[Speedrun] Part 1: How to choose a game to speedrun

#1
Pea
Most, if not all hobbies are a subject of dedication: Should you find interest in making, creating or doing things, you'd like to do it regularly, without necessarily making it a job or a scheduled workload. Being dedicated to a hobby means that you hone your skills towards it, eventually finding a point of satisfaction with your work that it becomes a second nature skill. Once you hone those skills, you could eventually let go for a year or two, come back and still be able to do what you were doing before, albeit a bit rusty.

Speedrunning cannot be any more by the book of being a hobby. You work your way to finishing a game as quickly as possible, honing your skills by doing difficult tricks that can save you time, doing the research you need to understand certain parts, and so on. Speedrunning is also one of the most dedicated hobbies out there. I don't really need to explain why, you already watch conventions based solely on them. So a few questions can come out of this; Why do I enjoy watching speedruns? Could I do that myself? What game should I play?

Those questions and answers happened when I went to Summer Games Done Quick 2018, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It was a spur of the moment decision for me to go and it was my very first decision to go travel by myself. Frankly speaking, I was anxious, but I was able to go through and have a wonderful experience. While I was there, I got to see popular speedrunners play games really really fast. I also saw people practicing their speedruns in a big room. Additionally, I spent half the time there playing a DDR Extreme cab, finally passing Max 300 Heavy for the first time in my life.

The other half was arguably spent playing Pringles.

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The Greatest Pop-Off of Pringles History

After missing out on a night of watching hentai with some other guys, I sat on my bed and asked on twitter this:


A friend answered to go check out the practice room: Someone's playing pringles.

And so it started.



To put it shortly, someone brought two copies of Pringles and set up two stations next to each other at the practice room. It wasn't necessarily to practice it, but to simply showcase it to bystanders. I was one of those people. I spent the rest of the night playing Pringles and eventually trying out on running it.



The next day, I went back to it and basically hogged one of the stations. I was pumped. Never have I been so entranced by playing a game about hopping on chips to get to the goal as quickly as possible. We'd have 10 people watching and playing the game, taking turns as we attempted to go for faster times while the person who set the consoles up drank whiskey disguised as "Apple Juice" right next to one of SGDQ's organizers. If you hadn't known: SGDQ is an All-Ages event. No booze allowed.

That day was spent at the Mall of America, wishing I was playing Pringles. At night, I'd play Pringles.

The following day, I played more Pringles.



For the rest of the event, I spent my time either mingling with friends, watching runs, sleeping or playing Pringles. Jacked up on either Burger King, Dairy Queen or Taco Libre for the whole week, I managed to keep first place with a sub-3 time. It was the most wonderful experience of my life by far (I live in a very boring place please forgive me).

So, where am I getting at here? I spent half the event just playing a silly homebrew game for the Sega Genesis? Well, wasn't that the point? Playing games quickly in an environment where everyone plays games quickly? Why'd I do it for such an insignificant game?

That's because I learned to love speedrunning and it became a hobby to me.

So, am I going to play Pringles for you guys this time? Hell no, I already got a time I'm satisfied with. I need to find a game that you guys wanted to see: A game with interesting and/or funny glitches. Perhaps I should have worded that differently: A game with interesting and/or funny tricks. Glitches don't make a speedrun, its tricks do.

Anyways, I went to the local game store last week and bought myself some games, mainly japanese imports and a PS1 Mini (which has a faulty AV connection port, I gotta go return it tomorrow). Two of those games were JP carts of FF 5 and Dragon Quest 5, so I now own Super Famicom carts, which means I gotta order a Super Famicom on Ebay. I'm not a stranger to collecting imported gaming consoles, as I own a Japanese Saturn and PS2, so why not add one from the big N to my collection as well? This dawned on me: I could speedrun a SNES game! As I was searching ebay, I came across all three JP DKC games on sale for like, 50 bux.

DKC is an amazing series to speedrun. It's popular, it has quirky tricks and it's loved by basically anyone who has more than 0 brain cells. I settled on checking out DKC2, but first, I had to confirm something.

When it comes to speedrunning a game, you want to have the version that is optimal to get the best time. To find out which version is the best, you would have to hope that someone documented it somewhere. Thankfully, the DKC speedrunning community is huuuuge, so there was no problem in finding out which one's the best.

And so I bought the triple pack so I can play the other games at my own leisure, but mainly to own a legitimate copy of DKC2 for the Super Famicom.

So, why did I choose this game to speedrun? Well, first of all, it was a coincidence that I started collecting SFC games. Second, I've had a history of misery trying to speedrun 3D games. DKC, while I haven't played it much, is still a very good game. I want to try it out for myself and, with the motivation to do this as a garrison, I think I will see more success and at least a result by the end of it. I just need to get my stuff from ebay on time.

So, how am I going to practice this game? It might take a month to get all my stuff and I'm sure the garrison can't do waiting like this, much like how Night 2 of Mall KG went. Anyways, how am I gonna do this, now?

Time to bust out the big guns.

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Anyways, look forward to me practicing a speedrun on emulator. By the time I'm done learning the route, I should be able to get a run going on legitimate hardware.

Until then!







































































































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#2
Draku

>zsnes instead of snes9x or something

oh shit pea what are you doing

the story about pringles was cool, i watched the run you provided commentary for but was unaware of the greater lore behind you running it yourself. happenstance is cool sometimes.

dkc rules for way more reasons than just speedrunning so this will be Good Shit.
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#3
sealelement
wtf this isnt super mario bros 2
100% pure gamer 100%
#4
Pea
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