8 Speedruns That Have Been Completely Ruined

[@Xem92]

I made a spiritual sequel to this video! If you want to see the stories of 9 speedruns that *were* ruined, but then a trick came along that SAVED them, you should watch this video: kzbin.info/www/bejne/h4q7goN5as6jgbM

[@djtoxicdhg]

L + RATIO

[@Xem92]

@@djtoxicdhg You failed

[@ryuk5673]

⁠@@Xem92your videos are very cool I hope the algorithm favors u and u get way more subs

[@Syphrus]

In skate 2, there is a category for completing every career challenge. The problem was ppl were running the category for years without realizing they didn't beat every career challenge. The game gives you a very linear set of challenges. And eventually no more challenges pop up meaning you beat every challenge. However there are 7 pools in the game you can find. The game only requires you to find 4. The remaining 3 were left out because it wasn't required to beat the game (any%). No where in the game was it incentivised to get the remaining 3. As it turns out, there were more career challenges if you found the remaining 3, invalidating 5 years worth of speed runs.

[@Xem92]

That's so sick, ty for letting me know! When did that happen?

[@Syphrus]

@@Xem92 3 years ago. But now I'm trying to get the community to start running it again after all this time that includes the 3 missing pools.

[@Literally_Kirby]

Hi

[@greenoftreeblackofblue6625]

Maybe they should of checked that Instantly

[@niyo919]

Yo​@@Literally_Kirby

[@nathanblackburn1193]

The irony of speedrunners optimising a game so intensely that they ruin it, kinda silly when you think about it

[@percher4824]

Given the chance, players will optimise the fun out of a game.

[@GoldMike_]

Personally I don't believe speedrunning shouldn't be done because it's fun. The entire point of speedrunning a game should be to get the fastest time possible with no restrictions placed upon the player except modding or hacking. That includes using specific versions of the game on specific hardware even if they're incredibly hard to find or expensive. If you can't afford it then f*** you go earn some money if you want to be competitive. Also only 2 categories should exist for all games any% and 100% with 100% being the most important one because it shows true mastery of a games. It's all about optimisation not having fun. Efficiency above all else even to the detriment of the player and viewers. It's why it irritates me when they ban certain things. Like no that's against the premise of speedrunning. Banning any technique because it's not fun is just some guy being butthurt that he isn't good enough to use it.

[@percher4824]

@@GoldMike_ Ginormous L take. Speedrunning isn't about speed or fun. It's about the community that gets built around the race, and just like any other kind of race, speedrunning has rules. They ensure that it's fun to watch, fun to participate, remain accessible to more than two people on the entire planet, and stays competitive. You even have proof in the video why it's necessary. When things get focused too much on efficiency, people stop running even though the record can still be pushed further. What's the point of a race if no one wants to participate?

[@GoldMike_]

@@percher4824 See it's subjective. To me I couldn't care any less about the community. I only care that someone can bring the time to complete as close to zero as physically possible. Who cares about competing fairly or equally. You're either the best or you're a nobody. But again it's all subjective.

[@edoardocaccia6226]

​@@GoldMike_I'm speechless

[@Landjrin]

That DK64 one is nuts. That's like discovering there was a 121st star in Mario 64 or something like that.

[@ihatethisgame6827]

Yep. And dk64 has over 1k collectables if I remember right, so literally about 10x worse than if it happened in sm64 100% lol

[@MyHandleIsAplaceholder]

You could say it's... Bananas

[@maestro9765]

It's cocoNUTS

[@someguy7777]

why do i have the feelings that this comment is gonna age well?

[@mynameskris]

its like discovering a 151st pokemon in generation one. crazy.

[@Dirakiaa]

Pokemon Red is also fucked... You barely leave your room and warp straight to the Credits (Hall of Fame)

[@Xem92]

Please tell me you've seen the Pokemon Yellow TAS with arbitrary code execution! It's the fucking coolest video I've seen in a minute

[@Dirakiaa]

@@Xem92 omg yeah, TASes in general are super fun to watch, be it Meme SPeedruns (Triforce% my beloved

[@Cousinouf]

on Pokémon Red tho Glitchless is by far the most popular category

[@InsertFunnyThingHere]

​@@CousinoufHow does a glitchless run even work though there's so many glitches in that game. Like what happens if you just land that 1/255 miss chance on a 100% accurate move? Does that count as a glitch? If an opponent misses a 100% accurate move you just reset the run?

[@LloydTheZephyrian]

@@InsertFunnyThingHere My guess is that glitchless means that you're not trying to use the meaningful glitches and the glitches that may happen are ideally of the kind that don't help the run.

[@trainerlsw]

Other games: Has insanely difficult mechanics that can make a run unbearable to play or has insane glitches that makes runs completely boring or too difficult to be enjoyed. DK64: Comically invalidates 9 speedrun categories because of a single missed collectible.

[@azer67]

The Wind Waker is very much still alive, but people usually run other categories. The most competitive one is Any% No MSS which bans manual superswimming and puppet ganon skip, leading to a difficult but fun and doable run !

[@Xem92]

Thank you for informing me! I wasn't aware of that, and it's very cool to hear the best speedgame still gets action

[@UnFuzed_]

​@Xem92 we also have All Dungeons which Linkus7 has been grinding for for a few weeks now. It is by far the hardest category with multiple zombie hovers. Manual super swim and even mutiple frame perfect tricks to skip a cutscene or to skip ever getting the bomarang. It is an amazing game to watch and the base idea of alot of the tricks are extremely easy to do like storage that allows walking up walls, skipping boss keys or even super swimming automatically just doing them for a specific purpose and other tricks makes it insane.

[@fatherunreal931]

I enjoy the randomizer runs likus does

[@harrylane4]

I’m only really familiar with the wind waker scene, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the case for a lot of these. There are usually two reasons people create a new category: a previous category did something that isn’t fun, or the new category does something fun the last one didn’t. Any game with a half decent scene size is being played because they love the game, not the category

[@blahblahgdp]

Thats why I believe nothing new can "ruin" a game for speedrunning since players can set their own categories

[@landonhagan450]

I think the strongest case for being truly ruined is OoT. There comes a stage where the game is so optimized that you're barely even playing it anymore, so what's even the point? By then, it's practically what philosophers would call a "solved game".

