Hey Joshimuz.com members, today I come to you with something a bit different! But before that I'd just like to post a little followup to the previous post that yes; the Rockstar Games Marathon is now delayed due to the GTA VI delay. I'll get back to you with more details when I figure it all out!

Anyways, this post isn't about any of that, this post is something new and interesting we wanted to try where people other than me write a thing about a relevant thing they like.

This post is Halogenlampert, fellow speedfriend and Nintendo Switch Definitive Edition aficionado, writing about why he thinks the GTA:SA Definitive Edition route is cool actually and you should know about it. He apparently has lots of material for a possible entire seires of these posts diving into the cool details of the run, so if you enjoy this kind of post there'll be plenty more where that came from!

With that out of the way, I present to you: Halogenlampert's Definitive Edition Breakdown numero uno!

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What's up guys? I'm Halogenlampert, you may know me from Josh's chat, and I run San Andreas the Definitive Edition on Switch 2.

Josh, Arko and I have been talking about having a 'Definitive Edition' news corner for Joshimuz.com. I still get a weird 'shameless self promotion' vibe from this, but Josh says he's fine with it and I will gladly talk to anyone about DE strats until their ears fall of so this is me scratching that itch so to speak.

For a bit of context, me doing SA DE of all things started out as a bit of a meme for one of the Joshimuz community races. It was later that I learned that DE actually has interesting noAJS strats, lots of which were, and are to this day, still in development (it feels like every time I do a run the route is outdated). Those strats, as well as being on the cutting edge of a route are something I enjoy quite a bit and why I still run this.

It should probably be noted that the reason few people are aware of the coolness of SADE any% noAJS is because not a lot of people run this category actively. In fact, I find it very humbling to read the #gtasa_remastered channel the GTA speedrunning discord and find incredibly talented stratfinders do very complicated research for a route that very few people are actually implementing. I would love it if one of you decided to read this and give the run a go lol.

The following will assume you already know a few of the basics of how om0 in San Andreas works (You can trick the game into thinking you're not on a mission, and by doing the same mission twice you can skip the next in the chain, that sort of thing). If feedback comes back that the explanation was too handwavy I can give it a more thorough go later. But for now, I said SADE has cool strats, so what are they?

As a bit of an introduction to this category, I think it makes a lot of sense for me to start out with explaining arcade om0 since that is what a lot of the noAJS route is built around. If you're familiar with how Josh uses vigilante om0 as the entry point for a lot of dupes, the same general concept applies here. 
Ever since the 10 year remaster of San Andreas, there has been a glitch that allows you to gain control of CJ while inside an arcade minigame. This can be used to set up a glitched phonecall, like the ones seen in Josh's Vigilante om0, which can then be used to dupe. 
This is incredibly useful since there's lots of usable arcades on the map, one of which is even in CJs house! Better yet, there is no frame perfect 1 in 3 bullshit, this just works and is pretty lenient in terms of timing. 
It does require you to be able to navigate using only the minimap, but that's a much more fun constraint in my opinion.
I should note that this strat is only used in "no external FPS caps" runs, since, of course, vigilante om0 just exists in DE as well, and FPS cappers use that instead. 
If you'd like to learn more about how arcade om0 works I have included a diagram and a link to a video demonstrating it. 

In future editions of this, I can see myself going over the new strats as they're being found, just like I will do in a bit, or talk more about the route as it exists now, like I just have. With all of that said, here's what's new! (It should be noted that between the writing of the previous sentence and the publishing of this article a few months have passed lol)

For noAJS, home invasion IP, running dog IP and doberman partial skip have been found 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iirmnE3a8sI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQbx1SxdNvQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBKGcMfj4mA

For running dog IP we need pimping om0, the inputs for which are INSANELY hard in DE. We don't have held calls, so we have to get it directly from an arcade. what ultragirl does here is blindly go to the pimpmobile, begin to open it, tap "left" to leave the door open (leaving doors open is its own headache in DE. TLDR is you cant do it as you exit the vehicle, only as you enter), then as the glitched call comes in do the projectile into vehicle teleport, then once you're in the pimpmobile, START DRIVING so that CJ doesnt close the door, because you need to start pimping in time before the om0 toggle happens and you can't do that while the door is being closed. This is stupid hard and I've only recently started getting any consistency in it.

