Thoughts on Speedrunning?

Brunn

Brunn

Arwing Pilot
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Now, I don't know a lot about speedrunning really, so I wanted to hear some thoughts on this. I've watched a couple of speedruns of Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Sunshine recently, more so to watch someone way the heck more skilled then me play a game I've played and enjoyed before.

But what the heck is up with the cheating? Yay, you managed to beat this super fast by glitching through half the game? And this is an accomplishment... How?

I get that the parts of the games that they DO play are super practiced and very skillful, and that's cool and all, but it seems completely marred as a 'speedrun' of the game when you then glitch through half the walls to get to the final boss. To me it's like if an olympic runner jumped the fence and ran across the center of the field to cross the finish line first. Like, yeah, you got there first and your run time was the shortest, but you cheated as all get out and it doesn't freaking count!

I guess I just don't get how the whole gaming world freaks out because someone beat a several hour long game in all of twelve minutes because they glitched through the whole thing. What's so interesting about that?
 
To be honest, I'd probably like to see a speedrun like event in that style for real life sports. More creative with physics wins!

But I like it. You get to see the insane, like where they glitch to the end in three seconds. The neat, where they play everything really well but do it the (mostly) intended way. And completionist runs where people get everything in a game in a matter of a few hours.
 
Speed running looks fun, but hard. Of course, I prefer the glitchless runs where they do things fast and skillful. I would love to do one, but that's a lot of time and I would get bored of the game by the time I was good enough to speed run it.
 
I agree with what Brunn said. I'd also like to add that it really only holds interest to me if it is something side-scroll like Vib Ribbon, the original Super Mario Brothers 1 or Lost Levels, or games like that. Even Super Mario World doesn't hold interest to me because of the levels where you need to go back and forth or the screen slowly pans. Sonic's original trilogy would also work decently. I'd like to see a non-stop hold down the run button fly through with no glitches and all skill.
 
Speedrunning is certainly something I want to get into. For those who don't like glitches, glitchless runs are a thing. Many times though, executing the glitches takes some skill, and in more optimised games actually executing them fast enough to get a good time is a tough challenge. It's more a different way of playing the game rather than actually beating the game.
 
For me, I will always find the glitchless speedruns most impressive…being able to complete the game insanely quickly without relying on glitches is something that I can get behind as being truly awesome. Glitch speedruns for me are largely for amusement purposes…seeing just how many holes games have and seeing people exploiting them is worth a chuckle, if nothing else.
 
Tool-Assisted Speedruns are entertaining to watch, but I find good old fashioned, no glitching runs to be the most impressive.
 
I find tool assisted ones great if the game itself is literally impossible without tool assistance. But for a normal game? Nah, less interesting than a mostly non glitch run.
 
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