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The Lives And Times of Speed Runners
1up.com has a feature looking into the high stress world of game speed running. Primarily a history of the sport, they start with Doom and Super Mario Bros. and walk us forward to sequence breaking runs through Metroid Prime. From the article: "While there are plenty of real-world time-based challenges, speed running stands apart thanks to its virtual nature. You'll never tune in to a track meet and see competitors taking shortcuts across the grass, but that's essentially the modus operandi of video game speed runners. Similarly, you'll never see athletes exploiting flaws in reality to jump further or to warp themselves ahead in the race. Again, that's something that can only be done via video games. While speed running has been acquiring a serious head of steam over the last few years, its origins can be traced back to one game in particular: id Software's late 1993 bombshell of an FPS, Doom. "
Yep, I used to do this back then. Doom would report your time to complete a level. At some point the thought occurs. Hey, i'll just skip killing the bad guys and run my ass off!
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I play speed running against friends, especially in Metal Gear Solid games. The first one I have finished in hard mode in 1h30, but the best time up until now is 1h08 in extreme mode. How is this possible?!
The only lame thing about that record was that it was recorded/played on an emulator, and in the end the various level-times were pasted onto eachother : Still a mighty freaky job.
And Quake speedruns are a feast for the (FPS) gamer-eye. :D
It all started with Quake Done Quick: http://www.planetquake.com/qdq/
Wallhugging, bunny hopping, rocket jumping, strafe jumping, quad damage jumping, grenade-rocket jumping, trapping a zombie under a closing gate so it reopens again, you name it, its all to get faster records.
Even did some speed running in Quake myself with another friend a long time ago, shooting each other to gain more velocity, launching rockets at each other to get even more height to get a certain key, etc, its very fun!! ;)
When I solo play a fast game of Classic Quake, I usually speed run episode 1 which I can run under 10 minutes
Damn this brings back good memories, im going to install Quake again :p
If playing a game to try and complete it as quick as possible is high stress I pity the submitter having to deal with real life.
The Megaman series in particular lends itself very well to speed runs. Just dash like a mad man and avoid the enemies while collecting power-ups. I remember beating Megaman X3 in roughly an hour with all items collected that way.
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An accurate artice, to say the least. I've attempted my share of speed runs and time attacks, and eventually resigned to the fact that there are people who have much more time and patience than i do to get things perfect (for more evidence of that, check the sonic 3 speedrun on bisqwit's site). but i definately enjoy watching the runs myself. there's still something to be said about watching someone smoke bionic commando in 15 minutes or utterly destroy mega man 2.
:]
a point of note -- when the article talks about morimoto, he's the one who did a crazy smb3 run. the article makes it seem like what he did was completely wrong and unethical. on the contrary, the video is a time attack. the levels in question are automatic side scrolling levels, where the speed cannot be changed and the time is consistent whether its me playing it or him. instead of making the video extremely boring and unpleasant to watch in those 2 minutes (by hiding in a corner and getting pushed along or something) he jumps and accumulates a ton of lives during a time that would otherwise be paint-dry boring. i think it was well done.
the link to bisqwit's site (mentioned in the article, iirc. read it yesterday.) is http://bisqwit.iki.fi. definately go there if you want to relive some nostalgia done perfectly
(advance apologies for the formatting. doing this through lynx).
.. before Wolfenstein (saw it for that a few times), before Duke Nukem (non-3D), even before Jet Set Willy.
..
Pacman had speed runners. Pitfall too. Speed running is at least as old as the 70's.
Maybe 'in the modern context of video games', where modern = 'anything since 1990', speed-running 'can be traced' to DOOM, but its an old sport.
speed running is what you did in the 70's when you already 'beat the game' a few times, and you had nothing else to play
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...who just had an image of people smuggling amphetamines?
I was speed-running when you Doom and Quake whippersnappers were still in diapers. Get off the lawn of my marine base!
Seriously, anyone recall using these same tactics in Advanced Dungeons and Dragons on their Intellivision in 1980 or so? Talk about exploiting flaws in the physics modeling and stuff: you could actually run THROUGH the bad guys (the dragon, snake, lizard and demon). You would accrue damage (which was not fixable with a health-pak or anything, those didn't exist back then), but you could run through them. Similarly, your arrows would *ricochet* off the walls, so sometimes you could get a shot off as you sped around a corner. Overall, you could definitely complete a level without firing an arrow, just holding down the side run button on the controller the whole time. Especially useful if you were just completing a mountain to move through the terrain map and didn't actually need any of the items in the mountain.
Great, now I have to break out the intellivision AND reinstall Doom and Quake!
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I guess it's just as much a sport as seeing how many hotdogs you can eat.
