Speedrun Spotlight - Dark Souls featuring Catalystz

Jan 8, 2021 Repost



Throughout the Speedrun Spotlight series we have established some common variables. Speedrunners often have a strong online presence, interacting often with their chat and twitter userbase, and forming bonds and friendships with other runners within their game. Discord is the main driver of discussion and knowledge sharing, and helps to amplify the resources of anyone getting into the intricacies of running specific games and categories. Now that we have a focal point and understanding of speedrunning, I want to begin to examine some of the complexities of the pursuit. My goal with this entry into the series - Dark Souls speedruns by Catalystz - was to gather some depth more acutely about the runner themselves and the distinct games and methods they use.




There are four main categories of Dark Souls speedruns: Any%, Any% No Wrong Warp, Any% Force quit, and All Bosses. For Catalystz, Dark Souls has been his main speed game for three years, and he has run each category except for Force Quit. He maintains the 1st place World Record currently in the Any% and All Bosses categories. Catalystz feels All Bosses is the exemplary category. “All of the Any% categories are shorter, so I don’t think they really do justice to the game,” Catalystz tells me. “At the same time, All Bosses has a really cool goal, that’s also really easy to understand. There are 26 bosses in dark souls, and you have to kill them all.” It’s a less complicated ruleset overall, with the added allure of watching someone beat these typically hard bosses very quickly.




As a fan of speedruns, I watch, but I have never tried speedrunning myself. There are not many comparable activities - an activity with a 1 hour or more commitment as a practice time - so it is hard to gauge the difficulty of training for runners; across games and across categories within games. As an outsider, I was intrigued to find that Catalystz finds the hour-long All Bosses category less intensive. I asked if he felt stressed having to put in such long times to perfect the run. “To to contrary, I find it more annoying to run the shorter categories,” Catalystz explained. “It is easier to get an Any% run to the point where you have to rely on RNG more than anything else. At that point you are fighting to get the game to line up the numbers for you and get the patterns that you need.” In essence, the longer Dark Souls runs are more time consuming, but more directly affected by player performance. You can grind a section perfectly on repeat, but if an enemy doesn’t drop the run-specific item you need, you have to restart anyway.





Catalystz sits at the top of the leaderboard for a few categories, and I was wondering what kept him coming back to the game and to speedrunning itself. “Speedrunning goes really well with streaming,” he said. In a game like Dark Souls, most runs require you to get a specific drop from an enemy. When Catalystz is repeating a cycle of the run waiting to get his item drop to trigger, he is able to get good content out of discussion with his chat. “I like to make my stream a lot about conversation. Talking about politics is something very common on my stream. When you’re resetting in the early game, its really easy to keep up with the audience. That’s what I most enjoy about speedrunning.” Catalystz is studying Political Science, so this opportunity to blend his studies with his streaming is an added layer of enjoyment.




I have a more than cursory knowledge of Dark Souls. I have beaten Dark Souls three times, twice on the Xbox 360 version, and once on the remaster. Having background information about the games, and first-hand experience, helps to articulate just how ludicrous some of these runs are. For people familiar with the game, keep track of how long it took you to get to Sen’s Fortress, and then how long it took you to complete it. In Catalystz’s SGDQ 2019 All Bosses run, he is inside Sen’s Fortress in 7 minutes and 45 seconds, and done with it, and into Anor Londo, only 3 minutes later. This combines a multitude of skills beyond simply mastering the mechanics of the game. Even being high proficiency at the game’s techniques, you also need to be able to execute them continually. You also have to master performing precise glitches and certain exploits, many requiring precision timing and reflexive button presses. I wanted to know what Catalystz thought of the dedication and effort it might take to become well-versed in some of these intricate tricks. “The difficulty of Dark Souls mostly lies in the knowledge of the game,” he expounds. He continues on to explain that in comparison to a game like Mario 64, Dark Souls has less movement and execution to perform. “Most of the time you are running around, rolling boss’ attacks, and punishing them,” he says. “The most important thing is understanding how to punish bosses correctly, and you amass that knowledge over time.” Every enemy that you encounter in Dark Souls will have an impact, but you don’t know how they will react to you until you are in the run. A hollow make block your path, and force you to do an extra roll. That roll may put you out of the position for the next enemy you were going to face. Having the knowledge to properly mitigate the roadblocks the enemies give you leads you to the top of the leaderboard. Dark Souls has many tools to be able to learn area skips and exploits. You can save your state or position in the game, but you cannot prepare for an unpredictable enemy movement or attack. The people who make it to the top, Catalystz says, are the ones who can most expertly adapt to what the game throws at them.




Having watched Catalystz run at GDQ events, specifically SGDQ 2019, I find him entertaining due to skill at the game, but that is enhanced by his personality and charisma. He is adept at running the category, while also explaining the complexities of the run, and on top of that making jokes and having a good time with the crowd. He attributes this to being so comfortable with the game. Having played Dark Souls enough, he never feels his focus drop when he is interacting with people in chat, or when he is playing on a live stage, such as a speedrun event. “I don’t really get nervous in general,” Catalystz told me in a flourish of confidence that he often exhibits on stream. “The nerves can really show when I get close to a World Record pace, or even just a personal best, but that’s just a part of speedrunning: handling the nerves and the pressure.” When asked about his nerves at a GDQ event, being in front of a large number of people, he was just as sure. “The nerves go away after the first minute. You aren’t there to perform the perfect run. That’s what you do on your stream. You’re there to entertain and show off something cool, and that’s always my goal.”




