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Speedrunning


Zapp Branniglenn
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Speedrunning  

27 members have voted

  1. 1. Have you ever attempted to speedrun a game?

    • Yep!
      14
    • Nope.
      13
  2. 2. Do you regularly watch speedrunning marathons like Awesome Games Done Quick, or watch players race these games?

    • Sure, I love checking those out
      10
    • Not regularly, but I've checked out some recordings of such events out of curiosity
      13
    • Not interested.
      4


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Hey guys, I'm just curious who on this site is interested in speedrunning. I've been speedrunning games for about half a year and find it's a great hobby. I've watched speedrunning marathons for years thinking that this sort of stuff was impossible, but communities can be very inviting and it feels great to learn some new skills to play an old game in a new way. I started out on Super Mario Sunshine. Great speed game with a massive community and plenty of helpful resources. However, the sheer volume of players and recorded runs makes it hard for your run to feel impressive. I eventually encountered the 602 race, a bi-annual event in which runners go through 64, Sunshine, and both Galaxies in a 24+ hour marathon race. It was extremely impressive and my first exposure to Galaxy speedrunning. So I ran Galaxy 1 for a bit. Fun to play, but the sheer length got me burnt out on that pretty quick. You spend a lot of time waiting for level loads and star fanfare scenes.

I eventually quit both games and moved on to my current speed game: Metroid Other M. This is the least ran of the Metroid games, and honestly the least broken. I believe it's the only game in the series that has never appeared at a GDQ, except for obviously Samus Returns, and probably Metroid Prime Pinball. There are no major sequence breaks in Other M, and believe me we've hunted for them. The developers meticulously built a game that stops you from accessing areas and abilities you're not supposed to have. Compare this to Prime where you're out of bounds as soon as you jump into a wall in a funny way. There are a few glitches and minor skips, but I'd forgive you if you've played the game before and didn't notice them when watching a run. What draws me to Other M is how good it feels to play. Cutscenes are skippable provided you've cleared the game once, Samus' morph ball is her fastest means of movement (faster than speed booster!) and it takes less than half a second to get in and out of it. Fights are engaging and really test your reflexes. We also run Hard Mode as a separate category. Hard mode is faster because there's no ~15-18 minute epilogue sequence, and all the power ups, including mandatory ones, are removed from the game world. However, in Hard Mode, Samus takes increased damage and her health is not reduced to 1 when taking a hit that would kill her. Most enemies in the game will deal more than half her health in damage, and several possess instant kill moves. It's an exhilarating category where anything can happen, making it great for racing.

So what's your guys' experience with speedrunning? And definitely post PBs if you've got them. Here's my Any% and Hard Mode PBs. Those are ranked 5th and 4th place respectively. I've been out of town for a while, but I'm raring to get back in and improve my times.

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I've tried speedrunning before but nothing serious or based on the rules that exist in the SR community. I much prefer challenges with restrictions and being done with the game after beating it with those restrictions to having to replay the same game tons of times to improve your time (re-doing the same map over and over is already a heavy price to pay for being into LTC and not a welcome one). 

When playing some games I occasionally get the interest of seeing how fast this or that section can be done so I look up whichever speedrun I can find. I've also watched plenty of Fire Emblem ones done by different people; they have something of a connection with LTC after all. But I couldn't name any people who do speedruns outside of the people from SF / reddit FE communities and I don't watch any events. 

tl;dr they're curious to check sometimes, but their tendency to avoid much of the game (especially the very parts that shape the experience, which generally take some time to make use of) and reliance on glitches and exploits usually makes it too distant from what I see as a fun way of playing the game. 

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The only game i have ever attempted to speedrun is Azure Striker Gunvolt 2, and that's because it has a built-in speedrun mode that you can select after getting the true ending for both Gunvolt and Copen. Other than that, no, i don't speedrun. I'll speedrun certain levels in games (usually Mario) but i would't speedrun the entire game.

As for watching speedrunning events, they don't interest me. Though gaming events like that in general don't interest me, aside from Smash 4 tournaments, and even then, i only watch them when i feel like it.

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I'm obsessed with speeedrunning. Really obsessed. I go through every SGDQ and AGDQ and look through for games I know or at least have been mentioned by RIchie/Hommel, and so I watch like a minimum of 40 every event. I also watch some RPG limit breaks, ESA (years when their audio is bearable anyway), and the Cal Fire Relief. Individual streams are not really my style but I keep a few, one for Goldeneye player RWhite goose, A Torneko: Mystery Dungeon player, a Doom player,  the Body Harvest crew,  and then  my many Monaco buddies. 

