Why Were These Pokemon Games Terrible To Speedrun? (And How Speedrunners Fixed Them)

[@DoctorSwellman]

Edit: Apparently I never bothered to learn that Ursaring is the pokemon's name and not "Ursaring". I've been saying Ursaring since I was a kid and I never bothered to correct it lmao Thanks for watching, be sure to check the description for links to resources and community runners’ channels! Note: There's some weird sound design in the middle of this vid. I was trying some new stuff and for some reason one section outputs in a way which creates a not good listening experience. I didn't have this issue in premiere, so I'll be more mindful of these things in the future!

[@runeicebird]

heya, the link in the description sound effect at 10:06 is also a little jarring, in both that and the mid section made me think I was hearing something outside my headset. really interesting video though, thanks for that!

[@aldelaro]

This was a really good presentation of the manip, better than my weirdly written blog post :D I still sometime am impressed how this one was possible from a technical standpoint because the closest manip I can think of that's as intense technically is the frlg one which gave you the seed, but the game scrambled it just enough after with NPCs that you had to input NPC movements into a program in real time to get your predictions. The colo/xd seed finder is notable because it gave you NOTHING. Every optimizations (using multithread, the clock set to narrow down the range, precalculating the first pass with a given range, etc...) had to be figured out because going through one of those battle screens was thousands of RNG calls...which doesn't scale well with millions or even billions of possible seeds. The convergence truly made the difference by making such a complex process incredibly simple to do. I joked that the process to generate the converged seeds was so intense, you could use it as a CPU benchmark (it can take 1-3 hours depending).

[@mrzwanzig460]

The GameCube Pokemon games are really cool runs, and I super appreciate all the work that has gone into developing these tools.

[@ThaRixer]

Nice vid doc! Custom Tools and programs in speedrunning are really starting to pick up steam in various communities to find stuff. Great coverage 😎

[@dafire9634]

Hey look who it is, i like your videos too!

[@Toothache42]

Colosseum was my first ever game to speedrun, way back in 09 when there were no tools like this available, somehow I lucked into a pretty strong duo for the run and finished the 100% snags category in 7:17. Probably well behind the current records now but I hope the strategies I used can help future runners

[@llamajuice]

That sound effect used for the red arrow flashing over espeon at 1:02 made me look out the window to see if someone was stealing my catalytic converter again.

[@Celticers]

another banger from the doc! Feels like the Editing is a step ahead from the last video, keep up the great work

[@evanmichaelray4360]

Love to see a new video from you pop up. Brought back some serious nostalgia from the GameCube days!

[@SaikyoKoutei]

Well done video, dunno why you made Typhlosion eye transparent both times though...make him look like a dragon ball villain :v

[@ryguyryziken2541]

Always nice to find videos like this! Looking forward to the sequel when we have secondary manip for Quilava/Teddiursa :)

[@chrilz1498]

These are two of my favorite Pokemon games, and I was not expecting them to be the focus! This was such an enjoyable watch, and cheers for the great research you did!

[@d00m5]

Top quality content, can we take a moment to appreciate how damn good the editing is!

[@Cosmolax]

Was cool to find myself in this! As someone who was around when all of this happened, it was a cool time to be a pokemon speedrunner. XD is a great game ❤

[@jasong7569]

Can I ask you some questions about speed running?

[@ReiniBlue]

That was really fascinating! There's so much work in so many niche communities that I'll never hear about

[@dr4gonblitz]

the goat at it again 🐐🐐

[@Webmage101]

4:19 I took psychic damage

[@LumanareM]

Interesting. Even if I didn't quite fully understand beyond the explanations of EV's and IV's.

[@BJGvideos]

IVs are part of how a pokemon is programmed, and EVs are stats the player can influence. Ie, IVs, individual values, are the individual stats, while effort values are changed by effort.

[@SaltpeterTaffy]

4:30 This scene transition is superb.

[@exarion1125]

Really well made video! I would like to make a minor critique, however. While RNG manipulation was an impressive find and helped lower times considerably, Colosseum and XD were far from the "worst" Pokemon speedruns before its discovery. In fact, they both required more game knowledge and adaptability than any other Pokemon speedrun I know. The major downside was the time required to get on a run, but this is still a problem due to the length of the whole run and the difficulty of the manip (most runners fail it about 70% of the time). Many runners prefer to run Pokemon without RNG manipulation for a variety of reasons -- more "pure" Pokemon experience, more game knowledge required, more excitement on good runs, fewer tools required to play. I know these videos tend to perform better with eye-catching titles, but I do think the title here is misleading.

[@Criggster]

The transition at 4:32 was insane

[@goblinbutler1313]

omg so much nostalgia in this video. gamecube was a banger console ngl.

[@Kasaaz]

What I learned most was that GC Pokemon Speedrunners have very interesting and artistic PFPs

[@devinusleton6634]

yknow that one video of the pink mascot going bananas on the drums? yeah this guy is that but with video editing like just going absolutely above and beyond for reasons i will never understand

[@Bonecrusher1022]

I used to watch this game in the early days of twitch when the runs were over hour longer than what they were now (assuming they even finished). I remember watching runs Colosseum up to the final gauntlet of trainers in Realgam Tower and people would sometimes just keep the timer running cause they didn't have time to do another run and spend hours trying to win at all lol

[@aldelaro]

I happen to remember pre and post manip and it was so interesting because pre, you actually could watch a stream entirely of early resets due to poor luck. Memes were made about boats being stolen and base exploding :D

[@StepBaum]

s/o to aldelaro5, one day ill finish my WR Progression vid on XD and Colo PS. Great vid

[@Kyoslilmonster]

Another swelly banger! Keep up the great work dude!

