By now, you probably know what a speedrun is already.
It's where players commit to beating a game as fast as possible.
On the surface, it's a bit silly —
people sitting down with one game, playing it over and over,
dedicating immense time and effort to learning its ins and outs,
and learning skills that probably aren't all that helpful anywhere else. And, yet,
*somehow*, the experience of taking part in or even watching someone try to speedrun a game is exhilarating and amazing and just fun.
And speedruns of some games frequently get millions of views.
This clearly matters to a lot of people.
So there's probably a reason why. And I was having trouble scratching out the reasons why,
so I arrived at the obvious solution of writing a YouTube video about it.
Speedrunning is really fun to watch and stories about speedrunning are consistently fascinating
and I really want to talk about why.
And no one's managed to stop me so far.
It's generally accepted that the "Souls" series is pretty difficult.
And they ARE, at least for beginners,
because the games are generally not great at teaching you how to really grasp playing them.
I've heard there's already a video out there somewhere that drones on and on for way too long trying to explain this,
so we'll ignore that here.
This difficulty is the prime reason why speedruns of games in the series are so entertaining to watch.
Owing to the games' inaccessibility and the time investment required to "get good", as it were,
watching someone blast through them is just plain fun.
What's interesting in a more in-depth way about speedruns, though, is seeing how they develop over time.
And Dark Souls is a perfect example of why.
The earliest speedrun on record at Speedruns.com—a fantastic resource,
by the way—for Dark Souls is by Japanese runner "Twilight".
In 2011, a lot less was known about how Dark Souls really ticked,
and there was yet to be much of a community to help pick away at all the possible fastest approaches to the game.
So Twilight's run consists largely of combining general tricks that were widely known early on for making the game easier or faster.
For example, in Dark Souls there are multiple different starting classes with their own stats, starting items, and abilities.
While some *do* have unique advantages, the Pyromancer starts with the ability to throw fireballs,
something none of the others can access for quite a while.
So it's usually the one recommended to new players, because, if they're having trouble fighting, they can *throw fire on people*, I mean, come on.
So Twilight picks them. It's not really a surprise.
It's kind of the obvious choice if you were to think about how to speedrun this game if you played it a few times.
The next big choice is the starting gift players can choose something extra to start the game with from a list at character creation
normally in Dark Souls early on to continue deeper into the game players have to go through a fairly tough area fight a
Difficult boss to get a key to another difficult area then fight another boss there to progress through to another difficult area called blight town
which leads down to another boss which is guarding a bell you need to ring to progress the game, but for
reasons the developers made one of the starting items players can choose from a key that unlocks a gate in the starting area which skips
Past two of those bosses right into the lower part of blight town
So it's pretty clear what item a speedruner would want to start with here.
It's just the most obviously fast and helpful choice
I mean look at the other ones:
Binoculars?
A rubbish ring?
A ....more rubbish ring?
Pendant.
Trinket: no effect.
Black fire bombs? What a garbage option. Why would anyone ever pick that?
I don't know. I guess they're pretty good
I mean they're
more deadly than STD bomb
what?
Another initially obvious trick for speedrunning involves this drake that  shows up early on and hangs out up here.
Getting a decent weapon in this game usually takes some time
But once you get to this big scary boy,
One recommended way for new players to get to an advantage so they don't have too hard a time starting out
is to sit in a safe place and spam arrows at its tail until it breaks off giving you this sword.
The Drake sword deals a ridiculous amount of damage for the place in the game where you can get it
it drops off in its usefulness quite quickly but for early players is just a fantastic weapon to pick up.
But instead of wasting time and arrows, of which they had neither,
Twilight simply dodged behind it when it jumped down and cut its tail off and then ran to the next area.
This is one of the most cathartic things you can see in a speedrun, you know,
You spend a bunch of time dying to its fire or getting kicked to death
and then you see someone else just steal its tail and
run away with it and proceed to beat people to death with it for the rest of the game.
It's great.
A lot of Twilight's early run consists of playing the game the way one normally would,
but just doing more running and ignoring enemies.
Early runs like this play the game basically as normal but very quickly and precisely,
Doing the most obviously easy and fast moves.
Twilight burns all the remaining bosses with their hot hot hands and grabs enough humanity that they can feed it to the daughter of chaos
And open a shortcut past all the major fire based bosses
Which obviously would take a long time to fight when all your weapons are fire.
Have you ever tried actually fighting fire with fire?
