The Luckiest GoldenEye Speedrun Explained

[@Bismuth9]

Additional notes: pastebin.com/61P2UJjn

[@circleo1992]

Right on time with the premier

[@LavaCreeperPeople]

Nice

[@murrowmench1565]

“SO WE WENT AHEAD AND DID IT” I expect nothing less from the legend that explained 0 A Press

[@RipVanFish09]

The same person who went “I was annoyed at the lack of a proper TAS for this run, so I made one myself.” This man is a madlad.

[@Bismuth9]

To be fair that was entirely the work of Whiteted, Ace, Seanjohn and Onslatt.

[@T3sl4]

I heard the "we could do [detailed experimental plan], but that would be impractical...", and in my head, Chekov clicked a gun. Payoff worth it 100%.

[@murrowmench1565]

@@Bismuth9 And your work on analysis and conveyance to a community made their work worth it

[@joebeezy9471]

@@Bismuth9and you’re humble.

[@-writer-7289]

23:15 "So we went ahead and did it" I literally straightened up in my chair. My data science nerd self just got excited.

[@ZorrotheArtist]

Golden Eye speedruns make about as much sense as what goes on during an acid trip, can’t wait to see how he explains this one.

[@wahwahwah6690]

Idk why Ive spent so much time learning about Golden Eye speed running (I've never even beaten the game), but I understand most of the tricks at this point. KZbin has taught me so much unconscious and useless info. Idk if that's good or bad.

[@jjtime_]

It's good. @@wahwahwah6690

[@Hovezipwn]

yea, ge speedruns are really hard to properly appreciate unless you speedrun it yourself

[@mateusbmedeiros]

The best part of this analogy is that an acid trip makes sense somewhat to the one going through it.

[@marmentad]

@@wahwahwah6690 Well, at this point you should try it! I mean beating the game at least

[@jameswu786]

I can't believe you missed the opportunity to mention that the Frigate level takes place in Monte Carlo...

[@Bismuth9]

😠 Cancel the whole video

[@laisaechao7289]

26:46

[@MahDryBread]

Loving all the Goldeneye stuff! I've been really into the history of the speedrunning scene for Goldeneye for years. I always appreciate people sharing the stories of just how insane it is. Good lord, Frigate.

[@MahDryBread]

@cubefreak123 Aztec 00 agent runs are always so tense in that ending sequence in the vents, my god

[@MahDryBread]

@cubefreak123 It's insane that they even had to figure out a super weird way to get a guard to open the door, because the old way of fighting Jaws was just such a waste of time

[@harrison1899]

Goose speedlore series and Karl Jobst are GOATED

[@BrentMalice]

WHOA ITS THE HERO OF KVATCH

[@ceceliagermann7716]

Random thought, but the animation style and font used in your statistical analysis portion looks really similar to that of 3Blue1Brown. So cool to see such similar stylistic takes on math problems from completely different subjects!

[@Bismuth9]

That's because it uses his creation: Manim, an open source python library.

[@clairekholin6935]

I didn't realize he created it!

[@ardzruni]

"So we went ahead and did it" has the exact same energy as DefunctLand revealing he statistically modelled an entire working theme park just to explain why Fast Pass sucked.

[@riven756]

was not expecting a full on statistical analysis lol. amazing job!!!

Almost 3b1b level.

[@TrueN8-bit]

Why couldn’t they have done stuff like this in my statistics classes? I don’t care about finding the probability that a random marble drawn out of a bag is red, I care about figuring out the probability that all five hostages escape in time on Frigate in GoldenEye007. Would’ve been much easier to pay attention, at least. /j Really good video. It’s always interesting to see how everything works in these games and how speed runners use them to their advantage. Or in this case, how it’s the bane of their existence. /srs Edit: Added tone indicators, as multiple people have misinterpreted paragraph 1 as serious. I can't blame them, it's hard to tell from just plaintext.

