the shop and spend 150 coins for the super sneakers to double Timmy’s stamina.  The first wish that’s granted is a lightbulb

to attract moths and since moths eat suits  it allows Timmy to bypass the animated suits blocking certain doorways. For the first section  Corovii performs what might be the most difficult skip in the run at this point by jumping up  this wall to land on this metal piping. From here he’ll jump up this wall and jump across  the seam at the top just before collision ends. Jumping across this seam is definitely not easy  as we see him mess it up once, but luckily after a nice save gets it on the s

econd attempt. This  allowed Corovii to skip the entire first section. He then death abuses to return back to the start  of the area and grabs a moth before heading out. After grabbing all 3 wish stars in the next  area, Timmy unlocks a magnet with the ability to open metal doors and collect and shoot bolts  from these walking buckets. Corovii figured out that the lamppost in the next area could simply be  used to hop straight to the next machine skipping this entire area as well. After collecti

ng the  next 3 stars Timmy is given a klaxon to wake up these sleeping benches that catapult Timmy  upwards. In the next area Corovii completely avoids collecting any moths, opting for riskier  strats by just running past this suit quickly before it can catch Timmy. He’ll also abuse run  off jumps to jump across large gaps skipping even more suits along the way. After doing some  intended platforming there will be one more jump which isn’t necessarily the trickiest, but along  the way he ran pas

t pretty much every checkpoint trigger and missing this jump or any jump prior  could result in tragedy. Thankfully every jump was hit and Corovii made it to the final machine to  repair this boat to sail to the giant robot. Just before sailing the boat will need some fuel which  is done from, and I’m just quoting Cosmo here, by getting into Timmy’s Dad’s central thinking  cortex thingy… basically we just need to fly through a Crash Bandicoot-esque auto scroller  and collect light bulbs. This ca

n’t be skipped and nothing can be done to speed the minigame up.  After completing it we’re finally onto the robot. Since Corovii never shot a single bolt with the  magnet he still has all 5 that you’d normally have after unlocking it. When the button pops up it  just needs to be slammed quickly and then 3 shots are required for the first phase, 4 for the second  and 5 for the last. A good time to collect extra bolts is while waiting for the robot to catch up.  After the final phase the robot is

destroyed and Timmy’s dad wakes up and gives us the code word  to retrieve the sugar from his toy robot and that’s another ingredient knocked off the list. Following this level we learn that there’s no new leads on who stole the Royal Jewel, other than  that they must have gotten access to the safe in Oberon and Titania’s mansion where it was stored.  To aid in the investigation the gang heads to the level Get a Clue to search through the mansion for  evidence. Upon entering the level we’re gre

eted by the Chamberlain, the chief steward who has  been serving the king and queen for centuries. He’s unaware of any clues, but he directs us to  the door that never opens to see what it knows… but as it turns out this door never opens so  whoever stole the jewel must have stolen it from a different opening. Back to the speedrun, Corovii  starts out the level by going up the staircase and heads into the area containing the first 3 stars.  Per usual Corovii’s movement and route is nearly identi

cal to modern day runs performing some  deceptively hard jumps while maintaining clean movement. The first wish granted in this level  is one of the coolest abilities in the entire game which is an upside downer allowing Timmy to  flip the entire level at will whenever he likes. This allows Corovii to proceed through the level  through a secret entrance on the ceiling. Normally in this level you’re meant to unlock 2 more  abilities which are the ghost costume to phase through grates and other ph

aseable objects as well  as a magicfying glass to detect invisible objects. Although the magicfying glass isn’t really needed  as Corovii is able to cheese past the rest of the level with just using the level flipper as well  as some clever platforming. There was a cutscene just before Corovii crossed the pit and as a shock  to absolutely noone Timmy learns that the king and queen were indeed responsible for the theft of the  missing jewel, however they aren’t working alone and are accompanied b