I'm on a watch list now.
After a lot of running past things and killing bosses
They gather the four Lord Souls required to open the big door to the remnants of great-uncle Gwynn's mega weekend barbecue and kill him
So someone can finally call the fire department and they do it in an hour and 26 minutes in in game time
This is an ungodly fast speed to finish Dark Souls
but there was a lot of improvement to make
what I think is interesting about the early runs through the game is that they weren't just improving on execution of the same route or
Finding slightly more improved paths, but the nature of the entire route from the very start was still up for debate
Nothing was set in stone
even what type of character you chose to play as and it wasn't clear what the fastest way would really be and that's a really
fun experimental period in the development of a speedrun
This is where Dark Souls runs excel in the spectatorship aspect in lots of other games
You don't have as much choice or freedom and where to go or what sort of character to play or what weapon to use there
Are so many other paths or decisions that could have been made in a Souls game that the next run threatens to be
completely different and well
It was the next World Record was set three months later and has gone on to be the longest standing world record lasting
13 months it was set by another Japanese runner care tap
I hope I'm pronouncing that properly care and then there's any engage took care tear it that all right
What's really fun about this run? Was it diverged from twilight's path?
Immediately not only do they start the game with a different class right out of the gate
But once they make it to filing shrine and you assume their own is going to be similar looking but with slight
Improvements they get up and immediately head in the opposite direction
Oh, wow goes to parts of the game Twilight never even sees in their run firstly
They go to the valley of Drake's dodge between the drakes and grab the red tear stone ring
Which boosts the players damage output by roughly sixty-six percent when they're below twenty percent health by playing more riskily cata becomes much more dangerous
This is the kind of improvement
I love seeing in speedruns learning to abuse a
risk/reward mechanic to just get the rewards by simply playing really well in a speedrun a risk reward item can very frequently become a
hopper of war then they run into
Darkroot base in an encounter the Black Knight there now Black Knights are tough enemies in the early game
They don't take much damage. Even when you reap a star backstab them
You can see this is gonna take quite always push them off. The cliff is rewarded with the Black Knight halberd
You only get this weapon for killing the knight like 20% of the time and these Knights don't respawn
This halberd forms the basis of care to strategy
So if they don't get the halberd here, they would have to start the run again. There are
definitely countless runs on the cutting room floor that ended here just because
You can slightly increase the chance of a dropping if you have more humanity on you, but it's still like a crapshoot now
There's a reason the last thing you fight before the final boss is a black knight with a halberd
Quinn knew what was up this weapon
Absolutely
Mashes most enemies and bosses then
They just keep going and run all the way around to the dark route Basin entrance to the undead parish
Skipping several areas completely after beating the gargoyles with a regular old axe. They use the souls
they've gained to level up enough to equip the halberd which they can now just about wield if they
Two-handed cata had precisely figured out the most efficient way to get the souls
They needed to use this weapon as early as possible
This means they're able to utterly destroy the fire bosses that Twilight had to skip completely because of their weapons
it's literally faster for character to run through all this and kill all these bosses than it is to gather the
Materials required to just skip them over all care to saved 15 entire minutes over Twilight while killing more bosses
Most of the current record holders and Dark Souls use this basic strategy now
But they've saved even more time by discovering new holes in the game to exploit life by
Messing with the camera system enough to go out of bounds and enter sen's fortress early
They've improved the strategy so much that they don't even use the master key anymore instead. They use black fire bombs to
Work fire bombs off say your page
Option why would anyone ever pick?
Someone should just fucking come and stop me before I make it so they stop me talking and axe
This just goes to show how much a run can develop the once really obvious main choices of Pyromancer
Master key and Drake sword have all in turn been
superseded the creation and development of new runs through games is really really fun to watch but in a way that's
hard to describe it's a kind of
Logistical fun. Is that a kind of fun? That doesn't sound like a kind of fun?
It's it reminds me of the feeling I got
when I had my GPS out and it told me to take a route through a park that I knew really well and I was
Like now I can go through that faster, and I had walked a different route and I got through it faster
I just felt amazing. It's a bit like
The feeling I got when I decided I was gonna do my taxes eight months early. Have you ever done your taxes early?
