Speedrunners Uncover 20 Year Old Secrets in Devil May Cry

This is the story of how a few speedrunners uncovered the secrets locked inside devil may cry, from old runs, to official guide books, and even untranslated documents, the devil may cry speedrun has come a long way in the past few years and this is the story of the most recent discoveries.
Referenced videos:
www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm2155...
www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm2289...
Runners
Maxylobes: / maxylobes
DanSpence: / danspence94
Dasote: • Devil May Cry RTA DMD ...
DizzySplits: / dizzysplits
Music By MachineGirl
-Cyan Hardcore
• Cyan Hardcore
-Greaze
• Greaze (Machine Girl Mix)
-Ghost
• Ghost
-Ginger Claps
• Video
Patreon : / waifuruns
Twitch : / waifu
Twitter : / waifuruns
Instagram : / waifuruns
Speedrun.com : www.speedrun.com/user/Waifu
Discord: / discord
TikTok : vm.tiktok.com/ZMeM9Lek1/
Main Channel: / waifuruns
Archive Channel: / @waifurunslive
Shorts Channel: / @waifurunstv
#speedrun #waifuruns #DMC

[@WaifuRuns]

i play this game sometimes www.twitch.tv/waifu

[@aAaAaAaAaA1234567ize]

Can i get a discord server invite?

[@martmine4618]

I have never seen a strategy guide literally telling you how the game is coded, this is insane.

[@lakshaykochhar6799]

Pardon?

[@placer7412]

fighting game guides tell you

[@teejt3737]

16:07 I couldn't describe the hype that I felt when you said that Distortion, a DT technique being used in DMC4, where you hit Devil Trigger at the impact frames of moves, existed a whole three games prior.

[@hisradiancelordnasty]

it’s still good in DMC5. if you watch my latest Dante Run i show examples of distortion and Guard Flying. the damage boost from a quicc distortion is hella worth it and the input times are a bit padded for both distortion and guard flying

[@playboydojo]

@@hisradiancelordnasty Wait, guard flying is in DMC5?

[@hisradiancelordnasty]

@@playboydojo go watch my last two Dante runs. the “Black Friday Cont.” one specifically

[@sho7455]

Growing up in Japan, and played DMC when it came out when I was in middleschool, and I indeed owned Kaitaishinsho for DMC (I think it was a series of Koryakubon, or walkthrough books they'd release sometime after the release of the game, includes so many art works and back stories, many goodies. I purchased it for most of my favorite games)...never imagined or knew about speedrunning then, I sort of skimmed through all the small tricks and stats, damage counts etc. Never realized it was such a wealth of useful knowledge for the speedrunning community. Didn't realize it was never translated into English but makes sense, since these books contained sooooo much text, generic walk thru to dev interview, short stories newly written for the book, etc etc etc. Dang.

[@MilestheDirtyMindedGoblin2099]

I also played DMC a lot growing up, they were the only games 2nd grader me had at the time

[@TheLastDose]

I never played it as well but had a copy of the game guide and loved to draw the creatures and weapons and imagine the game myself based off the stats

[@ramrodbldm9876]

imagine the game yourself based off the stats lmaooooo 🤓🌽🏀

[@ramrodbldm9876]

​@@TheLastDose imagine the game myself based off the stats lmao 🤓 by the way 🤡 Quit liking your own comments 🌽🏀. No one came to your comment in the last week and liked it😂 what a 😼

[@bassomegax]

A lot of mechanics were discovered in like the mid 2000s on GameFAQs by I think players like Joch, ryan86, sternn, and probably some more, and eventually Joch hosted it on her website called PhantomBabies in a DMD SB guide. Unfortunately, the website went defunct, so I assumed it disappeared off the internet and so did all of that knowledge. I did a lot of research and posted it all of their forums which also disappeared. I do remember the most optimal damage to Nightmare's top core was grenadegun stinger combo, DT 4 hit slash with high time, and fully charged Ifrit combos. It was written before they found out about perfect charging Ifrit. I remember a person doing a challenge run of Mission 20 SB with 2 red cores, and he simply just used DT Alastor combos on the cores. When it comes to the first fight, you want to break the core immediately, so Alastor is the perfect choice. I know that Joch's SB run back in like 2006 used 2 Infernos and an auto combo. Auto combo was what we called using the five hit combo from using kick-13 in DT. Last time I checked, I think the grenadegun breaks the core extremely fast, but Nightmare 1's core can't turn red, so that doesn't matter. Guide also mentioned that going to the underworld in Nightmare resets the core breakage too. This is done in Nightmare 2 and 3 for SB runs to avoid turning the core red. One thing I found later was that Trish cutscene in Nightmare 3 also resets the core, but you needed shadow Nelo's orbs for the SB, so that didn't matter, and hence why it took me so long to learn about it. That's the real reason why it doesnt turn red. For speedruns, I remember really pushing Nightmare fights when I was routing this way back then, because I had to wait so long for Nightmare to reveal his core. I was looking at how much damage I was doing, and I reverse engineered the damage function with my friend from the PS2 MIPS code(was nice but didn't help as much as I thought). I remember something annoying on Normal mode was that I was able to do exactly 7000 damage to Nightmare, and Nightmare has 7000 HP, but the code requires that enemies die when they have negative HP.