y a strange Kingdom Hearts  looking shadow figure who seems to be in charge of the whole operation. Corovii is then meant  to complete a box sliding puzzle, but for some reason this ledge is grabbable meaning rather than  needing a box to jump through it the level flipper is all that’s needed. Then it’s onto the end of  level boss fight in the treasure room. During this fight we’re meant to use the magicfying glass  to locate the boss for when it turns invisible… but unsurprisingly the ghost rem

ains in the exact  same position it was in when it was still visible so that’s not really needed. After dropping 4  boxes on its head marks the end of the level. After unmasking the ghost we learn that it was  none other than Oberon and Titania the whole time. During the conversation Oberon leaks that  they gave the jewel to somebody else and plan to use it to rule the human realm now that they  no longer have any control over Fairy World, but then they realize they could have just  poofed out o

f there the entire time and escaped. Next up is a Vicky level to reclaim the mooncalf  milk. Honestly this is one of my favorite levels casually mainly due to the pinball ability  unlocked later in the level which is just genuinely fun to play around with. Unfortunately  for Corovii, however, at the time there weren’t really any skips or tricks for this level  other than the occasional sprint jump maneuver. Compounded with the fact that this is the longest  level in the entire game taking him ab

out 12 minutes to complete, Corovii wrote in their  notes that this level was pretty boring for them, especially the boss fight where you literally  just run to a bunch of different buttons in a circle and that’s it. There’s also not too much  that happens here to advance the story so we’re mostly going to skip past this level, but still  overall I do enjoy how consistently fun a lot of these levels are from a casual perspective. And now finally Corovii is onto the final level the Great Esc-Ape

which is an ape level  probably themed from the events that happened in Abra Catastrophe. Corovii first has to break  out of the jail section which he does by cheesing some of the puzzle by walking across the railing.  The guards in this area have really bad detection so it’s easy to sneak past them, but still this  section of the level is overall pretty slow as you need to free monkeys from their cages and lead  them to each button to raise the gate. Once in the central chamber he somehow does

a wall jump  off this pillar to reach the second level which is weird because that’s not even a mechanic in  this game. If it wasn’t obvious the first unlock in this level is a banana gun used to bait the  monkeys, but the second unlock is this lizard suit giving Timmy the ability to walk on walls  with vines. In the central chamber there are two paths that need to be cleared, one path more  focused on the lizard suit and the other more focused on the last upgrade, the monkey wrench.  However we

won’t need to talk about that upgrade because after opening the banana on the one  side of the level Corovii performs a pretty crazy jump to reach the other side instantly  which is a pretty cool little sequence break. In the final boss fight versus the Ape King Corovii  managed to figure out an interesting exploit where after shooting the boss with the banana gun and  groundpounding him, it’s possible to land back on the top platform by groundpounding to cancel  the recoil allowing for a much

faster fight. Following this boss fight all the ingredients are  now collected and it’s finally time to bake the muffin. Jorgen poofs in an oven and… you know what  I thought none of the fairies could use magic, but at this point I’ve sort of stopped questioning  this game. I mean keep in mind Timmy literally ordered the ingredients for the most powerful  object in the universe on the Internet with 1 second delivery. Anyways unfortunately the muffin  can’t be eaten after being baked because it’s

too hot, but time is running short as all the tv  stations are beginning to broadcast the same show which plans on taking over the world.  Jorgen has tracked down the signal to channel 13 so while the crew waits for the muffin to cool  down they head to the tv station to investigate. Upon entering we learn that whoever the king  and queen were working with backstabbed them and took the royal jewel for themself and  they’ve been using it to make TVs on earth magical turning TV shows into real li

fe which  explains why Timmy, his parents and Vicky got transported within them. Timmy suspects the  only other character in the video game to be the culprit which is the chamberlain… and he’s  still wrong. It’s actually Chamberlain's shadow. The chamberlain explains that centuries ago he  separated from his shadow hoping the two of them could better serve the king and queen together,  but as it turns out all shadows are evil and in secret he had been plotting to take over the world  for some ti

