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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?
Geek Olympics. Let the games begin!
can anyone succinctly explain the exact tricks the team used to speed up their time?
Hum... Frame skipping?
I live in Soviet Canuckistan you insensitive clod!
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
Optimizing is not that hard if you can do it with software. atleast not if you do ACM challenges.
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!!
A few years ago Slashdot ran a story about a product that was used to cut a single frame per second out of television broadcasts in order to fit in an extra commercial. Maybe they used a similar trick :]
Can anyone comment on the accuracy of the speed of these emulators? Considering the dead time in just walking across the screen and loading a new screen, I don't think 14% increase there would very noticable. But details like that make a big difference. Personally, I'd have trouble trusting a recond time not played on an original NES.
Anm
have you looked at the page at all?
yes, they are 'fake' in the sense that things like quicksave are used. if you are worried about frames being cut out, you can download the fmv files, and run it on your own computer
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.
It IS faked. It says so right there in the text of the story, let alone the article. It WAS made using an emulator.
This practice is called a "Time Attack" and is completely different from speed completions, which are indeed done legitimately. Time Attacks are not world records and are never claimed as such - they're just cool, is all. If you understand Japanese it actually says clearly on the website of the guy who made the 11 minute SMB3 video that he faked it. It was an unfortunate misunderstanding that most people accepted it as legit.
That's not to say that Time Attacks are easy to do. It takes a lot of time and effort to put one together.
qntm.org
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.
If you were a girl you'd be adorable. Just so you know.
That's twice you've failed to properly post a link while posting as AC to insult people for asking a legitimate question. Next time try using the Preview button and reading the allowed HTML codes at the bottom of the comment box.
Doesn't beating Zelda mean beating the ENTIRE game, not just half of it?
The second quest is generally more difficult than the first. Saying you've set a speed record for beating the game but not even counting the second quest is pretty lame if you ask me.
With that said, the gameplay was pretty impressive, it's definately the fastest I've ever seen the first half of the game accomplished.
I'm not an expert in this field, but for time run competitions and such, arn't you supposed to use a real nes with a real cart? I vaguely remember reading rules that said emulators are not allowed, or maybe that was just for a specific competition?
This has actually been discussed here before.
upon reviewing the video, and comparing it to my nes emulator (rock nes) running zelda, the video game speed seems increased, or at least link's run speed. I compared different scenes throughout the video two different ways, with myself doing the same actions in real time to the video, and the "stopwatch" way. I tested various scenes that ranged from running straight across from 1 screen to the next, to ones where more controlled movement was involved, and in all of them the video was signifigantly faster. I have no doubt this is why the video is "14%" faster, most likely because the emulator's game speed was tweaked up 14%. It would be possible to record a demo in real time, then play it back at a slightly increased speed
It doesn't matter what their "purpose" is. 90% of the people who watch this are still going to think that a 29-minute run is pointless next to a 27-minute run.
Rob
Heck, even the creators themselves admit this.
We often compete for speed, but sometimes a two seconds slower movie has better chance to get published than a faster movie, if it keeps the audience entertained better. It all depends on various things, but generally more speed is better.
Rob
to everyone who left their bittorrent running. Got an awesome download rate this time.
so what, people do silly/apparently pointless things all the time...
:)
Yeah, it's called life.
Way back when i had this golden cartridge in my mittens, it took me 3 months to complete it. The time i've waisted... But those were good times =P Best timewaste ever!!
Check my site: http://pixel.pagina.nl
Whoops. I put this in the wrong place. These videos were NOT sped up. They should run at the exact same speed. No frames were removed, no frames were edited, this is actual gameplay that you could get if you pressed the buttons at the exact same time. The only reason that this is 14% faster is because a better route was thought of. The only "cheating" that was used was slowing down the gameplay(the actual movie runs at normal speed though), and rerecording.
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
Well said.
I am in fact a 29 year old unemployed geek/loser living in my parents basement who does nothing but surf porn on the web and play video games. I also have a girlfriend who is gracious enough to occasionally have sex with me. And, that's pretty much my entire life right now.
Most people who write those +5 funny jokes seem to assume that if a dork playing video games could get layed, it would somehow magically change his lifestyle. *shrug* Hasn't happened.
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
That's three separate sentences highlighting three separate points. STFU.
