How Pausing Breaks Speedrunning

[@ScottobozoRaC]

Ratchet Deadlocked also has a broken pause menu. By going into the Control Options menu you can reset Ratchet's state and chain hyperstrikes infinitely to gain height, or go across giant chasms while preserving your speed.

[@Alex-ex8ob]

The PS3 version of ratchet 2 is also broken by pausing. On PS3, the primary method of maintaining charge boot momentum (holding L1 when a charge ends) doesn't work, but if we simply pause and unpause, we get the same effect.

[@247_yugioh]

Pausing also lets you skip the autoscrollers in Ratchet and Clank: Tools of Destruction. You save the game right before a load is about to start, and the game interprets this as you not having any location. So it ends up setting your location to the first planet, allowing you to basically teleport out of the autoscroller. A similar mechanic is also used in Ratchet and Clank: Quest For Booty to skip the unskippable cutscenes.

[@Robloxinsanegaming27yeaburger]

Pause my balls

[@sippingthe]

is every ratchet and clank game broken😂😂

[@Alex-ex8ob]

@@sippingthe Yes.

[@branchy2000inc]

It's not necessarily tied to the pause menu, but there's some crazy tech in Fallout: New Vegas where by unbinding the "Block" key, opening the Pip-Boy, and then clicking on the map and closing the Pip-Boy at the same time, the "would you like to set your marker here?" menu comes up while the Pip-Boy is down, which pauses everything in the game *except player movement.* New Vegas has a lot of crazy speedtech, and while I don't think this one is used in the speedrun, it's one of my favorites

[@Paddster]

I discovered your channel today and as a non speedrunner who loves to hear about the history of speedrunning these videos are awesome!

[@inkaymr4919]

Majora's Mask any% also makes use of pausing + SRM to give yourself items in order to beat the game quickly. Even before SRM, there was a glitch that opened up the debug menu, allowing you to pick whatever items you wanted to go straight to your inventory, provided that you played a specific song around 70 times in a row. Sick video!

[@whiplash6548]

My mind goes to windwaker, where by rapidly pausing and unpaising, the player gains a LOT of speed and swims at like mach 10 through the ocean, never needing to meet pirates or the ship, only getting the green tunic after a neccesary cutscene.

[@wariolandgoldpiramid]

I remember playing a flash game called Exit Path, by jmtb02. And I noticed that when you pause the game, all of the obstacles (such as the swinging axes) continue moving, but they can't damage you. So it was totally possible to avoid some obstacles by simply pausing the game, and then making that hazard just go past you. Not valid for a speedrun - as it's slower compared to just skillfully moving past the obstacles - but still a fun glitch to take advantage ofl.

[@MadamLava094]

When I heard "but to understand Note Cloning" for a moment I got struck with PTSD and thought parallel universes were about to come up

[@user199x]

I did NOT expect to hear Harry Potter music today

[@rewandemontay]

Keep on covering a great variety of speedrunning aspects with amazing videos.

[@Trank933]

Glad I found your channel, wishing you the growth your quality content deserves!

[@aughlnal7333]

18:15 The code you can fit on the file screen is actually quite limited, sure it's enough to wrong warp to the credits, but not for getting all items. That was until someone realized they can write code that deletes the character limit on the file select screen and you can make your file name as long as the console has memory.

[@ImmacHn]

In the game I run, accidentally pausing can be a run killer due to a bug that prevents you from performing actions for a few seconds after unpausing. Thing is I have the pause button in comfortable palce because it is used to skip cutscenes and you need to hold it for a bit then you are immediately thrown into action so having it on the usual spot is not good either.

[@giantclaw138]

Which game?

[@DustyyBoi]

which game though 😩

[@Redmage913]

Great video! I’d love to see a part two that explores Pokémon Gen 1’s pause/menu-based shenanigans. Pokémon Green is even crazier.

[@attemptedoptimist3560]

The music in your videos goes so hard. Was not expecting Process of Elimination ost

[@Alex-ex8ob]

Another PS2 game where pausing breaks the game is god of war 2. By using certain attacks in the air, then pressing start and either cycling through secondary weapons or swapping a magic attack, you can get an extra jump or do infinite jumps. Edit: Jak and Daxter has a glitch called "pause buffers." By pressing L2/R2 and start at the same time, it delays the pause menu showing up with the use of the HUD. With this, we activate cutscenes, find a way to go back to a checkpoint, and it allows us to skip cutscenes.

