This past weekend I managed to sit down and catch a few speedruns at the live stream of Summer Games Done Quick (SGDQ). I mainly caught the Link to the Past runs, I really wanted to see the Final Fantasy 6 run but the Sandman and my bed sadly had other ideas for me. And of course all of this was for charity, something that is usually a good reason for almost anything.
Now of course speedruns are absolutely nothing new to the gaming community, even more so with the millions upon millions of Let’s Play channels on YouTube. And while they are indeed something that has been growing and evolving for quite a while, I can’t help but be fascinated every time I see one. (The first one I ever saw was almost 8 years ago, it was an 11 minute run of Super Mario 3, it still hurts my brain). And when they involve a game from my childhood, say Zelda or Mega Man or Mario, at first I think about how it’s amazing I never once stumbled onto one of these shortcuts or glitches, but then a new realization hits me.
Think about how much work it takes for someone to truly master one of these speedruns. It takes so much work and dedication it’s almost dizzying to think about. The hours of practice needed to make sure that you hit every enemy just correct, hitting all the walls until you find one that sends to exactly the final boss, and even knowing the exact pixel you need to hit to warp to a new location in the game (something I learned this weekend). Of course I am not naive enough to believe that all of the people who were speedrunning this weekend were also the ones found these glitches, the vast resource that is the internet more than sped up that process.
However knowing the secrets alone does not suddenly make you a speedrunner. It still takes a lot of time, practice, and patience to perfect a speedrun on any game, as it is art that requires you to learn all of its ins and outs with all of the various techniques required. These are qualities I can tend to lack in my adulthood sadly, which explains why I also suck at fighting games. But I think the deeper issue here is that not only do you have to constantly practice to get the speedrun just perfect, you have to play the same game the same way over and over and over and over and over. It’s like creating your own Groundhog Day (Google it young people). And I am all for going back and playing an old game I love but I also know too much of a good thing can be bad for you.
Before anyone gets upset, I am by no means insulting the speedrun community. I just want to show the level of dedication it takes to do one of these and do it well. I have a lot of respect and admiration for the people who can actually pull these off. Odds are as long as people have access to the internet and streaming tools like Twitch as well as the dedication, speedruns are going to be here to stay and that is perfectly fine. I honestly hope to see more of them some day. And even if I will never be a major league player, at least and I can have good show from the cheap seats.
