As of yesterday, it’s now possible to beat the game by catching only a single portrait ghost: King Boo. The entire Area 1 hallway is now skippable thanks to the discovery of left-right wall clipping (previously all clips were done on north/south walls).
A human could now theoretically beat this game faster than Super Mario Bros 1. A sub 5 minute speedrun is on the horizon, which is certainly one of the fastest completion times for a GameCube game, if not the fastest at this point.