[@PWBS-yc6xi]

If I ever become a teacher this is the shit I would do lol

[@ThePharphis]

because you have to start simple before you can learn more complex ideas and implementations. This was only easy to follow because Bismuth went above and beyond to do the work and make it easy to follow

[@GeneralBolas]

Because the marble question is equally worthless to everyone. For you, the probability that "all five hostages escape in time on Frigate in GoldenEye007" is engaging. For most people, that probability is not merely worthless; it's eye-rolling. Picking things that are boring-yet-universal is more likely to succeed at teaching the basic issue than picking something that a niche audience is super-interested in yet is confounding to most people.

[@jesusbertaniramirez9681]

you need to walk before start runing

[@drakewinters1]

Nah man you have a point, I'd seriously have done better in my Stats class if it had more game related stuff in there, or at least was presented as well as Bismuth did.

[@J3tAlone]

...No thanks, I'll stick to my differential equations. In all seriousness, I love the fact that you all took the approach not just taking the probability of all the events happening at the same time and factored in the person performing it as well. Ace has been putting up top times since the game came out and is legendary for his execution and his odds are still that slim. Albsolutely wild. Kudos for the insane amount of effort and research put into this video. This one is a certified Bismuth classic.

[@circleo1992]

As someone who enjoys math, this video is a dream come true.

[@NexusOfChaos]

even better with the 3b1b style on the math parts (yea ik its just using his tools but still)

[@christopherhaas8637]

@@NexusOfChaos I half expected to see a pi-guy show up!

[@LunchMeatTrump]

You enjoy math? Something's not adding up here 🤡

[@NexusOfChaos]

@@LunchMeatTrump let's not divide the community with such terrible puns

[@Kyulnjir]

@@NexusOfChaos Why are you dividing after the clown added, are you trying to be mean?

[@sunnyseraph]

this is so fascinating from the stats perspective, like maybe it's just me being a little nerdy because i'm studying stats and experiments for science currently but seeing that applied for some speedrun time data analysis is super cool

[@jruss609]

I loved the SM64 ABC series, but the fact that you created a rom hack, collected data, and ran a Monte Carlo simulation makes this the greatest speed running video of all time. Bravo!

[@Blaze2005M]

Nice, a new video on a Goldeneye speedrun. The comments and analyzes are very technical compared to your video on Silo DLTK. It's not always easy to understand. But it's very interesting, it allows us to see how the hostages work, and to see how much luck is required to obtain such a low time. Once again, you did a great work on the video.

[@Bismuth9]

Thanks! I wanted this video to be a bit of a crash course on probabilities with a GoldenEye backdrop.

[@BishopStars]

​@@Bismuth9mission accomplished

[@ShamanJeeves]

Coming home to a new Bismuth video is a treat. Thanks for your efforts! I can relate to the struggle of saving for a home.

[@lt_johnmcclane]

I was very pleased to see that y’all played a rom hack to run the actual numbers

[@JackKieser]

"So I went ahead and did it" has some big-time "Shape Land is Animal Kingdom" energy. So much so that I would be shocked if @Bismuth9 wasn't also a Defunctland fan himself :D No shade, because you pull it off just as amazingly as Kevin did. I would expect nothing less from a legendary speedrunning documentarian like Bismuth! Truly one of the best of the best, on this platform or any other. Incredible vid, expertly paced and presented, with complex topics explained in such an approachable way!

[@CasualKraken]

Imagine being a prisoner and the rescuer runs in looking at the ground zips around and leaves you behind to save a few seconds

[@Graespectrum]

This felt like a 3blue1brown video... both the subject and the quality. Well done.

[@Arcsin27]

i love thinking about what speedrunning bugs look like in the universe of the game imagine being a guard when bond switches guns and teleports through a crack in the wall even funnier if his hitbox comes into play and you watch him suddenly compress thin as a hair and squeeze through said crack

[@baronobeefdip8075]

This case is more of an exploit, not a bug. Also, since this case relies on lag, what would lag look like in the universe? Is it just a time perception thing? Do people just think they mentally blanked during the lag? Do they remain conscious but physically frozen? Is it just like that time-skipping episode from Futurama?

[@dusklunistheumbreon]

I mean....realistically it's just him turning sideways and squeezing through that gap :p

[@llmkursk8254]

TerminalMontage's animations of speedruns are pretty adept at this IMO. Not the most realistic (comedic liberties are taken), but it does paint a solid picture.