me. His plan is to broadcast his TV show Shadow TV across the world where shadows  will wear their casters rather than the other way around which honestly goes pretty hard. The boss fight starts out with a slam that thrusts Timmy in the air, but this can be  canceled with a quick ground pound. There are 3 buttons located around the room and they  need to be ground pounded in order to stun the boss. The button to choose is always the one  the shadow is looking at and the shadow will always look a

t the furthest away button from  Timmy. After ground pounding the button the boss becomes vulnerable and then it just takes  another ground pound on either of his feet to deal damage and that’s pretty much it rinse and repeat. The game ends with Timmy and the shadow chasing down the fairyversary muffin just before Oberon  swoops in and throws it towards Titania who passes it to Timmy. After a sick maneuver Timmy catches  the muffin in his mouth and wishes for everything to return to normal. Timm

y heads back home only to  just miss the Crash Nebula special and it’s never going to be aired again… but of course he has  Fairy Godparents so after a simple wish he gets to enjoy the season finale and that’s the game. Corovii ended his speedrun in 49 minutes 43 seconds and considering all the crazy skips  and speed tech he found this time was pretty impressive. Apparently he had spent the entire  year working on this route so it makes sense why his first ever speedrun was so good. He  writes “

while this game isn't completely broken, (you can't skip any levels), there are still  plenty of tricks and glitches in the game that allow it to be beaten pretty quickly.” But only a little over a month later on September 28th 2013, Corovii would post a new  speedrun, absolutely destroying his previous time. This run would clock in at 28 minutes 46  seconds, over 20 minutes faster than the previous run… so what happened? Well, other than a small  route change in Dad’s Dream to save 12 seconds,

Corovii managed to find what at the time would be  the holy grail of Fairly Oddparents speedrunning. In this run we would see after completing Get a  Clue that instead of going into Vicky Strikes Back Corovii would instead head over to these computers  and simply just perform a double jump over the barrier to get past, it’s really that easy.  Similar to the rainbow bridge in fairy world, although the bridge isn’t loaded in, is still  able to be walked on and furthermore the Shadow Showdown level

can still be entered despite  not entering the prerequisite levels. This was huge for the speedrun as now two of the more  boring levels were completely excluded out of the route while the more interesting levels remained. In his notes Corovii explains that they do plan on improving the run in the future due to this run  having several mistakes, but with current strats he believed a 27 minute time would be possible.  Despite this run occurring only a month after the previous it wouldn’t be unti

l 4 years later  for Corovii to return to the game. However he was finally back and achieved his goal with a time  of 27 minutes 32 seconds. Based on his notes the route was nearly identical to the last, just with  less mistakes overall, however there were a couple new strategies added to the H2olga fight in Take  it on the Chin. The first is a small cutscene skip just before the fight. By using the crimson wing  to fly straight into the doorway and holding up allows Timmy to fly around the cuts

cene trigger.  The cutscene audio does still play, but he’s able to move around during it essentially skipping  it saving about 7 seconds. He also found an alternate pogo stick route to hop around some of  the piping getting to the third part of the boss fight quicker saving an additional 10 seconds.  Despite the new optimizations Corovii explains that due to small mistakes and sloppy movement in  Fairly Disastrous and Get a Clue they weren’t able to get a 26 minute time this run, but believed 

it definitely was possible with current strats and he was definitely right about that as only 20  days later he’d achieve a 27 minute and 1 second time. The main difference in this run was just  skipping coins as the longer sprint meter only really benefited the longer Ape and Vicky levels  and it was pretty easy at this point for Corovii to just conserve meter by sprint jumping so the  trip to the shop was cut out. But it was back to the drawing board and we wouldn’t see a run  for a while, ins

tead a handful of glitch videos. Some of these glitches wouldn’t be very useful  such as this clip in the tutorial level, but others would prove to be a bit more useful  like a skip to bypass the ice ray in Take it on the Chin. About a month and a half later Corovii  would return, achieving their goal with a time of 26 minutes 26 seconds. The mistakes in  this run were about equal to the last, but the main difference would be the newly added  ice ray skip as well as a block puzzle skip in the wa

