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'Perfect' Zelda NES Speed Record Beaten
An anonymous reader writes "The last verified human Legend of Zelda (NES) speed record was 34 minutes. A few months ago, a re-recording emulator was used to make a 'perfect' video which was 31 and a half minutes. A team worked to optimize the path, and using an emulator created a new video which is 26:56, four and a half minutes faster. The video is 14% faster, and is the first Zelda run to be under a half hour. Furthermore, it achieved a sub-27 minute time, which was presumed impossible. Definitely worth checking out - you can grab the BitTorrent version of the AVI replay at Bisqwit's NES time-attack movie page." There's a thread on the NESvideos forum discussing the attempt, but can anyone succinctly explain the exact tricks the team used to speed up their time?
Thanks to Google, I've found other speed runs:
http://www.planetquake.com/sda/other/
Before anyone else posts something about how they "faked" the god damned movie, please refer to this page on thier website: http://bisqwit.iki.fi/jutut/nesvideos/whyhow .html#why
They are very open about using various tricks of the emulators to achieve a quick run of the game. Even if you consider it "cheating" that is very much beside the point, because they clearly state that it is not so much a competition as much as for entertainment.
They also comment on the idiots on various forums around the web that bitch and moan about their assumptions that these videos are faked, who also don't read the FAQ. I would hereby like to welcome you all (who have bitched and moaned about just that) to that group. Thank you for your contribution to stupidity.
1) Using (abusing) the Select-Continue to go back to the start of a dungeon (after grabbing an item, before fighting the boss) and to get back to the starting overworld area right quick.
2) Going through the dungeons in a different order, which seems to keep the new guys almost a full dungeon ahead through most of it.
3) Skipping out on some things - new one didn't get the master key from dungeon 8, and is using the new dungeon order to ensure they can get enough keys. They're also skipping out on the extra hearts from bosses for a few extra seconds - as it looks so far (half way in) it doesn't look like they're going for the level 3 sword, just level 2.
4) Bombs. Lots of bombs. MFried used bombs only for blowing doors and some enemies. Sleepz is using them in regular combat to hit 4-6 enemies in one blow. Sometimes using multiple bombs for the silver knights and such.
5) Flute abuse - sleepz is hitting the flute twice in a row, before the first whirlwind gets to them. Looks like this is still getting them to the same spot. Nice trick though :)
All in all, I recommend people watch both at once :P It's entertaining to see them identical going after the sword, then one select-continuing, peeling left, and the other walk out, and go right. Neither have been in the same screen at the same time since :)