[@ubermaster1]

I think that's why there's still a consistent boom in randomizer speedruns, it still allows runners to do the strats they have learned over the years, but now they have to constantly rely on quick on the fly strats to deal with the RNG of seeds.

[@iimuffinsaur]

@@ubermaster1 fr. randomizer runs are so popular and just getting more random lol. for any game it allows someone to stick in their niche, but have not experiences rather than just replaying the same game over and over.

[@webbowser8834]

Fun fact, about 2 months ago they discovered a brand new route for Any% no arbitrary code execution (ACE) which skips the Deku tree entirely and uses Dodongo's Cavern to wrong warp to the tower collapse scene. Game is very much still alive.

[@landonhagan450]

@@ubermaster1 Exactly. Both have largely the same audience, so randos overtaking speed running categories in popularity is generally indicative that the run is in a bad place, imo.

[@landonhagan450]

@@webbowser8834 Alive =/= good.

[@megacherv]

Fun fact related to the Majora's Mask ruin (which is called a 'buffer overflow'), that is how Insomniac used to patch RaC3's online mode. Because the PS2 didn't have a HDD by default, they couldn't just upload fixes or balance changes. Instead, they realised that the EULA that you download when you go to connect online, they would download more extra data that eventually overwrote a function pointer, allowing them to then 'patch' the game. I can't find the interview right now but it's such an incredible trick that they utilised a flaw to their advantage

[@NikoJr.]

It's funny that they had to break their game to fix it

[@solsystem1342]

​@@NikoJr. Little Niko Jr 😍🥰🤗💜 -Niko

[@atpyro7920]

PS2 and PS3 era Insomniac were masters of doing unspeakable black magic to get their games to work in insanely short amounts of development time, it really gives you some perspective on how hard it is to actually make a game under such a strict deadline. Unfortunately that also came back to bite them in the ass when it comes to rereleases, but that’s some other studio’s problem, right?

[@SunRiza7]

I also saw that RaC video lol

[@megacherv]

@@SunRiza7 oh I read this in I think it was GamaSutra yeeeaaars ago lol

[@canolathra6865]

RNG is always the largest issue with speedruns. The moment the fastest time is only available via RNG the run becomes an awful time for everyone.

[@mardan2876]

Speedrunners included. MANY such cases

[@DensenBro]

yet ppl speedrun yugioh which is argueably the biggest rng fest there is, with the game not being dead

[@KaitouKaiju]

​@@DensenBroAt least Yu-Gi-Oh is an inherently luck based game being a card battler. The problem is when things that shouldn't require luck do and when the odds required are so low, skill isn't the point anymore.

[@freimutig_pappe4409]

CoD Zombies EE speedrunners know the pain

[@cs8712]

RNG in speedruns often helps lower the barrier to entry, presuming there are no RNG timing exploits

[@bread2369]

The fact that Paper Mario 64 was not mentioned is a crime. The fact that you have to play Ocarina of Time for the majority of time in order to get a world record will always be funny to me.

[@iimuffinsaur]

*what*

[@timotheatae]

​@@iimuffinsaur Stop 'n Swap world records fr

[@andrewrobinson8542]

You can use Ocarina of Time to change some memory values on your N64 then switch to Paper Mario and use those changed values to warp to Paper Mario's credits.

[@Bonecrusher1022]

ACE categories just never had much appeal. That one in particular was just viewed as a novelty so people played it for a month when it was new, then never did it again lol. The one exclusively in PM64 just had a new record set last week but it's pretty dead too

[@GDNachoo]

WHAT LMAO

[@gilolaes4725]

Shift has a stranglehold on BfBB is probably the biggest understatement of this video when you consider some of the crazy stuff he helped discover in that game.

[@lordmarshmal_0643]

Bro took "practice what you preach" personally

[@bigbangbot-SuperSqank]

Nice video Xem. Seeing this has reminded me that I once completely ruined a speedrun. Disney's Extreme Skate Adventure is basically Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 but with a Disney skin. The game was a short speedrun which overall was not too difficult for newcomers to get into. It didn't have many skips, exploits or glitches, it was just a clean run which needed strong routing and movement. One day however, I found a trick called menu storage. You can pause the game when a cutscene starts or when you pickup a collectable and it will allow you to skate around during cutscenes while the save menu was open. This would naturally let you skip cutscenes. Originally, it was a very niche trick which was not very consistent or applicable but runners eventually found a way to make it consistent, allowing it to be used in a bunch of places. This started off by allowing the player to skip a few cutscenes, you could only really do it in certain places for specific missions but then I came in and caused chaos. I found that you could chain together menu storage across multiple missions which meant that on some levels, you could play the entire level with menu storage. This saved a whole bunch of time, allowing you to skip many cutscenes but the problem was that you only really had one chance to set it up (and if you missed it, you just missed it) and when you got it, you had to play the game while a big menu was overlaying the game and you had to make sure that menu stayed open while you played. It made the run faster but it significantly increased the barrier to entry and it turned veterans away from the game, killing any momentum it had. It was an arbitrary trick which made the game harder and more annoying to play and nobody wanted that. A no menu storage category was made later on which did breath some new life into the game but this admittedly happened way later than it should have and that was my fault. People simply didn't make too much noise about menu storage, everyone hated it in the background but they simply moved on with their lives rather than making a fuss about it (until years later at least). Nobody has ran the menu storage category since I pushed it while the no menu storage run has gotten to a point where the run is shorter than the current menu storage record. And that is the story on how I ruined a speedrun. Out of the many games I have speedran, that was the most detrimental contribution I had made to a run. It was a shame because it is a neat little game and the trick was going to be found eventually but it is still something I feel guilty about. These things just eventually happen to some runs and they are more or less inevitable but it does hurt when you are the one that finds these things and it has a negative impact on the community.

[@Xem92]

If it wasn't you, it was always gonna be someone. Be proud, Sqank. You forced the community to face reality!