I got into speedrunning Late 2014 because the top runners of Monaco were messing around the game in an open lobby and all 3 of them tolerated me because they each was convinced that  I was a personal friend of one of the others and therefore they accepted my "strange" strategies. I was a fast learner with Monaco, mostly because I'm very consistent. That said Monaco does require you to think on the fly because of lots of little RNG factors. The game inspired me to watch other speedruns, but I don't think I actually tried any other games myself until 2016. I'll probably be playing mostly Monaco for the time being since the (Sept 7) giveaway/sale has produced a lot of new players.

I guess my only unique speed runs are

Steambot Chronicles - It's a semi-sandbox game with good setting but awful awful combat. Not very proud of it since for the life of me (and 3 other people) there are no breaks in this game so it's all about going from story event to story event. I advocated a pseudo low% strategy since I was convinced that fighting with starter weapon would save time over elaborate money routes. Other runners disagreed because making the combat shorter is a big deal because of how quickly it can go wrong. 

Future Tactics: The Uprising- This is a weird 6th gen cross platform game (I play Ps2). It's kind of cross of turn-based artillery game (worms 3D) and a spiritual ancestor to Valkyria Chronicles. By the time I played it, a very good route had already been established so running this game is mostly up to getting the most precise things to work (knocking off the car on the dam level). I tried to add a new category by running the second story (which I only knew existed since last year) but it's A: stupid, and B: grind heavy. The second story is the same levels, but changes from turn based to phase based, on levels where enemies reinforce this breaks everything since they lose all of their actions for doing so instead of getting it free, but on other levels (eg the final boss) this makes the game harder since it'll attack 4 times as often. Running the first story is pretty chill though.

Monaco: What's Yours is mine - My first speedgame and still my favorite and most active. I used to keep track of records for the entire community until PC rendered my ugly table irrelevant by writing a program that read from the game's servers. I miss having all those video links in one place though 

Ape Escape: Pumped and Primed- The only game that I feel confident about saying that I've played it more than anyone else in the world. It's a spinoff game, but the classic gadgets from Ape Escape 1 and 2 are used for it's minigames, the best of which are platforming based. It probably has too many scrolling sections for its own good, and also is probably a good argument against what happens when you make a party game without a rubber banding mechanism. (too easy/one sided)

Beyond those a few marathons inspired me to casually run a few games.

Banjo Kazooie, Banjo Tooie (no DCW), Mario 64 (70 star), Robot:Rocket on Wheels, Goldeneye (IL), Perfect Dark (IL),  Final Fantasy Tactics Advance (more just testing whether doing all the story levels low level via  gil toss was faster than grind on frosty mage strats), and Majesty: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim. I also like to do blind races of NES platformers, because there's something comforting in 100+ games using the same control scheme and basic physics. 

There are a few things I'm thinking about in the future, More n64 platformers (Probbably Chameleon Twist 2 and Duck Dodgers) Mike Hommel's games, (Dr. Lunatic, Loony Land, Loony Land 2, Sleepless Hollow), Colony wars and Colony Wars Vengeance (Little worried about having to do certain missions on demand). 

 

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I love the concept of speedrunning, but most games are too long for me to have that level of investment where I know every nook and cranny. With that being said, I -

  • Hold 9 out of 103 stage time records in Bangai-O HD: Missile Fury.
  • Beat Super Metroid in 2:45.
  • Beat Shantae and The Pirate's Curse 100% in 2:08.
  • Beat Shovel Knight: Specter of Torment in 1:28:15.
  • Fully S-rank every Sonic game I play (and Rodea the Sky Soldier).
  • Completed F-Zero GX's story mode on Very Hard difficulty.

I actually think Bangai-O HD is one of the best games for speedrunning. The levels are short, restarts are instant, controls are digital (so inputs are consistent), and playing fast requires nerves of steel - it's very exciting!

I'm curious - what kinds of software/hardware are used for recording speedruns?

Edited by Zera
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I tried speedrunning Pirate Mode in Shantae and the Pirate's Curse- didn't take me long to realize I was terrible at it and massively behind where I should have been by a certain point. I just don't have the talent nor the restrain from the nonessential for speedrunning.

I don't watch more than snippets of LPs, speedruns, glitch videos, and other interesting gaming stuff.

 

48 minutes ago, Zera said:
  • Hold 9 out of 103 stage time records in Bangai-O HD: Missile Fury.
  • Beat Super Metroid in 1:45.
  • Beat Shovel Knight: Specter of Torment in 1:28:15.
  • Fully S-rank every Sonic game I play (and Rodea the Sky Soldier).
  • Completed F-Zero GX's story mode on Very Hard difficulty.

