The Portal Speedrun That Gets Every Cube

How many cubes can you get at once in Portal? The answer may shock you.
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32 Cubes Run: • Portal 32 Cubes Speedr...
24 Cubes Run: • Portal 24 Cubes Speedr...
Music used (in order):
Quantum Conundrum OST - It's Our Destiny
Baba Is You OST - Wall Is Stop
Portal 2 OST - Robot Waiting Room #4
Corporate Clash OST - Last Tap!
Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door OST - X-Naut Fortress
VA-11 HALL-A OST - Karmotrine Dream
Ducktales (NES) - The Moon Theme
Thanks to UncraftedName and BaileyP2SR for helping with the video creation process.
Additionally shoutout to Imanex, whom (according to my sources) founded this silly speedrun category.
This video is not an actual speedrun world record, nor a speedrun tutorial. This video is a showcase of a speedrun strategy that goes in-depth to the various tricks, glitches and bugs that make the strategy possible.

[@Lily_Kuroki]

GLaDOS: I’m afraid this next chamber is impossible. Our previous test subject stole all the cubes in the facility. What a shame

[@TheBcoolGuy]

Don't worry. They have warehouses full of the things.

[@YetAnotherInv]

​@@TheBcoolGuy Unfortunately, they took those too.

[@bennyellis3512]

YYAAAAAS THAT NEEEEEDS TO BE A PORTAL2 MOD PLEEAASE Please someone make this a reality this is EXACTLY the kind of crap GLaDOS would say Pleeeaaaassseeee

[@Bulba413]

​@@bennyellis3512 okay but what would you do afterwards, like she said, the test is impossible

[@Zordlistair]

​@@Bulba413 sit and wait

[@dirt_dert_durt]

These glitches may seem strange, but remember, the portal gun is still in its testing phase

[@Azurious]

"Wait... the portal gun is still in testing?" "Always has been"

[@DarkNexarius]

@@Azurious "Testing never stops."

[@MrSlunkyPics]

“We’re between banks right now, so you can just make those cheques out to cash. Cave Johnson, we’re done here.”

[@alan_7390]

Precisely the reason why Aperture never took anything out and went bankrupt, I'm beginning to believe that this is all a reference to Valve itself.

[@orieltv2722]

*aperture science handheld portal device

[@fsxaircanada01]

“Why are you petting the radio with a clipboard?” I’m breaking laws of physics

[@bennyellis3512]

🤣

[@muffer62816]

21:48

[@angelinasurzhyk6655]

19:46 "It saves no time. Actually, it loses time. But it looks *cool* " What a mood, I love this

[@catboygremlin]

gotta love the style points

[@espenstoro]

Doing things that waste time but look good gets you world record.

[@CrzyKll]

Saw and read this as this part came up.

[@satibel]

Kill the frames save the cubes.

[@chibinezuk1]

​​@@espenstoro I guarantee you don't know any strats not from this category.

[@TinyDeskEngineer]

"It's actually quite simple" *starts the process of summoning a demon using portals*

[@bennyellis3512]

Yeah uhu Sumpn tells me otherwise

[@MandrakeGuy]

*its surprisingly simple!*

[@HopefullyJustMe]

Mumbo jumbo be like:

[@ItsVreenTM]

“After stylishly creating the ritual circle, we clip out of bounds and place a portal in hell.”

[@supersansyans]

Failboat be like :

[@arkdotgif]

21:16 if you’ve ever done square packing in maths you’d know how painful this is

[@NoNameAtAll2]

tightest packing of 17 squares in a square intensifies

[@quack3891]

@@NoNameAtAll2 it makes sense, I don't want it to make sense, but it makes sense

[@ultmateragnarok8376]

Why'd you say this

[@GaybrohamStinkton]

If youve ever done fudge packing in ass, youd know how painful it is

[@SpiritedSpy]

as a kid this literally was my DREAM, i loved hoarding cubes, chamber 16 quickly became my favorite just for how many cubes it had in the one room alone, i had always wished i could take not just the companion cube, but every cube i saw with me, at the time of course that sounded completely impossible, but seeing that people have found methods to do that exact thing makes me feel like a part of me is now complete. this is now my favorite speedrun of all time.