[@Arcsin27]

@@llmkursk8254 oh yeah i love his speedrun animations lmao!

[@_pancakes1734]

@@baronobeefdip8075 id imagine it working something like how crimson king works in jojos part 5 probably

[@Sterlin18]

A+ on the video and statistics - C- on how the bug throw and pipe warp were discovered (myself in 1998 hoarded the warp) - Other than these small trick factors for the bug and warp its crazy to note that some of the percentages that were thought to be what they were are explained more in depth in this coverage then we'll ever see is epic - Really nice job in which I wonder why Ace didnt try to manipulate Bridget on the speedrun given that the odds increase nearly 3% for best exiting location for Bridget - **There was an OG line releasing Bridget first down the Portside of the vessel to start the OG sppedrun line and continuing more or less with the mainline run (releasing the other hostages as normal except Bridget first) that ace as well as others are executing (relieving this low odd escape from this Bridget out of the equation as Bridget is released first!) - In saying that I wonder what the probable odds are on the other 4 hostage escape routes while implementing Bridget first hostage release before the others hostages....- I know it allowed Ace a "2" second or there about buffer near exiting onto the tender (which is what I did back in 1998 was had a buffer ending albeit more in the 1:06-1:10 exiting)..(which he had some 1:04's complimenting a 2 second buffer on some small testing...meaning had he just exited to the tender on these runs he would of been 1:01/1:02) again it would be interesting to calculate that line for the hostages and if they can even escape in time...anyhow great stuff Bismuth!

[@brosevideogames7908]

A lot of people are pumped about the the depth of statistics based on the trial runs, but I’m even more impressed by the level of collaboration it took to get that data.

[@KaitlynBurnellMath]

"As cool as it would have been to do hundreds of trials on a custom ROMHack it's simply unrealistic...." "...So we went ahead and did it." I love this so much.

[@DavidAndrews-eb7gm]

Such an abrupt gear change, especially with the casual follow-up of the participants. Flawless, understated story-telling.

[@gloriousliar8747]

Great video 3Blue1Bismuth Can't believe you made a 35 minute video feel rushed. Great analysis, looks incredibly well researched. Bravo.

[@Bismuth9]

Thanks buddy 🌪

[@randomperson1418]

When you said that making a custom ROMhack with top level runners was infeasible I knew you were gonna do it

[@Galaxy40k]

Never in my life did I expect to see a Monte Carlo in a damn video about speedrunning. This is it lads, KZbin has officially peaked, we can go home now

[@themistermorph]

So that guy just explained stochastics in a speedrunning video. Great work, man!

[@Kyulnjir]

As someone who enjoys math, you formatted this video beautifully and made it easy to follow. Although, now you are inclined to give us more statistical analyses now we know how good you are at explaining them

[@JohnTibbitt]

A small tear went down when you said "so we did it" and I was literally on the verge of crying with numbers montage

[@Craiglionheart]

I'm a huge fan of goldeneye speedruns (shoutout to Rwhitegoose) so I'm so happy to see you covering goldeneye speedruns in depth, keep up the good work!

[@kattybratt1353]

my dad introduced me to goldeneye, and i always look forward to showing him these videos whenever i get home from college :)

[@PWBS-yc6xi]

Always an amazing day when a video game documentary drops

[@jnerdsblog]

I absolutely love these run-explanation vids. How these dudes and dudettes do this stuff is intriguing.

[@blackieblack]

Let's be real, it's all dudes

[@LMMotoss]

That tense music when you start talking about the hostage escape probabilities...

[@juak91]

Love the piano renditions of the ost. Also like how you explain things like pipe warps to more casuals like myself.

[@TheKincognito]

your Piano playing is top notch as always. it adds a lot of character to your videos.

[@72pinkush]

As a college student studying statistics, this was so fun to watch! Thanks Bismuth and contributors

[@larsthedude1984]

Bismuth is the type of guy to pull out high effort statistical analysis to talk about the time someone else played a movie tie-in game from the 90’s

[@Jonseyonsey]

Great work as always Bismuth! An excellently explained introduction to those who are newer to probability theory and Monte Carlo simulations specifically. This one is on par with Matt Parker's video on Minecraft Speedrunning.

