Speed Runner Beats Ocarina of Time in Less Than 19 Minutes

[sinterklaas]

Speedrunning is finishing the game as fast as possible using any means possible within the scope of the game. Glitches and bugs fall into this category. Memory hacking for example would not because that'd require outside interference.

And besides, performing most of these glitches is damn hard to do, way harder than anything you would be required to do in a glitchless run. Which, by the way, is a different bracket than Any% and seperate WRs exist for both.

 

[Sean951]

I take issue with the claim that he "beat" the game. No. He did not beat it, he reached the end of the game, but by skipping most of it, I can't cell it beating. Especially since it abuses where kid Link spawns after saving to effectively warp. Yeah, this is it's own category, but the terminology needs to catch up.

 

[sinterklaas]

I take issue with the claim that he "beat" the game. No. He did not beat it, he reached the end of the game, but by skipping most of it, I can't cell it beating. Especially since it abuses where kid Link spawns after saving to effectively warp. Yeah, this is it's own category, but the terminology needs to catch up.

If beating the end boss/completing the final challenge and getting the credits rolling is not beating the game, then what is? Having to play an arbitrary percentage of additional content? If I take all the warp pipes in Mario and skip 80% of the levels have I not beaten the game? It doesn't matter how he did it, as long as it's possible within the game.

 

[Sean951]

I take issue with the claim that he "beat" the game. No. He did not beat it, he reached the end of the game, but by skipping most of it, I can't cell it beating. Especially since it abuses where kid Link spawns after saving to effectively warp. Yeah, this is it's own category, but the terminology needs to catch up.

If beating the end boss/completing the final challenge and getting the credits rolling is not beating the game, then what is? Having to play an arbitrary percentage of additional content? If I take all the warp pipes in Mario and skip 80% of the levels have I not beaten the game? It doesn't matter how he did it, as long as it's possible within the game.

To me, beating the game means he beat the story missions, i.e. beat the required dungeons. I'm not taking away from what he did, I certainly can't do it, but I feel the wording takes away from the people who beat it "legitimately."

"Oh, you beat it in 3 hours? Well it says this guy did it in 19 minutes..."

It's a problem of terminology in my mind.

 

[The_Echo]

What is at question here, what has always been at question here, is whether or not completion of 10% of the game using heavy doses of exploits qualifies as "beating the game" or not.

Well this is entirely arbitrary and up to your opinion.

Like, how much of the game must you play before you've "beaten" it? 100%? 50%? Where's the line? Every game counts its percent differently, can there be a strict "amount" of a game you must play? In a speedrun, the run normally ends at credits, and that's a definition of beating the game. Not yours, obviously. But it is one.

I don't care if it follows "house rules", that doesn't make it a equal run to someone who plays 100% of a game and beats 100% of the game legitimately.

Nobody said that it is.

And yet, cue the dozens of speedrun fans who have kept telling me "oh but the rules say", acting as if that matters.

Why doesn't it matter? Because the game is being played in a way you don't like?

And it's annoying, because it's like you didn't read what I said at all.

Well, in my case the part I quoted specifically was the part I was responding to.
[small]You don't expect me to keep up with all the arguments happening in this thread, do you?[/small]

Or, to use your own damn arguments against you, there's a reason that separate 'categories' exist. Your "Any%" speedrun junk != a 100% clearing of the game.

Yeah, no shit. Nobody ever said they were equal. Where does this even come from?
[small]Well maybe someone did but if they did they were dead wrong.[/small]

 

[Olas]

I don't recognize his achievement. Exploiting glitches to beat a game should invalidate the entire effort.

As much as I similarly hate it, I'd imagine there's a significant gray area when it comes to what is or isn't a glitch, which can make that a somewhat arbitrary line to draw. For example, is the fact that Link runs slightly faster going backwards a glitch? Because it obviously wasn't the intention of the creators for people to travel backwards through the whole game.

To make something truly competitive you have to have hard rules, and you can't call people out for playing a game 'the wrong way' if they stay within those rules. That being said there are speedruns with certain requirements like defeating all dungeons or getting 100% items which would probably more closely align with how you think the game should be played.

 

[The_Echo]

The title of the thread, for starters?

In my previous post I already said that the definition of "beating a game" is up to you.

You're arguing semantics. Where is the line drawn? How much game do you have to play before you're allowed to say you've "beaten" it? The specific line you took was in response to a sentence comparing a speedrun to a 100% playthrough. Do you need to get 100% before you've "legitimately" beaten the game? Is that what you think?

