I absolutely love watching speedruns. Last night I watched a 33-minute run of Amnesia: The Dark Descent that blew my mind, even though I’ve never played the game! I like straight runs, segmented runs, TAS runs, whatever. I don’t know why I love them so much, I just do. I’d say my favorite speedruns to watch are Portal, Deus Ex, Halo 2 and Super Mario 64.
Is anyone else as hopelessly addicted to these videos as I am? Anyone ever try to make one?
I see two appeals to them: One, they allow you to see an “entire game” in one brief sitting. And two, they often involve the use of clever tricks which are to be admired.
If they are done legit, in platformer games, they also showcase some really fine gaming skills. I don’t see the point in most styles of game. Then again, if someone does a skill-run on Final Fantasy, beating one of them at level 1 or something, I am rather impressed.
An example of a neat skill-run(no idea if they cheated).
Let me put it this way: this is my top bookmark.
And a great site for speed running community.
True, that too. I guess I just tend to admire trickery more than skill. I don’t actually make much distinction between “real” and machine-assisted speed runs, either: I’m more interested in the theoretical limit than in what any real human can actually do.
MMMmmmmmaybe, but at that point, why involve a human at all? It’s the human skill which is the interesting part. Otherwise, it’s like a race with no drivers.
A human still has to figure out which route to take, and what the second-shaving exploits are, and exactly which frame-moment and pixel-location is right for the optimum move, and so on. I suppose that, in principle, a computer could figure out all of those things, too, but the problem, while finite, is still far too large to be addressable via brute force.
And besides, even if you could devise a computer program clever enough to do all that, that just shifts the admiration onto the human who was able to create such a clever computer program.
Another thought, too, come to think of it: Suppose there’s a game with, say, 5 levels. And suppose there’s a player with the skill to do a perfect (or near-perfect) speed run on it, but it’s tricky: Each level, he has about a 2/3 chance of screwing up. So he plays the first level until he gets it right, and then saves, and then plays the second level until he gets it right, then saves, and so on, producing a video of all five levels done perfectly. He’s demonstrated that he really does have the skills: He can get through every part of the game, and he could, with a 1 in 243 chance, get through the whole game perfectly. Now let’s suppose that the same player is bound and determined to do it “right”, and plays it again and again, hundreds of times, until he gets it all right on one go. This doesn’t demonstrate anything about his skills; it just demonstrates that he’s got no life.
Of course, you might have another player with even better skills, who can succeed at each level half the time, and so might only need a few dozen tries to get the whole thing. Or one who can get each level 75% of the time, who only needs a few tries. They can do it while still having a life. But the end result is the same: You can’t tell the consistent guy’s speedrun apart from the persistent guy’s.
I remember watching a video about 15 years ago of a guy getting to level 13 on the Nightmare skill-setting on Doom 2 which blew my mind at the time. He eventually took himself out by firing a rocket into a door-frame at point-blank range.
I’m sure there are far more impressive things that have been done in games I’ve never even heard of, and I’ve heard since that people do speed-runs where they beat all 32 levels of Doom 2, but at the time I saw it as being akin to Maradona’s goal at the '86 World Cup.
Some people have way too much time on their hands.
That is incredibly impressive. He makes it look so easy!
I have several runs on the SDA (and many more that were obsoleted) and am working on one right now for The Binding of Isaac. So yes!
Besides the SDA there’s The Elite for GoldenEye and Perfect Dark. And for TAS there’s TASVideos. The TAS site is great because they even have runs for hacked/custom emulator only games like Mario Adventure, Super Demo World, and so on. Or silly gimmick runs like beating Mario 1 without running.
I’m not sure if he relies on save states or not, though.
For what it’s worth, he claims he doesn’t in the description. But yes, that would make it, while still pretty impressive, much less so.
I love them all, tool-assisted or other wise, both because of the skill and cleverness involved.
There’s something very darkly funny about watching some guy blow through, say, Mega Man 1 by warping through the walls and then turning the game into some weird Lovecraftian amalgamation of glitches.
And man, it’s amazing what kinds of glitches you can find in these games. Gives you a whole new appreciation for people who work in the industry.
This thread made me look up youtube videos of speedruns of Super Metroid, which is the only game I’ve ever tried to speedrun. I was able to get it down to 43 minutes. I’m pleasantly surprised to see that 30ish minutes is about the lowest people can get it, judging by youtube evidence.
TASvideo.org is one of my favorite websites.
These things are simply amazing. Breathtaking exercises in power, precision, and fluidity. These are why sites like YouTube were created.
The things these people do to get these times defies belief. “Save scumming” is just the beginning; there’s also deliberately taking damage or dying to save time, taking levels out of the proper order, shortcuts, and every glitch exploitation imaginable. Don’t even get me started on luck manipulation…given the rotten luck I’ve had in too many games, THAT’S gotta take some effort!
On a more basic level, it’s great to see just how a game clicks. How do you warp to the last world in Super Mario Bros. 3? What works best against Abobos? How do you do the instant knockdown against Soda Popinski?
And of course, there are those games that flat-out deserve to get beaten to a bloody pulp. Battletoads, Adventures of Bayou Billy, Kid Icarus, Marble Madness, Pilotwings, U.N. Squadron, Contra 3…you know 'em. 
I love speed and or challenge runs, especially if they’re commentated explaining what and why the player is doing what they’re doing, especially if they take advantage of many glitches as they can be hard to follow if you’re not very familiar with the game elsewise. My favourite is thisseries of runs for Mega Man X1-6 with no upgrades, no weapons, no damage(except for a few areas that it’s necessary), and for the first 3 games no dash. It’s not a speed run, but it’s damned impressive.
There’s a 12 minute run part 1 part 2
But it takes advantage of a huge glitch that allows the player to basically skip most of the game. Seen at the start of part 2.