[@Cmaxb9]

This is so fascinating, the work goldeneye runners put in to give themselves the best chance is totally insane. Also that piano goldeneye music is absolute 🔥

[@cailloufranchement3032]

"it's impossible, so we did it" i love it, it's like "explaining this would be too long and hard to simplify so let's do it"

[@bradybaksay1395]

Bismuth you make some of the most high effort, high quality videos on youtube right now. Don't let it go unnoticed that your videos are masterpieces. Keep it up!

[@stigmaoftherose]

So, fun fact about the N64 i learned from a Kaze video. The N64 doesn't have trouble drawing a lot of polygons it has trouble drawing polygons in front of other polygons. Kaze's video is way too in depth for me to understand but basically if you simply put multiple polygons in front of each other the N64 uses the CPU to compute which polygon to render based on a ton of things for each frame. Obviously, calculations for each overlaping polygon for each frame take a ton of the CPUs power and cause lag. The more overlaping polygons the more math it has to do as it compares each polygon to each other polygon rather than just doing some sort of tourney elimination system which is obviously a huge flaw. TLDR rendering things isn't the issue for lag, but drawing them on screen is.

[@qgame4941]

I just had a comment typed out going into more detail about overdraw and it being a problem in modern games as well, but then my youtube crashed... But if you want more insight to this i can highly recommend "warum hyrule warriors age of calamity so schlecht läuft" by SambZockt, i think he actually subtitles his videos in English by now, so give it a watch if you are interested

[@porglezomp7235]

You’ve misunderstood slightly. The concept you’re thinking of is “overdraw”, and the real lesson is “drawing triangles isn’t so expensive, drawing to pixels is”. Every pixel a triangle covers takes a bit of time, lots of overlapping triangles spends that time wastefully.

[@musaran2]

@@porglezomp7235 This is called "fill rate" IIRC. It was a very common limitation of older hardware, Doom and Quake were entirely designed around it.

[@Somefox5]

Im a stats major and i gotta say this is a great and super entertaining video. You do a great job explaining everything, including the inaccuracies that might be in the data

[@Zarzamoritas]

loved the use of MANIM for this video, very good use of it! awesome content

[@CorrectHorseBatteryStaple472]

Holy shit. Incredible visuals, analysis, effort, music, explanations. Just incredible everything. I got a little too excited at how well those graphs followed normal distributions, not gonna lie. I'm surprised a sample set of 200 was good enough for all the detail you went into.

[@dc8836]

You absolute madman. Did you put a Port of Adia cover in my math lesson?? Your channel is amazing!

[@carter2449]

Friendly reminder that the pianist and composer in these videos is Bismuth himself!!

[@Bismuth9]

Composer is not really the right word. I make the arrangements but I didn't compose the original music.

[@QuickNick2402]

"so we went ahead and did it" you absolute mad lads!!! oh and that piano cover is amazing

[@delooled]

Wonderful. Now the probability and statistic subject that I had to study at university is useful. Btw great video, every time the study that goes behind everything gets more and more crazy. You are an incredible mad lad and I absolutely love this

[@andy4an]

I've learned so much about probability from gaming. I'm glad other people are getting the basics here

[@IvoryMadness.]

What a great video! Congrats dude! 👏👏

[@KnakuanaRka]

Ah, Bismuth; love your videos. 2:02 Anyone find it annoying how times are only reported to the second, when they could be in a lot more detail? Would make it a bit easier to meaningfully compare and progress on records; second barriers should not be enforced. 3:46 Where do these control style names come from? 4:33 I remember a video about the looking down trick causing a huge controversy. And the movement thing reminds me of how you discussed DK64 does the same. 9:12 I love this bit with the tracker throw. xD 9:35 Like in your video about Silo? I especially remember hearing it from that. 10:18 As a 3Blue1Brown fan, I love this whole part. 11:17 Love the little bits of humor. 14:45 There’s one animation with 20 seconds? Talk about making a dramatic exit. 15:45 Derp. 23:15 Of courses you did

[@jarzz3601]

yeah the story about looking down is wild

[@Bismuth9]

Regarding your first two questions: Times are recorded using the in-game timer, timing externally would be really annoying and a romhack for decimal timing would be a pretty significant barrier of entry. Rare named them after Bond girls.

