Pokémon Snap is a game where you move along a rail, and yet it has had an active speedrun community for years. The game lends itself to it: it offers a fixed path but great freedom in what you photograph, in the order of unlocks and in how you handle luck. This page presents the race categories, the records as of 13 October 2026, the route of a reference TAS submission and the technical tricks the specialists have discovered.
The categories on speedrun.com
The Pokémon Snap leaderboard on speedrun.com has four categories: Any%, 100%, Challenge Score and 250k Points. Times are measured in real time, a video is required and emulators are allowed. The precise rules of each category are detailed on the game’s page. The TAS submission we describe below ends at the credits, after the photo of Mew.
| Category | Displayed record | Holder | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Any% | 20 min 19 s 100 | quo | 27 October 2021 |
| 100% | 23 min 19 s 400 | aKaFuKu | 31 May 2026 |
| 250k Points | 26 min 18 s 500 | quo | 22 June 2022 |
The reference TAS submission
A TAS (tool-assisted speedrun) is a sequence built frame by frame with the help of tools. TASVideos submission no. 9564 completes the game in 20 min 33 s 50 on the American version. When it was validated, one of the judges noted that, using the timing method of human runs, it beat the humans, the American version’s record then being over 21 minutes. It served as the basis for several pieces of information used in this guide: the unlock thresholds and the reference scores on the scores page.
The route
- Beach. You take just enough points (23,800) so that a quick shot of Electrode in the Tunnel is enough to clear the Apple threshold, set at 24,000.
- Tunnel. A very quick shot of Electrode, leave the course to unlock the Apple, then go back in and blow up the final Electrode to open the Volcano.
- Volcano. A short course: you leave it right after the photo of Moltres, enough to reach the 22 species for the River.
- River. A shot of Poliwag is enough to unlock the Pester Ball (72,500 points). You then have to leave and come back to send the Porygon onto the button and open the Cave.
- Cave. You accumulate the points needed for the Poké Flute there, 130,000 in all. As soon as the last shot clears that threshold, you leave.
- Valley. The Valley no longer requires photos of Pokémon, but it does require the one of Dugtrio Mountain. You have to knock the Mankey onto the button to enter Oak’s lagoon. The dialogue in this scene can be advanced every other frame.
- The other Signs. You go back to take the Mewtwo Constellation, the Cubone Tree (flute), the Koffing Smoke (Pester Ball in the crater), the Pinsir Shadow (Apple, flute) and the Kingler Rock.
- Rainbow Cloud. Mew appears at random and you have to hit it six times (three close hits, three at mid-distance). Once the bubble is broken, you take the photo. After the scoring session and the save, the credits start.
The mechanics speedrunners exploit
Slowdown
Much of the lost time comes from slowdown. The busiest areas are the second half of the Beach (grass and moving Pokémon), the Tunnel room with many Electrode and Kakuna, the zone with the Slowpoke and Shellder in the River, and certain rooms in the Cave. To lessen it, you look up or down while aiming rather than at the busy areas. An Electrode’s explosion causes a spike of slowdown, as do certain evolutions, such as that of Charmander or Weepinbell.
The camera and the vehicle
Photos can only be taken while aiming, a mode in which the vehicle’s speed freezes. Items cannot be thrown while aiming, and a short delay is needed after leaving it. The ZERO-ONE has two movement modes depending on the course: in one it stays exactly on its rail, in the other it can drift a little left or right depending on the camera’s orientation. Its speed drops when you look away from the front, lowest when you look straight behind you: this is what the manual calls “slowing down the ZERO-ONE”.
The Extended Look Up bug
Specialists have spotted a bug called “Extended Look Up”: outside of aiming, the cursor can look a little higher than the normal limit. When you then re-enter aiming, the camera recentres on that higher point. This further reduces slowdown in several passages. It is behaviour of the original game, which players exploit deliberately.
Dialogue
The text in the American version is slower than in the Japanese version, which costs more than ten seconds according to a runner quoted by the TAS’s author. The choice of the player’s name matters too: the default name, Todd, limits the time lost. During scoring, you can hold B to speed up the display.
And for you?
You do not need to aim for the record to enjoy these discoveries. Reducing slowdown by looking elsewhere, studying framing effects, photographing only what is useful: all of this also improves a regular playthrough. For photo values, see the reference scores, and for the logic of unlocks, the progression page.