Speedrunning is for you. Welcome friend. I
Have a script for this bit but I forgot all the words part 2 categorization and arbitrary
No one I showed the script suggested better titles. So I'm just gonna have to go with these ones now
I have to admit I've so far deliberately not mentioned something about the dark souls run
The progression I described is actually only one of several different categories of run through the game one known as any percent
No wrong warp
Like I said before most of the normal runners spent killing all the major bosses to get the Lord Souls to unlock the big door
which is why it was kind of a big deal when players figured out a way to
Teleport right here on the other side of the door without having to open it the games
DLC added an arena where players could fight each other online
swag to tomorrow after beating
Artorias who incidentally was my favorite boss fight in the series until Blood Bones DLC came out you gain access to the battle of Stoicism
Gazebo which presumably sounds better in Japanese when they joined the arena
through the gazebo
players receive a purple cowards crystal which they can use to quit a fight and teleport back to the entrance it does this by telling
the game to move you to a certain map and position the map being the main dlc area and the position being the entrance to
The arena now there are other items in the game which work similarly like the homeward Bonio or the darksign
They tell the game to take you to the map where you last rested at a bonfire and the position of that bonfire
So let's say you last rested at the bonfire in front of the big door barring specific circumstances using one of these two items
We'll take you back here. Now. You can't normally use the purple cowards crystal outside of the arena
It's grayed out trying to use it makes your character have a panic attack and think about all the times
They said you too when a waiter told them to enjoy their food
But there's a glitch that allows players to use items even when they're not intended to by trying to use it
switching to an item
they can use like the estus flask while holding down the use button still running off an edge while toggling weapons and
pressing the use button again on an exact frame causing the player to drink the item along with the flask which
Uses it even if you're not supposed to be able to what a handy item
You can visit the gazebo whenever you like
But here's the thing
Using the crystal in the main game has a fancy long
Animation where you can't do anything as the game fades to a loading screen
But when you use it this way you can still walk around and use items before it fades
So what if we used another item that teleports us while this other effect was going off?
Well to put it simply the game gets confused
It tries to load you to the map of the last used bonfire
Which in our case is the bonfire before the big door, which we cleverly napped at before coming here
But the position of the arena entrance the arena entrance the game is looking for doesn't exist in this map though
So instead it takes you to the pre-programmed
Default position in the level and it turns out that the default position for this area is inside the kiln of the first flame
so now all
Players need to do to beat the game is gain access to this bonfire and the dlc battle arenas
And then they can warp directly to the last area
Oh and also they have to perform an absurdly precise set of inputs with barely even a frame of lenience seriously
It's really hard getting this footage alone
Took me like 25 minutes
But if you can execute this consistently which speedrunners are really good at learning to do this method saves a lot of time
however
It was decided by the community to be so different from the other runs since you have to both
The DLC and abuse a pretty major glitch that all runs prior to the discovery of this glitch and after the discovery
But which don't use it should be split off into their own separate category at this point the dark souls
'speedrun community has split the game into at least 14 different
categories ranging from extra difficult challenges such as killing all the bosses or completing the entire game without leveling up to
Absurdist challenges like completing the game after collecting one of every ring item in the game the Lord of the Rings
Run of the clever name this kind of separation of a run into distinct categories also happened in blood-borne
when the game was initially released a glitch in some of the architecture for the game was discovered resulting in the player being able to
leap off at an angle from a coffin and get on to a raised section of wall then do an attack at another part of
A wall to clip through skipping a whole bunch of the game
for example
the fight with gas Gwaltney and leading to the creation of a root which
Supplemented by other tricks would eventually only take about 20 minutes, which is utterly absurd
however
blood-borne was pretty heavily patched after release making lots of changes and fixes including that error in the architecture and
Also incidentally much better load times. This makes this run impossible to do on a properly patched version of the game
It also means the version of the game you would play today on an online ps4 would be unable to do the fastest speedruns
Which puts you in a pretty major disadvantage the solution was for new categories to be created
So runners could run the original version of the game if they wanted but runners could also compete using the current patch the current fastest
Patch to run of the game is slower by 8 minutes
Although incidentally because of the massive fixes to load times despite the in game timer telling you it's almost 8 minutes slower
It's a minute faster to watch in real time
Blood-borne was messed up when it came out wasn't it Blood Bones a really interesting game to run as well in general for a lot
of reasons one of them being the beasts blood pellet which adds a meter filled by dealing certain types of damage and the higher the
Meter the more damage the player both deals and receives
It's a bit risk/reward in normal play, but it's a godsend for speedrunners and in some ways
It makes the game easier for speedrunners by specifically
Rewarding fast play the diverging anypercent categories in these games raises interesting questions about the Hobby
In games with multiple categories, which one is the real speedrun?