[@KnakuanaRka]

@@Bismuth9 Sure; not familiar with the franchise for the second. And I know about the technical limitations for the first, but I meant it more in a hypothetical, “If only they had…” way.

[@zhewaxen3047]

Ace got a better time in the mod, because the mod makes it 50 times more likely to get good rng

[@YouNameItGaming]

Your presentation is on point, and the music just tops it off! Subscribed 👍

[@femkeyt2635]

"So we went ahead and did it." Top 10 best anime plot twists. Seriously, loved that part lmao.

[@ThaRixer]

Levels like frigate is largely why i chose to run perfect dark instead, although that's not to say that game doesn't also have it's fair share of random levels haha. Great breakdown bismuth, this level is a spectacle, perhaps 1:02 some day

[@markoadam6619]

Imagine hating randomness that much that you end up playing Yu-Gi-Oh! Forbidden Memories

[@stueym100]

Another bismuth classic. After seeing this, the algo presented me with an older video by Karl Jobst on the agent frigate record, which was a great companion piece for this work of art.

[@auphonium]

I really enjoyed the in-depth explanation of the probabilities, great work to everyone involved!

[@draculactica]

this video is so absolutely my jam. greatly enjoy all your work man!

[@Dsand23]

we as a species are so lucky that this man both has the skill to explain all of this complicated math, AND arrange and play these pieces for us!

[@hauntedsunsets]

making a custom romhack and having top runners do tons of runs on it is to bismuth as creating a complex simulation of different iterations of fastpass systems in a full active theme park is to defunctland definitely impossible

[@Ara_Arasaka]

32:26 I dunno what song you’re playing here but Bismuth you are COOKING dude.

[@DiegoG2004]

I did not expect this Golden Eye speedrun analysis vid to turn into a probability class.

[@grent7588]

Learning English and apreciating this pieace of art in Brasil. Parabéns pelo empenho, Bismuth

[@anlev11]

O Bismuth tem sempre os melhores vídeos de speedruns

[@grent7588]

Um dos únicos canais que me faz assistir um vídeo de horas

[@psyhodelik]

awesome explaination !!

[@musaran2]

Speedrunning is indeed becoming a science. Complete with data collection, statistics, hypotheses, simulation, testing, publication, review, falsification and the occasional fraud.

[@ezmna57]

Never realised that such a "simple" game could have such a complicated and interesting speedrun.

Even Tetris has fairly complicated math.

[@ChristopherStendeck]

You know what's fascinating about this? I have never been a speedrunner. I only really found out that there is a whole speedrunning scene a couple of years ago... BUT, in my late teens, when Goldeneye was the latest and greatest game, I spent a huge amount of time playing it, and perfecting my runs, to the point that I had unlocked all the cheats, and would often be asked by friends, schoolmates, cousins etc, to unlock the tougher ones for them, most commonly, invincibility. Well this was 25 years ago and my memories have faded, but I do remember, (and I could not for the life of me remember why), an awful lot of running diagonally and looking at the floor. Watching Goldeneye speedruns now brings it all back and looks so familiar to me it's like being regressed to a past life, but I had no internet to get speedrunning tips from, and rarely read the magazines. I must have worked out this stuff by trial and error which is a surprise to me because I don't think I'd have the skill or patience now to be a speedrunner in any game.

[@squirrel_killer-]

This is not an insult to speedrunners, though randoms in comments always think it is when they hear this, but a secret they don't like you to know is most of them are shit at conventionally playing games. Make the world's best X game speedrunner play that game casually (not using the speed running tricks) and it is commonly a barely above average playthrough at best. This is because a lot of the tricks they use train very different skills, and they do so through repeated application of a particular trick until it is hammered into them. The real thing they need is patience, and that's something you can always learn. Not even having large amounts of disposable time is that important. I wouldn't be shocked if most of the top 10% of times for this game were set with only a few hours a weekend of attempts. Eventually though you hit these types of super lucky runs, doable only with excessive amounts of luck or the time to make it. Most runners aren't aiming for these. If you have time to make one attempt a day twice a week at the minimum, you can do pretty well as a speedrunner so long as you find a long weekend to practice the tricks needed to do your chosen route.