[@Eliza-hb1nc]

cool for you

[@maddoxmonteza]

ok

[@ijre]

hell yea

[@melodyMonger413]

@@maddoxmonteza ok

[@Eliza-hb1nc]

@@melodyMonger413 ok

[@dimarichmain]

I like how Portal evolved from a cool puzzle game to an incredibly complex meta game with absurd challenges, insane glitches and random bugs. I love it.

[@Hawk7886]

That's just speed running in general my guy

[@bennyellis3512]

🤣🤣😂

[@bennyellis3512]

Hey that's my line😂

[@TheAdvertisement]

The way they fill the elevator with cubes is adorable to me. They're so neatly lined up around the circular chamber, like a squirrel organizing his collection of nuts in a tree.

[@dirt_dert_durt]

I like this game-within-a-game type thing. It's like a physics based Collect-a-thon where you actually have to haul all your things around.

[@edmn]

And there’s me thinking that the gnome achievement in Half-Life 2 was hard!

[@rcpwProductions]

in half life 2 after you leave father grigori behind, i always made it this goal to pick up literally every box of ammo and gun i could find from that point up until the rebel base a bit later for some reason it was really fun to me because i felt like i was helping them

[@rerere284]

Far: Lone Sails and The Aurora Wager have entered the chat

[@nologin5375]

I like to imagine glados watching the player obsess over saving every single cube they come across (ignoring the absurdity of tangible objects completely losing tangibility for her in-game perspective)

[@wetnoodle5471]

I think if GLaDOS saw all of the cube fuckery involved it would be funnier.

[@nologin5375]

@@wetnoodle5471 Oh yea, what I mean is more like glados watching the player basically become ratman but with all cubes

[@JamesScholesUK]

"What are you doing? Stop that!"

[@GeekOfAllness]

That's why Portal 3 never released. Valve designed it, but newest incarnation of GlaDOS was given access to KZbin for machine learning. She created the Weighted Storage Cube Optimizer instead of alternate player models, and Valve had to pull the plug on the entire project before we lost Earth.

[@Sany_Tarn]

​@@GeekOfAllness isn't she already one? And does she have paperclips?

[@AthiosDvK]

I'm imagining GLaDOS watching on the cameras and just being like "okay she got a cube out of the chamber, how clever" *2 chambers later* "...and now she has 4. hmm."

[@MisterBurgerBeachball]

"Please be aware that circumventing the Aperture Science Material Emancipation Grills is a violation of Aperture Science company policy, no matter how many Weighted Storage Cubes you believe you need to fill the apparent square-shaped hole in your heart."

[@CoreyKearney]

@@MisterBurgerBeachball That's good, I read that in her voice and it works so well.

[@CalamityIDK]

Wait why is she fazing through walls

[@Manabender]

It's quite fascinating that any objects (besides the player) are even carried over between maps during loading transitions. It's been awhile, but I don't recall that being necessary to normal gameplay ever.

[@kham_pastgom]

It’s a leftover from the Half-Life 2 code. Portal is really just an advanced mod of Half-Life 2 in how it works.

[@hanthonyc]

@@kham_pastgom Interesting, is that a commonly used mechanism for HL2? I'm one of those freaks that's never had the time to play it myself.

[@LotsOfS]

@@hanthonyc In HL2 it is mostly just attention to detail, but for HL2Ep2 there is an achievement that requires you to carry an object from the start of the game to the end

[@hanthonyc]

@@LotsOfS Oh damn, that's still a great attention to detail. I can absolutely see myself trying to do that on my own as a kid, without even the achievement prompt haha. I used to collect the cameras and radios in Portal, and fizzle them all at the elevator. ;P

[@chargus]

@@hanthonyc airboats (vehicles are basically props when it comes to transitioning through map transitions, in hl2 you have multiple levels that you bring the airboat through)

[@microsoftpowerpoint4731]

