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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?
I've beaten the game extremely quickly using emulation by cheating and saving state to gain rupees quickly at the gambling house, then getting the blue ring and other important artifacts right off the bat. Speeds things up like crazy.
Read jack phelps dot net
Actually, wouldn't frame skipping speed it up, because the clock goes by how many frames have been rendered per second?
thisnukes4u.net
I have a huge game collection of oldschool titles I grew up with. Once in a while I pick them up to play through old favorites, but I am so busy nowadays that I rarely have 10 minutes to spare.
Often times I just make a mental list of games that I'll play through again someday when I have the time. Well these Time attacks are a blessing in disguise, because I can relive all my old memories of childhood faves, not to mention in usually under 30 minutes!
YEAH! THANK YOU GUYS!!
you know, whenever something like this comes up, someone always makes a funny comment relating it to sex. and it is funnny, and it does get you modded up. but you know - and bear with me here, i'm in a thoughtful kinda mood - not everything in life has to be about sex. it may be the primary purpose of our genes to reproduce, but it doesn't have the be the #1 purpose of us. i'm sure the people doing this don't think it well help them score with chicks. so what, people do silly/apparently pointless things all the time, it's called art or sport or several other things and it's what makes life interesting and us (a little) different from animals. now, i wouldn't want to play video games over & over or make videos of it or make websites about it but if it amuses people great. i had a look at the zelda video because i had this game as a kid and it brought back some memories and i can respect the skill that was shown. and I was thinking, after watching a couple of minutes, skipping to the credits and hearing that tune again, the game is 18 years old, which is pretty amazing, and it definately qualifies as art. sorry if that makes me sad, and sorry about this rant. btw i do have a sense of humour and manage my own +5 funnies sometimes, not that that helps me score either.. ;)
This is my Sig, this is my Gun. One is for Slashdot and one is for Fun.
I think you're the one whose failing to understand what's going on. The article explaining that these are faked is like the 4th link out of 5 and isn't made out to be an important link in the article. I doubt more than 1% of slashdot readers actually click every single link in any article with that many links. They'll click the ones that appear most important.
Further, if most people knew how these were made, they would reject them out-of-hand because anyone can sit there and hit save/load state 100 times until they beat the boss without getting hit. That doesn't show any skill at all.
Using an emulator to compile moves into a "perfect" run can be amusing, but, by no means, should it be praised, or considered talent, nor should it be recognized or publicly released, because it downplays the mastery of the true speed runs.
*sigh*
Look, if you don't like the concept of emulator-assisted time attack videos, fine, don't download 'em. But who are you to say that such videos shouldn't be "publicly released"? Your opinion is like your asshole.
Personally, I enjoy the hell out of the videos, because they celebrate the elegance of the game designs themselves, even if the humans playing them don't have perfect reflexes.
In terms that you can understand, it's like jerking off to an airbrushed Playboy spread instead of a dingy polaroid of your mom -- you don't care if it's REAL or not, it's the unattainable IDEAL that you're after.
Complaining that timeattacks don't require talent because they're "fake" is a lot like claiming pro wrestling doesn't require talent -- it might seem that way at first, but I bet you'd be crying a different tune if you were ever to try it yourself.
-Poot, working on an NES Strider timeattack (32:35 and dropping)
So do you not watch movies and television shows or listen to music, since they are made with essentially the same process as this video?
Get over yourself, these things are made for entertainment. The people who record them don't pretend that they're god's gift to video games. The point of these speed runs is just to show what is possible under the best of circumstances. Sure someone who does it without savestates is more impressive, but that doesn't make movies like this any less interesting to watch.