Speedrunning Discussion Thread

Delta

Delta

Selling colourful Pokemon to Celadon Game Corner
Member
Some of you may have heard of the term 'Speedrunning'. It's a booming community filled with people attempting to grab World Records for the fastest time clearing a game. People upload their personal fastest runs to Youtube most of the time although if it breaks a world record they can submit their entry to Speed Demo's Archive (SDA). SDA is a collection of the fastest run times of games that have a record. Live streaming is also a very popular thing to do nowadays. The chats and streams are encouraged to be PG so there is no worry if your sensitive to anything. Live Streams themselves often break records and there is much terminology for every game. Ocarina of Time for instance:
MST - Medals, Stones, Trials
BotW - Bottom of the Well
ISG - Infinite Sword Glitch

SDA runs a couple of marathons every year. The most important ones being Summer Games Done Quick (SGDQ), Awesome Games Done Quick (AGDQ) and their sub-marathons Awful Games Done Quick. These marathons are to raise money for charity and give away spectacular prizes; such as a replica Master Sword from The Legend of Zelda and a replica Gunblade from Final Fantasy 8 amongst many other things. At least I remember it being a Gunblade. This year at AGDQ they raised over an amazing $450,000 for the Prevent Cancer Foundation.

SDA focuses on the human aspect of speeedrunning and making sure that everything is properly done. Every speedrun you see from SDA can be done using any sort of controller/legitimate peripheral. However TASVideos focuses on the fastest possible way a game can be completed using things like slow down and save states. Cheating devices are still banned though. It's still very interesting and some projects can take years. The Super Mario 64 project took over 5 years to complete and the outcome is quite spectacular.

I hope there are some people who share my interest in speedrunning, it's something I watch very often and if I can encourage other people to join this fantastic community it'd be interesting to talk about as I already have some lengthy conversations about speedruns with friends.
So are there any stories about speedrunning or is anyone trying to speedrun a game themselves? I'm currently in the process of deciding something I want to play and commit to.

There is actually a speedrunning wiki which can give you a detailed guide of strategies and a run down of World Records for whatever game you wish.
 
Speedrunning does a lot for the video gaming community and does a lot for all of the charities and organizations that get donations after some of the marathons/events that occur every year. I even remember a Pokemon speedrun a few years back that involved catching all 493 Pokemon in the quickest amount of time, and I think the donations went to cancer-related charities. They've probably done it again since that time.

As for my personal speedruns, I specialize in Fallout: New Vegas and Megaman 1/Megaman 10. I could never do a livestream, since I'd definitely mess up somewhere and just disappoint everyone lol.
 
Well, ever since I read a walkthrough on GameFAQs I've done lots of speedruns on defeating the Elite 4 within Pokémon Red. It's very fast and done within 3 hours. Sadly I don't have two Gameboys and two copies or else I would try speedrunning catching them all since 151 is the smallest number (there's no way I'm going to try 649).
Sometimes I do speedruns of 4th gen games, too, but they aren't spectacular. I also like to get people together and speedrun in real time. This is just where we play a certain Pokémon game as fast as we can and post proof saying we've done it.
 
Some Loser said:
As for my personal speedruns, I specialize in Fallout: New Vegas and Megaman 1/Megaman 10. I could never do a livestream, since I'd definitely mess up somewhere and just disappoint everyone lol.
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There is a very popular Super Mario 64 speedrunner, siglemic, who is the king of resets. If I remember right, one time he was going for the world record on star 119 and he missed a jump he could easily recover from and he just reset. But on a super tight and competitive game like that you kind of have to.
Old Oot speedruns used to last up to 6 hours and if there was one little screw up the run was usually lost unless the runner had an amazing lead. I guess you have to accept it's gonna happen from time to time. No-one really chastises anyone for it.

Amphy23 said:
I also like to get people together and speedrun in real time. This is just where we play a certain Pokémon game as fast as we can and post proof saying we've done it.
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I like to do this a lot too. I usually emulate Super Mario 64 and a friend plays it on a TV side by side and we race sometimes. It's a lot of fun.
 
No mention of TheSpeedGamers? /sadface

I like watching them, and have attempted to pull them off before, but I've never had the patience to get very skilled in any one game. Maybe if I read guides it'd be different, but all my attempts have been without one haha.
 
There is actually a speedrunning wiki which can give you a detailed guide of strategies and a run down of World Records for whatever game you wish.

I forgot to mention this, I'll edit it in the first post.
 
Delta said:
If I remember right, one time he was going for the world record on star 119 and he missed a jump he could easily recover from and he just reset. But on a super tight and competitive game like that you kind of have to.
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I shoot for perfection, especially in speedruns, so I'd reset over and over again until I got it right, which wouldn't look to good during a livestream. I like doing it at my own pace, but I definitely see the amount of practice you have to put in for a livestream speedrun or world record.
 
I like watching speed runs of games(specifically ones of Zelda OoT),but I haven't actually done one myself all the way through. The furthest I've got to an actual speed run was beating Brock in Pokemon Blue in around 9-10 minutes, and then failing on the way to Misty. Actually, a couple of months ago I was considering joining the speedrunning community, but I haven't really found a game I'm good at speedrunning at, although I'm familiar with some speedrunning terms in Zelda OoT.
 
Anyone seen the SMT IV trailer Monopoly TAS?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDAcKNg9akA

I guarantee you will have to watch it at least twice and it will blow your mind.
 
I've been doing quite a couple against my friends on inFamous 2, MoH, and Black Ops (1 and 2). I don't do it for records oor whatnot, just for the lolsies.
 
Delta said:
Anyone seen the Monopoly TAS?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfkwasBfV-E

I guarantee you will have to watch it at least twice and it will blow your mind.
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That's a very nice Shin Megami Tensei trailer, but I didn't see any buildings nor was Boardwalk Avenue even discussed! Don't tell me they're removing the beautiful blue properties! D=
 
Whoops! Haha. I'll just go ahead and err...fix that. Boy imagine if I linked to the vid I saw before that o.0

No Demi-Gods in this video I hope.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDAcKNg9akA
 
Umm... That's a Speed Run all right.

Now let me go watch it a third time to attempt to see what just happened.

TAS never really interested me. I prefer "clean" ones. I don't even mind glitches in speed runs, but using tools to get down to the frame on things seems kind of like cheating. Not that I'm saying it is. Just that it feels like it.
 
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