[@MsLoquendo3456]

Japanese are built different. I don´t understand why nobody watched their speedruns, because (in the old years of youtube) their videos were like a mistical experience, so much knowledge is engraved in them, accesible only by simply watching. Amazing video.

[@PedroAugusto-tm1to]

If we are talking about japanese speedrunners, if im not mistaken this month we have "RTA in Japan", an RTA/Speedrun event from the jp community that is pretty cool.

[@thatitalianlameguy2235]

the karl jobst canceling people will murder you for saying jp (you see he was thrown the usual Twitter accusations, one of which being that he was racist to Japanese people by having an emote for the jp version of the game for every time someone new asked on stream why they were using the jp version, because jp was an American slur for Japanese people that no one else ever used with that meaning)

[@Maxylobes]

"Maxy was fast. The fastest, by far." True "If you couldn't beat him in execution, you can at least make it more consistent." NO WAIT, I DON'T WANT TO GRIND THIS GAME 4 TIMES A YEAR, PLEASE SPARE ME!!!

[@HoboVibingToMusic]

What I learned: DMC community has guys with good ass hair.

[@DANAR-ne3cn]

How you seen thier hair on thier ass

[@purepwnage909]

One day we will see a Speedrun leaderboard for how fast you can get blocked by Hideki Kamiya on Twitter

[@N0l30dy]

"Pressing the button with a certain rhythm makes you shoot much faster than their "intended" fire rate." I thought that was always an intended mechanic?

[@morgan79737]

Trey, I have something I'd like you to look into as a DMC3 runner. This is entirely anecdotal, but here goes: I was playing DMC3SE on the HD collection on PS4 in 2019, and as I was going through each difficulty, I arrived at DMD with Dante and found myself at a wall. I took a break, and decided to get the Vergil completion trophy on Normal (Yellow Orb mode) instead. When I beat it, I saved the game in Vergil's slot and then went to the menu to continue Dante. I don't know what happened between that time, but after playing some more Dante I wanted to play Vergil some more, so when I went to load my game I noticed something weird: my vergil save was showing identical stats to my Dante save, both mission, play time, and secret mission progress. I loaded up the save, and lo and behold, Vergil had unlocked all the missions I'd beaten with Dante. Even better, I had an identical red orb balance to that which I had on my Dante save. Prior to this happening, I only had Normal cleared and Hard started with Vergil, but now I had unlocked everything up to DMD's mission as Dante where i stopped playing. I don't know if the game got confused and the separate save slots for the two brothers overlapped somehow, but the long and short of it is this could be a useful way to get a fully completed save for others in future if people find a way to replicate it. I can't be the only one this has happened to, and it's fascinated me for 3 years since it happened. Sorry if this doesn't make much sense, I tried to recant it as best I could.

[@Ripperley]

This is a known bug in the HD collection, when loading between saves of different modes (Gold/Yellow) or characters (Dante/Vergil) a lot of data linked to progress and completion doesn't get flushed properly and gets transposed onto the save you load into. I wouldn't recommend trying to use this an exploit though, it extremely commonly results in save corruption that at best leaves you with missing weapons and orb fragments you can't get back and at worst simply crashes the game whenever you try to load into a stage. Generally speaking whenever you want to swap between saves in DMC3HD best practice is to close the game completely before loading into the other save.

[@morgan79737]

@@Ripperley Thanks for the insight, I tried looking all over to see if it happened to anyone else back then and came up with nothing so I'm glad it's something people know about.

[@419]

This is true for DMC3 as well. The only thing I've learned in the last year or so is that we know almost nothing about these games beyond the surface. Exciting times!

[@specter_of_thestars2500]

Reminds of people discovering DMC2 moves had names and other mechanics

[@RandomLap]

The DT charge attack is like DMC4 distortion damn.