Catalystz started running Dark Souls in November 2017. He guessed his first All Bosses run was somewhere in the ballpark of four-and-a-half hours. Three months later, he was top five in the category. He admits that the leaderboards were less active at the time, but it is quite the achievement regardless. When you look at the World Records now and you see the name Catalstyz, you assume he is the elite runner, and the best in that category. Catalystz was quite humble when I proposed this merit. “I attribute it to the fact that for the past three years, I’ve been playing the game more than anyone else,” he starts with, before pivoting to another point, “There are people that are a lot better at understanding the inner mechanics. There are people who discover glitches and look through the files. That is something that I cannot do.” He believes that anyone who puts in the time to run repetitively has all the resources to succeed just as he has. “Speedrunning is all about the community effort. I’m the guy who puts together the route, grinding down the times. There are a lot of people behind those times, making these runs possible.”





The idea here that Catalystz suggests, is that consistency is key in a game like Dark Souls. The knowledge and community is there for anyone to access, but he puts in the most time towards those speedrunning record goals. Community members have dissected the game, figured out what needs to happen in each section, and the person who best performs those actions can achieve good times. There is still a lot left up to chance, and Catalystz supports the idea that being consistent across everything you can control can assuage the pitfalls of the game’s RNG. You can prepare for things in game that are certain, and help your chances most by executing well in those parts. In the upper echelon of runs is when you will also need a bit of luck here and there.





Catalystz is a full time student, and his streaming is an endeavor of love. “I want to give it as much as I can because it is something I really enjoy doing.” He also wants to pursue speedrunning content creation on YouTube. Due to the variety of glitches and categories Dark Souls has, as well as the community support and randomizers, Catalystz feels content running Dark Souls for a long time. “There is always something more to run, and more goals to reach.” Catalystz is a talented and captivating streamer that mixes talent across Dark Souls with conversation. Be sure to check him out on YouTube and Twitch for World Record times.




YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/catalystz

Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/catalystz

Twitter: https://twitter.com/catalystz_?lang=en

Speedrun Spotlight - Super Metroid featuring ShinyZeni

Oct 9, 2020 Repost

Super Metroid has been a favorite game for me since its release in 1994, and I have long been a proponent for it being one of the greatest games of all time. It has all the criteria for a wonderful game. Over the years, I have taken time to go back and play it again fully every so often, if only to re-immerse myself in it once more. The art style is stupendous and holds up well over the years. The gameplay is, of course, immaculate, and is not bogged down by story in any way. The controls are fluid, tight, and straight forward. On the surface it is a simple concept, but it excels at each thing it does in a wonderful way. Each area you venture to is enhanced by the incredible soundtrack. It is challenging without the difficulty feeling arbitrary or needlessly punishing. It is a work of art in gaming.




As an avid player, very familiar with the game but never replaying with the goal of speedrunning, my most recent completion was on the Nintendo Switch Online SNES version a year ago, and my final in-game time was 2:57. Throughout the run, I was aware of my time and tried to finish as fast as I could. It wasn’t a serious undertaking, simply a personal challenge since I complete the game out of my pure enjoyment for it. Years of experience playing Super Metroid gives me intimate knowledge of many different facets of the game, or at least a more-than-average understanding of all its aspects. When I watch a speedrunner, then, I am even more in awe of what they can accomplish. Where I stumble through a climbing section, they barely touch the floor. I hunt down extra health and ammo, and they barrel through with the least amount possible, in order to save time. The map guides me through as I meticulously complete the game in order, and they skip entire sections and sequence break with precise button presses, tricks, and movement techniques. Bosses are a struggle, my aim and movement sometimes allowing me to be punished, and runners have quick-kill setups and low-ammo strategies. Knowing my skill level and limitations, and then learning about the extreme skill and dedication it requires for these runners to beat it so quickly and make it look effortless is a humbling and awe-inspiring journey through the game. During AGDQ 2019, my admiration grew by several factors when I watched the Super Metroid Reverse Boss Order run by ShinyZeni. I legitimately couldn’t believe what I was watching. There are no mods or game-altering exploits. It was run on the hardware the game launched on, only he defeated Ridley first, and worked backwards through the bosses. This meant going through all of the heat damage sections without the Varia suit. It requires use of a mechanic called Crystal Flash to recover health in long and arduous sections. To see a game I knew in-and-out, loved and cherished all through my childhood, be so completely and thoroughly mastered in such a fashion completely eclipsed my expectations. On top of that, ShinyZeni completed that run in 1:06:02, a full 2 hours faster than I could complete the game normally. He currently holds the World Record in the category with a 58:37. That’s why I reached out to ShinyZeni and got some of his thoughts on the run, on Super Metroid, and his place in the community.




