Episode 31: The Art of Speedruns

The Art of Speedruns is the 31th episode of Scott The Woz, the video was uploaded on August 6, 2017, by Scott Wozniak on Scott The Woz.

Description
Scott talks about speedruns and what makes them so interesting to watch!

Characters

 * Scott Wozniak

Credits

 * Scott Wozniak as Scott Wozniak
 * Footage by TeeNTee314, Silverwings21, Omnigamer, Lammah, Darbian, Games Done Quick, TASVideosChannel, Mitjitsu, Gymnast86

Plot
The video begins with Scott Wozniak informing the viewer that he's preparing for his speedrun of Kinect Sports: Season Two and that if he messes up during it, the community for said game will bother him about it for a while. The video then cuts to gameplay of the baseball minigame in Kinect Sports: Season Two, where Scott fails to hit the baseball coming at him, and gets a strike. Scott then exclaims how he didn't know he didn't know "humiliation came included with this thing". Wozniak then changes the subject to speedrunning as a whole and the communities behind it.

Scott ends the episode by singing more praises for speedrunning and the speedrunning community, he then mentions how he's currently working a "No Touch" run of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the video then cuts to footage the run, which has gone on for over 40 minutes, it then cuts back to Scott, who says it's a work in progress.

Music

 * Star Light Zone - Sonic the Hedgehog
 * Tropical Resort - Sonic Colors
 * Level 1 - Blaster Master
 * Pleajeune - Gravity Rush
 * Breakout - 3D Dot Game Heroes

End Cards

 * Gaming on a Budget
 * What the Wii U Did Right
 * Fixing the Worst Game Trailers

Transcript
Scott Wozniak: ''Hey all, Scott here and would you shut up for, like, a minute because I'm trying to focus on my Kinect Sports Season 2 speedrun. If I screw this up, the KSS2 Speedrunning community won't let me hear the end of it!''

[Scott Wozniak attempts to hit the baseball on hit 1, but fails]

Scott Wozniak: ''Wow! I didn't know humiliation came included with this thing!''

Scott Wozniak: ''Speedrunning is one of the most fascinating aspects of the gaming community. Almost every game has a following when it comes to completing it as quickly as possible, and it's amazing to see it in action. I feel that it's easier to say speedruns have been a part of gaming since the very beginning. If you like a game and get incredibly good at it, you instinctively try to get through it as efficiently as possible. One of the first speedruns that was accounted for was Todd Rogers' 5.51 second run of Dragster on the Atari 2600. Rogers is famous for his various high scores in old school games, such as Gorf and Asteroids. Dragster is different because it has a timer, so the high score is how low your time is. Interesting footnote, Dragster was analyzed by another speedrunner Omnigamer recently, and it was concluded that it is impossible to get a time lower than 5.57 seconds. Rogers' high score was verified by the developers of the game and Twin Galaxies, so... I don't know.''

Scott Wozniak: ''Speedrunning became much more popular when games could officially be beaten, rather than just played to obtain a high score. Players were starting to try to beat games as quickly as possible. Super Mario Bros. is one of the most popular games to speedrun due to everybody knowing the secrets on how to beat the game in mere minutes, the original Metroid rewarded players for beating the game quickly by revealing Samus with less and less clothes on, and the entire concept of speedrunning was the basis of Sonic the Hedgehog's gameplay. Yuji Naka wanted to make a game where the more skilled you are, the faster a stage can be completed, which is, you know, the entire idea of speedrunning. But the start of modern speedruns can be traced back to Doom, which offered a demo record file option. Communities were launched online that focused on submitting demo files that strive for doing specific tasks, such as damaging no enemies for example. But then, the website Compet-N was initiated, which focused on completing Doom as fast as possible. This turned out to be the first website dedicated to speedrunning, and the rest is basically history. Speedrunning, of course, has been a popular way to play through games for quite a long time, but with online video and a greater emphasis on the internet itself, it exploded in recent years. The Game Done Quick events are definitely easy to credit for this phenomenon. Two charity events, Awesome Game Done Quick and Summer Games Done Quick are held each year. These events have speedrunners from across the world come and quickly beat games, while viewers donate, and it has been incredibly successful. There are two main types of speedrun completion methods: Any percent and 100%. Any percent is about simply beating the game as quickly as possible, while 100% is, of course, 100 percent completing the game as fast as you can. A less common type is low percent, which involves completing as little as you can. I'm partial to any percent because those are straight to the point. If I'm feeling especially blood clotty while watching speedruns, I might look into a 100% run. Tool-assisted speedruns can make things a bit easier for the player, whether it involves savestates or emulation. However, I tend to be more impressed by the pure runs.''

Scott Wozniak:'' I usually see Nintendo games have the largest speedrunning communities. I don't know if it's just me, I'm obviously a big Nintendo guy, so it just may be because that's where a lot of my interests lie, but I do notice some of the most popular games to run are Mario and Zelda titles. And I can't blame anybody for running those, Mario 64 is an absolute treat to watch speedruns of! There's so many different varieties of the runs too, like simply beating the game, 120 stars, zero stars, 16 stars, one-handed! It's incredibly interesting to see how these different runs affect the strategies the runners employ. With Zelda, most recently Breath of the Wild offers so much in terms of speedrunning! Like the series producer, Aonuma stated, the game could be beaten in mere minutes! Currently, the record hovers around the 40-minute mark or so, which is still pretty impressive. Speedruns don't always mean fast though it, of course, means fast in context of the game that's being run. For example, Final Fantasy XII was beaten in a blistering 8 hours at Summer Games Done Quick 2017. I've never been tempted to try speedrunning out, but watching others absolutely destroy a game I know is mesmerizing, especially during Games Done Quick marathons. The runs during the events aren't perfect of course, the runners mess up all the time, but they still complete games in mind-boggling times. ''

Scott Wozniak: ''Me personally, I don't think I could keep doing a speedrun if I knew I messed up, I'd keep on resetting no matter how far I was in the game. ''

[Scott Wozniak resets his NES after dying in Super Mario Bros. multiple times]

Scott Wozniak: ''Sometimes, I wonder if the players simply memorize button inputs and when to do them for an entire game, and then I say, "Probably not. They're probably just way too good at the game." They know the ins and outs of everything the game has to offer. And that's the art of speedruns. It's just insanely knowledgable and talented video game players, playing a game in an incredibly interesting format the fastest way possible. It involves a ton of planning and practice! I honestly would equate it to something like learning an instrument. At first, it will obviously be amateur hour 24 times a day, but once a runner gets a game down, watching everything flow so smoothly and effortlessly is fascinating. There's a lot of wiggle room for creativity in runs, new things and old games being discovered constantly, and communities who help out each other all the time. Runners find exploits and tricks that may have been originally been mistakes by the developers and turn them into legitimate strategies. They take mistakes and turn them into crucial gameplay elements! Watching an excellent run is like watching a skilled pianist go to town or some other analogy. It can be a beautiful sight to behold.''

Scott Wozniak: ''Speedrunning continues to be one of the most interesting ways to watch a game be played, especially the wackier ones like blindfolded or no-handed challenges! Which is why I decided to go forth with the world's first-ever no-touch speedrun of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild!''

[a stopwatch on the bottom left screen shows that the speedrun has been ongoing for 48 minutes and counting]

Scott Wozniak: It's a work in progress.

Trivia

 * In The Legend of Zelda | Tales from the Backlog, it is revealed that since Breath of the Wild Isn't Perfect, Scott Wozniak has had a string around his thumb; however, the string is not visible in the episode.