[@jansongin2636]

If someones bet the run without using menu storage they should just do it in the menu storage category easy world record

[@TheGreenTyphoon]

this is so funny because in my main speedgame for many years, transformers for ps2, a gltich, also called menu storage, also allows for the stacking of cutscenes in that game, which can lead to cutscene skips and even teleportation. It's definitely forever altered the way we play certain levels but luckily it can only be used under very specific circumstances. It's something ive had to keep my eye on for a while because new developments come out sometimes. It's def the biggest kind of glitch i would consider separating the categories for

[@RJA]

Based Sqank

[@fresh9530]

yoo, I love your vids on shit smash moves 👍

[@LunaticJ]

Dang the OoT part really hit home. I really wish people knew more about categories like MST (Medallions, Stones & Trials), as well as GSR (Ganondorf Source Requirement). GSR is basically a No Major Glitches category that’s been around for a long time, and bans RBA, GIM, wrong warps, and SRM. There is so much variety and community activity like Bingo and DannyB’s OoT Master Series task competitions that unfortunately don’t get much appreciation. I’m very impressed with the research on the OoT part, and I hope people take the time to check out some of the more competitive categories!

[@BigHailFan]

whats the origin of the GSR naming?

[@LunaticJ]

@@BigHailFan Category was originally called “No RBA/WW” until 2015 after the discovery of GIM, so the category was renamed to “No IM/WW”. In 2019, people were debating whether Blue Warp cutscene skips in Shadow and Spirit temples counted as wrong warps and whether they should be allowed. This sparked a community wide debate, so runners then voted for a new name. “Ganondorf Source Requirement” was chosen since people wanted to have the category name reflect the requirements rather than the restrictions (collect all items needed to beat Ganondorf from their original sources)

[@BigHailFan]

ahhh cool, thank ya.

[@kode-man23]

Maybe I’m just dumb, but I did not understand his explanation of OoT at all. The issue is that the category is too short now? Is it still RNG? I feel like he jumped around waay too much. Maybe there a lot of assumed prior knowledge for these skips?

[@Xem92]

I still fully believe MST is one of the best categories throughout the history of speedrunning

[@healthyminds9279]

As a semi casual Mario Sunshine speedrunner, the game is incredibly fun to practice and speedrun! The key is to simply have reasonable goals instead of trying to get crazy perfect runs. Probably true for many other games.

[@Xem92]

Based mentality. Best of luck achieving your goals :3

[@Robbie1okay]

ZFG quit any% a long time ago, he mostly ran other categories with 100% being the main one. Only reason he started pumping randomizers was because a couple runners were trying to work out a potential new route for 100% and it was taking a long time so he decided to try to get good at randomizers while waiting since he was decently interested in it with how many tricks and glitches can be used in randos that aren't viable or worthwhile to use in current speedruns. He still plans on going back to 100% at some point. Also missed a chance to showcase how bad memory overload barrier skip in WW was at the start. It saved time overall but there were many spots in the run where the runner would just sit spamming the bow while counting to try and reach close to the amount needed to unload the barrier and finish it off in the castle.

[@Need2disconnect]

0:04 “…but this can come at a price” carpel tunnel 😔

[@DoctorSwellman]

I'm glad you're getting into content like this. Having general speedrunning edutainment for the masses is something I've been missing ever since a lot of channels decided to niche down into their own respective areas. Very good video homie

[@Xem92]

As always, I appreciate you so much

[@drasticgray]

For perspective on how obnoxious wind waker runs are: After doing a whole run of complex tricks requiring insane dexterity, you would skip puppet ganon. There's a vertical climb after the boss, then you go fight the real ganon and win the game. To get to the top of the arena the puppet ganon fight without fighting him, you used to need to execute a zombie hover. This trick requires a lineup, and high speed button mashing for an exhaustingly long time. As you get to the top of the room with no HP, you can't land on the platform with 0hp or you'll get a game over. Luckily there's a pot with a fairy in it up there, so if you can make contact with it during the hover you'll be able to fight ganon and finish the game. I remember the video of the dude zombie hovering in wind waker just before the final boss at WR pace, and the fairy doesn't revive him because it flies in random directions every time. He quit the category. I don't blame him at all, polishing your skills at something to a ridiculous degree and just having to accept that most runs aren't very lucky and you wont get your prize must feel horrible.

[@king_dedede]

In UYA's case I think it's also worth mentioning the new trophy strats (you unlock a PSN trophy and press load in the pause menu, but the load screen lags for about 10 seconds and you can load a file in a place you're not usually supposed to). Back when they were first about a year ago pretty much everyone agreed it was a big improvement, since the only implementation in runs skipped a very boring 6 minute arena mission. Since then, there's been a bunch of research and now there's massive skips in almost every category (e.g. blackwater early mission 3) which sounds nice at first, but in the long run I think it makes the game worse. If you want to be competitive, you now have to close the game after every run past the first 9 minutes to reset the trophy using a homebrew tool, which makes doing attempts a lot less fun for me. We've been looking for a way to do these strats without trophies for a while now but haven't had any luck, and the new skips are way too fast to just not go for, so it's not a great situation. Anyway, if there's any PS3 homebrew developers reading this, there is a $50 bounty if someone can add a trophy lock/unlock feature to racman 😅

[@Xem92]

Ok pins this so homebrew developers can save us Ratchet runners from a watery grave

[@ghz957]

😊

[@mokMan23]

no need, trophy unlocking's been around for years on CFW, and the latest evilnat CFW has a trophy unlocker plugin.

[@king_dedede]

@@mokMan23 CFW only works on older PS3 models, and a lot of rac runners (including myself) play on the super slim model, which isn't compatible with CFW. Right now what we use for trophies is Apollo Save Tool, which works on any PS3 model and any firmware, but like the CFW tool you have to close the game to access the tool, which takes a couple minutes and makes doing attempts very tedious. What we'd like to do is to integrate the trophy locking/unlocking into Ratchetron (VSH plugin that hosts a TCP server to read/write game memory) so it can be done while the game is running, which would be significantly faster and more convenient, and make doing runs/practice more fun and efficient

[@mokMan23]

@@king_dedede super slims actually *can* run CFW, and again, just use a trophy unlocker, they work with HEN too, without exiting the game, and what you've described already exists, CCAPI/TMAPI, which barely works without a DEX converted CFW PS3. no hacker will answer your bounty, ESPECIALLY for how pathetically low it is when coding for the PS3's already known to be difficult. you're really better off buying a CFW compatible slim or phat for what you're trying to do.

[@caliburnleaf9323]

Wind waker really was ruined for me by the introduction of manual superswim. It's bad for the runner, it's bad for the viewer, it's bad for everyone. It basically renders the first couple minutes of the run unwatchable as the screen is reduced to pause buffering and rapid camera switching. Zombie hover is bad for the runner too, but at least it's hype for the viewers. That said, MSS and zombie hover would both still exist even without barrier skip. That could have been presented better.