Imagine having to do this in Portal 2… much larger rooms and much harder to get out of bounds. I’m imagining someone having to take a ride in a funnel to the part where he kills you with 30+ cubes

[@ARCHIVED9610]

hell 2.0

[@kracerplayz4033]

please tell me this is a thing

[@CantEven]

@@kracerplayz4033 it's unfortunately not possible due to the way that level transitions in Portal 2 work. While at the most fundamental level, the transitions technically work the same (keeping over objects and properties of the player, this is why crouch fly glitch preserve works), there is a layer of abstraction built on top (the level transition boxes) which effectively makes it impossible. If you brought a cube into a Portal 2 elevator, the level transition would teleport you to the box with no cube, and then you would transition maps in the box, and then at the start of the next map the box would teleport you into the starting elevator, cubeless.

[@karelpgbr]

@@CantEven Woah hello top level runner! Nice explanation

[@Yoob-yh5gb]

@@CantEven RIGGED

[@DemoR]

This is what I love about source games. The physics are so tight that the game plays great normally, but they're also close to completely falling apart that shit like this is possible

[@Phoenix-0455]

speedrunners really be doing everything but playing the game

[@seareez]

We play the game, just not how the developers intend us to

[@thephoenixking1086]

Reminds me of how I buy games but to mod/hack them instead of playing the game, I find more fun in working out how to mod games and having it work than playing the game itself, I kinda feel like I made the game my own.

[@ashhermosillo1384]

I mean, sometimes making your own toys is funnier

[@dr.waffle24]

​@@seareez pp😊

[@redRuxx]

What’s playing the game

[@Liquid_Galaxy]

Msushi making the most absurd things interesting

[@PancakeTAS]

this has gotta be one of the most insane runs of portal...

[@AdamHolland-Adz]

Next thing you know there'll be a speedrunning category for collecting all the cameras, or making GLaDOS a cup of tea

[@EnZoDxGaming]

This has gotta be one of the most insane runs of portal at 3am mr beast

[@Epsilon3141]

This reminded me, one time I accidentally trigger the item save glitch somehow, I only noticed when I loaded chamber 1 and the first cube fell through the floor, then the second cube started sliding around, I tried to throw it onto the button because it wouldn’t stay put on the button, but it fell through the floor and I was softlocked. That was a weird experience.

[@czech_ring]

I also once accidentally got the item save glitch on PS3 portal

[@hotdogbananaman]

I got it on my first playthrough of the game near the end, made the bossfight harder for sure! Although I didn't have to press the button to open the incinerator (they just fall through), I had to make so many saves so that I wouldn't get softlocked. Only realized what had happened when I saw a speedrun analysis of category that used this glitch

[@CadeCraze]

When I find out there are actually more than 24 cubes in the thumbnail: *we've been tricked, we've been backstabbed, and quite possibly bamboozled*

[@dracothewarrior4316]

He can bamboozle me any time~

[@neonzplayz5060]

Seriously Draco what the fuck

[@charley12241]

:(@@dracothewarrior4316

[@404nf_]

i love how its like you're a teacher on a field trip taking all the students down the place one by one

[@dripnx6381]

the fact that you did a trick that loses time but looks cool just because you wanted to do it and still snagged the world record shows that you truly are the worlds fastest cube mover

[@TinyDeskEngineer]

The cube droppers have that small untextured room above them because the cube droppers use env_entity_maker entities to spawn cubes. These reference one or more entities placed in a map via a point_template entity and will spawn them when triggered by map logic. That room is used to store the template cube and point_template entities, as entities cannot be placed out of bounds. Why the template cube still exists in the map at runtime I do not know, as there _is_ a setting in point_template to remove template entities when the map loads.

[@d3str0i3r]

so what you're saying...is we could sabotage the cube assembly line...and spawn only companion cubes

[@bennyellis3512]

Wait, so the redemption line scene from PORTAL2 is a not so subtle nod to this quirk?! Huh Weird but cool The more you know...*

[@bennyellis3512]

​@@d3str0i3r ....[sharp inhale]OOHh😃🤭hehehehehe

[@Streetcleanergaming]

So what your saying is you can sabotage the cube delivery line

[@urtfools]

I have spent 1023 hours on portal throughout my 12 years on steam. I have never once broken out of the map or done anything like this, I just like playing it. But my god, do I feel completely broken and sad every time I've had to send that poor companion cube to its death. It's so weird but it warms my heart to know that somewhere out there, some peope have managed to save these little guys.