Oh wait, that's not a sport either.
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In recent years the same thing has been done with Sinclair Spectrum games, recorded using an emulator: http://www.rzxarchive.co.uk/. My favourites replays are Jet Set Willy and Head Over Heels (the latter is VERY fast/tight).
They're in a replay format which includes the game code, and all input needed to replay the file. You'll need a supported emulator to play them, as detailed on the site itself.
Its possible to beat the first mission in Perfect Dark by falling through the 100 or so floors in the Lucrene Tower straight into the elevator for a total of six seconds. Its reallly quite amazing to see.
Anyone else remember that late 90's flick with Fred Savage about his videogame master of a brother. At the end of the movie there is a "speedrunning" contest between like 4 others playing Super Mario Bros. 3.
I think the movie is a great overlooked example because the kid brother was able to win due to the secret shortcuts he found.
Go Gusties
frsit psot!!!!!!11
:-) I don't think I have ever speed played except in actual racing games... hrm :-)
Now I have to post the demo!!
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I was really hoping they would mention the new Kirby game for DS because it is the most fun speed run friendly game I have played. Because your are using a stylus instead of a controller, getting through the level quickly requires a certain finesse of the hand, and when you have to restart a level it's because you didn't do something properly, not because a creature didn't come at the right time.
If you are into speed runs, definitely give Kirby a go.
Videos and tricks related to speed-running through the Metroid series can be found here. There's also a lot of good tips and videos on sequence breaking, low % games, and 100% games.
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Grenade-hopping and rocket-jumping started with Marathon, late 1994.
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I'm involved in Speedrunning, and I really dislike the way timeattacks get lumped in with them. They are not similar AT ALL, and I do feel that time attacks are decieving.
I don't nessesarily have an objection to timeattacks in general, but they are presented decievingly. Increasingly they are played at 6% speed using thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of re-records. However, it is presented to you as a continuous video, which it is not. This is deception.
Furthermore, many of the movies create glithes in the game because they are not humanly possible to accomplish, therefore the game designers had no way whatsoever to know that it was possible to hit up+down at the same time on the exact frame, or perform ridiculous acts of precision.
Even though they make it clear the runs are being played with emulators, many people don't know what "tool assisted" means, or why they don't see somebody loading a savestate. They assume it was a continuous run, simply played on an emulator since the fellow didn't have the original cart or system.
Don;t get me completely wrong: there are some tool assisted runs that I enjoy watching. But speedruns always have that element of skill, and more importantly improvisation. The timeattacks are so precicely done, they are on the verge of mechanical.
Wow. At least 12 posts made it in front of your "frsit psot" and yet you want to post a demo of it. The speed you're involved with would seem to be the chemical type, not technological type.
/.? :)
Go ahead and post your speed demo. Are there DEA workers on
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They are still running.
Here's an excellent site where you'll find a lot of speed runs: Speed Demos Archive
A lot of them are pretty impressive (ex: SMB 1 and 3, Diablo, etc)
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Interesting,...I guess saying that you running diagonally was sqrt(2) faster doesn't sound as good but it is a little more telling as to the "math error"
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I had only borrowed the game... and I never, ever got past the part where you're going around a road course AND beat the annoying ball thing to death. Well, okay, maybe once.
Those were some adrenaline-packed hours, trying to not DIE. :-)
-Rob
Biblical fiscal responsibility
This is at least as much sport as car racing.
I always enjoyed mastering a game, the first one I recall was Ghouls and Ghosts, in the arcade, started out seeing how far I could get with $2 in quarters, getting farther and farther; then seeing how few quarters it could take; finally beating the entire game with a single play.
Good Times.
Interesting factoid....
It seems very likely that the maintainers of the 2D Metroid series at Nintendo in Japan heard about all the speedruns, sequence breaks and low-item games from Super Metroid, because not only are many sequence breaks possible in Metroid: Zero Mission, but the game seems designed to make them possible. There are enough secret, hidden passages scattered around to enable most players to play the game in wildly differeny ways than the "official" route, although unless you know they're there, you'd probably never notice them until you got Power Bombs (which reveal special block types in the vicinity).
So, not only is it possible to finish the game in less than an hour, and with 15% of items or less, but there are special, secret ending screens for players who do so!
Morrowind in 14 minutes, absolutely hilarious to watch, and Super Metroid in 55 minutes, by Red Scarlet (IIRC) who is a *girl*, I was doubly impressed...
Yep, I used to do this back then. Doom would report your time to complete a level. At some point the thought occurs. Hey, i'll just skip killing the bad guys and run my ass off!
That and you pretty much have to in Nightmare mode...
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