[@alexlovesyouvt34]

over a decade of speedrunning a game really does take a lot out of you if u ever catch SHiFT streams cuz he looks always miserable doing it

[@cameronbigley7483]

I remember when BfBB was nearing the Sub-1hour mark, he looked so jaded with the whole thing back then lmao

[@fenixchief7]

Not a very fulfilling life. Almost every speedrunner that can make a living on their personality drops speedrunning for a reason.

[@ideac.]

shift is a full time lolcow, obsessed narcissistic streamer

[@ShenDoodles]

@@ideac. Is he really? I’ve watched a lot of SHiFT and he seems like a decent guy who’s just not the best at looking excited. He’s said numerous times that BfBB is his favorite game and he still loves playing it.

[@ideac.]

@@ShenDoodles you just dont watch him enough, he is absolutely insane, recommend taking a look at the troll vids since it shows the reality of things honenstly, he is really unhinged and toxic

[@thewinterprince1731]

"Here's a stick. Get to whacking, ocarina boy." Beautiful. XD

[@wile123456]

16:30 "You wouldn't expect it from a game made for children" the irony of all the games covered are games made for children (and 99.9% of the runners playing them played them when they were kids) 😂

[@xXRunDeathXx]

Minecraft was not made for children as the target audience when it was brought to life by Notch I also struggle to believe that OoT was made for children given how dark it is

[@balakehb]

@@xXRunDeathXx definitely too young to remember that kids programming never used to shy away from mature themes in the 80s and 90s. Good example is The Simpsons, was inherently a children's TV show and one of the first season episodes dealt with themes like depression and unalive attempts. I don't think OoT was specifically made for children either though, but it was heavily marketed towards them

[@765craven4]

I don't think you understand the difference between "Made for children" and "Made to be accessible to children". Tons of games and shows are made to be accessible to children, but that doesn't mean they're meant to be exclusively for them.

[@thegreatgoobert5847]

​@@xXRunDeathXxit really isn't that dark, especially compared to other zelda games. The only thing that I find seriously questionable would be the dead hand since it appears to be covered in blood and is just generally unsettling. But even then the worst case scenario is the kid gets some nightmares for a week.

[@elivcdxv1852]

​@@thegreatgoobert5847 real, there are "dark" undertones and the shadow temple/bottom of the well, but besides that, there's nothing in it that's super "ooh, spooky"

[@aughlnal7333]

4:55 You don't open the chest, that would stop the glitch By going in front of a chest with GIM you manipulate what item you will get when resurfacing from water

[@xardnaslp3171]

Dream didn't cheat a world record, his best cheated run got 5th place. Imagine not getting first place WITH cheats lmao

[@Nobody_Shroom]

Lmao 🤣🤣

[@justinalicea1590]

Because it wasn't intentional. It was a mod to make Manhunt's more consistent that was left on when Dream started practicing for the next Manhunt due to an update, and Dream only submitted the runs because chat said he should.

[@Maxie962]

@@justinalicea1590 imagine believing what a pathological liar tells you.

[@justinalicea1590]

@@Maxie962 I'm believing what I saw and heard, because it is in the streams. It was chat's idea, not Dream's. And Dream has no reason to cheat to get 5th place. This is no "hardworker wants to be on top and gives in to cheating to get there," he got 5th place, and speed running had long since stopped being a key part of his thing. He got 3 legit world records for the competition and then refocused on Manhunt. That was the point of the speedruns. No matter how you put it, Dream's only crime was submitting the runs at chat's request. If he never did that, nothing would have happened even if someone called it out because they weren't done to get records to begin with. And even Karl Jobst agrees that it is far more likely that Dream's code was accidentally left on than being maliciously turned on.

[@herkules593]

Well yeah nah. He knew he had a dev modding his game and playing with these mods was a core part of his channel. Then after overwhelming evidence surfaced, indicating his game was modded, he hired this dodgy astrophysicist to come up with wonky numbers instead of investigating if his game was actually modded. His case is is more than dubious...

[@roobeedooo]

boxxy, my queen, absolutely ruined RaC3

[@mcklucker17]

sounds like they need a boxxy and noboxxy category split

[@Alex-ex8ob]

@@mcklucker17 We have one of these, although this was created late into the video's development and so it was left out of the script. As xem stated, not every boxxy is viable so it's closer to a 50/50 split on whether a planet has a boxxy or not. The category is called "NG+ No BP" and currently exists on the category extension leaderboards.

[@roobeedooo]

@@mcklucker17 some people are looking into a category that doesnt allow the succ canon

[@RJA]

Hi my name is...

[@Zzz-j2f]

You is trollin

[@tkienjoyer]

27:45 No, the bad news of this route isn't the trades. The trades were only a problem before bastions when you would mine gold ore. This reached it's peak with Korbanoes' sub 15, where he got 12 pearls off of 5 gold if I recall correctly. The bastion actually almost completely obsoleted this, because of the "shit load of gold" you mentioned earlier. There's enough piglins trading and gold to be traded you almost always could exit a bastion with more than enough resources. This rng factor only started coming back with calculated travel, but we aren't there yet. The rng of this category at the time was getting a good nether enter with (ideally) an iron pickaxe, and then actually getting a bastion. There was fortress first world record, but it got to the point where you needed the safety net of fire resistance and the mobility from pearls to get a top level time, so the rng mostly came from getting both a bastion and a fortress close enough to your enter portal, and then the last rng hurdle back then was getting an exit portal near the stronghold.