Home invasion IP works via the stuck cutscene of burning desire. getting cutscenes stuck allows us to combine the initial "wait for cutscene to end" loop, instead of the main mission loop with other missions, which allows for more transformation dupes to exist. (I should probably explain how Instapsses/Transformation dupes work at some point)

Doberman partial skip is similarly cursed, since it needs a specific balla model to be loaded as doberman starts. I'm not sure yet if this will be integrated into the route, the current LS route proposal predates this find.

Meanwhile, in the hundo corner, vigilante has an instapass with life's a beach now
I think what happens here is Skipperskip is entering the in-mission cutscene while is om0 call is still ending, allowing him to regain control while the cutscene is happening, and then using that control to start vigi in the cutscene.

Aaaaand that's all I got. Do let me know what you think of this, once again I will gladly talk about DE until the cows come home but if it's not something the Joshimuz.com members are interested in then I can also live with that.
Until maybe next time!
-Halogen

Hello Joshimuz.com readers! I come to you while on holiday in a little static caravan on the Isle of Wight with Faye (who’s helping with the maths/spreadsheets of today’s post). I’m sat at the kitchen table sipping orange juice and writing this on my MacBook which is not a situation I thought I’d ever find myself in.

Ahead of the release of GTA:VI in late May next year I’ve been planning to do an “All Rockstar Games” marathon, where I will do a playthrough of every Rockstar made game chronologically leading up to GTA:VI!

Now this raises a few questions, mainly: “What games are included?” and “how long will that take?”, both of which I hope to answer here today!

What Games?

First the main question, what games? You’d think that “just every Rockstar” game would be easy enough, however there’s a bunch of complications such as how Rockstar changed name, how they not only just make games but publish them, and even just the searching difficulty of “Rockstar games…. Games”. Fortunately for us, I knew about an easy answer to this question as Rockstar themselves keep a list of their own games. This seems like a better list to use than any 3rd party like myself or Wikipedia.

This list does have a few questionable choices, such as Smuggler’s Run PS2 and Smuggler’s Run Gamecube being multiple entries, and even just the order in which things are listed is… confusing. But we can deal with those issues and take a few liberties with what we include and what order we do them in.

What... order are these listed in?

How long will it take?

With the list question mostly solved, now we can tackle the next, bigger, question; "How long will it take?" It’s a bit of a hard question to answer for a few reasons, but one I kinda need to know in order to plan when to actually start the marathon.

Firstly, we need an estimate for how long each game takes to beat. While I’ve played a few of them, and speedrun a bunch of them, there’s a lot I’ve never even heard of which makes knowing how long they are a bit hard.

Thankfully, this is where howlongtobeat.com and Remo come in! After talking about this on stream one day, Remo went ahead and made a big list of all the games from Rockstar’s website on howlongtobeat.com, a website dedicated to figuring out how long it takes on average for people to complete games.

Here’s the list which if you scroll to the bottom says it’ll take 28 Days 18 Hours, otherwise known as 690 hours! (Nice) This doesn’t include GTA:O or RDR:O playthrough times, but those are both so massive I realistically could spend any amount of time I want to in those, from 0 hours to infinity, so we won’t worry about those and instead I’ll just play them as filler between the end of the marathon and GTA:VI release to making timing easier.

So 690 hours then, there’s our answer… right? Well not quite, sure that gives us an amount of hours, but for me to plan when to start we also need to know how many hours I stream on average. Thankfully I can look at my Twitch stats for how many hours I stream a month and take an average. Here’s the last year’s months excluding September because of JDQ:
August: 122 hours
July: 144
June: 126
May: 96 (I went to an event that month)
April: 65 (Went to an event and also held GTA Marathon!)
March: 97
Feb: 76 (again, event)
Jan: 75 (Event)

December: 127
November: 102
October: 127

We can see just how many stream hours I lose to going to events! But looking at this I’m inclined to just give a rough estimate of 100 hours a month. Sometimes it’s much more sometimes it’s much less, but 100 seems safe and easy to calculate with. So with that it would seem that it’ll take approximately 7 months to complete! That means in order to complete before GTA:VI releases at the end of May I’d need to start… Right fucking now! Uh oh!

No wait, it’s OK! We just took the howlongtobeat.com average time and naively used that for our calculations. There’s a few other things we need to consider! Firstly, I speedrun a lot of the games, and secondly I would hazard a guess that I finish games a lot faster than the average gamer.

Since I’ve done a few playthroughs of games recently, we can take my completion times of those and compare them to the website’s times. Here’s a list of all the ones I could find:
Bully - Me: 12 Hours. Website: 15.
The Getaway - Me: 10.5. Website 12.5.
Mafia The Old Country - Me: 12. Website 12.
Grand Theft Auto Liberty City Stories - Me: 10. Website 14.

