Competitive Speedrunning

[Zork Nemesis]

I've found that, as of late, I've been watching more and more YouTube videos of people who are racing through old video games while everyone's on a single Teamspeak or Skype discussion. Obviously the classic Battletoads race pops to mind when you think about it but I've been watching many more, including races of stuff like Super Mario World, Kirby's Adventure, Mega Man X, Crash Bandicoot 2, Super Meat Boy, and VVVVVV among many others. I'd post a couple for example purposes but all of them tend to have NSFW commentary, mainly storms of cursing frustration when certain people hit hard parts of the game (again, the Battletoads race comes to mind) which add to the overall comedy values of the races.

After watching several of these races, I've wondered who around here would be in to this sort of thing? Sure a race session could take a few hours depending on the game, but if there's enough interest, maybe something could be set up. There's a bunch of games I would love to try this with too: Mega Man 2/3, Super Metroid, Sonic 2/3&K/CD, Crash Bandicoot 2, many more!

So yeah, would there be any interest in this sort of thing? I don't think it would be too hard to do, the only real snag I could see is whether or not someone has capture software and/or better-than-Windows-Live movie editing software.

[Flyte]

I'm down for jump speed runs..
I'd probably fail at those games, tf2 is love, tf2 is life


Rocket and sticky jumps that is..

[Zork Nemesis]

That's not really what I meant. Racing through TF2 is one thing, i'm talking more like racing to beat an old-school single player game, such as Mega Man, Mario, and the like.

This is more than what i'm talking about (NSFW commentary warning)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9ORZmhq0Nw

[Flyte]

That game is a couple years older than me :G

[belak]

The only game I'm even decent at running is antichamber... >_< And I'm at 10 min on that... where wr is around 2-3.

[Maple Man]

Cavestory? Could that be speedran? :3

[Supreveio]

I've watched the past few Games Done Quick marathons (there's been quite a few races in there). Speedruns are fancy.

Cavestory? Could that be speedran? :3

Yes. Any game with a definite ending can be speedrun. So Cave Story could be speedrun, but something like The Sims or Team Fortress could not. Like, I've seen a speedrun of Minecraft.


That said, I think the only game I'd be decent enough to speedrun is the original Quake. And I'd still have to learn how to bunny hop.

[Daryldime]

I tried to get under half an hour on the original Zelda... but I ruined it pretty hard on the 5th boss... cost me an extra 10 minutes :/

[black_and_blue]

but something like The Sims or Team Fortress could not.

You could speedrun MvM.

[Plinko]

The only one I've done is Binding of Isaac. I could really only see myself doing a game like that where it's more about reacting strategically to what the game's RNG throws at you rather than holding a line as close as possible.

[abiscuit]

http://www.speedrunslive.com/

SRL is a great place to watch speedrunners and to participate in races.

I actively speedrun a couple games, most notably Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga.

The only one I've done is Binding of Isaac. I could really only see myself doing a game like that where it's more about reacting strategically to what the game's RNG throws at you rather than holding a line as close as possible.

Binding of Issac has an active racing community which bans the use of certain items or combinations (such as Epic Fetus or Polyphemus + Tech 1) to make things a little less reliant on RNG. Binding of Issac Rebirth will have features to help out this community quite a bit, such as being able to have set seeds for races.

[belak]

Spelunky speedruns are pretty crazy, but considering I can't even make it to the end... >_<

Also, one of my favorite non-race speedruns is a TAS of Cave Story. It's insane how much time was put into it. Best ending in 45 min or so, I think. Long story short, in a normal game there's a better option than the machine gun, but in a speedrun, the recoil on it lets you fly places you shouldn't be able to.