[@BlueCyann]

You have some good additions but you're also wrong. Virtually every development in RSG speedrunning has reduced RNG, not increased it. including calculated travel, which turned post-fortress play from an inevitable game of "how far am I from the stronghold, 2000 blocks or 200 blocks" to a matter of seconds difference between one pearl throw and maybe three, making nether terrain a bigger factor than distance per se. But virtually every post-blind with 20 obsidian is playable now for a solid time, something that was emphatically not true with the single-blind runs of earlier eras. Back then, if your blind was 1700 blocks, the run was just dead. If a thousand, it was on life support. Now, 1700 blocks could very well still be alive depending on nether terrain, and 1000 is like, just fine. Other relatively recent late-game RNG reducers include pre-emptive stronghold navigation and zero cycle. The issue is more that, as each piece of RNG is mitigated or removed, the remaining ones loom ever larger. So all the RNG reduction strategies don't amount to as much a they might. But there's still an effect. Let me offer a story of two tournaments for context. The world record right now is 7:01. There was a tournament the last two weekends that involved (among others) around a dozen speedrunners I'd consider to be in the top 20 or 25 best in the game. in the time that they had (up to 15 hours total, although most played less), the truly top runners collectively produced an 8:01, an 8:4x, a low 9, and several high 9s. Over three years ago, back in the days that superficial analyses like this video tend to consider as being before the bad times, there was a tournament in a similar style for 8 of the very best speedrunners of the time. I'm a little shaky on what the world record was at that point. I want to say the 11:07 or the disputed 11:03. (But it might be Brentilda's 9:36, which would only make the following points stronger. I'll use the low 11s to be conservative.) In 36 hours of play, which almost all 8 players participated in almost entirely, there were produced a mid 12, a mid 13, three 14:xx and a few lowl 15:xx. A mid 15 is about 40% slower than an 11 minute run. Basically the same ratio as 10 minutes compared to 7 minutes. So in 36 hours of play by 8 top runners in 2021, around 8 runs were completed within 140% of the world record time. In 2024, in 10-15 hours of play by around a dozen top runners, 9 or 10 runs were completed within 140% of the world record time. Another point of interest: the best time produced in 2021's tournament was about 14 percent slower than the world record. The best time produced in 2024 was about ... 14% slower than the world record. Given the results are almost exactly comparable in 2024 vs 2021 with only a couple more runners but less than half the time, how can you say that RNG has gotten worse? What *has* happened is that strategies are no longer improving at the pace that they have in the past. The fastest plausible time has been pretty static for a while now. Which means people have to rely on *only* luck (besides their own skills obviously) to get close to Drip's time. They can't assume he'll be beaten by changes in tech, such as has happened in the past. That puts the current era into the same category as post-Brentilda sub 10 and pre-calc, more or less, where every top runner knows they're capable of exceeding Drip's time and also knows they're very unlikely to do so even if they put in massive amounts of time. So the player base drops. But again, this is not new. Luckily for Minecraft speedrunning, Ranked exists.

[@anythingelse6232]

DK 64's new coin was probably one of the best things to happen to a game that old, in truth if you do some digging the DK 64 speedrun isnt finished since some collectables are "unreachable" with the current tech, so I wouldn't be surprised if some of the leaderboards get wiped again for DK 64

[@Square_One]

One thing people seem to struggle with is thinking they need to able to learn every trick that the world record does in order to enjoy speedrunning a game. There's nothing stopping people from playing the game however they want, with a timer, then trying to beat that time. And that's speedrunning, and it's fun, it really doesn't need to be more complicated than that, people get so muddied up in "official rules"

[@Vaelosh466]

A lot of the people that get into speedrunning are competitive, part of the point for them is being able to climb a leaderboard.

[@draconicfeline6177]

@@Vaelosh466 And the question is, do they end up enjoying the game with that?

[@FUCKYOUYOUTUBE2222]

@@draconicfeline6177If it’s small then sure, but if you’re dedicating >5 hours a day or longer then you’ve peaked in highschool

[@nonamepasserbya6658]

@@draconicfeline6177 They don't. Any speedrunners that got lucky with KZbin's algo/become famous for their personality tends to drop speedrunning significantly

[@fletcher371]

It's surprising to see no mention of Jak 3 where the run has been neutered due to the first 10 minutes being a boring run through the desert. and you cant work around it because it cuts off like 5 minutes of time.

[@5Picoseconds]

One of the most ruined speedruns i've ever seen is Mario Odyssey Minimum Captures. What was originally an extremely hard showcase of tricks and movement turned into standing still for like 10 minutes of the run and ground pounding with Cappy every 2 seconds thanks to the Cappy Return Cancel.

[@ThaRixer]

Damn, you cooked with this one 🔥

[@RJA]

frfr

[@InfinityExtended]

28:35 In his sub 10 run, Brentilda used a method called divine travel which uses the coordinates of a fossil to teleport directly to a stronghold. The luck was instead getting a seed that had the potential for divine travel, which requires a fossil in specific chunks.

[@TheAquaMonster]

I'd hardly say Ocarina of Time is a ruined game for speedrunning purposes, there are categories out there that don't use SRM/ACE/etc. New discoveries are still being found within the game keeping things fresh for those who more so want to see the game broken in unique ways. Plus there's lots of other speedrun adjacent things that are going on that keep the game very much alive, such as randos. This also applies to Majora's Mask

[@track3476]

SHiFT legit is a freak, over 10h a day playing the same game for ages. He has said before that he hasnt slept in 2 weeks. Probably one of the most insane streamers out there honestly. I hope he gets help someday

[@Cyntaria]

If I had the skill for speedrunning, that sounds like something my bipolar would do before I was medicated or during a relapse (I've done it with living dexes in Pokemon)😅

[@Chizzle69420]

Yeah he's nuts. He can be really funny at times though. His mood varies a lot

[@ECODKyleskymast]

@@Chizzle69420 i would imagine so if he's sleep deprived

[@MrPoke]

I wonder if he has an asmongold setup, complete with barnacles growing on his table

[@LiEnby]

I love me some unhealthy coping mechanisms

[@Dramatic_Gaming]

I remember the Elden Ring speedruns getting almost immediately ruined when someone figured out how to do the warps to kill Maliketh and Godfrey & skip the final boss.

[@Muftaay]

Elden Ring. The chainsaw glitch completely ruined the any% unrestricted category (the main any% category basically). Bosses were no challenge anymore. The only question you had to ask yourself as a runner was "did I get the chainsaw glitch or not?". It's a very hard glitch execute, but if you manage to get it the bosses die instantly. I held the WR for like 4 months and then someone took it from me, that person held it for like 6 months, then someone beat it and it's been like that for over a year now. Nobody runs that category and no one watches it. That glitch has completely killed any% in elden ring. Glitchless is so much more popular.

[@DerpingtonTM87]

This was an awesome video! I knew about some of the categories like with BFBB, but for the Zelda games I knew nothing about you made it all palettable and entertaining. Keep it up Xem!