Why are some glitch and tricks permitted and others not shouldn't the goal be to create the fastest singular run and agree on one?
standard set of rules for what the
Speedrun should be and how does one decide when something is allowed and when something should be a separate category or band?
well, it depends on both the game and its community a game that's impacted by these questions in a big way is mirrors edge mirror's
Edge is a game
Very close to my heart to the point that I've speedrun it before as well if I'd bothered to submit the run to speed runs
calm I'd
Officially be in
200 first place. The thing about Mirror's Edge is it's a game about moving very quickly
The player character is very mobile has a diverse set of moves across
Services and for picking up speed and different ways of jumping on to off of and across things
There are also a lot of little ways the mechanics can be manipulated to go even faster
this makes it an ideal speed game this runner just executed a trick so
Quickly at the beginning that you probably didn't even see it right as they load it in
They turned to the side and did a side hop which immediately gets them up to top speed
This is one of my favorite tricks right here
Normally this pole like you have to slowly do a balancing act as you walk across it
Okay kid
All right
Runners have reached the point where they leap
Onto it in a straight line and don't fall off and then turn into another jump off of it
So they never have to do it
It's incredible playing Mirror's Edge as fast as you can and then going online and checking out a speedrun is a really fun experience
There are so many nuances and specifics to the game's level designs and movement mechanics
That is just a joy to see how much extra speed can be teased out
But the game's parkour focus and aesthetic also poses a question for runners. What does it mean to speedrun Mirror's Edge?
There's a variety of interesting glitch is available to exploit if you want to beat nerves edge as fast as possible
But some of them significantly impact the way the game is played and what the experience of watching it is like take for example
The out-of-bounds glitch or ooh
plenty of games like you get above the level and use this to get to places meant to be reached through slower or harder means
This can be used very egregiously to bypass large chunks of several levels
And this is technically much much faster than playing the game the normal way
but
it also
Runs counter to the sort of principles that make Mirror's Edge the game you'd want to see speed run in the first place
Doesn't it it's a game all about motion
Finesse clever use of controls and timing to skirt along the edge of the proverbial mirror not to clip through it and then just win
part of the fun of speedrunning is watching a game being played very
Skillfully and very quickly and some tricks rub up against what some people would define as skillfully playing the game
so Mirror's Edge has multiple categories for the main run through the game including any percent and
Glitchless in any percent you can be treated to a faster run of the game using a lot of technical trickery to run across surfaces
in weird and impossible ways
Accelerate far faster than was probably ever intended abuse a bizarre mistake in the wall run kick
Programming that allows you to jump on one frame right afterwards like faith had a double jump or something
slide into parts of the world
You were never meant to see have an LSD trip
nightmare as every frame of faiths movement is suspended before her eyes and climbed through moving elevators to shoot up into
Darkness, this run is really interesting and showcases some amazing tricks and moves, but it's also maybe not the sort of stuff
It's fun to see specifically in a speedrun of this type of
This is obviously highly subjective of course, but the community seems to agree with me. So I win in around 2013
They introduced the glitchless category which specifically prohibits using major glitches that alter the flow of the game in this way glitchless' runs
Don't go out of bounds
don't abuse the weird extra jump you can get from kicking off a wall and
Prohibit a few other specific tricks that some people might deem against the spirit of Mirror's Edge
Glitchless has never and will never be faster than any percent
but to me
At least it's even more entertaining to watch runners in this category are navigating through more of the intended world of Mirror's Edge
Which for someone who played and really liked the game is a way more interesting
Challenge all kinds of segments that are completely avoided by fairly easy tricks in any percent have to actually be played and routed properly
In glitchless, let's compare just one jump across both categories
Here's the entrance to the RP a building in the second level
This jump is one of the first properly tough jumps in the game
It's a long distance, but also involves downward traversal
You have to approach it at speed and jump really late
But also roll when you land or you get hurt either
Rolling or taking damage is really slow
