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Throughout my time as part of not just the LzH Community, but also the Speedrunning Community, I’ve seen a lot of people ask (whether it was directed at me, or the community in general) how does someone get into speedrunning? And frankly, the answer is shorter than the question. You just do it, plain and simple! But then a lot of people might start, and see that they’re not the best, and it puts them off. So, here’s a better question for people to ask: How does someone become a better speedrunner? And the answer to it? Well, that’s what this week’s article is about!
There are 2 main methods to the planning of speedrunning any game. Sometimes, there is only one, but almost all the time there are 2 ways to learn how to speedrun a game. The first method is to just put the disk/cartridge into the console, write up some splits for the game, and run the game from beginning to end. This is the method that works with every game, without fail. The second method works with most games, but only with games that people have posted speedruns before. This is a much more time consuming method, but overall you will more likely than not (assuming that you haven’t got the motor skills or the reflexes of a sloth) be faster than the first method, and that is to write up notes based off of someone else’s run. There is a third method, but we shall get to that later.
The first method, we shall call “freestyle” for the sake of it being about as freestyle-ish as possible. This incorporates the strategy of just doing whatever you feel like doing, and hoping that you are faster than everyone else. While this method isn’t suggested, it is always a great place to start with a game. The main reasons it is worth trying to freestyle a game initially is because it gets you into grips with the controls and the menu-ing. I know, first-hand, that menu-ing sucks in all games. If you aren’t used to a games menu system, then you’re going to have a bad time. It may not be the fastest method (unless absolutely nobody speedruns a game, which while it is possible, is very unlikely) but it gets you used to the game, the games controls, and all other aspects of the game itself. This is possibly the most important thing, as well, because if you can’t control the game how you want to control it, then there are some parts of the game that you will suffer with, which in turn will cause you to lose time if you plan on moving on to the second method with a game.
The second method is the most common method, and that is the method of studying another player, and doing as they do. I am having such a massive creative block today, so for now, we’re just going to go with “copycat” rather than a cool, fancy name for it. This method relies on you watching the entirety of a play through by somebody, and taking notes on absolutely everything. Depending on how long the speedrun is, and the nature of the game in question, this can take anywhere from a bit longer than the run, to up to twice if not three times as long. I’m also going to provide an example. Here we have a screenshot from some of my personal notes for Pokémon Fire Red. I based the notes for the speedrun off of MexiricanBassMonkey’s 2:09:xx run, which isn’t the fastest, but it uses the method I prefer the most, the Zaptoise method, rather than Blastoise, which is much more RNG based.
As you can see, they are very bare bones. However the complete notes took me approximately 5 or 6 hours to finish up, which is pretty much 3 times as long as the run itself, but that’s not too bad for an RPG game. And my reward for doing this? With a simple segmented test run, I was able to take my time down from the 4 hour mark to 2:32:20. RPG games tend to take a long time to either write notes up for or to plan the speedrun, so you should assume that you need to spend a long time on the planning stages of an RPG game. However, games such as Super Mario and whatnot are a lot easier to plan, as it tends to be just what order you complete the levels in, and maybe even whether or not you pick up specific power ups. It is a lot easier to practice these as well, as RNG tends to not be as much of a factor, and if it is, it tends to be easier to manipulate.
The third and final method is really only for the sadistic, and that is to do a TAS run of the game and find every single possible spot in the game that you can glitch past, or abuse in order to reduce encounters and whatnot, however I only really advise this if you plan on completely optimizing a run, and also if you are just absolutely sadistic in every way possible. To be honest, I’d rather grate off my foot with a cheese grater than do a TAS run, but to each their own, I suppose!
But now that you’ve planned out your route, how do you go about practicing? How do you go about getting better, or even just getting your time down even lower than everyone else’s times? That is a discussion we shall unfortunately have to save for the next article, but I shall be publishing it tomorrow, since this one was incredibly late, and since I’m in a creative and writing mood today!
However, before we get onto that, it’s time for this week’s World Records! Firstly, a massive congratulations (and slight commiserations) to LzH’s own CarNage64 for breaking his FF7 NoSlots PS2 WR, but it’s terrible that it ended up being only a minute shy of that beautiful goal of sub-8 hours! Next up, inspired88 has broken the GTA:SA Any% WR with a time of 5:58:31! Also in the GTA:SA sector, LotsOfS has managed to set a 100% time of 17:09:46, which has inspired a number of people to want to run it, even though the length of the run seems a bit over the top! And some SM64 runs of note, Siglemic has set a new 70 Star WR with a time of 48:28, along with a new 120 Star WR from HYassin27, with a time of 1:43:37. And finally for this article, a lot of new LoZ times! ZFG has beaten the 100% WR for Ocarina of Time, with a new time of 4:47:03, Ennopp112 has set a new 100% WR on Majora’s Mask with a time of 5:18:08, and finally this week in the LoZ department, zmaster91 has broken the record for Zelda Four Swords Adventures with a time of 3:05:52. But that’s enough WRs for this article! There will, however, be many more in the next article which should also be out in the next day or two! But since this article is long enough as it is, it’s time to call it the end of the article!
Next time, we discuss how to go from planning a route to actually putting the route into practice, how to actually practice speedrunning, and just how many licks does it take to get to the centre of a tootsie pop? All this, and more, in the next episode of The Green Split!
And if you’re wondering, I can’t help it; here are my splits for this week.
And remember, an apple a day keeps the bad RNG away! Stay Green, folks!
-Rory