[@megatenshi]

Nothing makes math sound more dramatic than Bismuth's piano scores tbh. DO YOUR BEST OLIVER BABY WE'RE ROOTING FOR YOU

[@20x20]

It's been a while since I've heard the Port of Adia theme. I wasn't sure if I was recognizing it or something else. Nice cover.

[@lovedeluxe2154]

The graphics and visuals of this video and all the stats stuff is just gorgeous!!!

[@Benobot99]

I used to speedrun Goldeneye levels fairly often from 2014 to 2020 so even though I knew all of this it was enjoyable to watch.

[@Tkmined]

Absolutely insane. Glad to see some more statistical math!

[@dh510]

Nice to see a speedrunner having a collab with 3Blue1Brown😂

[@beep90]

Love the statistical analysis!

[@zacharyjeffares8158]

I like coming back to this video just to make the joke: Devs of GE64: “WE SAWED THIS BOAT IN HALF! ( So the NPCs can’t get off the ship to port fast )”

[@circleo1992]

Tonight, my mom, sister, and cousin are watching The Batchler, which I hate. I'm glad that I have a premier to watch instead.

[@cheaterman49]

"This is completely impractical so we did it" is literally what we come here for :-) great job!

[@arkhe1n107]

After the data compilation, modeling, and presentation, I feel like I own you money. Alas, I'm broke as shit. The best I can do for you is subscribe.

[@jeynarl]

If my college math classes used goldeneye 64 to explain statistics I would be so much smarter

[@compugab]

It's crazy how much complex a speedrun become when you need to save fraction of second. I really like the "It's to crazy to do hundred attempts, so we when ahead and did it" 😀

[@slipperynickels]

lol that ad pretending like we’ll ever own a home just by cancelling netflix. i mean, get that bag, bismuth. but lmao.

[@mytromic]

bismuth is so good that the periodic table added him

[@Gregair13]

The amount of math in this video is wild and so interesting. Also, the piano Bond music is lovely.

[@wunnup3229]

You know Bismuth is getting serious when he breaks out the Port of Adia piano cover.

[@LamantinoElettronico]

You know you're in for some serious stuff when the video requires an explanation using MANIM animations

[@-GameHacKeR-]

great video as always, but I would like to hear a full release of all your goldeneye themes, especially the one that starts at 31:20

[@Bismuth9]

They're on youtube @bismuth-music

[@-GameHacKeR-]

@@Bismuth9 awesome i'm going to check that out now

[@jortand]

I fucking love this stat nerding over a video game gives me so much joy.

[@JAGtheTrekkieGEMINI1701]

Clicked cause of the titel, got overwhelmed by the math Data and stayed since the BGM and Narration were *So Good!*

[@StepBaum]

The python animations looked beautiful and whole video in general was super interesting :)

[@DanielGirardBolduc]

Bismuth and 3Blue1Brown now feel the same to watch :) Really Awesome Vidéo really enjoyed all the math visualisation included to help visualize properly the odds of this perfect run :) Have an awesome day. Dan

[@Seany1616]

so not only is it a 0.2% completion rate, but it also requires running the level at blistering world record pace every single time. i cant imagine playing absolutely perfectly and yet still only 1 in about 500 runs have a chance at a 1:03 completion. jesus christ frigate

[@jarzz3601]

the story behind look downs discovery is wild

[@blankwavemessiah]

at about 19:10.... Im just waiting for scott steiner to come out for his math promo for sacrifice lol These videos are so so so so GOOD!

[@iluvcats2]

absolutely love the graphics done for this vid

[@Keirnoth]

03:43 Marathon Trilogy also made diagonal running faster than forward running for the same reason. Some jumps were impossible without it.

[@twosadcows4549]

I hope its still that one kid that got every grenade blast his way on runway or whatever it was. Epic vid

[@chonk3000]

watching this as someone who teaches undergrads statistics I'm like how can I incorporate this into the curriculum..... the stats are so genuinely well explained.....

[@choisancutenessaggression]

literally the mathematical statistics jumpscare when you mentioned CDFs 😭