[@MyNipplesArePointy]

Fuckin hell mate. I always knew people overlooked how powerful Ebony and Ivory were in DMC1 and exaggerated how overpowered they were in DMC2, but I never knew that they were *more* powerful in DMC1. There is one thing I'd like to correct about the Marionettes. You said that there were 3 types of Marionettes including the Bloody Maris but in reality, excluding Bloody Maris and Fetishes, there are a total of 5 types of Marionettes: light blue (no ranged attack, standard behaviour), light green (no ranged attack but they roar and trap you on strings), indigo (most standard behaviour and most similar to Bloody Maris and they have more health than the others), dark green (can do the spinning attack at any health level whereas the indigo Marionettes and Bloody Maris can only do them at low health), and dark blue (most aggressive with ranged attacks, but also the only type that doesn't jump on you without a warning). But damn. I just love that even after all these years there are still so many new things to discover. And great video. Good on you for discovering all of these things and organising them into a very easy-to-understand video.

[@WaifuRuns]

For sure I just simplified for the video since it was already so long

[@hisholiness4537]

Marionettes to this day are my favorite cannon fodder enemies in any game. DMC1 in general has imo one of the greatest enemy designs ever.

[@clownphd1684]

They're not actually more powerful lol. DMC 2's E&I kill enemies in just a few taps on Devil Hunter. Whereas in DMC 1 you're stuck shooting a lot longer

[@shiro_boy]

"These strats may be obtuse but you are A-cute"

[@gillateen1515]

As soon as I found out dt distortion was a thing in dmc1, I jumped on my switch and completely broke the game. It was fun

[@mokaza40]

If we speed run every DMC, we might get DMC6

[@peaceandtranquility274]

true gamers completely fucking miss the shotgun

[@zxad]

It's been 20 years since I've played the game but I remember using a charged upgraded meteor on nightmare's cores to finish him quickly. Really helped me unlock Super Dante.

[@DreadnoughtDT]

People don't give Meteor enough credit. Yeah it's not as cool as Inferno but hot damn does it hurt.

[@no.402]

@@DreadnoughtDT Charged Meteor is fantastic against Griffon 3

[@c-burn2933]

Based MachineGirl BGM

[@victoriousf.i.g.3311]

"Mr. Kamiya, if you could use one word or phrase to describe your game direction, what would it be?" HK: *Lowers sunglasses* "DTF"

[@Crota0100]

Ebony and Ivory baby

[@ryanmcconnell7410]

bro i can't think of a better boss expeirnce than nightmare. the entire fight for first timers is "what the fuck" and being totally overwhelmed. every time he makes a reappearance its the same groan too - this fight gonna be some bullshit i know it. so good

[@JameboHayabusa]

I've beaten this game 20 times and had no idea Ifrit had a just frame, or anything about how Nightmare's orb mechanics worked lmao. nice shit.

[@MatildyMatilduh666]

It's incredible that people are still discovering secrets in a game that's over 20 years old. This game was basically my childhood and still holds the title of my favorite game of all time and I never knew about the hidden mechanics behind the Nightmare's cores until I watched this video.

[@stupid90able]

3:22 thank you! People always talk about how OP the guns are in DMC2 but They were strong since day one. Hell the grenade launcher can kill most enemies in 1-2 shots.

[@DizzySplits]

DMC Community strong.

[@manfredstorm7599]

18:13 Waifu : ... allowing for massive damage MachineGirl : Good

[@SongVoDs]

Your videos are always so well crafted. Keep up the amazing work. You are one of the people who have inspired me to speedrun and now I hold 3 records in my game.

[@tobykassulke2385]

I dont see much stuff about the technical mumbo jumbo in dmc1. Its really damn nice to see. Most of the dmc fandom talks about 4 and 3 gameplay wise

[@mirion3383]

Whoa...that Ifrit damage multiplier...what the hell man, amazing

[@darwingreenheart]

speedrunners break ground for people who don't speedrun. i'm currently running a much more comprehensive playthrough than i ever have, not having played DMC since it came out in 2001, and the things speedrunners have learned is extremely helpful to my style of play, but i don't plan on speedrunning DMC

[@Excel86j]

Waifu once again hitting another one out of the park! freaking loooove this content!

[@fapsboi6971]

Why did they remove holy water in dmc and dmc 5

[@DimkaSulegnaa]

The faster fire rate ebony and ivory reminds me of something more or less the same in DMC3 Also quite the strange interaction with nightmare beta there, especially seeing as it’s supposed to do no damage against nightmare I really want to play DMC1 now lmao

[@AkaiAmeUltsch]

I love these Speedrun explanations, especially these ones where the explanation is that the American community discovered something that Japanese Speed Runners found out ages ago, roughly after the launch of said game.

