Behold, the fastest speedrun ever!

[thwak is T.hawk]

Now that you've watched that video, let me tell you what the hell just happened.

King's bounty is an old pc game that was ported to the sega genesis (the version you're seeing being "played"). The goal of the game is that the king sends you on a quest to get a magic staff that's randomly spawned through out the game world. One of the places it can spawn is right outside the starting point.

What happened in this speed run is that the speed runner kept reloading the game and used a bot to select the menu option to search for the staff. This was to cut down on time, because hey why not?

[Fiddleford H. McGucket]

Ok.....so If I understood hat correctly....

The "Player" used a savescumming system to reload the game until the optimum conditions are met....then used a BOT to actually find the item.

Whatever happened to simply playing a game?

[invaderdave]

I think savescumming and bots are horse crap. You're not really speedrunning anything unless you're playing the actual game.

[thwak is T.hawk]

Jan 12, 2011 23:25:28 GMT -5 Fiddleford H. McGucket said:

Ok.....so If I understood hat correctly....

The "Player" used a savescumming system to reload the game until the optimum conditions are met....then used a BOT to actually find the item.

Whatever happened to simply playing a game?

He didn't use a bot to find it the item, he used a bot to select a menu option.

[The Ichi]

Yeah, I'm afraid this shouldn't count.

[El Cokehead del Knife Fight]

Save-Scumming until there are optimal conditions shouldn't count.

[Red Impact]

Jan 12, 2011 23:31:52 GMT -5 invaderdave said:

I think savescumming and bots are horse crap. You're not really speedrunning anything unless you're playing the actual game.

Yeah, and doing it with the whole game. Exploiting glitches so you skip 99% of it shouldn't count either. There's no real skill being shown in avoiding actually playing a game.

[Fiddleford H. McGucket]

Personally, my criteria for a "legit" speedrun don't seem too bad.

You Can:

- Use what is on the retail version of the game (Glitches are fine, exploiting bugs is ok, Warp Zones/Whistles/etc encouraged)

- Savescum for practices, but NOT the final run

You CANNOT

- Use outside cheat devices (Game Genies/Pro Action Replay/Game Shark/etc)

- Use a "hacked" rom (NOTE: Unless it's supposed to be a run of a Mod/RomHack

- Use a Bot to do something faster than you would be able to do naturally (It's a speed run.....not a contest to see how quickly your bot can do something)

[stealthamo]

Technically, this is the fastest speed run ever, at a time of 3 seconds.

[Bam Neeley]

It's a TAS run. It's purpose is to show how thoroughly the game can be broken to achieve the winning condition.

[Pervy Stone Cold]

The Iron Sheik has two words for this speedrun. F.......... bullshit!!!!

[thwak is T.hawk]

Jan 13, 2011 8:36:55 GMT -5 Red Impact said:

Jan 12, 2011 23:31:52 GMT -5 invaderdave said:

I think savescumming and bots are horse crap. You're not really speedrunning anything unless you're playing the actual game.

Yeah, and doing it with the whole game. Exploiting glitches so you skip 99% of it shouldn't count either. There's no real skill being shown in avoiding actually playing a game.

But in a lot of cases it's actually harder to exploit glitches to speed run the game, than to actually play the game normally.

Like that portal speedrun where the guy is out of bounds for half the game. Or metroid prime 2, where you can skip the part where you lose all your upgrades.

[Red Impact]

Jan 13, 2011 17:15:46 GMT -5 thwak is T.hawk said:

Jan 13, 2011 8:36:55 GMT -5 Red Impact said:

Yeah, and doing it with the whole game. Exploiting glitches so you skip 99% of it shouldn't count either. There's no real skill being shown in avoiding actually playing a game.

But in a lot of cases it's actually harder to exploit glitches to speed run the game, than to actually play the game normally.

Like that portal speedrun where the guy is out of bounds for half the game. Or metroid prime 2, where you can skip the part where you lose all your upgrades.

I don't really think it matters. Those are part of the game, and it's hard to say you completed a game in a certain amount of time if you skip long stretches of it because you abused a jumping glitch. You haven't read a book if you read the first chapter then skip to the end. Likewise, you don't complete a game if you use programming errors to skip parts of it (or use bots to do work for you).

[thwak is T.hawk]

Jan 13, 2011 17:25:10 GMT -5 Red Impact said:

Jan 13, 2011 17:15:46 GMT -5 thwak is T.hawk said:

But in a lot of cases it's actually harder to exploit glitches to speed run the game, than to actually play the game normally.

Like that portal speedrun where the guy is out of bounds for half the game. Or metroid prime 2, where you can skip the part where you lose all your upgrades.

I don't really think it matters. Those are part of the game, and it's hard to say you completed a game in a certain amount of time if you skip long stretches of it because you abused a jumping glitch. You haven't read a book if you read the first chapter then skip to the end. Likewise, you don't complete a game if you use programming errors to skip parts of it (or use bots to do work for you).

I guess we have to agree to disagree then.

It's still interesting watching this though:

[Red Impact]

They can be interesting to watch, sure, but I just have to doubt any skill or great feat involved in types of runs that do that. Speed runs, to me, are only really ever impressive when a person actuall plays a game, not skips past the end because they learned you can run through a wall at a specific spot and glitch the game to the ending.