[@ViIvaNunner]

this title and concept reminds me of something i loved to do in portal 2 co-op; which was trying to "save' as many cubes as possible; taking each cube as far as it can go whether it be to just before the emancipation grid but beyond the door its button is for; or throwing them off of the side just before the final grid before the elevators some of them are fairly easy but some of them are dang hard and i just think its fun

[@Yaraiare]

SiIvaGunner

[@funnyfella8198]

same! we'd also try it with turrets and most other physics objects.... aperture is going to be pretty low on chairs and coffee mugs from now on

[@MaskedDeath_]

It's always funny to me how the Portal speedrun community uses the fancy name "quantum crouch", while a GMod community I played in just went with "headglitch". From the names you might not figure it out, but it is indeed the same thing, just discovered separately by two different communities, and with different use cases (in a FPS it's an obvious advantage if you can see and shoot from behind cover while your model is fully hidden). And then in CSGO people call having only your head visible "headglitch", where it's not even a glitch, just a result of shooting from your camera in Source games.

[@wolfcl0ck]

The untextured rooms are there so that the cube dropper has a template entity to spawn. Since Portal 1 is a Half-Life 2 mod, NMS didn't actually put the time into creating unique cube and button entities. Instead, they made cubes with the name "box" and button brushes on top of buttons searching for entities named "box."

[@bennyellis3512]

Hehehehe... Wait, but what about the function of buttons detecting Chelle?

[@ettoresalvatore9437]

@@bennyellis3512 Chell is just a human-shaped box

[@MCAlexisYT]

@@ettoresalvatore9437 So, by that logic, a minecraft Steve with the Blockbench template skin should come out of cube droppers and work like regular cubes.

[@cloudtaker633]

"They all went to the same cube school together, but they've been separated by the chambers for years... Until now! With the power of speedrunning glitches, one woman has set out to reunite them all."

[@TeePeeWee]

Congratz on the wr for both 24 cubes and 32 cubes Msushi!

[@baotan774]

Game:*exists* Speedrunners for absolutely no reason:

[@Azurious]

This is a very wholesome speedrunning category

[@hanthonyc]

I always love when, as per speedrun fashion, the goal is proven arbitrary in the end. It's the JOURNEY, man!

[@cryolitegem]

This messed with my head so hard that for a moment I was wondering how you placed a portal on a ceiling before I remembered that that is literally how the game works.

[@MrLinkDay]

This is insane. It's basically if Chell went insane and thought every cube was a companion cube.

[@djjdjdj8383]

I'll never get tired of this content.

[@Le_leeeee]

Me too!

[@king_br0k]

"A lot, you can get a lot" pans to room full of cubes

[@MarkEichin]

I love that this game has been out for *16 years* and we're still getting entire new *concepts* of speedruns...

[@LinuxAvali]

I do wonder theoretically how many cubes could fit through the loading zones. 32 looks like it was already pushing the limit

[@autisticpi]

Two words: Square Packing.

[@june9914]

@@autisticpican you explain it in more than 2 worrs

[@autisticpi]

@@june9914 I took this from another comment, but basically, square packing is about trying to find how many squares can fit into a give shape, in this case, a circle. They are extremely difficult to solve, and often require extremely high precision to do in real life (the maximum packing).

[@trunkit8749]

The textureless room with a cube that “makes droppers work” is likely a cloning area. The dropper just clones that one template cube when it needs to make more.

[@spimbles]

man the sound of the portal gun shooting and portals being formed is so nostalgic, i love it so much

[@abuffzucchini]

How is it that I'm still learning things about this game? Amazing video Msushi, never expected anything like this would be possible.