I'd like to know.

most of the people objecting were commenting on the bullshit-ness of the article's title. >_>

Which is entirely your opinion and not some kind of objective fact. Clearly those of us in this thread who follow speedruns and are a part of the community see it differently.

It's not like it's an essay, it's a few posts of a few paragraphs' length at best. You can manage that much. No excuse.

You're right, it's not an essay. I shouldn't really have to put in any effort at all.

 

[Alex Mac]

It takes hours and hours of practice and optimization for this sort of thing. People want to act as if what Cosmo is doing is "cheating" but I promise you that most of the people saying that would struggle amazingly to pull off a great deal of the things he's doing. Sit down, crack out Ocarina of Time, and see if you can figure out how he's doing that water extended super slide from Zora's to Kakariko. Then see if you can do it without dropping it 9 times out of ten. And that's just one trick!

People who want to moan about any% runs don't really understand just how hard it is to do these things. OoT is nearly air tight in routing at this point (unless something major happens); these records are down to matters of mere seconds and hinge upon technical execution to a high degree. What's being done here is not easy and certainly deserves recognition.

As a side note, OoT just got a new 100% record as well. Look it up. Then lament that even 100% runs use glitches and understand that is how speedrunning goes.

 

[RJ 17]

Snip.

I disagree, I think it's pretty easy to tell what the developer's intent was, and using that you can easily determine "the rules of the game". Judging by the fact that the moment you step into the boss room the door slams shut behind you, startles link, and is even sealed with iron bars, I think it's pretty safe to assume that the developers did not intend for you to leave that chamber without killing the boss in the proper fashion. Those are the rules. The rules aren't defined by code.

To further clarify that, the code in a game is akin to free will in reality. Sure, according to the code you can pass through that wall, but are you supposed to? In real life, you can go on a murderous rampage, but are you supposed to? The rules of society are set in the form of laws. Laws are simply words, and have absolutely no power to stop you if you make a decision to go contrary to them. Coding is just...well...coding. It can't stop you from exploiting it if you find such a flaw and decide to exploit it. Does that mean we can't see what the intention behind the coding was meant to be? No. We can see that the developers clearly didn't want you to leave that room. Just as we can see that society clearly doesn't want you to go around murdering people.

So no, I still disagree with you on the notion that it's impossible to come up with rules for a game or adhere to them because it's impossible to know what the developer's intent was. Most games have a tendency to obey the laws of physics, and unless there's a valid reason given in the game for having a character being able to pass through solid matter (i.e. they're a ghost or something) then you're not supposed to be able to pass through solid matter. I really can't see this in any way other than black and white.

Quite simply, there shouldn't be an argument over the phrase "how the game was meant to be played"...as we should all already know what that means. It means not exploiting things such as clipping glitches, trigger avoidances, or side-jump short-cuts. All of those things are neat tricks, I'll give you that, but they still all obviously go beyond the bounds of what the developers intended. What did the developers intend for 1-E? They intended the level to be pretty challenging due to a slow self-scrolling screen. What did the developers intend for Metroid? They intended that you shouldn't be able to reach that ledge and skip a massive chunk of the game. What did the developers intend for OOT? They intended that you'd beat the boss then go outside to watch the tree die. If you're trying to argue against that, it'd be like trying to argue "Well maybe the engineers MEANT to use faulty steel to build the bridge so that it could easily be destroyed." I highly doubt any developer intends to use faulty code so that you can clip through walls and skip past the game.

So yeah, I understand that people like speed runs. I understand that there's different categories of speed runs. I understand that people like these various different categories of speed runs. And I understand that not everyone is going to play by the rules of the games. All that said, however, I still won't find it to be impressive or anything other than cheating, and as such not worthy of holding a record. Does that mean I'm going to start a petition to have such records removed? Of course not. I just won't ever really give a damn about them.

 

[crepesack]

This is in chinese. Not japanese.

 

[SilverStuddedSquirre]

This is in chinese. Not japanese.

