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
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