Pokemon YouTuber SmallAnt shows off the easiest way to speedrun Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl

It hasn’t even been a month since the release of Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, but a YouTuber has already speedrun the game in under 20 minutes.

Of course, the speedrunning community is always looking for strategies and glitches to execute on the newest games. Most world records for Pokemon speedruns, though, tend to take much longer. For example, the record for the original Pokemon Diamond and Pearl is over three hours. Youtuber SmallAnt, however, has found a way to speed by most of the in-game content.

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YouTuber beats new Pokemon game in under 20 minutes

The exact timing for SmallAnt’s speedrun of Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl is 17 minutes. He was able to do this with only a Fishing Rod and a level 5 Turtwig.

There were two main glitches that Small Ant exploited to achieve this run. The first glitch allowed him to pull up multiple tabs of the in-game menu.

To pull this off, SmallAnt clicked the two Z buttons, one after another. This pulled up two menus on top of each other. If one of these menus is closed, the game thinks that the player isn’t in the menu anymore. Therefore, they can roam around the overworld with the menu open.

While the game is in this state, if a player tries to enter a house, the game will freeze. This allowed SmallAnt to head all the way to Jubilife City uninterrupted. There were no trainer battles, no conversations with Rowan, and no catch tutorials with Dawn.

SmallAnt performs a key glitch in Jubilife City (Image via The Pokemon Company)

The other glitch that Small Ant uses involves getting the Old Rod and registering it to the top and bottom slot of the registered items menu. When a player tries to use the Old Rod while not being around water, a text box appears with Rowan saying “There’s a time and place….”

If this text box pops up while an action is being performed, that action will resume as normal. SmallAnt exploits this with the help of an NPC in Jubilife City that pushes the player away when trying to enter the GWS building too early.

What he does specifically is stack three menus on top of the Old Rod glitch. Then, he speaks to the NPC in Jubilife, closing a menu right before she pushes. This freezes the game in place with the “The GWS isn’t ready yet” text box still active.

While the game is frozen, SmallAnt finds a ledge and jumps off while closing a menu and the text box at the same time. This allows the “push” to happen, which propels the avatar into the air.

From there, he closes a menu to restore the game to normal, speaks with the NPC one last time after stacking a couple other menus, and walks in the air from Jubilife to the Pokemon League.

In the Pokemon League, SmallAnt goes up an escalator and uses the menu glitch to end up out of bounds. He then sneaks into the first Elite Four room, and through these rooms he stacks the Old Rod glitch on top of a Menu glitch on top of another Old Rod glitch during the room entering animation. This allows him to phase through the walls, and he does this a few more times to reach Cynthia’s room.

Once inside, SmallAnt activates the Old Rod glitch during Cynthia’s speech. This allows him to roam around, reaching the elevator and entering the Hall of Fame, completing the game in a shocking 17 minutes.