[@PetrolHeadMotorsport]

This puts another definition to the term "speed cubing"

[@Norable426]

the humor in the 32 cubes section of the video was very good. the "actually... it loses time, but it looks cool." was my favorite bit.

[@paulmccartney2327]

Ok. fur crіnge

[@thephoenixking1086]

Now someone needs to speed-count how many times he said the word "CUBE" in this video.

[@Glirdo_]

I love these types of videos. I've watched you for 5 years now since your world record uploads (I started watching Can't even at about the same time) and I'm glad to see that your videos have improved drastically over these years and that so many people seem to like your content. Much love man

[@MechaLeo]

Cubes, my long standing nemesis across every video game of all time. I'm impressed that Portal is just one of those games where just about everything is possible with enough practice and intensive research. Seriously, this is more science than Aperture has ever discovered.

[@anon_y_mousse]

This reminds me of how I used to play Halo 2, where I'd have to carry a whole stack of weapons just so I would have enough to fight the next battle. Made it a lot more fun to just waste all the ammo I had at the end of a section knowing that all of it would disappear anyway.

[@infinityforever9975]

As a toontown fan, I cried when I heard Dave's phase 2 music being used for the trick part of the video. So, so, sO SO WELL DONE.

[@jonahvankesteren]

Very cool to see some of the new strats like isg on 00 and the way you get the cube in 04. Also just simply how fast you can do 32 cubes is insane!

[@SemiHypercube]

Portal Oops! All Cubes

[@LeoStaley]

We need a category for highest number of cubes active in a map. Hundreds of cubes, stacked precariously and carefully throughout whatever level has the most volume available for it.

[@B.anan.a]

I cant wait for a 3 hour run of speedrunners putting cubes on top of the map, sounds fun

[@X6herbius]

This is like "What if you had to complete Portal while also doing the equivalent of moving house every time you loaded a new map"

[@worldpopcoin]

We need portal 3 if speed runners are doing this

[@coryp2564]

Great video! I've never played Portal, but this is very interesting and I loved the twists that you put in there.

[@exterminator9676]

I can't believe you used Corporate Clash music!

[@nickagombar4992]

I honestly loved this video so much, great stuff 💓

[@killer1gamer1]

there are 2 types of portal glitches, the ones that look insane, and the ones that look goofy as hell

[@BuzzGoober2329]

This is the best KZbin video I’ve watched in long time, 10/10 Amazing job :)

[@KrispyKorpse]

Ive literally started binging your content just yesterday. Ive watched it a lot b4, but literally the algorithm gave me a lot of your videos a day before you upload. Holy shit this is trippin me out

[@antoinebulois186]

Incredibly cool and fun video, as usual 😃

[@piriteme]

I don't know why but the item save glitch is so funny to me, I just started laughing when everything just started sliding and bouncing lol

[@kaloofy3500]

Imagine glados just watching you ferry these cubes around like a little squirrel lmao

[@HarleenQuinzel-jt1zc]

GLADoS: "The material emancipation grille will destroy cubes and stuff, don't take them with you!" Chell: GLADoS: "Listen here you little sh-"

[@Beagle36]

bro i got so hyped when i saw the title. I helped make this category in the p2 coop boards. never got a run bc i couldn't get one particular (it was grabbing it thru the dropper)

[@Kids_Scissors]

16:48 lmao the way that cube swung out of the dropper was glorious

[@N64gamer124]

One thing that i love about speedrunnung is how advanced and well developed somebody's love and knowledge for a game is. and with this for fun sub-category is a perfect example of some creativity and technical knowledge. I do speedruns for fun myself, despite my mediocre times I get i still have fun and get to meet some awesome people who share the same intrest as we along the way!

[@Drawliphant]

This is how portal 1 canonically ended.

[@mackeralface]

This is absolutely hilarious. I love it.

[@greatvegetables]

You should be able to get more cubes than that. Because of how the Source engine works, a character’s voice lines can not play if they aren’t in the room. That means GlaDOS’s lines shouldn’t be able to play since she’s not in the room. To fix this, the devs put a cube somewhere out of bounds on every level named AI something and tell the game that that cube is GlaDOS. Theoretically, since you can go out of bounds, you may be able to find that cube and take it.