[@sagacious03]

Neat analysis video! Thanks for uploading1

[@dimthedimwit7221]

holy crap lois its aldelaro5 from bug fables

[@MrBrownsugar85]

lol love the ffx music in the background

[@Criggster]

The Doc is back 🥳

[@MoneyHoneyBunny]

Thank you for the reminder here. I own Colusseum but, Idk Ive never finished it! Idk why, I just play so many games, plus my social life and alllll the shit ive done in my life, I just never had the time to finish them. Then again I own shield and sun and never finished those either. BUT IM FINALLY DOING THEM ALL this winter. I just finished X and Y for only the 2nd time and LOVED it, such an underrated game, 1 of the best tbh. I think after the 3DS games before switch, Im gonna do the 2 Gamecube ones finally! :D wish me luck!

[@jurandfantom]

2 seconds over 4:30h long run? That sound like nightmare o_O

[@chrishunter9185]

You're the best, Swellman. Thanks for the pretty in-depth look into speedrunning.

[@damiencouturee6240]

Well Doc, I gotta say this videos swell, man.

[@sergiomejia7720]

What did you use to datamosh @4:32 and @8:07 ???

[@DoctorSwellman]

All done in After Effects!

[@Swagtildawn]

These videos are leagues ahead of Summoningsalt's videos. These are concise, well explained and arent 54 minutes of "in 2013 darkprince334 broke the record. Then in august of 2013 emojifucker broker the world record. Then in 2014 etc"

[@IsoYear]

my wife and i got a switch for christmas and i havent played a pokemon since gold. missed out on the gamecube ones bitd. which pokemon should we start with ? :D. love your videos doc

[@BJGvideos]

The Gamecube games give you starters to begin with. In Colosseum you start with Umbreon and Espeon and in XD you start with Eevee

[@kyleellis1825]

Gale of Darkness is a little more polished than colliseum. I'd suggest doing it first. Pokemn Omega Ruby/Alpha Saphire are epic culminations of the main story. Pokemon Black/White are soft reboots and excellent stories. Scarlet and Violet are an incredible open world.

[@Vmac1394]

Finally an RNG system in a game that seems sensible to me. For videos like this on other games, I was repeatedly wondering why the devs didn't base the RNG on say the millionths digits on the system clock since that's effectively true random and is what I'd do.

[@aldelaro]

Well, first, it depends on age. Some hardware did not support this so you had to use some kind of CPU bound register which was kinda random, but much less effective. But in most cases for modern games, it's a mistake. I heard of the remake of link's awakening that they seeded the game on the second of the clock, but it's a switch: they had access to a lot more precision.

[@avasam06]

Reminds me of TWW kaboom minigame tool

[@DoctorSwellman]

Ah yeah, I forgot the community had a tool like that. Cool stuff!

[@darkbegin]

Insane!

[@MrGermanpiano]

One of the cases where I'd lobe to get a bit more technical info, but this would probably not be very interesting for many viewers

[@aldelaro]

The description links my blog post which has more info, but it's not as well written so just be warned, but it is more dense in details if you feel like it :)

[@bradenkropp7956]

I’m still impressed with the times dam y’all are fast. Feel like spend that much time deciding my character name jk

[@Epzilon12]

Might be a weird take, but I don’t think they should be using a metronome to time it. To me that feels… tool assisted in a way. I think research tools used out of the game are cool and finding a way to have a more consistent seed is something Pokémon games needed. I just think they should time it. But hey, it’s not my game so if their community prefers it go for it!

[@MrPsichoKid]

Ev and Iv were introduced in Gen 2, not Gen 3. Gen 3 introduced the natures

[@ecocodex4431]

I guess we are going To Zanarkand 😿

[@AubLambe]

Great video, clean editing, but I found it a bit distracting.

[@hipstersephiroth3722]

Thank you being loving kind all mighty God help me and these people become more like u

[@Kasaaz]

Oh no, this graphing style is catching on.

[@SilentVinyl]

Cool

[@kyleellis1825]

I have never understood how it can be called speed running a game when you skip mst of the content. I want to see peple finish the content as fast as possible. I don't want to watch someone use the World 1-2 warp pipe, then the 4-2 pipe and skip to the final world. I lose 90% of the experience.

[@musicstuff6310]

There are different versions of just that. Usually a speedrun is defined by beating the game as fast as possible, but there are 100% and other categories

[@engerlandt]

If you need to manipulate 'randomness' to succeed in speed running a game, you might as well just cheat to guarantee that outcome. There's no skill in resetting the game until you get dealt a good hand.

[@Mobius14]

There is no skill in RNG either.

[@angeldude101]

This is why Minecraft speedruns have so much cheating. It can be fun to try to get the best time you can with a given seed, but traditional competitive speedrunning just doesn't work with RNG heavy games. You simply can't have fair competition if times swing so wildly even with the same level of skill.

[@kyleellis1825]

Or how they skip entire chunks of content. I don't win a marathon by taking shortcuts to the end, I get disqualafied.

[@dadbodenvy4247]

@@kyleellis1825 speed runs and marathons are literally different things, right now you're basically complaining that you can't travel in basketball or something

[@kyleellis1825]

@@dadbodenvy4247 And I'm saying I have 0 interest watching someone skip 75% of a game and say they beat it. I want to watch them finish the entire game (marathon) as fast as they can. I want to see someone beat all 8 worlds of Mario, not use both warp pipes and do 8 levels total. If people are skipping content, they didn't finish the game.