Written Japanese utilizes the Chinese characters as well as its own alphabet. The Chinese characters are called Kanji. //edit - unless of course, it really IS in Chinese, and I'm just being a smarty pants XD and you are completely right


Also I would like to remind people that the Nature of the argument has ZERO to do with this being an any% run. Please do read and understand the arguments presented and stop trying to change the subject. Very simply, the Use of the Glitch cannot be said to be beating the game. It is an opinion, you are not required to agree with. Neither do you need to cry about it. I would ask though, that you remain on topic. If OUTSIDE of the context of speedrunning competitions, you feel that using a glitch to skip 90% of the content still means you get to claim you beat it, fine. THAT is what people are calling cheating though, nothing in regards to competitive speedrunning.

 

[Neta]

So he didn't actually "beat" the game in 19 minutes, he just glitched to the end boss in 19 minutes.

Wow. I can glitch right past the end boss, to game completion to where I turn the power off after playing the game. What do *I* win?

 

[Alex Mac]

It's objectively false to claim that he "beat the game" when he didn't complete a majority of the primary (read: non-optional) content. It's just that simple.

To win a game, you merely must complete the end goal. To win Chess I need to capture your King. It doesn't matter if this takes dozens on dozens of moves or two. I captured the King. I've won. In the case of OoT, the end goal is defeating Ganon. Which he did. Under those criteria, he absolutely beat the game. Ganon's dead, the good guy defeated him. Hyrule is safe.

If you want something different (and cue the storm of "I already know about the categories now, RAWR!"), you can look up glitchless runs, which are their own thing. Barring that, you can look up 100% runs, which collect the stone, medallions, hearts, skulltulas, et all. That category just saw a new WR run at 4:42:46.

EDIT: To clarify, cheating is a circumvention of rules or an direct altering of parameters in order to achieve a goal. OoT doesn't have set rules or parameters outside of what has already been programmed onto the cart itself. It has an end goal. What a programmer or designer intended as solutions on the path to that point is irrelevant. So long as you are not using an outside source to edit the game ala Gameshark or an emulator's functions, you're not cheating.

I just won't ever really give a damn about them.

And yet, here you are.

Wow. I can glitch right past the end boss, to game completion to where I turn the power off after playing the game. What do *I* win?

I know you're being dramatic for effect but the answer, to quote Willy Wonka, is "You get nothing!". You've done nothing that requires technical knowledge or executional competency.

 

[Steve Waltz]

This is in chinese. Not japanese.

Written Japanese utilizes the Chinese characters as well as its own alphabet. The Chinese characters are called Kanji. //edit - unless of course, it really IS in Chinese, and I'm just being a smarty pants XD and you are completely right

No, he's right. You're aware of Hiragana, right? Hiragana is used in things called "particles" which are used for structuring the sentences. Hiragana is also used for conjugations, so when a word is slightly altered (E.G. a verb from past-tense to present-tense) it can be shown. Because of that, It would be extremely rare to see a sentence made entirely of kanji. And heck, some words don't even use kanji and are just written in hiragana. Considering there is no hiragana ANYWHERE in that entire video it's easy to note that this isn't Japanese in any sense.

I'm surprised that the Escapist hasn't fixed that mistake considering this was pointed out on page one.

 

[SilverStuddedSquirre]

It's objectively false to claim that he "beat the game" when he didn't complete a majority of the primary (read: non-optional) content. It's just that simple.

To win a game, you merely must complete the end goal. To win Chess I need to capture your King. It doesn't matter if this takes dozens on dozens of moves or two. I captured the King. I've won. In the case of OoT, the end goal is defeating Ganon. Which he did. Under those criteria, he absolutely beat the game. Ganon's dead, the good guy defeated him. Hyrule is safe.

If you want something different (and cue the storm of "I already know about the categories now, RAWR!"), you can look up glitchless runs, which are their own thing. Barring that, you can look up 100% runs, which collect the stone, medallions, hearts, skulltulas, et all. That category just saw a new WR run at 4:42:46.

EDIT: To clarify, cheating is a circumvention of rules or an direct altering of parameters in order to achieve a goal. OoT doesn't have set rules or parameters outside of what has already been programmed onto the cart itself. It has an end goal. What a programmer or designer intended as solutions on the path to that point is irrelevant. So long as you are not using an outside source to edit the game ala Gameshark or an emulator's functions, you're not cheating.

I just won't ever really give a damn about them.

And yet, here you are.

Wow. I can glitch right past the end boss, to game completion to where I turn the power off after playing the game. What do *I* win?

I know you're being dramatic for effect but the answer, to quote Willy Wonka, is "You get nothing!". You've done nothing that requires technical knowledge or executional competency.

