12
votes
What are your favorite any% speedrun videos?
I like watching speedrunning videos, especially ones where they break the game in really interesting and novel ways. Every now and then when I'm bored I search "any% speedrun" on YouTube, but... the search results feel gamed by clickbaity Top 10 videos, Soulslike games, and the latest hyped up title of the month.
So I thought I'd ask if you guys have any videos to share. Maybe even like, favorite GDQ videos or favorite niche games you like. Stuff like that?
Here's what I've got:
- Sethbling's "4 Different Mario Credits Warps in Under 15 Minutes" -- Specifically for the Super Mario Land 2 speedrun. I really love how the game's code and RAM gets interpreted as level data, and he has to navigate the garbage sprites to get to a point where it will trigger a debug flag to load the credits.
- Luigi's Mansion any%: Something about the OOB route here is so spooky and interesting to me. It's a 3D game, but fixed perspective, so you don't get the freedom of movement you would in a game like Super Mario 64. That makes any OOB tricks really funky, with Luigi skewing oddly and going off camera in a way that forces the runner to intuit and feel out where to go. It's neat!
Super Mario 64 - 16 Star Blindfolded by Bubzia from AGDQ 2021
Mario 64 is the game that got me into watching speedrunning, so I have a soft spot for it. The fact that the levels are non-linear, combined with Mario's incredible movement set, allows for some fascinating routing and execution. I've seen so many at this point over the past decade that a lot of the luster is gone, but when I first saw it being speedrun it was a source of ongoing and genuine joy for me.
Bubzia's run returned me to that feeling of joy. Calling it a speedrun is a bit of a misnomer, given that it's actually pretty slow-paced (comparatively speaking), but also speedrunning has diversified so much that separate categories like this are much of the fun of the scene at present.
The run itself is straightforward: he gets 16 stars to beat the game (which is actually much less than the game intends for you to get). The catch is anything but normal: he's not able to see anything he's doing. It's an impressive feat of planning, routing, and skill. His run is full of genuine "WOW" moments, as well as some genuinely suspenseful moments (I won't spoil anything, but at one point I thought he was going to have to kill the run). I watched it live -- completely mesmerized, completely full of joy.
Also impressive is that this isn't just a "don't look at the screen" run but a literal blindfolded run. This means that he can't consult notes/reference material either. Every precise step that he had to take he literally has memorized, from start to finish.
Even more impressive is that he returned to SGDQ 2021 to do a 70 Star Blindfolded run. That one was an hour and 50 minutes, and I was glued to my screen the entire time. During that one he talks about how he'd like to do a 120 star run but that he wasn't sure if all 120 stars were routable using his methods. Some levels had insurmountable random elements without sound triggers, or just imprecise movement that's not replicable (he mentioned Dire Dire Docks 100-coin being a particular concern).
Well, never say never. He and the community finally routed the whole game, and just three months ago, he completed a single-segment 120 star run. The full game. It took him eleven and a half hours. He had every single movement memorized, from start to finish.
I think we can close the thread now. That's as good as speedruns get.
Final Fantasy 6: Die repeatedly, then get the credits.
Ooh, I like this already.
I'm now watching this World Record History video on FF6 that will hopefully explain the background behind the 52 Death any% route. :>
EDIT: They go even further! They talk about Relm's sketch glitch too, which seems equally as fascinating.
This isn’t technically a speed run, but it was from GDQ, so I’m gunna say it counts. It is a stepmania/noitg showcase by SpootyBiscuit. The amount of still in this run is just spectacular! https://youtu.be/mKfdfNxnrw0
I remember liking a randomized Legend of Zelda - Link to the Past run that (I think?) was debuting a Twitch extension called Crowd Control which let the audience impact the game in a variety of helpful/aesthetic/harmful ways (ice physics, inverted controls, one-hit deaths, lagomorphery, superspeed, chicken attacks, etc.).
Mechanically it isn't noteworthy so it might not be of any interest, but the couch was great, the audience was great. The banter was lighthearted. Lots of tense moments or surprise deaths.
I think it stuck with me because it seemed like it was a glimpse of something that might be common in the future, some less passive audience-entertainer interaction, without the pessimism of the colosseum / Hungers Games-y depictions. Something where there could be a layer of community adjustment on top of games to make a 5 year old, a tired adult, or a world-class speedrunner have an appropriate amount of challenge/novelty/etc.
Breath of the Wild Any% in 24:10:33
It's amazing how busted, yet rigid the game is. Previous any% records involved you using a glitch to fling yourselves at high speed off of mobs. This one now involves a button mashing glitch to item-hover at fast speed.
As of now, there is one major obstacle to lowering the time of BotW Any% further, and that is somehow skipping the Great Plateau entirely. Problem is, you have to complete all 4 shrines and watch a cutscene to obtain the paraglider, and trying to skip that will either lead to you falling and getting warped back to the Great Plateau, or hitting a death trigger that spans the whole overworld. This death trigger makes it impossible to defeat Ganon immediately because the final Ganon fight takes place on Hyrule field.
A further time save would only be possible if a way to disable the death plane or a credits warp was discovered...