In the early 2000s, ShinyZeni stumbled across Speed Demos Archive, and was similarly blown away when he saw the Metroid Prime and Super Metroid 100% runs. They had videos available to watch on the sight, and he did just that. He also would frequent a Metroid fan site (Samus.co.uk), which had a wealth of videos about speedrunning, including DVDs with World Record speedruns of every Metroid game, which ShinyZeni still has today. “What I would do was watch the video, and then I would turn on my console and try to copy what they were doing,” he told me. “It worked for some things, but not for others. A lot of the tech it is not super obvious the nuances that go into it.” ShinyZeni would do this a few times a year, running only the 100% category, purely out of his love for the game. Around 2015 he set the goal for himself to get his time for that category to under an hour for in-game time, which he achieved that year. It wasn’t until 2017 that his speedrun journey really got its legs. “Ten minutes into the run, I died to the most ridiculous thing, Mini Kraid, and when I texted my friend about it he said ‘I don’t believe you,’” Zeni recalls. Afterwards he immediately set up his capture card and streamed it, so he would have actual proof for his friends in the future. During this streamed run, another friend and viewer suggested he should time his runs to see how fast he can really go. “Something about having the timer, and the immediate feedback on how I was doing, that’s what hooked me.”

The Reverse Boss Order (RBO) category originally came about as Tool-Assisted only run. It was a proof of concept that the game was no longer limited by having to do things in a certain order, but the strategies involved were too difficult for humans to execute. This first theory TAS was made by Dessyreqt, who also made the second TAS for this category and put a lot of work into making it viable for standard play. Zeni didn’t find out about it until later, and wasn’t planning on playing the category at all. “I remember seeing it on the schedule for AGDQ in 2016 and being upset that it wasn’t 100%,” he said with a laugh. “As the run went on I kept thinking it wasn’t as crazy as I thought it was going to be. Then I saw the Ridley fight, where he survived with 1 HP, and at that point I thought okay, this run is pretty cool.” The category was an afterthought for a long time still for Zeni. About a year later when he started streaming, he was mainly focused on the 100% run. After he hit his personal goals for times, he even considered stopping streaming. The same friend who suggested he start streaming then suggested he give Reverse Boss Order a shot. “I started putting in runs and it was fun, and then I began to identify ways that I could optimize it,” he told me, “items I could skip, or different routes I could take.” Eventually there came a point where he realized he was close to the top of the leaderboard. “When I realized that, I thought it was really weird that I could take the World Record. Then I took it, and I wanted to bring the time under one hour.” The more he ran it, the more he found himself loving the category. “As a gamer I really love difficult challenges and overcoming them, and Reverse Boss Order was that aspect combined with speedrunning.”




Zeni came to this position as a speedrun fan and viewer, with Zoast being his favorite. “I had been watching him loyally for a number of years at that point,” he said. Zeni would keep up with many different runs this way, though never taking particular interest in anything other than the 100% run. The 100% run seems overwhelming from an outside perspective. A lot of memorization, trial-and-error, and learning different techniques seems like it could take a toll on someone’s psyche. Zeni excels in that regard. “As far as speedrunning being daunting or tedious, I actually thrive on repetition,” Zeni explains. “I like to see improvement in myself and my abilities, and speedrunning fits really well into my character.”

Something about speedrunning that keeps me watching is how grassroots it feels. Games that I grew up with, play and know consummately, are being played expertly on display. The accessibility of the pursuit is inherent. Most people who decide to speedrun are already familiar with the game and typically good at it or long invested in it. The decision to speedrun is less of a leap and more of a logical next step. There are no tryouts, no gatekeeping. If you have the game, you can speedrun it. The communities surrounding them band together to compile strategies, tutorials, expert advice, and videos of their attempts. Everyone benefits from this, because you still need to put it into practical effect to succeed. ShinyZeni is the exemplification of this idea. A speedrun and video game fan turned speedrunner, who now dominates parts of the leaderboard. An interest as a passive viewer turned into a hobby, spurred on by an inviting and helpful community.




While being near or at the top of several Super Metroid speedrun categories, Zeni remains quite modest. In fact, Zeni contests that Zoast is “definitively the top runner of Super Metroid across the widest breadth of categories,” and Zoast’s results reflect that. Zoast averages 2nd place across the top 7 main Super Metroid speedrun categories, with four 1st place runs. Zeni also has two 1st place finishes of his own, and a 2nd place in 100%, beating Zoast’s time in those three categories. Zeni didn’t intend to get himself to this spot; first watching and looking up to Zoast and his skills, and now competing with and sometimes eclipsing those skills. “I never thought that I would reach the top of the leaderboards,” Zeni tells me. He has always had reverence and respect for the skill displayed by the members of this speedrun community. “Something about how difficult and complex Metroid as a speedgame is, made me feel like I wouldn’t be able to get near those people like Zoast, Behemoth, and Oatsngoats.” Much like myself, marveling at the skill that ShinyZeni displays, he viewed the top-tier players in the same regard. “Back in the day it was Hotarubi, Red Scarlet, Smokey. I always felt they were all playing the game at a level that, for whatever reason, I couldn’t reach.”




