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Author Topic: Speedrunning Marathons  (Read 6009 times)

Koopaslaya

  • Kansas
« on: October 11, 2013, 07:56:53 AM »
Hey all!

It's been a while since I've been very involved in the gaming world. Unfortunately, in college and grad school, I have been more consumed with schoolwork than gaming. Recently, however, I've gotten back into gaming largely because of the Awesome Games Done Quick marathons. I've found this sort of meta-game stuff to be very enjoyable. My experience of the replay value of games has skyrocketed since watching speedruns.

I've been trying to learn how to run OoT and SM64 myself since I started watching others. Exploiting glitches and frame-perfect inputs require a new level of practice, strategy, and precision. Routing and rerouting runs also adds a new component of difficulty when completing a game with speed as the goal.

I was just wondering if anyone else here is excited by and interested in speedrunning as I have been over the past few months or so.
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Turtlekid1

  • Tortuga
« Reply #1 on: October 11, 2013, 10:44:46 AM »
Mostly some casual attempts at Metroid games for me.  Zero Mission is very speed runnable.
"It'll say life is sacred and so is death
but death is life and so we move on"

WarpRattler

  • Paid by the word
« Reply #2 on: October 11, 2013, 11:35:54 AM »
I'm always watching speedruns these days. As far as marathons, Chicago Speedathon was this past weekend; they raised $6000 to help get about a dozen awesome runners and back-end people who can't afford the trip themselves to AGDQ 2014, plus a little extra (I don't know the amount) to be donated straight to the Prevent Cancer Foundation at AGDQ itself.

I don't actually run anything myself at this point, but if I were to pick up a game, I'd probably do something I really enjoy that doesn't already have a major competitive scene, like the La-Mulana remake, Monster World IV, or Rondo of Blood (so odd that I've never seen anyone running this, at least on-stream), and maybe do something more popular like a GBA Metroid or Symphony of the Night on the side. I wouldn't be too interested in running most of the mega-popular games, for a few reasons; the big one would be that several of the most popular games are things like Final Fantasy, Pokémon, and the 3D Zelda games, which tend to be anywhere between three and six hours for the categories people take seriously. I can barely bring myself to watch a lot of those games, let alone sit down and play them for that long in a single sitting.

Koopaslaya

  • Kansas
« Reply #3 on: October 11, 2013, 11:46:09 AM »
The fastest (but not necessarily the easiest) OoT category is under 30 minutes. I've found that to be the best place to start. 16-Star runs in SM64 aren't bad either.
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WarpRattler

  • Paid by the word
« Reply #4 on: October 11, 2013, 12:15:06 PM »
I wouldn't want to run any of the mega-glitched any%/low% categories like that either, though. No-badge in Pokémon Red/Blue is under an hour and fun to watch, but for actually playing something myself, I'd much rather do a (mostly) glitchless any%/100% run of something where an optimized run comes down to how skilled you are at the game itself, rather than how consistently you can execute a glitch that skips a huge chunk of the game. The most extreme examples are things like Richter any% in SotN: five minutes for a complete run, but it skips all but a couple of bosses and relies heavily on an out-of-bounds glitch that's difficult to execute.

« Reply #5 on: October 11, 2013, 02:53:06 PM »
The most impressive speedrun I've seen was Pokemon Red in just under three hours, will all eight badges.
YYur  waYur n beYur you Yur plusYur instYur an Yur Yur whaYur

Turtlekid1

  • Tortuga
« Reply #6 on: October 11, 2013, 11:08:14 PM »
Now that I have some more time to type out an actual meaningful reply:

I watch a lot of speed running whenever I can manage it.  Twitch is my friend here, as is SDA.  Actually donated a bit to SGDQ this last time.  I think it's fantastic that a community like that can draw in such a big crowd and get that kind of turnout for charity.

I've had some interest in running Spyro 2 Any% (basically, no Orbs and only the bare minimum of treasure) but routing the most efficient treasure gathering and pulling off Climb Skip is a big deterrent.

The last few months have seen me get a bit into Classic Mega Man, and I think the third or fifth game would be pretty fun to run, since they come down mostly to execution rather than big skips.

Either the first or second Sly game might be fun, but I would be borderline poopsocking given the length of them.

Mostly what keeps me from doing more speed running myself is (a) having to reset whenever I screw up, especially in single segment runs, and (b) having to worry about timing it precisely.  Basically, I like having the finesse involved with running a game but I can't stand the repetitiveness.  It can be just as bad as level grinding.