ter works by performing a tricky glide. These  tricks alone saved anywhere from 50 seconds to a minute combined. Corovii mentions in his notes  that he’s happy with the time he got here and doesn’t plan on returning to the category  unless something new is found or somebody beats his time, let’s see which happens first. Corovii would continue posting new glitches, but instead for categories like All Levels which would  still benefit from skips in levels like the Great Esc-Ape. But even these vid

eos showed off some  powerful glitches with some new implications for the rest of the game like this weird hover glitch  Corovii found by taking damage at the same time as jumping off the vines. He would then refine  the glitch and use it to skip most of the Great Esc-Ape by getting to the bananas way earlier  than usual and is still used in runs today. Corovii would then post a new route change in the  H2olga boss fight once again. It was discovered by another runner named Zam that it was much

easier  to start from the top button and then work your way back down to not have to deal with nearly as  many hazards on the track and could just fall down to each button instantly. Corovii would add in  a bunch of these new tricks for their all levels run and save nearly 5 minutes off their first  any% run which is basically just an all levels run anyways. A few months later on July 25th 2018  Corovii would come back with another any% world record of 25 minutes 28 seconds, shaving another  min

ute off the run. He did say he’d only be back if new tricks were found and oh boy did they find  a cool trick, discovered by Zam once again. By pressing glide the same frame as opening the  wish menu in Take it on the Chin would make the game buffer a glide so it occurs after the  menu is closed, but if you unequip the crimson wing while in the menu Timmy no longer has gauge  present while gliding and can fly infinitely. This trivialized a lot of the prior skips like the  skip into the waterwork

s, the block puzzle and the ice ray skip. Combined with the new button  route in the boss lair Corovii was easily able to shave off that minute in this level alone. Following this run would be another regular disappearance from Corovii. At this point Corovii  wasn’t leaving any more write ups or comments about his runs anymore, just drops a world record  and leaves like a true chad. But something was brewing in the community as during the time  between when this run was posted in 2018 and his ne

xt run in 2021 the community had grown quite  a bit and even just having a few new eyes looking at the game meant reroutes were inevitable. After  this 3 year hiatus Corovii would return with a time of 23 minutes 5 seconds, finally with crystal  clear emulator quality gameplay and splits. During this time timing conventions for the leaderboards  would switch from real time to load removed time across Playstation 2, Gamecube and Dolphin  Emulator to ensure everyone who was playing this game was o

n an even playing field which I think is  pretty cool. This did play a role in the amount of time shaved off the total and in general the load  remover would take off a little over a minute from each person’s run. So this 23 minute 5 second time  was actually a 24 minute 8 second time, but still a 1 minute 20 second improvement nonetheless. For  the rest of the video I will only be referring to runs with their load removed time in mind. So what exactly did Corovii do to save this much time? Well

for starters a new glider glitch was  found in Take it on the Chin called glider climb. During the startup animation of the crimson wing  Timmy is lifted up into the air slightly. If the ability is used the same frame a cutscene begins  the height increase won’t stop being applied until after the cutscene ends allowing Timmy to gain  massive amounts of height. Corovii would use the glitch at the start of the waterworks. By using  the infinite climb to fly above the cutscene trigger in this firs

t room he could then setup  to walk into the trigger just as he activates the glider to go straight to the room where ice ray  skip is performed saving about 25 seconds. Corovii would also use this trick during the H2olga  fight after performing the first cutscene skip. After positioning Timmy in this corner the next  cutscenes will play and there’s a short 2 frame window in between when H2olga says “extinguish  the Crimson Chin’s power forever” and Wanda saying “She’s huge.” By mashing the crim

son wing and  hopefully getting the input on the earliest frame in between the cutscenes it’s possible to get a  massive amount of height above the level as the amount of height you get correlates to how long  the cutscene is. This was much faster than pogoing to the top and the route on the way back down  was the same as before. This trick saved about 30 seconds. With these two tricks added in you  can just see the time melt right off the timer. Also in Dad’s Dream instead of collecting the  fi