A runner doesn't really want to do either of those things in the current glitchless world record the runner rec
Executes an incredibly skillful maneuver to take full advantage of this rail here
So they land on the rail instead of the regular ground which prevents them having to roll or take damage
But they also turned in midair and executed a side jump to immediately get back to top speed when they landed
This is really really cool. It's really difficult to do I can't do it
Here's the same part in the current anypercent world record by filler tracks
Tracks abuses the wall kick jump to effectively fly over this challenging gap
Landing safely on some of the game's trademark white plant furniture stuff
Extrapolating tricks like this across a full game run makes for two very different and uniquely interesting paths through the game to watch earlier
I asked the question of which category should be considered the real speedrun of the game
But I don't think there's an objective answer at least for most games even in Blood Bones case using bugs that were patched out later
This is a version of blood-borne that was released and it beats the game as fast as possible'
and a Mirror's Edge may be clipping through walls should be seen as just a
the strategy is not doing so but everyone gets to decide for themselves how to figure out what a speedrun needs to be and
Usually there's gonna be enough people who feel that way that it's gonna end up as a speedrun
Category and the Mirror's Edge community has come up with quite a lot of categories over the years
I've only talked about one of the extra ones so far
There's also any percent in bounds
Which specifically avoids out-of-bounds glitches if you think going Oh busy and they're okay with the more advanced wall kick jump tricks and stuff
There's much more healthy competition when there are multiple agreed sets of rules to choose from I imagine if there had only been one
Ruling for how to speed run mirrors edge it would be a lot less
Satisfying for a lot of runners and wouldn't have seen quite as many runners come and go over the years
One runner eventually got a job at dice and worked on the sequel which apparently some people even played
So that's nice speed running is a completely arbitrary
Challenge one that most developers never even think to account for so it's totally fine to have multiple ways of categorizing runs
Different kinds of challenge and so on because some types of run are more interesting than others and non are really any more valid
Because they're all ultimately just silly things some people do for the sake of fun and competition
I think it's cool that even what it means to play a game quickly can be up for discussion
Sometimes my favorite type of Mirror's Edge run is the 69 Stars category, which is very nice
It's the category for running through all the games optional time trials in one sitting and getting all the stars
It really embodies the things I enjoy the most about the glitch less speedrun. It's just great performances utilizing mechanics
Mostly intended by the games developers run us do awesome stuff
Like ignore the game's inbuilt run ups for big jumps and instead make a really precise movement over them to jump
Manually at the edge and make it further and faster. It's awesome
The current number one record is by 40 vote iam voix TM
Not sure who got in just a teeny smidge over 21 minutes due to a couple of minor mistakes you're kidding, right?
Someone is going to beat 21 minutes in this category, and I can't wait
It's gonna be awesome
And because Mirror's Edge seems to inspire utter obsession in its fans myself included speedrun.com also has a category
extension leaderboard for even more weirder and specific runs
speedrun.com
me meme
It's pretty great
There's a true glitchless category here for weirdo purists like me who just want to see the actual game played near perfectly
There's categories that often only even have one or two submitters where like runs where one runner uses the mouse into another uses the keyboard
Or where two runners each use half of one controller. Honestly, this is just getting silly now
What about a New Game+?
Category where play his chapters select to the last segment and beat it in 13 seconds and people are genuinely down to counting
milliseconds to figure out who was actually the fastest
What about our Bo?
Reverse boss order where runners chapter select - each boss in the game in reverse order and time beating each of them
What about reverse our Bo where they do our Bo backwards? Why would you do it like that? That's just gossip
Why is it called that how about 80% times 25 where one runner has decided to run the game?
25 times in a row which took over 17 hours
And which they openly declare know what will ever beat what the fuck your sites that's right now. Yes. I
Told you I'm not even paying attention anymore. Why would you do this heck again?
Was your 60 millisecond lead and you gain plus not enough anymore. Did you need something stronger? What are you doing to yourself?