[@leithaziz2716]

Outside of speedruns, that glitch in GOW2 is used to skip a tutorial section regarding one of the new magic items. The tutorial gives you infinite magic for testing it out, but if you manage to exit the area without finishing the tutorial, you get infinite magic for the rest of the game.

[@Alex-ex8ob]

@@leithaziz2716 You're thinking of god of war 1, where after killing medusa we are given infinite magic. We don't use infinite jumps to get out of the arena, we use a form of high jumping to do so

[@leithaziz2716]

@@Alex-ex8ob I know about that trick, and yes it's not an infinite jump trick (you use L1 + X to launch into the air). There's a simillar scenario in GOW2 with the other. That one uses the infinite jump to clip out of the area.

[@MrShanester117]

17:00 I don’t care if Monday’s blue. Tuesday’s grey and Wednesday too. Thursday I don’t care about you. It’s Friday I’m in love

[@Twookis]

you're one of the best speedrunning channels out there, great video!

[@pabloperezperez3856]

Your channel is pure gold.

[@RapGameFresh]

Love that background Sly Cooper music.

[@angeldude101]

CrossCode's menus are so broken that its community redefined "NMG" to mean "no exploiting the pause menu or the main menu" ("No Menu Glitches" rather than "No Major Glitches"). Often it's possible to open a pop-up box within a menu on the same frame that you close the menu allowing you to have that pop-up present where it's not supposed to be. This can be used to sell more of an item than you actually have, store a warp to use when you shouldn't be able to (including in other save files, and yes this is useful even when every file involved is started during the run), and saving the game at weird times, like during screen transitions or during the prologue. Sometimes you will see these stacked to the point that there are multiple invisible save or load prompts open at the same time. Any% with menu glitches is actually pretty rare to see, as they often include seeing the main menu's splash screen more than gameplay, though longer categories like All Dungeons will often be done using menu glitches, bringing the time down to be pretty close to the Any% NMG runs.

[@trucy1337]

But that slows down the runs...

[@angeldude101]

@@trucy1337 Au contraire. The category that allows saving and quiting for more than warping to the entrance of a room is _half as long_ as the category that bans those tricks. There are several other "menu glitches" that are banned in NMG, but they really are powerful enough to halve the time of the entire speedrun, even if you use realtime.

[@Alice47103]

Wow. Didn't think I would see Crosscode mentioned. Awesome game :)

[@qbmac2306]

Forgot to mention save quitting in Dark Souls is basically the only way to speedrun the game. That incorporates the 'pause' menu.

[@leithaziz2716]

It's VERY usefull for many scenarios. You can reload a checkpoint without having to run back to a bonfire (so enemies don't respawn every time. Handy for progressing NPC quests and cutting down on backtracking), reset enemy aggro and save yourself from a fall midair.

[@Philosophvr]

In Metal Gear Solid: VR Missions, you can input buffer directly passed an enemies' line of sight; cheesing the game hardcore. Great video!

[@Zelda1548]

I just wanted to say you're channel is great and I'm amazed you don't have more subscribers yet. Every video is great.

[@dabmasterars]

*your

[@thegrassgenie]

I don’t know what I did to KZbin but they’ve been viciously suggesting this video to me. The VERY FIRST video shown to me every time I click on the app since you uploaded it

[@MORONIC_official]

16:57 is that "Friday im in love" I hear.

[@HimmDawg]

In Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus, we found something that is called Advanced Relocation Glitch (ARG). So in this game you move in screens that are aligned on a grid and you can quicksave/quickload the current state of the game with F4/F5. If you pause and press F5 almost frame perfectly after, you pause the game but also start the load process. This is important because in the menu, we can choose to quicksave or restart the level. If you restart the level, the cam will move back to the start of the level, but your position will still be the same before the level restart. And we are still able to move freely. This is very useful because every object out-of-cam is unloaded. So there are no doors, mines or enemies, not even death barriers. There are two catches though. This does not work for sub-areas. Also, if you move horizontally while having the same y position as the cam, the cam will instantly follow you again. Same goes for vertical movement. That's where the "advanced" comes in. If you do the same trick again, but choose to quicksave instead of restarting the level, you can move the cam to where your latest quicksave was. So with careful quicksaving, you can basically unload everything while moving out of cam. ARG also works in sub-areas. If we execute ARG in a sub-area with a savestate in the main area, we teleport back to a point in the main area, based on our position in the sub-area. The current WR any% run is about 16 min and there are theories that, with the help of ARGs, we can basically skip the entire last major area of the game. It's crazy 😄

[@SASTSimon]

8:39 SWEDISH MENU

[@aerospherology2001]

Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures, Lego Batman: The Video Game, and Lego Indiana Jones 2: The Adventures Continue have turning V-sync off to increase the framerate to mess with the game physics, since they're tied to the framerate. In the first two you can clip through walls while in the third you can roll up walls.