rst 3 wish stars he instead runs past the first animated suit which is really difficult to  do and heads straight for the seam walk. This is because getting to this machine is the trigger  to spawn the next set of stars so once he gets back to the starting location he can grab both the  yellow and purple sets of stars at the same time. This is only a minor timesave and the rest of the  level plays out exactly the same as before. But in the next level Get a Clue Corovii would perform  the first e

ver out of bounds trick discovered by fellow community member earllgray and was made RTA  viable by Symystery. The beginning of the level would play out exactly the same as before up until  receiving the level flipper. The cutscene for the door that never opens only plays when you’re  within its detection and when you activate the cutscene it repositions Timmy. However if this  is activated while using the level flipper the game repositions Timmy out of bounds instead.  From here there’s a whole

out of bounds route that Corovii follows leading to the boss fight.  Surprisingly this only saves 8 seconds over the previous inbounds route, but hey 8 seconds is  8 seconds. With all these new tricks added in Corovii managed to beat their previous time by a  minute flat. In Corovii’s notes he writes “pretty decent run. No major mistakes, but there were  a few silly mistakes here and there.” Corovii would still remain active in the community after  this run, but this would be the last any% run

we would see from him. Going all the way from a 49:43  to a 23:05 is just extremely impressive no matter the context in any game, but even though Corovii  was done setting new world records it doesn’t mean nobody else would step up to the plate. If you’ve been a watcher of this channel for some time you might know where this video is  about to go. The man that needs no introduction, the licensed video game master himself, the  man, the myth, the legend Toxicpinhead. Toxic is well known for his h

igh level gameplay and  consistency in so many speedruns it’s almost hard to keep count and is the main reason I only  have aspirations to be a content creator and not a world record holding speedrunner instead, so you  know thanks for that. Before ever doing any runs Toxic generally spends a lot of time practicing  and researching his games. He would post his first Shadow Showdown clip in August of 2022. At the  time earllgray was working on a TAS for Take it on the Chin to be able to beat the

level without ever  unlocking the pogo stick. This would be achieved by using a series of different glider climbs, 4 to  be exact, to be able to skip the ability. This was theorized to be not viable for speedruns as glider  climbs at the time were just something you could throw into your runs to save a bit of time, but if  you weren’t able to pull off the trick you could still finish the run with a bit of time loss. But  requiring 4 frame perfect inputs with no room for error was just a bit too

much for most runners  which is why only a TAS exists of this route. However in this first video from Toxic he performs  a glider climb using this cutscene just after grabbing the last star for the crimson wing. This  allows him to get high up on top of this building. At the time I’m sure other runners knew this was  doable, but there wasn’t really any benefit to doing so… or was there? Once on top we would then  see Toxic perform an infinite glide all the way over to this building in the distan

ce. The height  gained from starting on that building was enough height to be able to walk on this random seam that  was for some reason tangible. It was important to do this as jumping off this seam would give  Timmy the ability to ground pound again, and by performing one at the top of this ceiling for  max speed and then pausing just before Timmy hits the water would allow Toxic to open the options  menu causing the game to drop to 20 FPS from 30 skipping past the death plane allowing him to 

fall far below the rest of the level. If performed correctly at the right distance Timmy would hit  the death and checkpoint trigger at the same time and respawn in the room just outside of H2olga’s  lair saving nearly 2 minutes off the pogoless TAS. Toxic would then find another crazy route in Dad’s  Dream. This route would make use of a float glitch similar to the one I shared earlier in the Great  Esc-Ape, but of course this level doesn’t have access to the lizard suit so Toxic would instead

  setup this glitch by grabbing onto a ledge and performing the pull up animation into a cutscene  trigger. This puts the game in a similar state as the Great Esc-Ape float, but the key takeaway is  Timmy’s arms aren’t flying in the air as if he’s in a falling animation. This is an important  distinction as if Timmy isn’t in this state he can’t ground pound because the game thinks he’s  walking on a surface. This means if Toxic were to lose control of Timmy he wouldn’t be able to save  him. It’s