This is also where the segmented speedrun lips with various runners including the aforementioned Hecky can vote
I'm vote vote tart filler tracks and wreck all contributing small segments to produce an absolutely incredible
run
It's a fabulous
expression of a community's commitment to beating a game as fast as possible' and their years of developing skills and learning more and more about
How the game works I love it link in the description. Just give it a look. It's it's just great
there's a
tremendous sense of community to speedrunning people share information and discoveries
Discuss theories together and all the tricks used in runs are by their nature
Immediately available for further analysis and use in other runs
I remember like way back in the day like in 2014 like I was in a Skype call with some other house the best runners
We were watching table do some runs and we've never seen that sped up before and it just like yeah it blew our minds
We're like, okay
I'm never gonna go for that and now it's just like humming plays so that just goes to show like how far this game has
Come yeah
Speedrunning is an almost inherently collectivist activity in this sense while there is competition to be the best and take or hold the record
Almost no record holder has completely earned that position all on their own the best runs
Oh adept to the discoveries and ideas contributed by previous runners. The best run is often representative of many people's contributions
Alongside the runners own skill, of course in a sense speedruns are always a group effort
It's really not surprising that awesome charity events, like gdq have emerged from this space
it's just a grand a scaled version of what speedrunning had kind of always been you can't copyright a technique or strategy for beating a
video game quickly
There are no patents in speedrunning
Proving that you got a time or even getting the fastest time isn't just an achievement or personal victory. It's also
automatically a
Contribution to the greater community effort and that's radical calm radical
But speedrunning isn't always about socialism. Sometimes it's about beating video games very quickly part 3 in depth investigation
Actually, no. I've thought of a better title for this one
Donkey Kong 64 is a game by rail where for the Nintendo 64 you need to know that part
It's very much
The embodiment of the stereotypes about rares games for the time period large levels full of hundreds of different specific items
You have to collect to unlock more things to collect for instance
Each level has 500 bananas
But what makes it particularly troublesome is that some items are specifically for one of the five characters you play
To collect enough stuff to progress you'd have to traverse the same environments over and over with every character and the levels were often
Really big at the time it made the game feel big in like a cool sprawling
Adventure that lasted a long time and had a lot of chances to see how each character can progress through the same
Environment using their own skills and abilities. That's because I was seven years old
Now it just feels like time consuming busy work
Lots of this was completely unnecessary
from a design standpoint - you could design a game with
Collectibles only one character could reach in the first place instead of most of the time just having them hanging out there faded out
reminding you you're gonna have to come back here again with another character and running back to that barrel that changes characters because you need
to pick something else up is awful running back to previously completed levels because you finally have the
Characters you needed to pick up those bananas you'd already walked past eight times is a more painful
tragedy than Titus Andronicus
I would cut off my hand and send it to Emperor saturninus
If it meant I could have just picked up banana four hours ago with Daddy Kong instead of Yankel Kong
I can feel my cells
dividing as my precious existence rushes toward its finite end with nothing in the world to beguile my sorrow
but the sweet siren song of
banana
Donkey Kong 64 is an existential crisis in the form of a video game cartridge
I'm actually more aware of the futility of my existence after trying to go back and play this
Now I could sit you down and explain the progression of the Donkey Kong 64
anypercent run to you like it was the back of my hand, but firstly
There's already a video by summoning salt out there doing just that and that fit is bed
I think I could do so you should just go check that one out and secondly well to be honest. I've
I've seen a lot of speedruns at this point, and I'm kind of used to it, you know
Oh, yeah, Donkey Kong 64 a game. I be in 72 hours as a kid being beaten by professional in 30 minutes. Yeah. Sure
that's impressive to
a clown
At the circus I need something stronger. I've built up a tolerance to this stuff
We need to go deeper and darker
We need to talk about the players who will settle for nothing more than total conquest and no I'm not talking about
Donkey Kong Country to Diddy's conquest you get it's a pun
No, I'm talking about the Donkey Kong 64
100% speed run
Yeah
Well, technically it's the 101 percent speed run because rail where were pretty good at ironically recognizing that they put way too many collectibles in
their goddamn game to achieve 101 percent
completion players must collect the Nintendo coin the rare where coin all eight keys or ten battle crowns all 20 fairies all
201 golden bananas and all 40 banana medals each of which is awarded for collecting
75 OVA Kong's bananas in a level for a total of
3000 bananas
Hey, but, sometimes they come in little bunches of 5
Thanks Donkey Kong the rules list for this run on speedrun.com actually includes the stipulation but to submit runs for this category
You must hate yourself runners in this category endure such supreme
Torments that one of them fucking streamed themselves breaking their cartridge to make sure it was over. This is my DK car
