Key Points:
- Suigi has secured all five major speedrunning categories in Super Mario 64, effectively declaring the game’s speedrunning community ‘dead’.
- Suigi’s dominance is so profound that his records in all 5 main categories remain largely unchallenged.
The Five Star Categories:
- 120 star: Completes every single star in the game.
- 70 star: Completes all normal requirements to reach the final level.
- 16 star: Uses glitches and techniques to significantly reduce required stars.
- 1 star: Further optimizes the 16 star run for a single star collection.
- 0 star: Eliminates stars entirely, focusing on time.
Background Details:
- Some of Suigi’s records were set over a year ago; his 16-star record alone still leads by 6 seconds.
- Suigi estimates it could take up to a couple of years before someone else beats his current world records.
How do you feel about the dedication and skill demonstrated in these ultra-optimized speedruns? Do such efforts bring value to gaming or are they more of an academic exercise?
Do such efforts bring value to gaming or are they more of an academic exercise?
Neither? Speedrunning is entirely nihilistic. It rejects the rules of society to the point of rejecting the rules of games themselves in favor of meaningless tantric repetition. It’s the eternal pointless chase for a meaning that was never there and never will.
I find it fun and dreadful at the same time, as a concept, I would never do it myself in a million years.
In short, it’s an artistic performance.
Some people just like getting better at stuff.
The lucky ones want to get better at stuff that puts food on the table.
I can’t fully articulate the reasons why, but I dislike the entire speed-running culture. I’ve always been someone who sinks as deeply as I possibly can into the environments that games provide, placing a lot of value on carefully crafted details, flora, object clutter and ambience.
Speed-running is essentially the exact opposite of this, and it takes what was intended to be an enjoyable escape and gamifies it beyond recognition. It becomes a sweaty, disgusting mess of button mashing, sprinting, wall-glitching, exploitation, and a bastardization of mechanics. I definitely get why some people find this interesting, but I just can’t find the off-switch for how much I hate watching it. It’s in a similar ballpark as extreme min-maxing in modern MMOs, where people get so addicted to arbitrarily raising numbers by the smallest margin that the game itself just evaporates into the background.
To me, it’s like someone took art, sucked the creative soul out of it, and turned it into a math game.
Speedrunners are the people who are the most dedicated to a game, having analysed it for hundreds of hours, they deeply understand every corner of it and appreciate everything that the game has to offer.
And then they break it over their knee.
Speedrunners tend to be superfans, and I’m sure their first playthrough of a game is done in the intended manner. Also consider that beloved games tend to have more active speedrun scenes - People speedrun Majora’s Mask precisely because of its wonderful atmosphere.
But yeah actually watching speedruns isn’t for everyone
I get where you’re coming from, but understand that your way of enjoying things isn’t necessarily the right way to enjoy them. Some would say that ignorance of the technical aspects of a game’s design betrays a shallow appreciation of the work based entirely on its aesthetic value.
This is a bit like telling athletes that they should appreciate the human body for what it is, rather than try and lift the heaviest weight or run the fastest. Part of a holistic appreciation for the human body/a work of art/a video game is an understanding of what makes it tick, what its limitations are, and how far you can push the limits.
I also don’t much like watching speedruns, but I can understand that while some speedrunners are only in it for the numbers, the vast majority of them appreciate the games on a deeper level than I ever could.
To me, it’s like someone took art, sucked the creative soul out of it, and turned it into a math game.
I agree but I don’t come to the same conclusion. It’s akin to saying cubism is weird and paintings should be naturalistic.
Beside the artistic value, though, it leans more toward obsessively abusing rather than loving a videogame, as far as his intended purpose was.
To an extent is an act of rebellion and vandalism.
I’m actually a fan of 100% and no-glitch speedruns. Exploiting the game certainly takes skill, but I enjoy watching people excel within the game’s expected framework.
It’s the eternal pointless chase for a meaning that was never there and never will.
So… Life.
Do such efforts bring value to gaming or are they more of an academic exercise?
what kinda nauseating execu-speak is this? speed-running is gaming.
‘bring value’. smdh
Yea, but what’s the ROI? How do we profit? Who’s getting hurt in the process?
Because if it’s not hurting people, what’s the point
/s
TAS runs are an academic exercise. A person doing pixel perfect moves in fractions of a second several times in a row is peak gaming.
Was this written by a machine? The bullet point about 0 stars only being about time is nonsense. All of the categories are about time.
Maybe. A lot of ktec’s posts are like this. Seems very bot-like. I don’t mind too much since the information is interesting to me.
Now we can all focus on the A-press challenge.
And blindfolded runs
Congratulations to Suigi getting the quadfecta! After watching Karl’s videos on Suigi’s 120 and 70 star records, I knew it only had to be a matter of time until he’d conquer them all.
Pentafecta?
Quintfecta.
Damn, I meant quint but put quad by accident. Should’ve known better.
Though Pentafecta is actually way better
Yeah Suigi is the goat
I think this is the speed run video in question.
Thank you. I didn’t see it in the article, besides screenshots. You’d think all the runs would be front and center even.
I think hbomberguy did such a good job explaining the phenomenon of speedrunning that it largely negates the need of any further discussion of its utility. And I think that there is an irony in this
Speedrunning is not just about beating the world record. A lot of people speedrun games for their own enjoyment and only competing against their own PBs. I’ve spent time getting sub 10m in Getting Over It and never considered going for the WR. And there’s a whole community doing the same, setting their own goals.
I’ve seen enough Summoning Salt videos to know that it’s never dead
Always hefest and his fucking run, smh
This will at least be an epic part of a future video.
The game was considered dead. <Pause>, but then, <queue synth wave music>
Speedrunning isn’t dead. You just gotta change the goal. Do the 1-Up demon challenge instead.
From an imaginary point of view, one could view it as a rendition of Ender’s game and transform these runs into models of potential attack vectors.
For example, a very specific silly scenario would be rearranging microbial growth in the shape of a Super Mario level and then using miniature robots to deliver a compound into a pinpoint location to be released after regular activities resume.
Think of it as having prearranged templates that reduce the risk of errors to a minimum.
Do such efforts bring value to gaming or are they more of an academic exercise?
I’ll go with neither as well. They are an interesting sidestepping of how most games “should be played” that often discovers interesting new glitches, bugs and exploits. Using a TAS to execute arbitrary code is interesting, having that transformed into a possibility for human players (SNES Code Injection – Flappy Bird in SMW, by SethBling) is amazing beyond belief.
Ur mom
