Speedrunning done quick

Rolling around at the speed of sound.

Quite often when it comes to competition in games we default to thinking of the online space. Ranked online matches, tournament games and E-sports come to mind. But what about the perfectionists, those that compete against each other to see who can be the fastest to push through a game, start to finish? Well, then we enter the world of Speedrunning and GDQ (Games Done Quick). People have been finding ways to rush through their favourite games since the days of the super Nintendo at least, and likely won't ever stop. The challenge comes from being intimately familiar with mechanics and exploits whilst displaying appropriate reaction time to act upon this information in order to edge those few seconds ahead of the last person to attempt this. 

Although Speedrunning has only entered the prominence fairly recently, the art form didn't go unnoticed before the founding of GDQ. Who remembers the 1989 commercial/movie 'The Wizard' with Fred Savage? The entire driving plot point of that film revolved around the $50 000 prize for Speedrunning the first level of the, as-of-yet unreleased, Super Mario Bros 3. Of course, that movie was terrible and everyone involved likely wishes they could erase it from their memory, but is shows that Nintendo were aware of the Speedrunning community and wanted to represent them in their cinematic opus. At least before their next opus, the 'Super Mario Bros' movie.

For my part I will readily admit, Speedrunning was never really my go-to choice for video game entertainment. As someone who likes to immerse themselves fully into the video game world, the last thing I want is to be thinking about how to break boundaries in order to skip a difficult section, however I can still respect the level of talent and acumen required to pull it off. The first time I witnessed someone showcase the Level-glitch in 'The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past' I was certainly blown away. Using the way that the game stores it's levels, an enterprising player can skip from the first few screen to the last in no time and beat the game in just under 5 minutes, it's pretty wild.

Some developers have even begun implementing mechanics and design choices in order to facilitate a speedrunning meta. This can be as wide changing as when Ryan Clark edited many spare items in 'Crypt of the Necrodancer' to deal damage instead of reward health and gold, which were both useless to Speedrunners or as simple as adding a tracking clock which you can even find in games like 'Hitman 2: No subtitle'. Interacting with, and including, the Speedrunner community with your game is a great way to help cement it's success and longevity. Speedrunners have been known to comb games for years to rinse out every lest secret and deeply hidden mechanic. Just look at the work that went into wringing all the secrets out of 'Spelunky'. You could spend hours online jumping from forum to forum and still not dig up half of the information that Speedrunners have uncovered regarding secret levels, deep mechanics and the like.

There are times when games find themselves naturally pre-built for the Speedrunning world without having to be built from the ground up in order to accommodate them. Just look at 'The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild'. From the merit of Nintendo's direction in design alone, people decided that BoTW would be the perfect choice for Speedrunning. The game starts off by placing players atop a large chunk of land apart from the rest of Hyrule and forces them through a tutorial before it lets them leave. Once they do leave, however, the entire world is open to them. Players can follow the narrative and travel to the four corners of the land, getting more powerful and resilient as they go, preparing for the final conflict one divine beast at a time. Or they could just B-line it for Hyrule castle and face down Ganon straight up. Not the easiest option, given that you start the game in tattered rags with no weapons and only 3 hearts, but certainly the quickest. And yes, it would be naive to think the Nintendo, of all people, didn't think about the Speedrunning possibilities at all when they made BoTW, but I don't believe that they would design an entire mainline entry around that community. It may have been one of many deciding factors toward the open world Hyrule we know and love, but it certainly wasn't the determiner.

Some games enter the sphere of Speedrunning from genre's one wouldn't expect. Somehow the Resident Evil games are popular for Speedrunners despite being games that inhabit the horror genre. When I imagine Resident Evil, I imagine creeping horror with the occasional puzzle and a fair amount of jump scares; apparently some people just see a race course. 'Resident Evil 7: Biohazard' even went so far as to add a mode that was based around Speedrunning the length of the map with a timer in the corner counting your progress. 'Resident Evil 2: Remake' added a similar mode and a rotating quota of weekly challenges that encourage players to speed through the game in order to beat their posted times. Heck, even the original had some of it's secret weapons locked behind the players ability to finish the game before 3 or 5 hours. (I literally got 11 minutes away from the rocket launcher one time.)

Then there are the challenging games. The ones that foster a reputation for being tough as nails, harrowing experiences that only the stubborn and insane should attempt. Then a Speedrunner comes along and puts everyone to shame by finishing the thing in no time flat. Of course, I'm talking about games like Cuphead and Dark Souls. For some, the mere act of reaching the end is cause for celebration; but for others, they won't be happy until they finish Dark Souls 2 in 14 minutes. It could be argued that in situations like this the purpose of the game is lost but then the same could be said for any atypical method of play, couldn't it?

There are times, however, when it is more impressive to see how quickly someone can complete everything a game has to other, rather than how well they can pull off a wall glitch. That's when you start seeing % runs on 'Donkey Kong Country' or 'Crash Bandicoot'. For a completionist, like myself, this is where you get to see the real masters show you how it's done. Beating the game on it's own terms with all the pinpoint precision going into efficient root optimization and corner skipping. Perhaps I find myself more inclined toward this style of Speedrun because I remember beating 'Batman: Arkham Asylum' for a full 100% in under 6 hours one day. My own claim to Speedrunning fame. Although I'm sure that's not a patch on the actual record, I'm too scared to check.

I see Speedrunning as a very active way in which the gaming community has chosen to show their love for the world's best pastime. (I'm not Biased. Honest.) We show how much we care about these games by breaking them, simplifying them, and speeding through as quickly as possible. It's win win scenario. Gamers get a competitive element to their games that seems so much more worthy then the 'high scores' of yesteryear and developers get to have their games bought and played by more and more people eager to prove their Speedrunning skills. I may moan and gripe about how it's not the way I would play the game but at the end of the day that's not the point. Speedrunning is a sport for those perfectionists that like going above and beyond your average gamer, and they've built one of the most amiable competitive communities in entrainment around that niche. Now, that's praise-worthy all on it's own.