Fun fact did you know that the PAL version of the Donkey Kong 64 cartridge was grey but the US retail version was banana yellow
You learn something new every day. This run is challenging in far more ways than the traditional run in that run
Your objective is fairly simple find the fastest way to the end
Whatever that way may be abusing cutscene glitches level skips moon jumps etc
Effectively ending up with runs where you do as little as possible
This runs core is having to actually do
Everything the game asks of you planning the most efficient route possible through all of it
And then somehow actually doing it all precisely and quickly
but with hundreds of golden bananas collect and some of these can be very challenging and
Llamas executing on all of this in succession introduces a new kind of test for these runners
resilience
paradoxically as with the beasts blood pellet when quicker
Strategies are found often that makes the game easier to beat because the length of time you have to focus on execution
Has gotten shorter
You only have to pull off 30 minutes of good stuff to beat the anypercent run in 30 minutes if something takes around five hours
to beat that's five hours of time to make mistakes in five hours to get tired or
Lose focus or slip from your intended most efficient path. These runs are essentially torture and
They're amazing
There's a three-year-old run by German Runner 360 Chris M that took 19 hours and 53 minutes
The best part of this run is it has face cam you can watch in real
Time as the Sun sets and Rises and he gets ever closer to making it to the end
He no sells it to like by the end. He still doesn't seem that tired. It's kind of awesome
despite there being plenty of runs that are way way more optimized the better runs push the 5 and a half hours mark
There's something very special about runs like this one where they probably know they're planned route is going to take them a full day
But they sit down and do it. I kind of love runs like this just for the sheer dedication
Regardless of how efficient they are
Phoebe boys at PB by 4 hours and 6 minutes pretty solid weight
His last attempt took nearly 25. Holy shit
The various runs of this game have led players to look very closely at almost every aspect
Even going so far as using hacking software to analyze the code in detail looking for anything that can be exploited to make runs faster
Dk64 has been investigated in a level of detail greater than the developers could have ever
Intended or expected and that's led to new discoveries for improving runs, but also to something really cool
Enter iso taj. Iso Taj is a runner with a really respectable time in the any persona category
It's also the longest standing run in the top ten by far
in fact
it was the world record for six months back in 20 Dean isotope has made a lot of contributions to the community including
spending a lot of time digging around inside the game's code finding new glitches and holes in world geometry and so on anything that could
Be exploited to get better runs isotons has found a lot of cool stuff in the game
Including this image of a railway employees face hidden inside the games files, which looks like it's been edited in a Game Boy camera
But they've also found stuff like this
out-of-bounds collectibles
It's common for developers to leave items and objects in places players can't get to in the game proper and not worry about removing them
Like this coin hidden in a wall in Mario 64 that someone actually figured out how to get and since these items exist
Well outside the intended scope of the game runs don't usually consider them collectibles as part of a run. They're more cool oddities
That shouldn't really be considered as game objects to be collected
But what if an item was absolutely collectable without any glitches?
But no one had found it before one day when messing around in the game's code looking for flags for collectable objects
isit arch found a banana coin that hadn't been
accounted for in the level fungi forest banana coins and dk64 are used to buy items and upgrades and because this is Donkey Kong 64
There are six different kinds of banana coin
There's one color for each character, but also a multicolored one
Which is usually hard to find and gives five coins to every character as soon as it's collected
there's only 15 of them in the game one in each level except angry Aztec which has two and
seven in the hub world of DK Isles
This new coin wasn't any of the ones that had been collected before but unlike the other items
This one wasn't out of bounds. It was hidden in a place
no, one had ever thought to check hidden in the tall grass in the level right about he no 8 sorry right about
here
And there it is as far as I can tell this coin isn't mentioned
anywhere on the internet prior to its discovery by I so turned in the games code and it's not in any strategy guide from the
Time period I can get my hands on
It's not really known whether the developers put this coin here intentionally or forgot to remove it or why they thought to give so little
Indication it was there it's easy to see why it was missed for so long
Now a cool kicker to this story would be that it
invalidated all the 101 percent runs or it turned out that there are now technically a hundred and two percent runs or something but banana
Coins aren't counted for percentages on the game's menu screen and the total amount of coins
You can get isn't even listed in the game anywhere the 101 percent run doesn't even include all of the bananas
because the game only counts banana medals towards completion so they don't even get all the
Bananas in the runs where you get a hundred one percent completion, which is a bit of a disappointment
Really? You should get them all next time to amuse me
Here's the sgdq run in 2017 soon after the coin was discovered when they've just stopped to get it for kicks
That rainbow coin has been hidden basically since the game came out so over
16 years, right?