Speedrunning communities have always intrigued me with their inclusivity, and the Super Metroid community is similar in most ways. The ideas and hard work of the collective come together in the form of talented and dedicated players. Zeni has certainly carved out his spot at the top of the leaderboards and made a lasting impression on the Super Metroid speedrunning circle. From a viewer and more casual point, Zeni stands out as an elite and highly regarded runner. Even still, the esteem with which I credit him, he grants to others. “Zoast and Behemoth are at a level that nobody else is at.” He attributes this to starting from the perspective of a fan and viewer. “It’s interesting to be able to remember seeing it from one side, and being on the other side, and realizing just how little there is in the way of someone being able to bridge that gap.”




“One of the great things about the community is how welcoming the people are, and how ready to help each other we are,” Zeni said. This seems to hold true with most speedrunning communities, and it is nice to see it be told to me again about Super Metroid. Along with being a streamer of the game and speedrunner, Zeni helps the community by creating his own tutorials. When he was watching those old speedrun DVDs, there weren’t very many resources available. “There were people talking about doing a mockball to get super missiles early, but nobody actually talked about how to do the mockball.” More recently, and especially at GDQ events, most runners have people with them that can explain these tricks as they are being performed. It is another great reason why GDQ is so popular and fun. It wasn’t always the case. Zeni hopes to bring even more people into the community this way. “Me doing tutorials is my way of saying if you want to get into this game, we are ready to help you.” Presently there is a lot of helpful information, across Youtube, Discord, and Twitch. “We want to bring as many people into it as we can, because we love this game, and the more people running it, the better off we all are.”




ShinyZeni is able to pursue his streaming of speedrunning as a hobby, apart from his dayjob. This allows him flexibility in branching out where it might hamper others. He has personal goals for the 100%, RBO, and Any% categories, as well as side categories he would like to pursue. His streaming success doesn’t impact what he decides to do, it is more of a natural evolution of his desire to get better and reach those goals. Be sure to check out this talented and versatile runner; his skill and dedication mean he could get a new World Record at any time, and you don’t want to miss it.

You can find ShinyZeni’s Super Metroid tutorial videos, his stream, and his twitter feed at the links below:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/shinyzeni

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ShinyZeni

Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/shinyzeni

Speedrun Spotlight - Hollow Knight featuring Emray

September 21, 2020 Repost




Hollow Knight started off as a game I actually disliked. It sets itself apart from other Metroidvanias in ways that I wasn’t used to, and it was off-putting. When I beat the game for the first time, I had gone on to tell my friends in detail what I didn’t like about it. A year later, on a Games Done Quick Twitch stream, I was watching a Hollow Knight run and decided to give it another shot. When I went back to replay the game, I realized I was too hasty in my assessment. Hollow Knight wasn’t bad because of the difference to other entries in the genre, it excelled because of it. It blended platforming and fighting seamlessly. There was a thread of story given to you, but much more to unravel if you wanted. The skills and abilities you unlock allow for varied and distinct playthroughs. Hidden secrets and upgrades reward the explorers, but talented players could excel without them. The difficulty was moderate and fair. Since then, I have gone back and beaten the game several times. Six months ago, after watching Emray’s Frost Fatales run in March, I was reinvigorated in my Hollow Knight fervor once again, and I reached out to her to find out a little more about this talented speedrunner.




Emray’s Frost Fatales run was in the “All Skills” category on the Nintendo Switch. Emray is on the frontier of Hollow Knight console runs. Being more focused on Xbox gaming myself, this was an immediate boon to me, and I enjoyed those runs more. PC tends to be the favorite when a game is available across platforms, at least for the optimum efficiency desired in speedruns. That was the reason Emray began running on Switch. “Every now and then we would get someone who came into the discord and they would say they guess they can’t keep up with PC runs because they only own console,” she said. “So I went and I did every single console run, so there was something on the leaderboards.”

This is monumental in cultivating a larger community of Hollow Knight speedrunners. Emray runs mainly on PC, but wanted everyone to see that it was possible on the Switch, and with comparable times. There are several reasons for the difference in times across PC and console versions. The console versions of Hollow Knight cannot be downpatched. That is, exploits that are patched out by the developers cannot be avoided by reverting to an older patch version of the game. The Switch is also locked at 60 fps, which Emray isn’t a fan of. “If you have the option of running on Switch or PC, I highly recommend PC,” she told me. “The game was programmed to be played at a higher fps, so playing it at 60 is a little awkward,” she continued, “there is a lot of input delay. It feels like playing underwater.” The hardware on the Switch also makes load times in the game much longer.

The reason for downpatching on PC is to maintain some exploits, glitches, and speedrun techniques that get patched out in later versions. The Hollow Knight community collectively decided to use these speedrun routes involving these techniques. “There is one glitch that’s only on patch 1.2.2.1 and that’s called lever skip,” Emray explained. These techniques are not only hard to master, they save a lot of time for speedrunners overall. Since many of them are no longer available to console players, they didn’t have a route or a path to follow for speedrunning. Emray pioneered the All Skills - Switch route, basing it heavily on the 112% route. “Not being able to do skips that the 1.2.2.1 patch could ended up causing a ton of re-routing in the mid-game. We need a lot more geo, and we need to get quickly back to Soul Sanctum.” When asked about whether she enjoys the routing process of the game, Emray told me she did it out of necessity for the Switch playthrough, but doesn’t necessarily enjoy it. She would rather grind some runs. “I like to push myself, against myself, and see how far I can take it. Routing isn’t really my specialty.”

