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The Late Movies: 11 Video Game Speedruns
A speedrun is the act of playing a video game (usually the entire thing from start to finish) as fast as possible. In some cases a speedrun may use glitches in the game or other shortcuts to get through it quickly -- an example of a shortcut that people of a Certain Age may remember is the warp tubes in Super Mario Brothers. On the other hand, Glitching is actually a whole gaming subculture, in which gamers do stuff like run through walls in order to reach unexpected parts of the map. Who knew?
So tonight, I present eleven epic speedruns through popular (and not so popular) video games. SPOILER ALERT: if you haven't played through the entire game, these videos are by definition total spoilers!
Super Mario Brothers in 5 Minutes
This brings back memories! If you're curious about the methodology, check out this YouTube page and read the author's description. He posts a FAQ including this gem: "Q11: So where did you mess up? A11: I didn't mess up in level 8-3 where I ran into the bottom of the flagpole, this was actually completely intentional so that I avoid the fireworks which wastes time. I really only messed up in level 8-4 (right after the walljump I wasted about half a second.)"
Note: this does use mild glitches (some enemies don't hit Mario properly, even when it looks like they do), and of course the warp tubes.
Super Mario Brothers on Top of a Building
This surfaced in July, but deserves a second look.
Super Mario Bros. from Andreas Heikaus on Vimeo.
Portal Done Pro
I actually haven't watched this whole video because I'm stuck halfway through Portal and want to figure it out myself. But in this video, a very talented player uses glitches to get through the whole game in about fifteen minutes. If/when you're confused as to what the heck is going on, check out his 15-part commentary. I listened to part of the commentary, and it's actually pretty amazing -- the sheer effort involved in this speedrun is just shocking.
Oh, and if you want to watch this video in various flavors of HD, go to YouTube. (There are also links in the video description to download an "insane quality" version via BitTorrent.)
Contra in Under 14 Minutes
Oh, Contra, my old NES friend. There's also a notable video of someone playing the Xbox Live version and unlocking all the achievements.
Super Mario Brothers 3 in 11 Minutes
Not much to say about this one. It makes me a little dizzy, I guess that's something to say about it.
Super Mario 64 in Under 16 Minutes
This is a "tool-assisted" speedrun.
Left 4 Dead "Leeroy Jenkins" Expert Speedrun
So if you don't know who or what Leeroy Jenkins is, ask your friend Google. But the gist of this video is, this player decided to use Mr. Jenkins's strategy to get through Left for Dead in Expert mode in just under 7 minutes. Zombiemania ensues. (Note: I'm not an L4D player so can't judge this myself, but some commenters on YouTube claim this is not Expert Mode. In any case, it's intense.)
Half-Life in Half an Hour
I still haven't played Half-Life (I know, I know), so I haven't watched much of this. But I enjoyed the author's notes: "This is my segmented Half-Life speedrun, done by me, Blake "Spider-Waffle" Piepho. I had the idea for this in year 2000, started working on it in 2003, and completed it in October 2006. This run was done through many small segments in aim of achieving a high level of perfection. The final time from start to the death blow on Nihilanth is 29:41."
Super Metroid (SNES) in 30 Minutes
Although no longer the fastest speedrun of this game, this is pretty crazy. I'm also confused by why the YouTube video is an hour long if the speedrun is 30 minutes (perhaps they don't count loading time?), and how exactly they managed to post an hour-long YouTube video in one piece. Anyway, check it out:
Morrowind in 7:30
I'm not super sure what Morrowind even is, but zipping through this video it seems way trippy.
Dragon's Lair (NES) in Under 5 Minutes
Dragon's Lair in its arcade form was famously hard, and thus super-expensive. Remember that game with the amazing animation that cost 50 cents and you died in 30 seconds? Yeah, that's the one. This NES version seems equally maddening (the speedrun's author claims it's "the hardest game in history"). I can't imagine how painful it would have been to play this and pay for it.
If you're not familiar with Dragon's Lair, check out its Wikipedia page, especially the "Technical" section which includes some remarkable information about the Laserdisc system used to power the game. I had an opportunity to play the original Laserdisc system for free in 2000, and I can tell you, it was still insanely challenging and annoying. But the graphics remained awesome.
The Source of All Speedruns
If you're into this kind of thing, check out the Speed Demos Archive, which currently includes official speedrun times for 623 games, with links to videos for each and often detailed commentary by the speedrunner.