Enough talk, Let's Play: Shadowrun

In case any lurkers out there were motivated to play around with speedrunning themselves, here are some new speedrunning optimizations:
1) Using Spatter instead of Akimi is definitely the way to go.
2) You can get away with using even worse equipment, and it does save time not to get the better stuff.

In particular, you don't need a Shotgun or even a Ruger - ever. Going without them introduces some new wrinkles though. Without the Ruger you can't even damage most enemies after Daley Station. This means using grenades against the Orc blocking the Wastelands entrance becomes a good idea (the Beretta barely damages him and Shadowrunners won't follow you into the club). And as long as you basically never shoot enemies, boosted reflexes aren't worth getting.

By slashing all the expensive stuff (weapons, Akimi, reflexes) you can skip more bank accounts and arena fights. I put it to the test and was able to do a run in 83:53. The run wasn't single segmented, but the time does reflect all the concessions one would probably make for a single segmented run (and was hardly error free anyway). My weapon until the Assault Cannon was the Fichetti Light Pistol (1 more power over the Beretta), and the Beretta would work fine too but the route has some extra money to spare. If anyone is interested I can post a brief summary of how you manage your money and karma in the route.

There isn't much left to cut it seems; you'd have to consider spending less on runners or not buying the Assault Cannon. Changing up the order of doing things is still possible though. Before I was thinking about doing Maplethorpe before Drake (which opens up the option of hacking Drake yourself) or doing Dark Blade right after the Rat Shaman (this might be part of a route that only visits the Wastelands once). I've tried my hand at writing routes using these ideas but I can't find one that seems good on paper.

As a speed-run fan I find this interesting even though I will likely never use this information.

This is one of my favorite games.

I rented it, back in the day, knowing nothing about it, but I was hooked when I saw how the main character started in a morgue (how's that for different), I loved the 3/4 view graphics (still love games like that) and the amazingly haunting music.

I was just happy to have something for SNES that sort of played like a point and click adventure game. I was extremely jealous of the growing cabal of PC owners in the '92-'94 era, especially since they got a sequel to Maniac Mansion that I could never touch.

Whoops, I bumped a very old topic. I didn't realize it was old.

I'm glad you did, since I hadn't read this one before and now I finally know what the differences between these games are. I've only played the Genesis version.

So now that it's bumped, let's use this thread to argue over which Shadowrun is best! Or not. The SNES version is a much more polished game (for example the Genesis version has this bug where hellhounds frequently pop up out of nowhere and eat you in places where hellhounds really shouldn't be, like in the streets or inside office buildings. At least I hope it's a bug.) But the Genesis version just feels more accurate to the source material. So yeah everybody should play both.

It's honestly a bit misleading to say version. That implies that they're, essentially, the same game. Rather than being two completely different games which happen to be based on Shadowrun. But yeah, SNES nails the atmosphere and is all adventure game-y, Genesis includes essence and is all open world-y. Both are good.

There's also another version: The Sega CD one.

And those are the only three Shadowrun games.

Well, there's also the actual RPG, and that PC game that was cancelled when MS bought'em out. After that though yeah. No more were ever made.

That's right. None at all.

Not to dig up too old of a thread, but an SNES Shadowrun speedrun (21 segments done in 1:35:50) was recently submitted to Speed Demos Archive. It's in German and not English, but still worth a watch: http://speeddemosarchive.com/ShadowrunSNES.html