[@nicholasepsilon3534]

i think it's hilarious that "pressing the button faster makes you shoot faster" is on the list like what.. what revolutionary idea.. XD

[@ryrin6091]

No it requires a particular rhythm. Just pressing it faster doesn't work.

[@shehzad_ali]

I have never played the game despite having it for many years but I watched the entire video nonetheless. Well explained and an interesting analysis of the core mechanics.

[@TheMagicCrafter]

I will never be able to do speedruns. I'm a DMC veteran and Shadow still kicks my butt all over the place 😵 Kuddos to those of you who handle the game with more grace.💕

[@SaltedCrunchie]

great video as always was very informative and entertaining keep up the excellent work

[@TasTheWatcher]

To clarify, Nightmare Beta only affects left-hand attacks _outside_ of DT, and going _into_ DT disables that multiplier, replacing it with extra DT damage, hence 'cancelling it out'

[@WaifuRuns]

Unlessssssss. You activate dt frame perfectly, then they stack

[@100hundert]

Love the Machinegirl tracks in the background 👌🎶👌

[@thinredpaste]

TIL I've been doing a speed strat by accident for 20 years just by shooting hella fast.

[@r.babylon2885]

The part about the handguns in the beginning reminds me of when this was my favorite game. I got so fast with manual firing that I carved a divot into my Square button.

[@traceyjones2242]

dmc 1s final bossfight is unique and dope asf

[@MrLulz9000]

Should do a video about that book when more of it gets translated.

[@humbertougalde6880]

I expected nothing less from the people who would become P+ games. As it happens, this is my favorite game. I've owned that book for years but I've only ever managed to Platinum the game on PS4. I'm not really interested in the speedrunning aspects of the game but I'm always eager to learn about just how much thought and care went into its creation. Another level of appreciation. Honestly, I don't think there'll ever be another game like it.

[@panagiotispagonis6856]

WAIT! There is a way to shoot faster with pistols?? HOW??

[@SpenceSpeedruns]

On PC - Keys J and L are your shoot buttons (Similar to Square and Circle on Playstation), by tapping between them in a rhythm it tricks the game into firing faster as it will register as double taps. Same can be done on console but it's a little bit more finicky.

[@panagiotispagonis6856]

@@SpenceSpeedruns THANKS A LOT

[@ArkhamsOutlaw]

It really been 20 years I'm lucky he made this game the last time I played dmc was from 2012 I played dmc devil may cry and I thought it was the end but dmc 5 came put in 2019 I was like wait what's this and bam devil may cry 5 and I was so happy then before 10 years I wait I did not know there was a new dmc coming out that my dmc true story thank you man you gave me a full explanation of speed run

[@umi9050]

ayo ginger claps at 16:47 fit too perfectly for nightmare bossfight

[@jaybeecaranza9471]

Thank god who discover the DT distortion because if that didnt discover, its so hard to speedrun the game

[@SwordSaint892]

i like the part where waifu said i'm a cute ♥

[@Eddie2P]

i have a speedrun collection of runs from like 2008 from some guy who did DMD SB and he explained most of this stuff back then. i think he lived in japan and is english native. was always trying to find good 100% DMD SB runs back in the day and it was really only the japanes ones that had any info on it.

[@prepter77]

how works the fast shooting with ebony and ivory?

[@khoo185]

Finding for JP speedruns is sometimes a challenge

[@FartherCaspian]

Oh my god they had Devil Distortions since the first fucking game!?

[@552jacki3]

I knew Beowulf in 3, 4 and 5 has just frame charge atks i didn't know Ifrit had it to that's actually so cool

[@14141313]

please more of this stuff

[@Frank_West]

Do the Japanese not have their own speedrunning community to share things with each other? He makes it sound like the west is the only ones with a speedrunning community.

[@outtaideas849]

When it comes to Speedrunning, usually communities blocked by a language barrier don't ever come into contact with each other.

[@Frank_West]

@@outtaideas849 Are you saying we or Waifu doesn't know of an Japanese speedrunning community, but there could be one and we just don't know?

[@outtaideas849]

@@Frank_West there is one, but almost no interaction bc of language barrier. The handbook would have found sooner if there was, and that handbook also pretty much confirms the existence of a Speedrunning community in Japan.

[@Frank_West]

@@outtaideas849 That's good to hear. I was scared they didn't have one. Thanks for the info.