Emray thinks the Switch versions have room for improvement. “The Switch version hasn’t been run enough to be optimized. Not enough high level runners compete on console versions.” Right now the consoles have limitations. You cannot downpatch for the common, advantageous exploits. There aren’t many high-performance runners enduring long sessions to work out strategies, or to watch to emulate their style, especially compared to PC. Emray attributes this to the caliber of player playing on PC right now. Her reverence for them is apparent, in describing their skills and their contributions to the leaderboard: “The current PC Any% record is just under 33 minutes by Pestilentbox. Pest is legendary. Pest and Fireb0rn were going back and forth for a little while with the PC world record. They are both very, very good runners. They have grinded out PC runs to get it optimized to the degree it has been. Nobody has done that for the Switch yet.”




Emray’s Frost Fatales run has a lot of flavor and skill on display itself. She is eloquent and knowledgeable about the game; performing tricks and expert movement while talking about the game and describing what is going on at the same time. Marathon runs are an interesting idea for runners because there are no resets or retries. You are on a stage, and you have to take whatever outcome you get. Sometimes tactics that would result in your death on a miss would have to be avoided, and slower strategies employed simply so that you could finish a run for the show. Considering all of that, Emray was only 43 seconds slower than her World Record 1st place time in this category.

During her run, she mentioned the trick Spire Pogo being a developer intended shortcut. I was interested in this developer-speedrunner relationship, so I pressed her on this to find out more. She explained the pogo is a tactic in the game, and there is an object you can pogo off of to skip the skill needed to reach the new section. The developer is aware of this and has never removed the skip. “There never directly said it to us, but they have removed skips they did not want in. You used to be able to get to Crystal Guardian 2 by pogo-ing off of a bookshelf,” she explained. “They removed that bookshelf.”




Speedrunning is an endurance pursuit, but Hollow Knight is a sprint compared to the games Emray used to run. She started out as a Pokemon speedrunner, often times going into runs of 3 or more hours. She is able to persist by virtue of the way speedrunning has been broken down into segments. “Focusing on each segment feels like a bunch of tiny runs, rather than a 4-hour long category.” Emray also came into Hollow Knight with the sole purpose of speedrunning it. “I never played it casually. I bought the game specifically to speedrun it.” Her enjoyment of the game, and of speedrunning it, allows her to pursue goals at her own pace. While she has thousands of hours logged, it didn’t feel like a laborious endeavor. It was a sort of natural evolution of absorbing the game’s mechanics. “You just kind of understand boss fights, and their patterns, and what outcomes can happen,” she says. “You get really good at reading what they are going to be doing.” Frost Fatales 2020 was her first Games Done Quick marathon, and along with her Hollow Knight run, she also did a run of Evergate, and the finale with Pokemon Shield. “Doing a marathon run has a different kind of rush to it,” she said. “and I get that fulfillment of being able to do something for charity.”

Hollow Knight has been Emray’s main game when streaming for the better part of 2 years. She will take breaks and play other games, and she says it helps with her performance across games. After taking a month or so to stream and play Metroid: Samus Returns, she was able to hit a Hollow Knight speedrun goal that she had been grinding for months. “You need that mental break to be able to come back and play better.” She attributes this to the streaming atmosphere she has cultivated, but laments that you do see a drop when playing an off-game. “I have a really great community, but I will see a drop in viewers when I play Evergate. There’s definitely a niche there for Hollow Knight, but that is just part of streaming.”




Emray got her start in speedrunning when she was much younger, challenging herself to get the fastest times she could on The Lion King. Now she is an elite Hollow Knight speedrunner with 1st place records and massive contributions to the surrounding community. The freedom that streaming allows, and the ability to make a career out of doing something you love is an attractive and incredible opportunity. Emray spoke of how lucky she was to be able to do this, and how supportive her chat and the Hollow Knight community are. She is a dedicated and very talented speedrunner, and her benevolence to the Hollow Knight community include her runs, but also her console routing and tutorials.



Check out Emray at these links to see her streams, her art, and more:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/emrayquaza

Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/emray

Speedrun Spotlight - Super Mario Odyssey featuring Dangers

Jun 11, 2020 Repost

For this episode of Speedrun Spotlight we will be taking a look at Super Mario Odyssey. The speedrunner Dangers was kind enough to lend me some of his time to talk about his lengthy speedrunning career, his achievements in Super Mario Odyssey, and where he plans to go from here.

Speedrunning is a relatively new pursuit, or at least the tracking and organizing of records part. Most of us gamers have been competing with our friends in games for as long as we’ve been playing. Especially in the infancy of games. When you only had a small handful of games to play, and you played them in person with your friends on repeat, you begin to create your own challenges. I personally remember watching a friend play Super Mario World and telling them that I could beat it faster than they could. That I could beat it in under a half hour, I bet. 