[@brliron6538]

A tiny correction, in OOT, Farore on B isn't an application of SRM, it's used in the 100% no SRM category. You can see that on Glitchymon's latest WR, at 1:48:40 (right after the Adult 2 split). It uses... *spend 20 minutes on ZSR* Bottle Adventure. You make sure to equip a bottle on B a while earlier when becoming a child, you equip a bottled letter on C right, and you become adult. The bottled letter on C right makes the game look at your arrow count to know which item to equip, you have 13 arrows at this point of the run, and the item with ID 13 is Farore's Wind, so that's the item you get on B. Btw, that SRM explanation was great.

[@iM0rb1d]

Speed running is an idea. If you don't like the rule set. Make your own. If you can't. Make your own category and ignore others.

[@CJ-wh7ik]

Your argument doesn't make sense xd

[@koopatroopa7968]

I feel like an honorable mention should've been Mario Kart 8 for the Wii U. There are so many ghosts tied to cheated runs that every tracks leaderboard has become saturated with them, and chief among them is a French player named Ranboo, usually with a zero second completion time. The things you can expect from these cheated runs are; Moving before the countdown ends Getting items before the time trial starts without hitting an item box A lap/finish notification before the time trial begins Ridiculously fast driving speeds Lap times not matching up This is just the tip of the iceberg, there are probably a lot more that I'm not aware of, but these are the ones I know for sure are dead giveaways

[@phyphor]

The talk of Manual.Super Swimming and Zombie Hovering at 22:11 reminded me of people saying how hypertapping in NES Tetris was great but had a limit. And then rolling was invented.

[@juho8371]

Hi Xem! Thanks for buying cigarettes for me and my little brother last friday from that gas station. You really saved our weekend!

[@Xem92]

Any time kid

[@KidCypherTV]

I used to speedrun Outlast, a horror game from 2013 that was pretty popular. once a glitch was discovered that let you go from the literal beginning to the endgame was when the game was ruined in my eyes

[@konosk8302]

i remember xem talking about this video a while back in a stream of his, so glad it finally got done, and HOLY is it a banger, nice one xem, so glad to be part of this community!

[@cadetsparklez3300]

when you are now practicing entirely different stuff then the mechanics of the game itself you have crossed over into the threshold of a run being ruined, because you are no longer speedrunning the game you are speedrunning a set of tasks

[@williamblackfyre4866]

"You can put pretty much anything you want, anywhere you want to put it" Sounds like my Friday night.

[@theodorhannevig8994]

I invested early in the Xem brand, so it’s nice to see such a banger video. I’ll pray to the KZbin algorithm gods to pick this up!

[@hsthatzo8063]

Love that this vid blew up for you man, well deserved and keep up the hustle 🔥💪🏼

[@ImAKAJenks]

As someone who lives for long form explanatory content this was a great watch. It's clear you put a ton of work into this and it shows, great video Xem!

[@MrSaturn.]

Something hits different about speedrunning videos + chicken soup with rice

[@marlvelius]

i remember hearing about how golden got completely ruined something to do with staring at your feet the entire run made you go faster

[@breakfaith3031]

Did you hear about that back in the early 2000s? Goldeneye runners got over it almost 20 years ago now.

[@marlvelius]

@@breakfaith3031 proly yeah

[@jordan8199]

Honestly so glad to see a vid on this topic was talking to friends about why speedrunning fell off so hard on twitch and I truly believe the most popular games all getting optimized to the point they're unapproachable as a fan and a new player is the biggest reason

[@Xem92]

The good news is that there's still plenty of incredible speedruns out there! I really recommend trying to find streamers that you fuck with alongside games you know. A passionate speedrunner pushing as hard as they can is nothing short of awesome.

[@illford]

​@Xem92 I feel like this is just people being too lazy to dig more than tan surface level tho

[@tomboy_kisser]

Thanks for being honest with that admission; it honestly must have been difficult to come clean like that

[@jorgizoran4340]

Two words: Glitchless speedrun

[@Alex-ex8ob]

Ratchet: Deadlocked was a ruined speedrun, for me personally. A new trick had been found called "air swings" which were sick as hell, but the setups were frustrating for me to figure out. I had gotten one PB in NG+ No LC with air swings, but I only utilized 2 super easy ones (out of 7 that were known at the time). Nowadays, I have figured out the setups (as have many runners of the game), and we even found an extra one for No LC. I also used them during my short time in the Any% category and now I realize that air swings did nothing but improve the game. Very grateful to have them in the game. Also for the few people who might read this comment, UYA has a category that bans boxxies so that the old strategies are still preserved in the game's future. It also has a skip that is optimal EXCLUSIVELY in that category (on Marcadia) and it's mind blowing.

[@Porkey_Minch]

Ratchet Gladiator is one of my favourite childhood games, but I've never actually seen a speedrun of it. Air swings sound iteresting though. I'll have to check out some runs to see all the cool tech :)

[@Alex-ex8ob]

@@Porkey_Minch more people need to watch speedruns of that game

[@Alex-ex8ob]

@@Porkey_MinchI have a tutorial series if you ever want to get into it. The game is very overlooked compared to its brethren, but it has a lot of fun movement. Hard to find something dislikable about it.

[@Alex-ex8ob]

@@Porkey_MinchI just saw this reply. Would highly recommend checking out a speedrun of the game, and even getting into it. It's an identical run to the previous 3 games, and I recently released a tutorial series for beginners to get into it. It is overlooked compared to the other PS2 games, so any attention is welcome.

[@Joshy-]

i feel like for majora's mask you missed a key part of why any% when debug menu was used died, which was because the only way of using it was on the WiiU, because it didn't crash the game upon loading it like the n64 and was able to be navigated unlike the wiivc. the wiiuvc version is notoriously horrible due to bad input delay amongst other bad things

[@disasterarea9341]

this is awesome dude

[@marcosperezomg]

Just imagine the reactions of the early Nintendo devs if these bugs were discovered by their intial hired playtesters. "Alright, bug report, whatchu got" "Well I managed to find a way to get the debug menu open" "Oh, that's a pretty big oversight, how'd you do it?" "Well I stood in this spot and played the Song of Soaring 2048 times." "...excuse me?" "So do you think you can fix it?" "Uh... I mean, yeah, but, why did you do that?" "Dunno, wanted to." "Like I-I-I I mean how long did that even take you, you were on payroll and this what you were doing the entire time? I would imagine you would stop after nothing weird happened after, I don't know, maybe the fifth or sixth time but 2048 times?!"