[@Rebellions]

Its all fun and games until the PDA guy blocks your number in the middle of a chasm

[@Jermuda]

Your editing style is so smooth and clean, I love it!

[@wolfen888]

It blows my mind that we can find these things out but still don’t have a cure for cancer.

[@section7173]

The only difference is that finding all these things won't affect a multi billion dollar conglomeration. Revealing the truth about cancer is just a way to speedrun an "accidental" death.

[@Animebryan2]

We actually do have the cure for cancer, but it's reserved for the rich ass 1% elites that run the world & the rest of us just can't have it.

[@shoopdahoop2221]

In Tak and the Power of Juju speedruns, the tutorial level can be skipped by jumping before activating a cutscene trigger, pausing the game, saving, and loading Upon loading the file, all of Tak's collision is disabled and he can go right through the wall to the next area of the game

[@ghah5701]

Legacy of the Wizard on the NES is another game that benefits from pausing. Pausing in that game resets your jump status and allows for infinite jumps, which makes speedrunning the game much faster.

[@ibozz9187]

On trackmania united forever campaign maps, pausing is banned on the leaderboards because spamming it could be used to "slow down" the game (leaderboards are IGT)

[@GoodGuyKeegan]

Always love the subtle sly cooper music

[@Alexs23743]

18:15: "Don't forget to subscrib!" -Julia Chang in Tekken 7(?)

[@mohammedu7105]

In the legacy versions of Minecraft (so ps3, xbox, old ps4 versions, old xbox versions, old switch..), pausing cancels fall damage, so you can pause before a fall to negate the damage :p

[@rac1equalsbestgame853]

EXCUSE ME W H A T ? !

[@renegadesofanarchy289]

Meanwhile in the first 3 Jak and Daxter games you can just spin kick to cancel fall damage

[@bagelman2634]

One of the most broken pause menus in recent memory is in Pokemon BD/SP. The Any % run is under 15 minutes compared to a glitchless run of over 3 hours, because you can use the menu to glitch our of bounds and walk to the end of the game.

[@Benegade]

This was a top notch video

[@rac1equalsbestgame853]

In A Crack in Time a pause menu glitch is utilized for an arena stack glitch so speedrunners confuse the fuck out of the game by loading multiple arena battles at the same time and makes them a breeze I can't wait till one day a way to climb walls in the game is found out and the game it torn open cause when you get a bunch of height or exceed speeds the game usually expects the collision get _wonky_ to say the least

[@Sleepyhead080808]

In Moving Out, if you pause on the very last frame that you complete a level, you can hit the "Quit Level" button and still receive credit for beating the level, which skips the 15 second cutscene at the end. This can be used on every level except the last, leaving 29 potential frame perfect 15 second timesaves. The current WR only gets about 5 of them. In Pokemon: Legends Arceus, you can pause during the balloon race to pause the in game timer. However, your mount pokemon will continue moving in world. This strategy has led to the interesting development that as IGT has gone down, RTA has gone up - a 42s race with no pauses became a 30s race in 10 minutes, and then a 12s race in 30 minutes.

[@diethylmalonate]

Hades has a similar interaction as PLA but with the codex (flavor text for character and enemies etc) so opening it mid-run got banned, also to avoid the same result (unless you're at a place where the in game timer is paused anyway)

[@Sleepyhead080808]

@@diethylmalonate Yep, our categories got split lol

[@truffles]

Great music choice

[@bensavage6172]

I appreciate all the Kingdom Hearts music being used in your videos, very nice

[@SJrad]

in the sm64 any% TAS, it pauses the game a few times to get an a press every actionable frame, otherwise the fastest it can do A inputs is every other because it takes a frame to release a.