That was somewhat like Dangers did in Super Mario World, about a decade ago. “I opened up the game this one time and I realized my file was at 95,” Dangers states. “In Super Mario World there are actually 96 exits, and it evaded me my whole childhood. So I made it my mission that summer to figure out what exit that was.” From there, Dangers progressed to seeing just how quickly he could finish the game. Then, a little more seriously, getting a timer out and checking to see exactly how fast. When this was happening in 2009 it was still only a competitive hobby. Something you could jump in and out of. “There was a tiny community back in 2009, it was called Speed Demos Archive,” Dangers told me. “Speed Demos Archive was the original speedrunning site. They had some really weird rules. There was only a handful of games on there, and Super Mario World just happened to be one of them. That’s what got me started.”

Dangers didn’t really kickstart his career in speedrunning until 2018. It was a fun endeavor up to that point, but being sidelined from work with appendicitis ended up becoming a windfall. During his recovery time he stumbled upon NicroVeda, who was a World Record holder at the time, running Super Mario Odyssey on Twitch, and it reignited those old feelings from Super Mario World so long ago. 

 

After that first discovery of Super Mario Odyssey speedrunning, and rediscovery of his passion and excitement for it, Dangers was back to work and trying to manage gaming and working together. “I was balancing the two for a while, and then I took a couple months to see how far I could push it.” Near the end of 2018, until early 2020, Dangers was streaming on twitch and working at the same time. “It wasn’t fully supportive in 6 months, but in the beginning of January I quit my part-time job and I’m streaming full time.” An unexpected, unforeseen turn of events allowed him to follow his desires and cement his place within the speedrunning community. 

“Speedrunning has changed my life,” Dangers said. “I was only intending to make it a hobby, but when I realized it had grown into something so much more, and that streaming was more than it used to be, it became a viable option.”

 

Speedrunning isn’t as easy and carefree as just playing the game. Runners like Dangers are playing through the game on repeat, striving for better times. Meanwhile they are attempting difficult parts of the game to perfect tricks or helpful glitches. Super Mario Odyssey is especially difficult because it requires a near-constant execution of tight jumps, precise movements, and accurate button presses. A speedrunner’s mastery of the game is what drew me to begin watching speedrunning in the first place. I have beaten Super Mario Odyssey. I’ve gone back for seconds and done it quickly. Watching Dangers do a World Peace category run puts me in a state of awe; to have played the game, and went through those same levels, and see him do things I didn’t know were possible. Some categories are only a few minutes. Most standard Super Mario Odyssey runs go at least an hour. The dedication of runners is another astounding feat of their performance.

Dangers did shorter speedruns before he got to Super Mario Odyssey. The 11-exit category in Super Mario World only takes about 11 minutes. “Back when I did those speedruns, it was baffling to me that anyone would want to do anything longer than that.” Eventually, he branched out to the lengthier runs that encapsulate Super Mario Odyssey. I often wondered how difficult it must be to complete these runs. The structure of speedruns is wholly unique, and different from other areas of practice in that it requires near-perfect execution throughout the entire playthrough. You can’t go back and alter past mistakes or fine-tune them for your finished product during a run, it must be done in one segment. You can’t rest on a lead like in a traditional sport or play a safer style because you’re competing to do it quickly. Practice sessions require hours of time and constant fortitude. Beating the entire game over and over consecutively to get better and hone your skills. I asked if the length of the one hour or longer speedruns take a toll on him. “You get so passionate about something that it doesn’t really feel like that time is passing. One hour eventually didn’t even feel that bad.” Dangers even got involved in the extremely long Super Mario Odyssey categories: Darker Side (1st place 3:07:15), All Moons (3rd place 07:44:09), and 100% (5th place 10:43:57). You aren’t misreading that. He has completed, at a high level of expertise, a 3 hour, 7 hour, and 10 hour run. “When you have a passion for something, and you have the drive to improve, it doesn’t really matter how long it is. You just do it.”

Speedrunning is not relatable to other pursuits for these reasons. Very lengthy time investments and mental endurance, constant high-performance hand-eye coordination, and technique memorization and implementation don’t really exist outside of this field of competition. I consider top-level speedrunners elite, but Dangers is perhaps a step beyond that. He averages 4th place across the 6 main Super Mario Odyssey categories. Of the 14 category extensions, he has 1st in all but 2 of them. In those 2 he has 2nd and 4th place finishes. These runs also differ from one another. Dangers tells me, “Any% you’re trying to take the tightest lines as possible, whereas World Peace is chokehold after chokehold, and the reason for that is you’re sequence breaking.” This versatility in different routes of the game allows Dangers to combat the exhaustive nature of learning and perfecting these speedruns.

 

There is something interesting about Speedrunning in that a lot of the communities surrounding games have an aspect of friendly competition. Many people are competing for the same categories concurrently, yet they all chat together, share strategies, and are welcoming and engaging to newcomers and veterans alike. Discord has risen up as the standard place for these communities, with several channels within a server for a game for discussion, tactics, and general conversation. It goes without saying that Super Mario Odyssey speedrunning has its own Discord server set up for exactly this. With almost ten thousand members, you’ll be able to get an answer for any question you have. “The Discord is broken down into what category you’re running, and it’s very likely if you check the pinned messages you’ll find some sort of resource for that specific trick,” Dangers explained. 