Also,
I wouldn't want to run any of the mega-glitched any%/low% categories like that either, though. No-badge in Pokémon Red/Blue is under an hour and fun to watch, but for actually playing something myself, I'd much rather do a (mostly) glitchless any%/100% run of something where an optimized run comes down to how skilled you are at the game itself, rather than how consistently you can execute a glitch that skips a huge chunk of the game. The most extreme examples are things like Richter any% in SotN: five minutes for a complete run, but it skips all but a couple of bosses and relies heavily on an out-of-bounds glitch that's difficult to execute.
This.
"It'll say life is sacred and so is death
but death is life and so we move on"

WarpRattler

  • Paid by the word
« Reply #7 on: October 12, 2013, 04:54:03 AM »
Being a shmup player, I'm no stranger to resets, but as far as the timing, I think I'd run into the same issue I have with recording INPs when I play stuff in MAME, which is that I'd find resetting the timer for every run a bit of a pain and end up forgetting about it. Same for marking splits.

I know Turtlekid follows MilesSMB, but other than him, which runners do you guys watch? I watch assorted stuff based on who's live at the time (I've got TheTerribleOne running ALttP in another tab right now), but I actively follow Romscout (SotN) and feasel (FF1 NES), and sometimes watch Siglemic (SM64), 0xwas (Kirby Super Star), trihex (Yoshi's Island) Mecha Richter (also SotN), and a few others.

Turtlekid1

  • Tortuga
« Reply #8 on: October 12, 2013, 09:10:10 AM »
I watch Romscout and Siglemic sometimes as well.

Also Bl00dyBizkitz (Kingdom Hearts), bizkit047 (Kingdom Hearts, Super Mario 64, Crash Bandicoot, Tomba!, and anything else he feels like), CaneofPacci (Crash, Spyro), zoasty (Super Metroid), and Bonesaw577 (Jak, Ratchet, lots of stuff).

I may or may not ever actually see them streaming these days with my school schedule, but they're on my "follow" list on Twitch.
"It'll say life is sacred and so is death
but death is life and so we move on"

« Reply #9 on: October 12, 2013, 10:42:15 AM »
I've seen a speedrun where someone played all 4 NES (SMB, SMB2, SMBU, SMB 3) Mario games at the same time and all the buttons were shared among the games. I'll try to find a link.

WarpRattler

  • Paid by the word
« Reply #10 on: October 12, 2013, 02:22:08 PM »
That's actually a tool-assisted superplay, rather than a real speedrun. In a TAS, emulator tools like savestates and frame-by-frame advance are used to do things that, while (mostly) being technically possible, would be incredibly difficult for a human to actually do live. Some TASes are just "an absolute perfect playthrough," which is generally pretty boring. Some of the more interesting ones include "playaround" videos, which are often done with older sports games and fighting games; rather than rushing to complete a game as quickly as possible, these often involve showing off glitches or poor AI, with hilarious results. The most popular TASes tend to be the ones that that do silly things like play multiple games at once (here's the one you mentioned), completely abuse entry fields (Brain Age 2 here), or exploit absurd glitches to complete games in a couple of minutes (like this Yoshi's Island run).

Suffix

  • Steamed
« Reply #11 on: October 12, 2013, 04:35:24 PM »
Oh geez, I saw that International Super Star Soccer Deluxe playthrough on Nico Nico Douga way back when. I laughed until I cried.

« Reply #12 on: October 14, 2013, 10:53:08 AM »
That's actually a tool-assisted superplay, rather than a real speedrun. In a TAS, emulator tools like savestates and frame-by-frame advance are used to do things that, while (mostly) being technically possible, would be incredibly difficult for a human to actually do live. Some TASes are just "an absolute perfect playthrough," which is generally pretty boring. Some of the more interesting ones include "playaround" videos, which are often done with older sports games and fighting games; rather than rushing to complete a game as quickly as possible, these often involve showing off glitches or poor AI, with hilarious results. The most popular TASes tend to be the ones that that do silly things like play multiple games at once (here's the one you mentioned), completely abuse entry fields (Brain Age 2 here), or exploit absurd glitches to complete games in a couple of minutes (like this Yoshi's Island run).
I'm aware of TASes, one of my favorites is a 0 star run of SM64.

« Reply #13 on: December 05, 2013, 06:22:54 AM »
It's cool I saw this topic, I've been completely absorbing speedrunning for the past couple months. It's just about the coolest thing out there to me right now. I've been watching every AGDQ/SGDQ video I can, and I want to start practicing and attempting my own speedruns, particularly of various games from within the Mario series (SMB, SMB3, SMW, Luigi's Mansion) as well as other personal faves like Super Monkey Ball 1 & 2 (oh god, the effort that will take though), Kirby Air Ride, Alladin (SNES), and possibly DKC2. You have no clue how much I'm looking forward to AGDQ 2014. I'm gonna be glued to the screen for a week— gotta stock up on snacks.
Unwillingly, but successfully! Twice!

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