So other than Mafia I’m always faster than the average, by roughly 25%, but lets say 20% to be safe since I did take the same for Mafia and these are all styles of games I’m familiar with, while not all Rockstar games’s games are 3rd person shooters.

As for the games I speedrun, we can get a really good estimate for how long those will take. My literal marathon estimates from Josh Done Quick! Below is a list of all the estimates:
RDR (XBOX) - 06:50:00
RDR:UNDEAD NIGHTMARE - 01:30:00
GTA:SA (NMG)- 05:30:00
GTA:SA DE (NMG) - 06:25:00
GTA:TBOGT - 02:10:00
GTA:VC (NMG) - 02:10:00
GTA:VC DE (NMG) - 02:45:00
GTA:VCS (NMG) - 05:05:00
GTA:IV - 08:00:00
GTA:TLAD - 02:30:00
GTA:III - 02:30:00
GTA:III DE (NMG) - 02:15:00

However we also have to consider that this is supposed to be a playthrough marathon, not a speedrun marathon, and while I can’t magically unlearn the runs and play for the first time again, I can at least do Cutscene% (No Major Glitches) speedruns. That again brings us to uncertainty however since I don’t know how long each game is cutscene%. I do however know how long VCS, SA and SA DE will be Cutscene% as I’ve done both of those! Taking the time difference between Cutscene% and No Major Glitches of those two runs, making that a percentage and then increasing the time of all the other runs by that amount should give us a super rough estimate of how long they’ll be on average too. Here’s those calculations (I’m rounding up so not 100% accurate):

GTA:SA Cutscene%: 9:00:00. NMG 5:30:00. Difference 3:30:00. Percentage increase: 64%.
GTA:SA DE Cutscene% 10:00:00. NMG 6:30:00. Difference 3:30:00. Percentage increase: 56%.
GTA:VCS Cutscene% 7:30:00. NMG 5:05:00. Difference 2:25:00. Percentage increase: 48%.

With this (and also with ignoring DE) that comes out to an average of roughly 55% increase in time. If I wanted to be super duper accurate I could look up Youtube videos of “Every cutscene in X game” and see how long they were for each, then add those times on directly, but I think 55% sounds pretty close to my guess (I would’ve said 50%) so I’m happy to use that number.

Smush both the reduced howlongtobeat.com estimates and the increased speedrun estimates together (with the previous Bully and Liberty City playthrough times) and we’ll have our total time!

So... how long will it take?

341 hours, which if we again assume I’ll “only” stream 100 hours a month will be 3 and a half months. (Calculating with an estimate of 5 days a week, 6 hours a day we get 2.84 months, but I’ll take the higher estimate based on Twitch data.)

With this in mind, I think a perfectly good time to set for when to start the marathon is the beginning of 2026! If I start the 1st of January, that gives me 4 and a half months, which is one month more than the estimate. That sounds like plenty of leeway time to allow for events and days off doing something else, and gives a nice clean start date! If I do indeed finish nearly a month early, I can fill the remaining time with the near unlimited RDR:O and GTA:O content as I mentioned earlier, meaning I don’t need to do any tricking timing stuff to finish RDR:2 at exactly May 26th.

And that’s it, that should hopefully be everything I need to start the marathon at the correct time and play the correct games. I’m looking forward to seeing what all the fussy is about games like Max Payne and Midnight Club, as well as play some random retro games!

A big thanks for Faye for helping with all the maths on the estimates, she’s made a big google sheet with all the calculations on, and a little checklist for when I’m doing the marathon to see if I’m still on track to complete the marathon in time. I spent the whole time writing this sat next to her while we figured everything out for a few hours.

And a big thanks to you for reading! I hope this was actually interesting to read. If you think we got any of the maths wrong, or you really think *insert game here* should be included, let me know in the comments!

See you all the beginning of January for Joshimuz’s Big Rockstar Games Marathon!

Hello everyone, the public schedule for JDQ XXV is finally out! As well as a bunch more details like donation goals, prizes and such.

Still got a lot more JDQ things to do, like all the technical backend stuff that runs the stream and donation goals, all the graphical layouts and such. I also wanna try to get a merch store up and running before as well! Hopefully I can get it all done and dusted before September 23rd.

Also, thanks to Joshimuz.com I can now do some "Radio%" donation goals, since I can post the run with audio here after for members to watch as a perk! Hooray!