This community welcomed Dangers and it is a large proponent in his decision to continue to pursue speedrunning goals. “The community involvement is unreal and that whole element is what makes it so worthwhile.” When asked about his future in speedrunning and on Twitch, he was ambitious about continuing. His goals are lofty and many. Being a versatile runner, he wants the top spot in every single category extension. He wants to see his placements climb to top 5 for every single category he has played. This versatility is also propelling him to branch out. An avid Mario fan, and holding high times in Super Mario World, it’s not out of his realm to continue his Twitch voyage in that direction. “I’ve been looking at Super Mario Galaxy and some other 3D Mario games and they have piqued my interest, so that might funnel into the channel as well.” Along with building tutorials for the Super Mario Odyssey community on his YouTube channel, and keeping the stream diverse and fun with personal gaming challenges. “I want to educate and help other people. If I can get to that level, they can, too.” Rest assured, Dangers is set on continuing to dominate. “The channel was founded on the idea that I can play Mario games really fast.” 

I told Dangers I consider him an elite player, and wondered if he felt the same. “No, I never considered myself an elite player of the game. To this day, even as I broke into the top 15 and top 10s, this feeling was still happening of I’m almost as good as the guy ahead of me.” Dangers continued, “I think there is a driving force for speedrunning, and it’s something that tells you you can always be doing better,” said Dangers. “This is something that you really do have to work at.” Throughout his journey from starting to get where he is now, he was always looking ahead. “It’s not about being the best, necessarily, it’s about trying to be better than yesterday.” 

Check out Dangers here:

Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/dangers

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Dangers_TV

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/DangersTV

Discord: https://discord.gg/CsmbPD 

 

Speedrun Spotlight: Super Mario RPG featuring Pidgezero_one

 Foreword:

This article, and the many others I will post, were originally posted to my gaming website "BoneRobotGames.com" back in 2020-2021.  I have since moved websites, and the original website no longer exists.  I am reposting them here for everyone to read once again.  Thank you.

The Mummy Demastered Review and Interview with WayForward Games

 

I'm not sure the target audience for this game, but I am certain it flew under their radar.  I cannot think of any marketing for this game, it is tied to a reboot of a classic movie franchise, and somehow it extremely good.  That somehow is the talented folks at WayForward.  I find myself wanting to go back and play it just to listen to the incredible soundtrack and walk around the environments.

You start off with a small cutscene, and then you are thrown into the mix.  You're a random Prodigium soldier going after Princess Ahmanet.  Then you just start shooting.  Your main gun is not the strongest but has infinite ammo, which is an amazing start to a game.  Get out there and explore and shoot your damn gun.  It rules. You also get 2 grenades that can hurt enemies or blow up blocked entryways. You eventually get stronger guns that have finite ammo. You can replenish ammo, grenades, and health from destroying certain parts of the environment ala Castlevania lamps, or sometimes a drop from a killed enemy.  It replenishes your ammo at a rate I found to be perfect.  You don't always have the finite ammunition weapons and grenades, but it gives you enough to rotate between your guns and grenades at a super fun rate.

That's basically it.  They reveal your movement, guns, and grenade info right away and then you get to blast monsters relentlessly.  The sign of a good game is how quickly they let you get into the core gameplay loop, and The Mummy Demastered is quick with it.  They put you in this fun zone right away and all the upgrades you get from here improve on that formula.

Despite being short in total length and relatively simple, it is dense and succinct to perfection.  You master the movement and shooting, because it's all you have, and they scatter fun and interesting power-ups across the game that you unlock swiftly because of its size, leaving you always interested and always getting stronger.  Elite mechanics.  The unlocks are varied and unique.  The very first movement upgrade you get is that the soldier can hang from the ceiling.  I have never seen this done before in a metroidvania in such a way, and not as the first upgrade.  Getting a cool new movement upgrade very early unlocks so much more of the map while taking away that annoying part of these games where there are a ton of different unattainable rooms that you have to come back to later.  This still exists, but at such a smaller scale that it isn't a bother.  You then start getting more guns, ammo, and health upgrades.  The interesting thing about the upgrades is they figured out a way to make them all work thematically as well.  Some of the items you get are military, like rappel gear or a bandolier, and the more mystical ones like being able to run faster and jump higher, are from ancient Egyptian scrolls and trinkets.  It makes sense and it feels good to get supernatural power-ups without it feeling tacked on.  It doesn't need to be this way, but it adds a little extra flair that it works out.

The art style is amazing.  It is the best version of pixel-graphics I have seen.  They stylize it well, so it doesn't look like a jumbled mess of disgusting pixels.  It really captures a classic look that will hold up over time. The maps are designed expertly.  Diverse, compact, and interesting, with lots of movement and diversity in travel.  You start off jumping and climbing, but then you get a speed boost upgrade.  The coolest thing about the speed upgrade is that your speed grows over time and keeps momentum through rooms, which makes some areas of the game a legitimately unique run-and-gun segment.  You'll notice that two rooms away there is a jump that you can probably make with your new speed upgrade, since you can jump further.  You'll have to make it at least half of the way through the previous room to build enough speed for it.  You end up pre-emptively shooting at things that aren't on screen yet, so you can do enough damage to kill them and keep running, then enter the next room at full speed and get to a new area with the jump.  It's an incredible, unique mechanic.  