actually almost uncanny how similar this glitch is to the swim in air glitch in the console  version of Spyro 2 in the Spyro Reignited Trilogy. How it worked in that game is after setting up the  glitch Spyro could gain or lose height by rolling into surfaces with inclines or declines… in that  game we were forced to roll since movement was otherwise locked, but in Shadow Showdown we can  just move forward like usual. In Toxic’s route he would make sure to grab a moth on the way back to  the st

arting area to clear out one of the animated suits since they can be pretty annoying to bypass  and then head to the third area of the level as with this glitch he could bypass the klaxon. After  interacting with the third machine and repairing the boat there’s only one problem and that is  getting rid of the glitch which can only be done by quitting out of the game… but if he were  to do that he would lose all level progress. This is why he floats right into an enemy in order  to force Timmy in

to the falling animation. Like I said earlier when in this animation he regains  the ability to ground pound and Toxic will then head back to the starting area and ground pound  the save button to save the game to be able to quit out without losing progress. He does one  of the craziest out of bounds ground pounds to pull this off, but in his actual speedruns has a  much better setup that works more consistently. Then from here he just collects the purple stars  in the starting area to unlock th

e magnet to be able to deal damage to the boss and the rest  is business as usual. Despite how insane this all looks and how much is skipped he only  theorized this to save around 30 seconds, but still that is a ton of time to save. Toxic would then begin doing runs trying out the new skips in Take it on the Chin and his  first posted run would end with a time of 25:12. In this run he unfortunately missed the glider  climb and had to resort to performing a backup by unlocking the pogo stick to g

et on top of  the building. Furthermore he would also miss the glider climb in the H2olga’s boss room,  but I guess luckily in this case he did have the pogostick so he could just use Corovii’s old  pogo route to get to the third button instead. His next run performed 5 days later would  finally now include both glider climbs saving a significant amount of time over the previous  run resulting in a gold split of 1 minute 19 seconds just to give an idea of how much time  those glider climbs save.

This run would also include the new Dad’s Dream route now with a much  better setup using this bucket to fly into this ceiling ensuring Timmy doesn’t gain too much  height. With this in mind a simple visual cue was all that was needed to consistently hit the  save button. Unfortunately on the final phase of the robot boss fight Toxic hit a frame perfect  cutscene skip on the boss causing the shock wave to not despawn resulting in Timmy taking damage  and the boss got back up. Toxic wasn’t sure

what to do in this case so he tried jumping in a pit  hoping that would fix things, but it didn’t. He ended up having to run around the entire arena  again costing most if not all the timesave he had gained throughout the run. This run would  end with a time of 23 minutes 40 seconds, but with loads removed was actually a 22:15  meaning Toxic had just broken the world record, although a bittersweet record at the very least.  But with all these new strategies if he could just put it all together w

ith no robot shenanigans  a 21 minute time was surely in the bag. And only 5 days later on August 21st 2022  Toxic would post another personal best with the description only saying “good run” so you already  knew it was going to be insane. Toxic lost about 10 seconds in Take it on the Chin due to a missed  ledge grab reminiscent to Corovii’s first ever speedrun, but he would make up for it and thensome  with a perfect Dad’s Dream golding the segment by over a minute. He would end the run saving

a  minute and 22 seconds off his previous run, dropping the world record all the way down to 20  minutes and 47 seconds with loads removed. Truly an insane run as just to get through Take it on  the Chin required 3 frame perfect inputs in a row to pull off, not to mention all the other stuff in  this run is definitely not easy to pull off. Still to this day he’s the only person to beat Corovii’s  time. However I don’t think the any% speedrun is done just yet as there definitely are improvements 

to be made on it including the 10 seconds saved in Take it on the Chin. But outside of that  there were two reroutes made after this run. The first one comes from Corovii who is showing  off a Dad’s Dream individual level speedrun. In this run he completely skips the need for grabbing  the light bulb powerup and instead opts for some really tight passes around the animated suits.  With this in mind after setting up the float instead of needing to stop by the starting area to  drop off a moth at