It's not technically a major discovery and it changes nothing about how the game is run in the main catagories outside of what are essentially
ultra
masochistic jokes that people only really do just to be one of the two people who ever did it at all but it's still a
Really really cool discovery something was hidden
Just out of plain sight even to the people who would make a point of collecting everything in the game
for 17 years
What's fun about the banana coin is that it's kind of an abstract example of how awesome speedrunning communities are for
Deconstructing and examining games, like people are so dedicated to coming to an understanding of a game
They're uncovering things, which probably would have remained hidden forever otherwise, and that's just neat no matter how you peel it
Oh god, did I just say why is speedrunning awesome because people are awesome
Because watching someone try something over and over again getting better and better and learning new secrets and strategies
In order to be the best at something sometimes for years is compelling and fascinating and human
in a way that no other form of media
No television show could ever adequately replicate because a real human person is sitting right there and doing it.
I opened this video using clips from an attempt to finish "Zelda: Ocarina of Time" in the Any% category by skater82297.
This video in particular is one of my favorites.
This guy's been hammering away at "Zelda: Ocarina of Time" since at least 2014, shaving seconds,
fractions of seconds off of his personal best.
Here's a cool trick. On speedrun.com you can actually click to see all of the obsoleted runs — runs that our owner has themselves gone on to supersede.
If you turn that on,
this guy basically IS the top 20 fastest runs of Zelda of all time.
But he didn't have number one.
Someone else was faster than him.
So, he just kept going and going.
And you can see all of his runs. And live on his channel,
you could have seen all of the many, many attempts that went into even getting those runs.
And, in this run, you see him get annoyed by the tiniest things.
Gohma doesn't activate for about a second longer than he thinks it should and it just frustrates the hell out of him
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He's angry about this boss not spawning fast enough, even though he can kill it in seconds flat.
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A random onlooker would wonder why someone did this to themselves, did something over and over even though it clearly wasn't any fun for them.
But then they get deeper and deeper into the run.
And they start to realize that this might be the one.
The tone changes.
Things get quiet.
This might be happening.
Is IT happening?
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Towards the end, he can barely even control his breathing.
He's panicking. He's anxious. But he knows that if he can just execute on the ideas that he's been developing for years,
this might be it.
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This run is currently the fastest run anyone has ever done of "The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time".
And, then, in that moment,
in that period of being utterly overjoyed at this achievement,
it becomes clear why people do this
and what you can get from this that you can't get anywhere else.
It's a story, not something written or directed by someone.
A real human story.
It's a story of perseverance and triumph.
And it's derived from something so small and silly seeming, but,
that only makes it more beautiful, in a way.
And the best part is...
the story's not over.
There's almost always more to learn about how to run any given game,
always someone trying to beat the record.
And anyone can be a part of that or, at the very least, anyone can be there to watch it happen.
This is probably why so many people tune into events like GDQ
and even donate money to support work that helps keep people alive so they can spend time with the people they love or you know watching speedruns.
Okay, I have to admit I told a bit of a porky pie earlier.
That's cockney rhyming slang for lie, which I clearly know, obvious cockney that I am.
I never actually beat Donkey Kong 64 as a kid.
I played it for 72 hours and then I couldn't beat the Donkey Kong arcade part near the end which you need to do to unlock the final boss fight.
So I had 72 hours of play and nothing to show for it.
And frankly, that's piss.
So to finally put this little fucker to rest
I'm going to stream it. I'm gonna start the game again
I'm going to get absolutely everything in that game, including the rainbow coin disappearing everything full circle.
I'm going to get absolutely everything: all the bananas, all the ones required for 101% completion.
And I'm not gonna stop until it's done.
I might...I will fall asleep in my chair.
I'm not that resilient. Although it is currently, no joke, 2:41 a.m. Hope you can see that
So, I might do okay, but I should probably rig it up, so that if anyone donates
an airhorn will go off and wake me up. Let's just torture me for other people's enjoyment.
And all the donations will go to charity.
So, finally some good can come out of Donkey Kong 64 because certainly no fun has come out of it.
Anyway, thanks for watching this video.
It's really just a love letter to the speedrunning community, because I just find it's been such a fulfilling part of my life and it looks like a lot of other people's.
A lot of gaming spaces can be pretty cliquey at times and I think speedrunning has generally avoided that with a lot of sort of close-knit but quite friendly communities.
A lot of people were really forthcoming with information when I was doing research for this video
and that was just really awesome. And I just think it's cool how people can share the things they enjoy
and learn more about stuff and occasional raise quite a lot of money for some really good causes.
I just think the whole thing is so fun and kind,
in a way that you don't see very often. So yeah, just thought it was nice.
Probably could have thought of a clever ending to this video, but,