However in Chess, there are legal moves, and Illegal moves. It is Utterly impossible for you to capture my King outside of a very specific situation: the exact sequence of moves required permit a checkmate in 4 moves. If you, on turn two, move your knight 15 spaces across the board and Declare checkmate, you are cheating. Neither have you "beaten" me. As for "what was programmed on the cartridge" wall are supposed to be solid. Period. That IS programmed into the cartridge. It is not a hole in the wall, or place reached through Gamer skill, but code error.

Now I understand your argument of the "Enders Game" win. Simply get to the End because nowhere in the rules does it say you have to DEFEAT the other army first, just push the big shiny button at the back of the Room. The Difference is in the Battle where Ender wins this way, The Player who pushes the Button, actually Physically traverses the whole level. While he effectively Speedruns the level by being thrown at the Button, and reaching it in a few seconds, he does not glitch from his own home base directly to the door. While he utilized the wording of the rules to allow the swift victory by means not understood to be available, he did not CHEAT and break the physical boundary of the Game.

 

[SilverStuddedSquirre]

This is in chinese. Not japanese.

Written Japanese utilizes the Chinese characters as well as its own alphabet. The Chinese characters are called Kanji. //edit - unless of course, it really IS in Chinese, and I'm just being a smarty pants XD and you are completely right

No, he's right. You're aware of Hiragana, right? Hiragana is used in things called "particles" which are used for structuring the sentences. Hiragana is also used for conjugations, so when a word is slightly altered (E.G. a verb from past-tense to present-tense) it can be shown. Because of that, It would be extremely rare to see a sentence made entirely of kanji. And heck, some words don't even use kanji and are just written in hiragana. Considering there is no hiragana ANYWHERE in that entire video it's easy to note that this isn't Japanese in any sense.

I'm surprised that the Escapist hasn't fixed that mistake considering this was pointed out on page one.

I am quite aware of and can even still remember most of the Hiragana, and Katakana alphabets, but it's Been years since I spoke or practiced what little I learned. Good spot on the sentence structuring! O it is Chinese. Between this article and the Grandma Killing Dota Debacle of an Article I have to say the Escapist need to slap a few faces.

 

[Alex Mac]

As for "what was programmed on the cartridge" wall are supposed to be solid. Period. That IS programmed into the cartridge. It is not a hole in the wall, or place reached through Gamer skill, but code error.

Except it's actually not programmed into the cartridge at all. "Supposed to" is not the same as is. What is "supposed" to be the case or what you want to presume the developer intended to be the case have no relevancy. What matters is what the programming permits and what it does not. As a side note, if you think that clipping through that wall is not a matter of skill, you have a poor understanding of what is occurring. The execution on that is near frame perfect.

You were right to note that Chess has rules (even if that missed the broader point vis a vis end goals to a fair extent). But you fail to understand that OoT has no such thing as legal or illegal moves because the game has no ruleset. This is because OoT does not come with a rule book and you cannot break the rules of a game that doesn't have any. What OoT does have are mechanics and anything which the mechanics (and the programming behind said mechanics) allows is viable for use towards the end goal, the achievement of which constitutes completion of the game. Case in point, It is a "rule" of the programming that two objects cannot occupy the same space. This is why Cosmo gets pushed through the door during the Gohma fight. What does not exist, however, is a rule saying that he must remain in the chamber for the fight.

I can turn on my console right now and get the Master Sword without any Spiritual Stones and I've not cheated because there is no rule that says I must acquire them. There is only the game and what it allows me to do.

 

[DrOswald]

Snip.

I disagree, I think it's pretty easy to tell what the developer's intent was, and using that you can easily determine "the rules of the game". Judging by the fact that the moment you step into the boss room the door slams shut behind you, startles link, and is even sealed with iron bars, I think it's pretty safe to assume that the developers did not intend for you to leave that chamber without killing the boss in the proper fashion. Those are the rules. The rules aren't defined by code.

To further clarify that, the code in a game is akin to free will in reality. Sure, according to the code you can pass through that wall, but are you supposed to? In real life, you can go on a murderous rampage, but are you supposed to? The rules of society are set in the form of laws. Laws are simply words, and have absolutely no power to stop you if you make a decision to go contrary to them. Coding is just...well...coding. It can't stop you from exploiting it if you find such a flaw and decide to exploit it. Does that mean we can't see what the intention behind the coding was meant to be? No. We can see that the developers clearly didn't want you to leave that room. Just as we can see that society clearly doesn't want you to go around murdering people.

