'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?

Comments

Mmm.

[bruthasj]

Geek Olympics. Let the games begin!

Re:Mmm.

[yRabbit]

Thanks to Google, I've found other speed runs:
http://www.planetquake.com/sda/other/

Re:Mmm.

[thegrassyknowl]

I had an ex girlfriend who was awesome at Zelda. She could complete it in 30-40 minutes (on a real NES console). I didn't realise how good her time was because I could never fully understand the game.

Wow....

Re:Mmm.

[skermit]

That was marriageable material... I weep for your loss. > )

speed

[tekunokurato]

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.

Re:speed

[Apreche]

blue ring? wuss. First of all if you get the "it's a secret to everybody" guys you can get the blue ring before you get anything else in the game. Secondly don't you think you would beat the game a lot faster if you didn't get useless items like the blue ring? When going for a speed record you need to get only what is absolutely necessary to get to the end. Leave all other items behind.

Re:speed

[Sancho]

It may make things easier, but if you can play a more or less perfect game, it doesn't actually speed things up. See, you don't NEED the blue ring to finish the game. Just never get hit. Other items can be gained easily on the way to the various dungeons, so there's no need to buy them. Even keys can be gained in an "optimal" way so that you rarely ever have to go out of your way to get one. Nothing you purchase in shops is necessary except maybe for the monster bait, and that's far enough along in the game that you don't need to gamble early to get it.

Time Attacks Secondary Function

[neostorm]

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!!

What is wrong with you people?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:What is wrong with you people?

[ildon]

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.

Re:Fake?

[SamSim]

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.

Re:The scene is a singles bar

[real_smiff]

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.. ;)

Re:How they speeded up?

[Vaevictis666]

They actually did some smart things to speed it up. I'm watching the older one (mfried) at the same time as the new one (sleepzteam) and the new one is doing quite a few things differently:

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 :)

Perhaps I'm a touch anal but...

[shaitand]

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.

The scene is a singles bar

[Iainuki]

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!