[@maiastniki]

there's usually little crossover between foreign speed running n gaming communities only because of the language barrier. it would be weird to think that the west is the only place with a speed running community. a tiny bit ignorant

[@gothboy77z]

My favorite game series of all time

[@leonkenedy2988]

Wait, so distortion already exist in DMC 1? I didnt know this! Such a thing that got carried over with such detailed. I am so proud having to played all 5 dmc games. :)

[@oniluvsdmc7871]

Good stuff

[@rokkubell5986]

Do you have a link to the Devil May Cry 1 Dev book? I would love to read it

[@nannettebryant4779]

He said the thing POGGERS

[@cjtheman2985]

16:12 Wow so distortion was a thing in dmc1

[@aappaapp6627]

I love this channel, but I swear when you talk about the details, mechanics, and vernacular of speedrunning it's like it goes in one ear and out the other 😁 I mean that in a good way tho lol :)

[@ArgyrosVivum]

Dang that damage multiplier with ifrit and the nightmare gun , wow . Does any of those multiplier also apply to Alastor ?

[@FyreReign]

maybe if you punch during round trip

[@CYBEREALIFE]

I was like "oh god, what an awesome recomendation made by KZbin" then I clic on the video and the first thing I hear is Machine Girl and I was like "oh my, this video is definitely for me"

[@GrumpyCat97]

same, i thought that i am going to see something interesting, but nope :(

[@PaSStheMilkShake]

yo this videos dope frfr

[@WaifuRuns]

ON GOD :100:

[@afibuffygirl]

I seriously love these videos. I'd love to see a video on og re2 or re2r

[@1974dodgecharger]

Played this back in the day. Don’t remember a thing

[@shitemastermike]

theres always something new to find in this game, i need to learn japanese

[@Jewmanji-er8ip]

It's kinda funny that about half of this entire video focuses on Nightmare, because it's such a weird fucking enigmatically designed boss. That Ifrit damage boost and DT distortion is spicy tho 👌

[@SammEater]

I wonder why this guidebook was never translated or at least some of the tips.

[@maninthesnow4393]

Im still baffled about how well nightemare beta and sparda work on phantom.

[@SDNCam64]

Nice Vid. -Mamy

[@DarthDani]

What is the music you use in the video?

[@mothman1856]

This is all so coooooool!!!!

[@Cherrrryboy]

fuck the inverted flying controls on mundus though god damn

[@im2286]

Devil may die

[@SlickyGOGO]

Made my fuckin head spin when he said it was supposed to be RE4

[@izanagi_999]

You make speedrunning so interesting

[@scylla2784]

big ups we love machine girl

[@Filtiarin]

Not gonna lie dmc 1 is easily cheesed with the grenade launcher and nightmare

[@MILDMONSTER1234]

With how crazy DMD is they better be op

[@solsun7350]

Where can we find these translated pages?

[@Handles_arent_a_needed_feature]

I thought it was obvious that not spamming guns in dmc1 was faster

[@hisholiness4537]

Phantombabies chads where you at?

[@jeffpraterJSF]

But then.. Hefest got THIS run

[@aaronmorgan9444]

Due to family issues when younger I fell out of gaming. Used to love it tho and I still think I was quite good at a lot I played and I played a WIDE range of games since my mum was legally blind and had no hand-eye coordination whatsoever but loved platformers like James Pond, Alex the Kid (still haven't completed that f@#ker), RayMan, Sonic, Mario and so on. Whereas my taste was more Doom, Resident Evil, Any shoot um up & Any racing game. Then things sorta fell apart for me and I was on drugs by 13 and homeless at 15. I went to rehab and I went to prison. Neither I recommend. I now have my own flat, I'm back I reality, got a steady gf and I'm starting education in January. I never knew Speed running was a thing. I'd love2 get back into gaming again. I think I'd love the technical things that can b done now in the new generation of games.

[@maiastniki]

im so sorry. but im sure it feels good that everything is behind you, hopefully u can get back into gaming its the one thing that keeps my sanity

[@ibuj001]

Damn, hope you’re doing ok.

[@jaybeecaranza9471]

I thought taunting boss makes ur damage double

[@Fralohalo]

MACHINEGIRL !

[@BreezyBeej]

MACHINE GIRL

[@Omega_ID990]

Wish someone would explain the critical hit system more in depth or make a video about it. Or certain enemies have "weakness" to certain moves.

[@ArgyrosVivum]

I remember beating nightmare with vortex and nightmare beta

[@SonyaBladesBooty]

DMC1 is genius.

[@Karoool944]

Watching this makes me feel that Japanese people are some kind of aliens

[@dietrichrache1975]

Speedrunning that like and comment.

[@motivatedstorm3816]

DMC 1 is so 2000s, that the first thing you see when you boot up the game is already obvious enough to tell you when it came out