[@HonkeyKongLive]

Goldeneye had look-down where you had to do the entire run staring at the ground, and there was that one Sonic game where you just nonstop paused and unpaused

[@thelastgogeta]

I think you are talking about Sonic Boom unpatched on Wii U where I imagine the infinite jump with pausing Knuckles is a requirement, but no idea if anyone on Earth would choose that Sonic game of all things to run in any version. Judging from the site, the last run was months ago but most of the interest was 9 years ago. Goldeneye 64 actually has many metas depending on the difficulty and level so I don't think looking down while running forward is optimal for the Elite outside of very specific cases to cross a second barrier (they use the in game timer which is only in seconds).

[@Boltscrap]

@@thelastgogeta Nah, Sonic 2 speedruns make extensive use of pausing since many of the skips are frame perfect, and they used to use ingame time.There's a fairly recent video on it.

[@gmproxy]

Damn xemmy this is good as shit this is cool as fuck this is speed as run

[@tbotalpha8133]

I'm surprised you didn't bring up Jak 3 Any%, where you can finish the game in... sub-20 minutes, I think? But it involves doing a bunch of precise platforming, and then tapping up on a joystick repeatedly for 7 minutes straight.

[@charmanderfan1]

On the note of speedrun categories where you just beat the game with black magic, I think my favorite has to be the one where you just walk to the Triforce in A Link to the Past and it's entirely because I did it once in a card shop and completely blew my parents' minds.

[@jfei64]

23:40 I knew about the DK64 one and the next closest one I know of was from a video about how something like this happened in portal. Portal No Out of Bounds seems like it speaks for itself. You cannot shoot portals out of bounds so as long as the player doesn't go oob the run can be validated. However there was a slight incident where they realized that a whole bunch of runs had to be retroactively invalidated. Basically the normal run included players entering a chamber in a glitched state and using said glitched state to beat the chamber while legitimately staying inbound. However they have to shoot a random portal to remove the glitched state at once point. It is only important that any portal is shot and location the portal lands is entirely irrelevant and nothing ever passes through it thus most people don't think much about it. However people eventually realized that a lot of runs were inadvertently shooting this portal oob thanks to a side effect of the glitched state and it was regularly being overlooked in the validation process since again, nothing ever passes through it. Thus they had to retroactively check which runs had shot that portal oob and reject them.

[@KnakuanaRka]

If the portal being shot OOB did nothing to affect the run and they could shed done the exact same thing and shot it in bounds with no time being lost, I don’t think that should invalidate things.

[@trisfaleel]

@@KnakuanaRkathe shot is slightly closer so you save time

[@Materialist39]

I like that this video is 1. Purposeful clickbait made by an actual runner 2. Diverse in addressing the ways people might think a speedrun is “ruined” (any% OOT being the obvious example I would think of for the topic)

[@SirGary]

Pretty good video Xem! I don't really know about speedrunning, but I enjoyed it a lot :)

[@Xem92]

Thank you Gary :)

[@Professor_Wisteria_]

greensuigi recently shredding basically every major SM64 category needs to be studied, that shit is insanity

[@Cotran61]

Ngl I chuckled a bit when UYA was the second one you mentioned, very entertaining video Xemothy

[@SomniaCE]

The funnest part of speedrunning any popular game is when you aren't even close to WR pace so you just get to chase months and months of improvement while slowly integrating tougher strats.

[@gillybyrd5296]

Loved the video. Outside of the games you typically play, but a few years ago a trick was found in San Andreas that cut the WR down from 4 hours to 10 minutes

[@rickandmkrtysuperfan862]

A speedgame having having banned glitches to the extent of "no major glitches" as a category is my rule for ruined games

[@Yozzoy]

Man, its been a hot minute seen I originally heard about Boxxys but Im impressed woth the current optimization found. Banger video!

[@Singleredpikmi]

I've seen alot of extremely absurd speedrun tricks that always make me think what the fuck. How did someone figure out you needed to perform an action like hitting an out of bounds statue then playing one song 2618 times!!!?!?! What the hell

[@MariahXxXhairaM]

Linkus is back to playing Wind Waker again!!

[@alanfinck5595]

This dudes analogies for the glitches and tricks are on point. And for the record, I do not want my genetic code rewritten.

[@xvgm24]

I guess you could say this about Spyro: Enter The Dragonfly runs haha.

[@BoardHistorical]

Banger video! Excited to see more!

[@PPedroFernandes]

Alternate title: "Why any% sub categories exist"

[@jpufry]

That's like saying another way of saying "this bread is expired" is "why other loafs of bread exist". See how stupid that is?

[@Mercer526]

Very recent, but Elden Ring. Im the early days, something called "zips" were discovered. These allowed the player to basically telephort insane distances across the map. Not only that, but they also allowed the player to skip entire boss fights because if you zip far enough away from the arena, the boss would just die because the area deloaded. This also meant that literally every single main boss could be skipped, including the final boss. The run went from an amazing show of skill to who can zip through the game the fastest. Speedrunners were able to beat the largest game fromsoft ever made in sub 6 minutes with it.

[@darkcoolyo]

I thought Elden Ring might be on the list, great video

[@parkerheal7049]

Good vid Xem! Love the Spread of content variety. I personally would love maybe an elden ring speedrun or video perhaps?

[@couldbe_koral6972]

great vid man Im loving the new era of your vids.

[@mecenary1337]

I don't think that many of these games are "ruined" per se, but overall I did like how you told a compact story about multiple games in a single video. It's like watching a Summoning Salt marathon on 10x speed. Great presentation!

[@dtpiers6136]

I can watch speed docs all fucking day. So fascinating to see how all these games evolve. BTW this video reminds me: that 20 second Minecraft TAS is absolutely insane.

[@KindaKaon]

Hey fella what song is playing at 6:20? Couldn’t see a music list in desc. If there is one my fault its late

[@undercoverdudes]

Fantastic video, this is going to pop off for sure.