[@phorchybug3286]

Three words RISE OF LYRIC

[@JohnPaulBuce]

pause buffering moment

[@whitish1968]

Cool video as always :)

[@Alex_Magnum]

Honorable mention: Cruelty Squad god menu glitch

[@origobaldo7090]

I suppose the "videos used" are in order of appearence, right? If so, what is the name of that first game in the first 10s of the video? Looks interesting.

[@jpegmakima]

Eastward!

[@origobaldo7090]

@@jpegmakima Thanks!

[@battty_nattty]

I'm sure it's already been said, but Mega Man I had the yellow devil pause glitch with the elec beam

[@CasuallyShadow]

It also has the downside of often making the speedruns unwatchable, significantly reducing their popularity, look at perfect dark speedruns for more information. It can also make a run not skill based if a runner can just pause to make sure they do the perfect inputs.

[@Washedsortof]

BFBB mentioned 🎉🍾

[@PlushPapi_]

What was the game at the very beginning of the video?

[@FernGilly]

Me too, I also want to know this. My search turned up fruitless.

[@weckar]

I love that in OoT,, a 17-year-old is called 'adult' by fans :P

[@ka_stuggels2354]

Trying to figure out what that pixel game he shows in the beginning is

[@Mornings]

I remember finding out opening the xbox 360 menu made the wait timer in skyrim go way faster made the game casually way better lol

[@schlix]

What is the first game shown in the intro? It looks absolutely stunning!

[@Alphabetatralala]

What's the first game we see in the video, right at the beginning ?

[@raulpl1549]

what's the name of the first game that appears on the video?

[@amagicmuffin1191]

hollow knight also has some bonkers menu shenanigans. minecraft to a much lesser degree

[@Gerargeplublicalember]

frozen double troube is a great speedrun. you should make a video on it

[@FourSR]

I really liked the part where you talk about How Pausing Breaks Speedrunning! Very Cool!

[@MrNosounder]

Great video

[@alguien6462]

i was just wondering about this yesterday how does youtube know, How. How!?

[@SAZERU]

good stuff!! heck yeah

[@Kuvantor]

One of the worst things about Dark Souls speedruns is that they're constantly taking 5-10 IRL seconds to save like 0.5 seconds in game, it is infinitely annoying and it is allowed even in glitchless categories, which is absolutely absurd

[@Brindlebrother]

pause.

[@foreignuser_]

Completing the level in under 20 seconds is information that is useless to anyone who isn't already familiar with the subject matter. You need to tell us how long it takes runners without the associated benefit so that we know what beating it in 20 seconds actually means. Please take this advice when writing further scripts. Great video otherwise and thank you.

[@specialopsdave]

There's a Knuckles infinite jump glitch in that one Sonic Boom game

[@C_Corpze]

I love game breaking glitches like these. So fascinating to see how a game can be broken by entering a code as a save file name or opening a menu at a certain time. It does make me wonder how game devs miss or overlook things like that. I know you can’t make a game 100% bug or glitch free (I know because I develop stuff), but how does a menu glitch simply happen?

[@weckar]

What, no pokemon R/B? :P

[@DenkFiks]

Keep it up.

[@mysteryneophyte]

I don’t think pausing should be allowed honestly stupid I would even go for the glitching before I would pausing but glitching is pretty stupid too. I don’t know why, but I feel like whoever can move quickly play through the game without cheating should be the speed running champion of that game.

[@Sumanitu]

Speedrunning most games is garbage. Its not about how well you can play a game, its about how well you can exploit glitches. Even when there is a "glitchless" category, it still includes exploits (such as repeatedly building an unpowered, unoxygenated room in Subnautica 1.0 to create a checkpoint, then dying)

[@govianthefemaleinspector1517]

Do you read the comments section

[@chicknlittl3348]

🔥Video

[@DrEcho]

nice

[@HeyImBax]

Never once did I pick up a copy of ratchet and think "hmm, this is something I should try" not once, not ever

[@Akuretaki_Nikolay]

gg ty

[@tart1082]

At first I thought this was going to be a video talking about why pausing is bad for the speed running community, but I was pleasantly surprised

[@stargravita897]

oh

[@SAZERU]

what

[@Vintagesonic1]

"oh" - _Stargravita897, 2023._

[@Ascension721]

star gravita is my favourite youtube commenter of all time already

[@marcar9marcar972]

Dislike, wanted to see how pausing breaking speed running not about specific games where it does that.

[@rage9715]

For once youtube sends me something good for once - subbed. RI 19 is so good