Every once in a while, I see a video that leaves me full of motivation, such as There Will Never Ever Be Another Driver Like Dale Earnhardt. This video, to me, is one of those. I know a lot of people here are interested in SM64 speedrunning due to the game's technical nature, and those people will certainly find it interesting. But, I think even people outside the community will enjoy this video. Very well done!
And if you have never watched speed runs, Summoning Salt has a fascinating series on world record progressions in popular games: https://youtu.be/RdAkY7RfajY
Thy're a series of videos on how world records have been lowered over time on various games. It's fascinating watching particularity the one on Super Mario 64
Excellent video. I'm impressed the author went to recreate the run frame by frame, and then used those findings to analyze what was happening. Never expected this video to turn into a full on reverse engineering explanation.
As a side note, this kind of speed run has become more popular in the recent years for a combination of reasons:
- First, it's difficult to improve on the regular world records since they're so optimized (just have a look at Quake Done Quick and its sequels).
- Second, the emulators available to the speed running community have evolved. They now include better ways to track what's happening in memory.
- Third, the games themselves are understood better (as recently exemplified by the Super Mario 64 full reverse engineering).
So it's creating a whole new genre of runs that simply isn't about execution anymore.
pannenkoek2012's videos are a fascinating insight into the implementation details of an N64 game from the perspective of a speedrunner. Every exploitable glitch reflects some aspect of how the game engine works.
(There's also a secret sister channel, pannenkeok2012, for lower-effort videos. Among other things, there's a comprehensive search of the game's PRNG in there!)
I've always found the any% categories of speed running to be the most interesting, since it often works by manipulating the code of a game to work in really inventive ways.
if you like videos like this, pannenkeok2012 does super in depth analysis of everything Super Mario 64
For anyone who thinks they might enjoy "speedrunner overcomes all the odds" narrative style videos, I've greatly enjoyed the content of "ThaRixer" on the topic:
He gives a good sense of how unlikely it was for some of these glitches to be found, and how much luck and skill is involved in pulling off a successful world record.
pannen's commentated videos are always a treat. He started uploading again this year after a long hiatus (that started after this video) and I can't wait for more.
If you're interested in Super Mario 64 speedruns, the video[0] "The Story of the Greatest Super Mario 64 Speedrunners" is great.
Karl's channel is a great place to dive into. I guess he started as just a speedrunner, but in recent years he's been making terrific videos on deep mechanics of speedrunning, on cheating and cheat detection, etc. And he's done significant journalism on shady business in adjacent topics, like records-keeping organizations and the market for retro game cartridges. He's even been (being?) sued by Billy Mitchell (the King of Kong guy), whom Jobst calls the biggest conman in gaming.
If you're into more of this kind of thing, check out SummoningSalt (on Youtube). Very entertaining history of speedrunning videos, with solid production value and the creator has good connections with the community.
i was into listening to the commentary more then i was watching the speedrun. ever speedrun i've seen never has commentary so you don't know what the heck the runner is doing. it was really kewl knowing what the thought process was in pulling these off. Awesome find!
It's quite something. The commentary is an insight into a whole world. Not quite as crazy as the some of the other recent console memory hacking stuff but its the constant need for frame-perfect timing that makes it impressive.
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