a suit he just goes directly to the third machine instead. I can’t overstate how  difficult these sprints past these suits are. All you need to know is if even Toxic doesn’t want to  do them they’re probably pretty tough to pull off. But if someone were to try this route and instead  do Dad’s Dream before Take it on the Chin to grind it out they would save at least 30 seconds. Finally Toxic figured out during the out of bounds portion of Get a Clue if you jump off  this side of the level and pa

use the game whenever this present is in view the game will  eventually load in this red building to land on saving about 13 seconds from the previous  route. So in total there are about 50 to 60 seconds in route optimizations that could still be  performed, but time will tell to see if anyone is willing to step up to the plate to complete it. Well, you know, that is if we’re talking about the slow Gamecube version of this speedrun… what  did you think Gamecube was faster for this game just beca

use every run I covered was either  done on Gamecube or Gamecube emulator? Well you my friend would be wrong as several months  later in February of 2023 Toxic was back and this time he found the real holy grail of Fairly  Oddparents speedrunning. You see the PS2 is fast for this game for all the wrong reasons.  In this game lag is actually super beneficial if you couldn’t tell from the skip in Take it  on the Chin, but also because when lag spikes occur while sprinting it makes Timmy zoom ahead

  really fast which can often be seen when running across the rainbow bridge in Fairy World. Well  Toxic discovered if you walk in front of the TVs in the hub location the game will begin loading  the cutscene connected to the level before even pressing A causing a lot of lag on the PS2, but  not so much on the Gamecube. The Take it on the Chin cutscene occurs within the level hub itself  so it doesn’t create much lag, but the Dad’s Dream level requires actually loading in the house and  a bunch

of other assets from the start of the level before playing which creates a ton of lag. So Toxic will walk up to the Dad’s Dream level and then position himself by a slanted ledge in  front of the first gate and I shit you not will listen for clunking sounds from his PS2 before  beginning his sprint. With the added speed boost and trajectory he’s able to jump over the first  gate. From here the next gate will be closed, but in this clip he simply just enters and  completes Get a Clue to unlock i

t and then does the rest of the hub skip as usual. But  literally on the same day he would then post another video skipping Get a Clue by jumping on  the first gate and running around the barrier past the second gate. The following day he would  put it all together and complete the first ever sub 10 minute run. In this run it takes him about  5 attempts of going back and forth between Dad’s Dream and Take it on the Chin to finally get the  lag boost to go above the gate. He also wastes a lot of

time going in and out of Get a Clue to  prevent the game from crashing because apparently he was dealing with a lot of game crashes when  attempting to enter Shadow Showdown right away. But in his next run not only does he get the  lag boost first try, he also skips entering and exiting Get a Clue and heads straight into  Shadow Showdown as apparently the game crash was just random and may have just been due to his disc  or something else. Toxic would end this run with a time of 6 minutes and 47

seconds, over 15 minutes  faster than his previous run. Although for the sake of leaderboard integrity this speedrun was  moved to an unrestricted category almost exactly like the zip category in Elden Ring. It’s one of  those things that’s neat it exists opposed to not existing at all, but a pretty lame category  overall and most would probably have more fun with the restricted any% category instead. If you made it this far into the video and you thoroughly enjoyed it or thought it was  intere

sting be sure to leave a like as that’s the best way to show support. Special thanks to  Toxicpinhead and Earllgray for helping me out with all of the information in this video, it  literally would not have been possible to make without their help. Also huge thanks to Krinios  who is the new editor on this channel, you guys will hopefully see a lot more of their work here  across the rest of the year. Reminder that you can get 50% off Factor right now with my promo  code EZSCAPEFEB50 at checkout

on factor75.com or by using the link in the description. And that’s  all I have to say for today’s video. Subscribe for more speedrunning related content and as  always I hope you all have a beautiful life.