[@jedirieb]

I think this video hits on why I don't watch most popular speedruns of games more than once. Glitches are cool: I like learning about the weird ways people can break games, and I occasionally like trying them out myself. After seeing it once though, I'm mostly left with "what's the point"? If a glitch is skipping too much or changes the feel of the game too much, then it no longer feels like I'm watching someone skillfully play a game that I casually played or could play. They're playing a different, albeit related, game, one which doesn't feel accessible to me as a player, often requiring skills that feel entirely alien to the "original" game. Of course, that doesn't make this way of playing "bad" or "ruin" the game, it's just a different game that I have little interest in.

[@ScottE-2]

I think only two in the list are truly ruined: Wind Waker and Battle for Bikini Bottom. The former because of just the insane strategies required to get a true any% time as well as the fact that people lost interest in giving it any serious thought outside of randomizers. Like the mere witnessing of moving the stick 15 inputs per second is just wild to me. Sure there are other categories but the ceiling for entry is way too high compared to the other games on the list. Then there's BFBB, I like Shift but it is quite sad that he's genuinely the only one left as everyone else a part of that community just moved on. It's ruined in the sense that, there really aren't many playing and the one that's still playing it dominates it harder than any other.

[@Xem92]

Just wanna add this reply in defense of bfbb, there's still quite a lot of people running! It's less about them trying to beat SHiFT rn and more about them working to push the game even harder. Still, there's quite a lot of people at the top level grinding!

[@ScottE-2]

@@Xem92 Either way I think you did a great job editing wise on the video. Though I do feel bad for categories like 100% getting ignored by the masses since in the Zelda games at least, it can get quite hefty.

[@mrcarlosn00b]

Congrats Xem and Xem's team!! Perfect video, the results are coming ❤

[@ideac.]

16:30 SHiFT absolutely ruined the speedrunning of bfbb not only the game is almost impossible but the community is one of the worst ive ever seen. SHIFT is a complete narcissistic guy with 0 charisma and he makes sure that everybody will have the same horrible vibe as his during his streams. He is an example of what you SHOULDNT DO as a streamer. Highly recommend watching the troll videos on him since not only those are way funnier than his own streams but it shows how delusional that guy is

[@SockLove]

Yes, when i want to gauge if a streamer is nice, i watch troll videos to inform me, i'm sure that is gonna be the most accurate representation of the person in question...

[@ideac.]

@@SockLove true

[@heatfromsapphire]

28:40 Actually, the first ever sub-10 used what’s called Divine Travel, basically using the fact that fossils in the nether are directly connected to stronghold generation to guesstimate where the stronghold actually was. This run also didn’t use a beach seed, but instead used old village strats.

[@fox_four]

Slight correction : for the first sub-10 run of minecraft Rsg, Brentilda didn't just find the stronghold, he used a strat called "divine travel" iirc that allows you to know where a stronghold will be using the placement of a nether fossil in the spawn chunk. That strat is still used in runs but having a fossil in the right chunk is pretty rare, wich is why calculators are still widely used and considered more consistent I wouldn't consider the minecraft rsg speedrun ruined, but it is more and more unattainable for the casual gamer Also, Dream didn't cheat in a world record he just did in random runs he played on stream

[@Xem92]

Thank you for the information! I appreciate all the runners coming out of the woodworks to correct my inaccuracies

[@Glorp256]

Fantastic video, keep it up!

[@DescendentJ0]

Xem the GOAT!!! 💙

[@Picobits]

general speedrunning content is BAAACK BABYYY 🔥🔥🔥

[@schizojokerreal]

16:28 at first i liked bfbb but SHiFt is so incredibly unwatchable. i know that there are other runners but shift still says to himself that the game is competitive when the player count has only dropped more and more throughout the years. It used to be a fun game back in 2018 or so but it went downhill. The other problem is that he killed his community by being obsessive and power hungry, He wants to make sure he has control over anything bfbb related. He has banned people that didnt like him (for obvious reasons) and even started ranting about people finding out new strategies and tricks without him knowing when the remake of bfbb came out. I really hope someday, in a perfect dimension Rubbertoe gets his place, because shift is one of the most disgusting out of his mind speedrunners/streamers ive ever seen

[@AdamW051]

What?

[@schizojokerreal]

@@AdamW051 recommend taking a look at the troll vids on him honestly. quite concerning

[@RainbowMan9407]

This was a cool video! I'd be interested in more speedrunning content like this.

[@froznArctic]

18:10 its probably because shift harassed a lot of members in the community out around the time this WR was set.

[@ScienceDrummer]

How so? I was actually unaware of this.

[@froznArctic]

@@ScienceDrummer so back in like, 2017 he accidentally exposed on a friends stream that he and his friends created a "Fantasy [R-slur] League" in which he and his friends drafted fellow community members into fantasy teams and if they sent "[R-slur]ed chats" in his chat they'd earn points. It was the reason many of the top 15 at the time left bfbb. Even one of Shifts own mods left. Source: I was close friends with the mod, I was there in the livestream where it was leaked, and I was one of the people in the league. I was 15 and harassed/bullied by a man at least over 20. At the time I had a lot of friends in the community too, about half were also harassed out, and the others abandoned us to stay on shifts good side.

[@LowTierSHiFT]

would it be possible to contact you to talk about this?

[@ScienceDrummer]

@@froznArctic Any kind of proof of this? I'm not denying it, but it does sound like something people would do back in the day.

[@froznArctic]

@@ScienceDrummer vods were quickly deleted and I believe the account that leaked it was deleted. It was 2017 and I was like 15-16 and didn't think to save them. I haven't been in contact with anyone from the scene since 2017, so I'd have to go and dig around to find people. A lot of us who were involved deleted all of our accounts to get away from the harassment

[@gamingnoob4417]

I remember finding a glitch/exploit (not sure if others use it or not) in Need For Speed Most Wanted where instead of the regular mechanic of evading police and then entering a cooldown zone, you can drive straight into certain cooldown zones and skip the minutes it takes to try to evade them. Additionally, I figured out that it’s easier to just drive in circles on the highway on the map, then do the evasion slip when you want to evade the police. It’s my favorite game of all time (not a speed runner), but the trick I found made it so easy to evade police that I feel like it took a lot of the fun out of the game.

[@ratzmann1283]

hi my name is 9:40

[@username8511]

This is by far your best produced video to date, can't wait to see more like these

[@Xem92]

one could say it's my cvntyiest video to date

[@username8511]

@@Xem92 maybe if you included regirockwithahandbag% in the failed speedruns it could have been even cvntier