Gosh you're good.

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Oh man, I completely forgot that I speedran Shantae and the Pirate's Curse. I even wrote a little guide for it.
I also forgot my speedrun time for Super Metroid was 2:45, not 1:45. I edited my post to fix that mistake. Still kinda impressive, right?

 

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21 hours ago, Zera said:

I'm curious - what kinds of software/hardware are used for recording speedruns?

For PC games, there's plenty of screen capture software out there. Maybe some good free stuff too. That would also work for running games on emulator, but most games will not accept emulated runs on their leaderboard, since a game's load times on emulator can be altered by your computer's processing power, and emulators open the door for cheating with save states or speeding up the game with throttle. For consoles, we use pvrs. El Gato, Happauge, etc. You hook your console's video cables to the device, then output another set of cables to your television so that your gameplay displays real time on your TV. Whatever you use, it's ideal to stream runs. You can record runs offline and upload them, but that takes up tons of harddrive space. On Twitch, you can just highlight the run and it won't get auto deleted after six months. You can also upload directly to Youtube that way too. And then there's splits to record your times. I use Livesplit. Most split programs are free to use and pretty much the same functionally.

16 minutes ago, Zera said:

I also forgot my speedrun time for Super Metroid was 2:45, not 1:45. I edited my post to fix that mistake. Still kinda impressive, right?

Beats my time of ~10 years and counting. I could never finish Super.

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Speedrunning? I really like the concept, and have thought about doing one myself, but haven't really gotten around to it. They sound more fun than score runs, though, and can also be applied to stuff without a point system, so the whole format is generally more open-ended. That's why weird runs of unexpected games like RPGs and maybe even flight sim campaigns are a thing, and those are especially fun to watch. If I want to see a speedrun or TAS it's usually for a specific game, so I usually YouTube something instead of watching marathons of games I don't play.

Personally I've thought about running two games in particular, Metal Slug and Ace Combat 5. AC5 doesn't actually seem to have a speedrun yet so I'd be the first one to do it (or at least upload it to YouTube). Too bad I don't have any capture tools for my consoles.

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I'm a big fan of speedrunning, owing mostly to my love of Metroid games, where speedruns are some of the most popular videos of them. Other than Metroid, however, I tend not to like speedrunning too much because most games just take too long. I can run through Metroid Fusion in ~50 minutes gametime (any% with saves), maybe ~1.5-2 hours realtime, whereas other games (RPGs, LoZ games, etc) take either ~10-15 hours to complete, or a huge amount of game knowledge, or both. So, while I may enjoy speedrunning or watching speedruns, I just don't have the attention required to play or watch something that isn't Metroid. I may look at the occasional Mario or LoZ, but other than that...

Unfortunately, I don't think I'll ever record a speedrun, owing to my lack of recording equipment if I wanted to do a non-emulated run, and to the clunkiness of controls for an emulated run (and the fact that emulated runs are frowned upon). Also, I found out a few months ago my Fusion GBA cartridge broke... that was a sad day.

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I love watching speedruns, but I don't think I could ever do one myself.  To start off, I don't even know which game I know well enough to speedrun.  But speedruns are super entertaining to watch because it really shows a different side to gaming that not many know about.  I love watching Monkey Ball speedruns because that precision and dexterity is so cool to see in action.

I've even had a couple of Suikoden II speedrunners pop into my stream when I streamed Suikoden II and they were really cool about telling me about the many kinds of RNG and what would've been good luck if I were speedrunning as well as giving me some tips and tricks about getting things early in the game that I didn't know before.

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On 9/17/2017 at 11:46 PM, Glennstavos said:

Hey guys, I'm just curious who on this site is interested in speedrunning.

So what's your guys' experience with speedrunning? And definitely post PBs if you've got them. Here's my Any% and Hard Mode PBs. Those are ranked 5th and 4th place respectively. I've been out of town for a while, but I'm raring to get back in and improve my times.

I've been speedrunning Lufia 2 for some time now, and have a few other games in my pocket (Momodora Reverie under the Moonlight, Metroid Zero Mission, Mega Man X...geez all these M games). I'm also picking up Phantasy Star 4 to go with Shining Force 2 in my longer games to speedrun, but I'm a long way away from having those games comfortable to speedrun in my pocket. I'd say Lufia 2 is my most speedrunniest game of all.

V my claim to fame, Top 5 in the US for Lufia 2 Ancient Cave, Top 15 worldwide V

Spoiler

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Edited by Elieson
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