Categories Explained

How Categories are Determined

The majority of the categories for speedruns of Shadow the Hedgehog are started by pressing the "New" option in the 1P Game Story Mode. From there, there are 326 different ways of completing the story mode to get to one of the 10 main endings.

To make things really simple, we grouped up all of these routes into 5 main category endings to match the 5 final levels in the story mode: Pure Dark, Dark, Neutral, Hero, and Pure Hero. The end condition of each of these categories is to get to the final stage and complete one of its missions and its final boss to reach the credits. Grouping the categories this way instead of 10 categories each with its own boss ending prevents needing to so the same run twice just to do a different end mission and boss where everything else in the run is the same.

Some other more targeted categories may decide to run a particular route, like Only Dark Missions and Only Hero Missions, and some may just be based on an arbitrary goal like completing the game with only the Samurai Blade or choosing stages that have the Team Chaotic members.

Expert Mode, unlike Story Mode, is a standalone game mode with only 1 possible playthrough, so it's pretty straightforward how that starts and ends.

Most categories are also "New Game+", as in they allow anything you have already unlocked in previous playthroughs like Secret Keys and Special Weapons. But most importantly, whether or not you have viewed a cutscene as they must be watched in full the first time you see them.

The two categories that do not run as "New Game+" are All Endings and 100% No Library, which start with a new file and route out playing certain stages to get keys and unlock weapons for later on in the run.

For all categories, timing begins on the first input the begins the playthrough and ends at the first frame of the final bosses dying cutscene.

Sub Categories

This game has a handful of glitches and tricks that can drastically change how the game is played. Some of these tricks are hard or even very difficult to pull off, so there are several rulesets in place that allow playing the game with the tricks you want to use.

• Any%
  • Use anything the game can do on original hardware / controllers.
• No Warps
  • The use of Wall Run Warps is not allowed in this category, but everything else is fair game.
• No CCG
  • This category was the alternative to No Warps where the main glitch at the time was CCG.
• Glitchless
  • This category is aimed at those who want to run the game as close as we can determine was "Developer Intended".
• No SPW (Special Weapons)
  • Limit the use of weapons to only those that are not exclusive to the Shadow Box that contains weapons that are unlocked after completing Story Mode runs.

This ruleset can be mixed and matched depending on what exactly you want to run. i.e.: "No CCG Yes Warps".

Below is a table of the main game glitches and where they are allowed.

For exact rules, view the rules on the speedrun.com Leaderboard.

	Any%	No Warps	No CCG	Glitchless	No SPW
Wall Run Wraps	✓	x	✓	x	✓
Chaos Control Glitch	✓	✓	x	x	✓
Out of Bounds	✓	✓	✓	x	✓
Death Loops	✓	✓	✓	x	✓
Special Weapons	✓	✓	✓	x	x