Speed Runs

[Bartekk]

Speed Runs are a form of art. It's something anyone can do but only few can master. It's something that is often better to watch than a movie and something that will make you fall out of your chair right after seeing how a game that you've completed a thousand times gets destroyed in few minutes.

If you're interested in checking out some incredible performances, check Speed Demos Archives (the day I have found it was one of the most beautiful). Fallout completed in 9 minutes? Quake in 13 on the highest difficulty level? Diablo in 6? Nothing is impossible.

There are some amazing runs out there and I just thought it'd be good to mention them for those who never had opportunity to watch them. However I'd like to ask not to come here and criticize the idea of Speed Running. Some people just tend to say things like: "there's no fun in running through game". Well, I assure you that guys who do it have fun with a game first, now they are just trying to have fun with it in a different way.

Enjoy.

[Hatesink]

I play really fast through Hitman quite a lot (once I've explored and formulated and tested everything out and am basically going for the win). A lot of Hitman levels really lend themselves to the whole speed run idea. Most of them you can totally run through if you basically know the sequence (it wouldn't surprise me if a lot of them (or at least those of Blood Money) were designed with speed runs in mind).

[Bioshock_FTW!]

Pretty cool, except when I see videos I can usually make out where they spliced a couple parts together because they probably messed up; so from what I can tell the art form part of it is in making the video look at fluent as possible.
That's obviously not all the time, I've seen some good ones out there, but I just know that most of them that I see aren't legit.

[witch]

I don't really like speed runs, except myabe for the older games like Mario and such. Guess it's becuase when I usually play a game I never run through it.

[Bartekk]

Pretty cool, except when I see videos I can usually make out where they spliced a couple parts together because they probably messed up; so from what I can tell the art form part of it is in making the video look at fluent as possible.
That's obviously not all the time, I've seen some good ones out there, but I just know that most of them that I see aren't legit.

They are legit, there is a mile long list of rules for runs that are on that site and there's a lot of verifying going on. What you are refering to are segments. Most speed runs are done in segments because otherwise it'd take few generations to do it. There are single segment runs (see DOOM 1/2) but in most cases it'd be simply impossible.

[king_clueless]

one of my fav speed runs is the Morrowind one. I spent months loving that games only then to see soon loon do it in about 5 mins or somefink! Great stuff

found one on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jo7tViQanVs

but I've seen faster

[splicer]

best speed run I saw was SS2-the guy was totally mental-31 minutes!

[king_clueless]

oh got that one saved on my youtube account! hold on. . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1p8tOeN32eE

there you go fantastic gaming. I'm planning on doing the same thing on Bioshock except faster, lol.

[Jeff]

the word "somefink" demeans all internet users everywhere.

[lotkrotan]

I was recently debating on speed running through a few of my old games (sonic the hedgehog, Zelda OoT, Pokemon red/blue, and Twisted Metal 2)

I think that OoT would be great, I can beat it in two days not trying to speed run, and getting every item. I bet I can do it in one sitting just going for ganon.

[Irrational_Alexx]

When I was doing QA on Thief: The Dark Project, there eventually came a day when the game was so close to done that QA had very little to do. We would identify a ship-stopping bug, then basically have to wait for a new build to come out (several hours) before we could do anything useful. We did speed runs :-)

One of my 'specialty' levels was Escape!, and I got that down to 1 minute and 12 seconds. I remember that the guy who had Bafford's Mansion managed to get that one down to 49 seconds!

Have you guys seen the Co-op speed run for SS2? They got it under 25 minutes. I was muy impressed.

Alexx Kay, Designer, Irrational Games

[Hatesink]

One of my 'specialty' levels was Escape!, and I got that down to 1 minute and 12 seconds. I remember that the guy who had Bafford's Mansion managed to get that one down to 49 seconds!

Forty-nine seconds! That's fast! (I guess 1 minute twelve must be fast too, but forty nine seconds just sounds fast) (surely that's got to be on the easy setting).

I've never really tried speed runs with Thief. Maybe I should give it a go.

Edit: My record for 'Intermediate' level of Minesweeper is forty-two seconds (that's with copious amounts of excessive play over a period of a couple of weeks).

[Bioshock_FTW!]

Speaking of Thief, I've got the weirdest thing happening. I finally decided to purchase Deadly Shadows last night via Steam because my *cough* other copy *cough* was acting funny.
When I would load up the game and just as I would get to the front menu, one of the cinematics would come up, and I'll hit Esc to get through it and plop me on the menu but the cinematic kept coming back over and over, I could hold Esc and see just a flicker between the movie and the menu. It was so weird.
So I figured...probably a badly burned ISO image, right? So I purchased it on Steam, installed, etc. Went to load it up, and BAM same problem. I don't know what's wrong and I can't find anyone else having this problem. I updated it to 1.1 and even tried a no-dvd patch and got the same results.

So weird...I don't expect tech support from you guys but if you've heard of this and know how to fix it...help me!!

[lotkrotan]

he minsweeper on easy: 7 seconds.

[Hatesink]

he minsweeper on easy: 7 seconds.

On easy I did it in 8 seconds (you beat me)

[Jeff]

I watched Diablo 1 speed run and was unimpressed with the mod'd dungeon and god mode used. Meh.

[Raveness]

I remember that the guy who had Bafford's Mansion managed to get that one down to 49 seconds!

Ok now I'm officially confused as to what speed runs are Bafford mansion starts out with Garrett walking the streets of the City and finding the sewer well, picking the guards key, jumping in, and slowly swimming into the wine cellar of the mansion. Unless the game was hacked, that would take at least 20-25 seconds of pure forward motion towards the objective.

I can only guess that the run was done on Easy so that the smallest list of objectives was used. Anyone doing speed runs should do "full experience" speed runs as well, showing every facet/side quest/objective/corner street/NPC that is possible in the game. That's something I'd care to see.

EDiT: Just to add, is there any video's of speed runs for old Looking Glass classics?

[Irrational_Alexx]

Ok now I'm officially confused as to what speed runs are

This was many years ago, remember, when there wasn't such an organized "speed run" tradition. And we weren't trying to do anything formalized, just having fun with the game while waiting for gold candidate builds.

Bafford mansion starts out with Garrett walking the streets of the City and finding the sewer well, picking the guards key, jumping in, and slowly swimming into the wine cellar of the mansion. Unless the game was hacked, that would take at least 20-25 seconds of pure forward motion towards the objective.

The mission *can* start that way, if you want to take the *slow* route. For a sufficiently skilled player, going in the front door is much faster

I can only guess that the run was done on Easy so that the smallest list of objectives was used.

Yes, most of our speed runs were on Easy. (Once I had a successful Escape! Easy run at 1:14, I upped it to Medium difficulty, and that's where I actually got my 1:12 time. Hard would have added an objective which would have added significant time to the run, and also made it *much* harder to pull off.)

Anyone doing speed runs should do "full experience" speed runs as well, showing every facet/side quest/objective/corner street/NPC that is possible in the game. That's something I'd care to see.

I'd like to see that too!

Alexx Kay, Designer, Irrational Games

[Raveness]

The mission *can* start that way, if you want to take the *slow* route. For a sufficiently skilled player, going in the front door is much faster

Yes, now I remember that you do start right near the front door, which has three guards discussing bear baiting. Didn't ever try going in the hard way due to my penchant for never wanting to harm a soul in Thief games + wishing to remain essentially a ghost presence.