[@aphidamas1]

I like how you demonstrate the fail states for various challenges to the run.

[@Lanthardol]

Speaking of precise glitches, I seem to have discovered one with KZbin mobile, apparently if you tap the screen at the right moment while it rotates out of horizontal and into vertical. The overlay gets messed up and is outside the bounds of the video display. (Edit: not even sure if it’s from tapping the screen when rotating display, something just got messed up at some point, and I can’t recreate it) This will last when it automatically moves to the next video or when you click on a new video. It also lasts through a soft closing of the app (which makes sense, it’s just moving it to the background but it hasn’t actually closed). It lasts if you go watch a short and then come back to videos. The only thing that resets the video overlay back to what it should be is a hard closing of the app and reopening it.

[@key_bounce]

I've had other interesting layout glitches in youtube iphone browser. Yeah, painful at times.

[@timur_ivanov]

*Final fight: * showing glados his collection of cubes **

[@starrymic6588]

Those cubes above the droppers are instances. In hammer you can have an instance spawner that copies whatever object it's set to. That's why the droppers have an extra up there.

[@paulmccartney2327]

Whatever you say furcrіnge

[@lukehanson7554]

I love the use of Quantum conundrum music at the start of the video. I love that game

[@stormkitty3015]

that unloaded void effect makes my eyes hurt, damn

[@HECKproductions]

"just some normal portal gameplay" continues to distort the fabric of reality

[@grantb7901]

Im assuming the untextured room with a cube is used for templates that spawn duplicate cubes.

[@Garlic_Bread69]

Yes

[@gabepesco]

Always love your videos, mr. sushi :D

[@koralreef]

saw this video built from the ground up this is freaking awesome

[@null_verdict]

15:57 "In this state, item collision just becomes a suggestion" 😂

[@attmayMB]

The title is a lie!

[@CSharpDCS]

You never know when a youtube video about collecting every cube in portal is a lie.

[@00001Htheprogrammer]

11 hours ago?

[@Phoenix-0455]

omg are you a friend of msushi is that how you commented so early hi

[@oriyadid]

@@00001Htheprogrammer video probably releases early to supporters/friends

[@attmayMB]

@@Phoenix-0455 Msushi Patrons get early access to his videos!

[@RobSomeone]

This video inspired me to reinstall and play some more Baba is You.

[@aatsiii]

This is crazy and I love it 😂

[@SASTSimon]

LETS GO MORE MSUSHI :)

[@Obama_]

Great video

[@hoxorious]

Another Msushi video 🤩

[@dolchebeats]

god i love it when you upload

[@x8c8r]

the return of the king, i have been waiting for a new vid for a while

[@MaxwellCatAlphonk]

I can physically not unhear the Baba Is You music in ideos Same as for some osts in Rain world, Slime rancher, and Celeste

[@metaljeremy]

Great job

[@Totally_Bonkers]

i was able to take the cube from escape 01 to the end with me. I didn't become good friends with the companion cube, but me and the escape 01 cube were the best of buds

[@ZynSays]

I got into a state akin to item save glitch in HL2 the other day (complete with absurd bouncy props and save persistence) and I was absolutely perplexed! Love to see that it's an actual known, exploitable thing.

[@AhmedHan]

I like your explaining videos.

[@Jason-nz1ow]

yess msushi uploaded

[@fatefulwaffle]

MSushi, cube mover extraordinaire

[@sillymillieeee]

23:18 THERE I AM, GARY! THERE I AM!

[@Hawk7886]

Dude I absolutely love how you used songs from Baba is You, such a unique game. Edit: Ah man, realized which track it was, haha!

[@migolo1415]

0:06 "It's actually not too hard" *rips apart the fabric of space and time*

[@Definitely_Not_Clap]

why has this video gave me a fascination with the cubes

[@NatalieExists]

ok most of the time these videos feel like interesting info presented with a bit of comedy added to it, but this video is just one of the funniest things ive seen in a long time. specifically 15:22 made me giggle to myself for way too long, its amazing