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
Using an emulator and save states to redo every single move over and over again and compiling them into a single movie, imo, isn't talent. ANYONE can get a fast time with emulators, because you can continuously correct your mistakes as you make them, essentially erasing your errors. All that's needed is time. True speed runs are runs that are done WITHOUT emulation, WITHOUT taking out mistakes, doing everything as quickly as you can do without being able to bail yourself out by rewinding the game back with a save state. THAT takes talent. It takes dedication, time, patience, and a true mastery of a game.
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.
we ('we' being the team of people who worked on the first run) are working on a 2nd quest run, and have mapped out several different dungeon paths, trying to find the optimal route.
i would expect sleepz or someone else will attempt a run within a week or two, although it might be a month until a run is good enough to publish.
as far as faked: it's not 'faked', it's 'save stated', which means it's very much legitimate... with dozens (or hundreds) of attempts for every few seconds of footage, all streamed together in a seamless movie. you could do the exact same thing on your own, possibly even without saving at all.
we debated about the use of up+a, but since it was documented in the manual, we felt it was 'ok' to use.
it's like the theoretical 5:08 (which is now 5:05) for super mario bros 1.. the human best still stands at 5:17.. which shows just how close to perfection the console run is.
likewise, we have a fast zelda run, and we've shown that the ideal time is about this close... which means the console times of 34 minutes and such actually leave room for a fair amount of 'improvement'.
Attractive female: Hi, my name is Renee. Wanna dance?
Jock: (snort!) Who, me? (snort!) I'm not much of a dancer, I really don't do this kind of thing much!
Attractive female: Oh, well, that's ok. We can just talk! I'm a supermodel and just got back from Europe. What do you do?
Jock: I play football. I've been playing it almost every day since I was able to walk, which was about twenty years ago. I don't have a job, per se, but it's OK because the college pays me money to play this game. As long as I don't get in the newspapers outside the sports section, I have a free ride.
Attractive female: So, um. Yeah. What's football?
Jock: Oh, it this really great sport that I've played a few thousand times. I'm just trying to play it better now, to maybe get a major-league contract. You should see me play sometime!
Jock: Hello? Where'd she go? Aw man, I didn't even get to see her tits!
Emulator runs aren't fake. It's the same game, and (baring horrible bugs in the emulator's support for some odd bit of add-on hardware in the cartridge) the mechanics are the same. However, you are right, they aren't considered official records, since the ability to savestate around the game to shave seconds here or there means they don't have to restart the whole game every time somebody has to scratch their nose. However, having used an emulator to plot a much faster route through the game, they can now go to the real hardware and take the same route. The official record they could make doing that would be a minute or two longer (to account mainly for mistakes in combat), but they're still pretty well guaranteed to break the standing hardware record.
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)
Except pro wrestlers do require a great amount of physical strength, speed, and endurance. These so called "time attacks" don't require anything except for an emulator and patience. Seriously, anyone can do trial and error against a certain enemy in zelda until you get things right as quickly as possible. To simply re-record over and over again to achieve "perfection," imo, just doesn't require talent, imo.
Yawn, more confusion from a coward. First of all, who made TwinGalaxies god? Just because they publish a book doesn't make them more legit than me, I'm not in competition with them. Anyway about saves in games and TG... allow me to provide some links. Here is TG's press release from May 2003 about a new Metroid prime record in 1:46. Guess what, it was recorded WITH SAVES! Here is proof of that. And how about a run of the original Metroid. No saves in that game, so it's in a single seg.
Speed Demos Archive - Lots of speed runs!
I however never really go for speed when I (re)play a game. I generaly like to look around a lot and do EVERYTHING in a game. It still takes me a few hours to beat Zelda because I do silly things like get the white sword, blue ring, and anything else I can possibly get before even entering level 1. My favorite trick though has always been getting the white sword w/o getting the basic one.
Just my 1.5
I ran for about 1 minute. If I liked the time, I recorded it. If it wasn't up to par, I stopped my stopwatch, turned it back to the end of my last segment, and tried again once I caught my breath. When I combined the times and distances, it was marathon length... but in less than an hour and a half! Call Guiness!!
*yawn*
Seriously, wake me when somebody does this in a single run without restarts on original hardware. Otherwise it is missing the point, not me (as the FAQ would want me to believe).