Near the end of the game I got 2 powerups that I don't think are required, but made the game even more fun.  You get a buff that prevents you from getting knocked back on hit, and you get a phase dash.  The phase dash sends you a short distance (in any direction!) and during the animation, you cannot take damage.  It's quick, fun, and streamlines movement at the perfect moment during the playthrough.  When you now reach max speed with your speed boost, and you have phase shift, you'll notice you glow red.  If you press the button for phase shift when at max speed, you'll dash in that direction until you hit an immovable object.  You destroy enemies, breakable objects, and at this point I discovered secret walls!  The pacing with which you get your items, get to experiment with them, and then discover the depth that they offer is, again, perfect.  You get a new ability, can use it on repeat, and it has more than one application.  The team at WayForward deserves incredible praise for this feat.

The game is punishing in interesting ways.  The difficulty doesn't come from an obnoxious method like enemies with no telegraph or too large a health pool.  In fact, some of the enemies are downright cannon fodder. It's simply the way that the maps and the enemy locations are expertly crafted and placed makes it a challenging experience.  There is a bug enemy that jumps backs and forth in a horizontal line only.  Combined with the platforming you must accomplish, and the knockback from hits taken, and plus the number of these enemies on screen at one time, and it's the perfect mixture.  They telegraph their moves on repeat, but having to balance jumping between platforms, shooting them, and also perhaps dodging other enemies on screen at the time, and you have a fun, difficult, but fair system.  It's honestly so well done I was astonished.  Repeatedly, this game is proven to be a masterclass in the genre.

I do have one thing I have to mention.  I am an extremely elite gamer.  My first and only playthrough, I never died.  I found out from reading about the game that there is a mechanic I missed entirely.  When you die, the soldier you were playing as is resurrected as a zombie, and you take control of another nameless soldier.  You have to go and kill your former self as a zombie, who now has all your gear and power-ups, to get them back.  I can't really say how I feel about this because I never experienced it, but on paper it sounds dope and I think anyone who whines about it is a punk bitch.  Should have been like me and not died, loser.

My favorite thing about the game is the storytelling.  Not that it has an excellent story, but the way that it is done.  There are basically no cutscenes, and since you are a soldier on a mission, all of the exposition is done via text blurbs from your commander.  They are short, quick, and infrequent.  You get just enough to keep the story progressing, and they take control away from the player for the shortest possible amount of time.  Not every game needs to be a deep, Homer-esque epic.  This game succeeds because it is not derivative, despite being a movie tie-in.  It is 99% action and 1% explanation.  The golden ratio to which metroidvanias/platformers should aspire.  

I legitimately could not tell you the name of a single character, even the powerful female mummy you are chasing the whole time.  Partly because I didn't care to remember it, and partly because they don't beat you over the head with her squawking at you.  At some point in gaming, some dickhead said that Banjo-Kazooie was cool and you need to have the final boss talking to you in quips every 10 seconds or they are not established enough as a foe.  Puke.  You start the game, your commander basically tells you "Go check this place out," then shit goes haywire and the rest of the game is "better kill that evil mummy before she kills us."  It's awesome.  She talks some shit to you every time you see her, but it lasts 10 seconds and then you pull your gun out and start blasting.  

Take a page out of The Mummy Demastered's book.  It was short, taking me about 3.5 hours to complete, but it's length is not a detriment.  The maps are small and well-built, so you don't get sick of exploring and backtracking.  The discovery of new items, upgrades, and bosses is so frequent that you don't have time to get bored.  You're going at an incendiary pace simply by playing.  The gun upgrades are varied, extremely cool and diverse, and powerful.  It does so many things right and doesn't allow you to become exhausted by them because it's suddenly over.  I would much rather a product like this, short, succinct, yet very well done.  You feel accomplished and satisfied at the end.

It's a little bit Metroid, little bit Contra, and a little bit Metal Slug; in tone, gameplay, and look.  WayForward Technologies developed The Mummy Demastered, and they deserve accolades for their design decisions.  They take a few specific mechanics, they craft them expertly and polish them well, and they don't try to do too much.  This is a movie tie-in game to the 2017 The Mummy.  It was not expected to be good, but it is.  It outshines most other metroidvanias by a large margin.

That is essentially the mantra of the game.  Awesome platforming, cool guns, always be shooting.  It's also accompanied the entire time by a completely dynamite soundtrack.  I went out and bought it right after the game.  For an unknown game tied to a movie, they made an incredible fucking metroidvania with an outstanding soundtrack.  This game is a compact, venerable, masterpiece.  It sets out a simple goal and achieves it with gusto.

The Mummy Demastered is ambient, it's interesting, it's fluid and precise.  The gaming is quick, constant, and always enjoyable.  It's balanced well and they give you a ton of fun options.  It doesn't get boring, it nails things that a ton of other games in the genre try to do but can't, and it leaves you wanting more, in the best way possible.  I honestly can't say enough good things about this game.  I would call it a metroid-lite, and in that regard, it is without flaw.