The Art of Speed Running (feat. Smallant1 & Keizaron)
When you think of a game, you probably think mostly about getting from point a to point b; getting something accomplished, and maybe even quite literally, race to the finish line. A game can be anything, and it can be anywhere. Now with phones and even devices like the Nintendo Switch, a console can basically be anywhere.
In any game, there are usually goals, as well. One has to complete tasks in a specific way that the developer intended you to do, and these are more apparent in things like logical or puzzle games like Portal.
What if I told you there is a group that tries to break these “rules”? There is an absolutely beautiful game out there, and its known as The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. I completed this game (Not 100% of it, mind you) in over 100 hours. What if I told you someone completed that same game in under 30 minutes? That is the art of speed running. I personally played this game finding all its quirks and defeating the final boss (with a few failures) in the time it took me, yet someone out there bested everyone in under 30 minutes. These people end up being highly skilled, and people simply LOVE to watch these skilled pros because of it. There aren’t a ton of rules to it either, depending on the type of run you are doing. So, naturally, people find glitches or exploits in the game to make things happen in their favor. For example, one common glitch you find in these runs for this game, is clipping through walls to bypass any area of the game. Another thing runners do is exploit physics. One fun example is using bombs to fly basically across the entire length of the map.
This is just the tip of the iceberg.
Using all these tricks, one can simply use ALL of them to complete one task, that is to simply complete the game in under a certain amount of time.
However, this takes a lot of time to develop across the community. Everyone ends up posting these videos online, and it collectively spreads around YouTube and lots of other places such as Twitch. Sometimes people find glitches quick, but usually it takes a long time for anyone to find the best path possible in the game. For example, there is a speed run of Super Mario 64 (released in 1996) that was just run by a Japanese runner known as Puncayshun that has a verified speed run in second place just two short months ago. People are constantly and consistently finding ways to find their way to the top.
Now, all of this is said, but it isn’t always squeaky clean plays either. The community has its fair share of drama, but the majority of any run you see can be verified.
In my quest to find more about these runners lives and the carrer they have chose, I decided to ask some questions to none other than Smallant1 and Keizaron. I asked some things I feel would shed some light into the lives of speed runners
Smallant1
Canadian Speedrunner Smallant1 loves Super Mario Odyssey. I haven’t been following him long myself, but he is an amazing speed runner in the community (and he’s currently taking a break to play Breath of the Wild). He is currently the number one speed runner in Super Mario Odyssey at one hour and thirteen minutes with Any%, 10 captures (it took me personally about a week to get to the end of this game and this guy can do it in one hour! With only ten captures!!) I had the pleasure to speak to this awesome man and talk about the work he has done for the community. I asked some of these questions via twitter, and here is what he had to say.
How has speed running affected your career?
Speed running transformed my stream really. I was doing casual playthroughs of games, or building things in the LittleBigPlanet series on stream but it was all getting a little stale. When a friend of mine jokingly suggested I try out speed running Super Mario Odyssey I figured, “why not?” and gave it a try. From there I wound up focusing my stream on primarily speedrun related content. I played the game for hours and hours every day to try and become the best I could. Unfortunately I put so much time in that it caused a permanent hand injury so I do less strenuous speed running/gaming challenges now. Overall though, speed running managed to take my stream from a small hobby to my full time job in a relatively short period of time and changed my life overwhelmingly for the better.
Have you ever influenced the entire community by finding something new in a speed run?
Personally I’ve only made minor changes to the speed running community in terms of discoveries related to the speedrun. There are a few small movement optimizations that I discovered that are still being used today but it’s not anything significant enough to have me be credited. The most significant discovery I’ve made in the speedrun was at the boss fight near the end of the game. The mechabroodal boss at the end of the game has 4 bubbles you have to destroy, but they can be destroyed in any order. I messed around with the order the bubbles could be destroyed and found that if you perform some difficult tricks you could save several seconds by changing the order completely from the accepted strategies at the time.
What is the longest time you have played a game to get to where you are today?
The game that I have invested the most amount of time into is definitely Super Mario Odyssey. Over the course of a year I put a few thousand hours into practicing and mastering the game. It was a lot of dedication to sit down and play the same game day after day but I enjoyed it and the feeling of improvement at the end of every day.
Have you ever wanted to do more in the community?
I don’t think I could have done any more for the community. In my personal opinion, I did more for the Super Mario Odyssey community than anyone else in the world. I made a high quality set of guides that made it easy for anyone to get into the community and start doing speedruns. I ran many of the community events, running the “Tasks” event and the weekly Bingo challenge. I also owned and moderated the community discord which was the central hub for the Super Mario Odyssey community. I managed the Super Mario Odyssey Speedrun twitter account which kept the community up to date with any major record, event, or discovery as well. In addition to all of this I also was a moderator for the leaderboards on speedrun.com and personally watched and verified many of the runs that are currently there. I put all of my time into bettering the Super Mario Odyssey community. I don’t want to do more in the community because I did literally everything one could possibly do.
Keizaron
I ended up getting to talk to another amazing speed runner. Steven Eisner (Keizaron) personally caught my eye while I was looking around some Games Done Quick archive videos, and every time Pokemon was even mentioned, he was there. His tactics in my opinion, are actually really interesting, especially those runs that I’ve seen are glitchless runs. The fact that this guy can single handedly guess the Random Number Generator (RNG) (Or can basically be considered as the “Luck Factor”) most of the time while running, is simply astounding. So naturally, I had to ask some quesitons.
How has speed running affected your career?
Speedrunning helped expand my online community beyond what I normally do and play, which has led to a lot of opportunities for me both within and outside of speedrunning.
Have you ever influenced the entire community by finding something new in a speed run?
Typically when a new game comes out, I’m one of the very first to study and route out the game, helping pave the way for the routes you see today.
What is the longest time you have played a game to get to where you are today?
I’ve played Crystal for literal thousands of hours!
Have you ever wanted to do more in the community?
I always want to do more, and I want to be as inclusive as possible.
So… How does all of this become speed running?
Over the course of a few days, months even years after a games release, anyone can find tips to get things done faster, and that is speed running. Once someone finds things in a game they may find funny, or even show off some skills they may have, someone can end up using those skills to their advantage and create a speed run. Everyone can learn any game and master said game given time. As with anything in life, practice makes perfect, and to some people, speed running is a very unique thing anyone can do to just simply pick up and just pour any amount of energy into, and who knows. One day, you too can be climbing the leaderboards among these superstars.
HUGE Shout out to these fine people!
Thanks to these people for helping me out on some insight to the world of speed running! Please consider clicking the links and visiting their pages, and watching some runs for yourself!