So no, I still disagree with you on the notion that it's impossible to come up with rules for a game or adhere to them because it's impossible to know what the developer's intent was. Most games have a tendency to obey the laws of physics, and unless there's a valid reason given in the game for having a character being able to pass through solid matter (i.e. they're a ghost or something) then you're not supposed to be able to pass through solid matter. I really can't see this in any way other than black and white.

Quite simply, there shouldn't be an argument over the phrase "how the game was meant to be played"...as we should all already know what that means. It means not exploiting things such as clipping glitches, trigger avoidances, or side-jump short-cuts. All of those things are neat tricks, I'll give you that, but they still all obviously go beyond the bounds of what the developers intended. What did the developers intend for 1-E? They intended the level to be pretty challenging due to a slow self-scrolling screen. What did the developers intend for Metroid? They intended that you shouldn't be able to reach that ledge and skip a massive chunk of the game. What did the developers intend for OOT? They intended that you'd beat the boss then go outside to watch the tree die. If you're trying to argue against that, it'd be like trying to argue "Well maybe the engineers MEANT to use faulty steel to build the bridge so that it could easily be destroyed." I highly doubt any developer intends to use faulty code so that you can clip through walls and skip past the game.

So yeah, I understand that people like speed runs. I understand that there's different categories of speed runs. I understand that people like these various different categories of speed runs. And I understand that not everyone is going to play by the rules of the games. All that said, however, I still won't find it to be impressive or anything other than cheating, and as such not worthy of holding a record. Does that mean I'm going to start a petition to have such records removed? Of course not. I just won't ever really give a damn about them.

In Metroid Prime there is a specific wall clip glitch that allows you to skip a puzzle. The developer knew about it but chose not to fix it. Should it be played this way?

In Super Mario RPG you can use a super star to get tons of levels and then if you kill yourself you will be able to use the star again, and again, and again. Infinite free exp. Was this developer intended? How do you know? Is this how the game should be played?

In OOT you can skip over half the deku tree dungeon by allowing an enemy to hit you as you are climbing a wall, causing you to fall far enough to break the web without solving any of the puzzles that would normally require you to do so. Is this how the game should be played?

In Yoshi's Island you can hit a certain enemy before it is on screen to prevent it growing, costing only a single egg instead of 4. Is this a glitch or working as intended? Should the game be played this way?

In Super Mario World it is possible to gain height using the cape bounce, allowing you to fly over most of the levels in the game. Should the game be played this way?

Many Zelda bosses can be killed instantly, completely bypassing the bosses intended mechanics, using the right combination of attacks. Should the game be played this way?

In LTTP you can kill Gannon without the silver arrows. Is this the way the game was meant to be played? How do you know?

In many Nes and Gameboy games you can exploit the way random numbers are generated to eliminate randomness in the game. Is this the way the game was meant to be played? If not, why were these games not programmed like other games where it is impossible to do so? How do you know the developer did not intend for the RNG to be exploitable?

Sure, there are many bugs that are clearly unintended, but there are far too many unexpected interactions that are not clear one way or the other. For example, you were saying that sequence breaks, like the dash jump break, are alright. Now you are not. Why? What changed your mind?

Did you know that Super Metroid is full of sequence breaks? There are dozens of them. Are these to be categorically banned? Answer this in your head before you move onto the next paragraph.

Did you know that many of these sequence breaks were developer intended breaks to reward players who were highly skilled at the game and explored the game to it's fullest?

Which breaks should be allowed? Which ones should not? We don't know which ones were developer intended, so how can we tell? How should the game be played? Give me clear rules that everyone will agree on. Because, according to you, there should be no argument over how the game should be played. According to you, developer intent is black and white. It should be easy for you to give me a ruleset for Super Metroid that everyone can agree is how the game should be played.

And for every mario, and every zelda, and every yoshi, and every platformer, and every RPG, and every action game, and for that matter any game ever made. I should be able to give you a list of what is possible and you should be able to come up with a clearly defined ruleset of how the game should be played and all reasonable people will agree with you. Because developer intent is obvious. It is black and white.

I am not trying to argue that the developers intended the OOT wrong warp. I am trying to argue that if we don't categorically allow everything it is impossible to create a rule set that everyone will agree on. A rule set based on how the game should be played will fracture and destroy any competitive scene built around those rules. This is why glitchless categories are so rare in speedrunning, and why the few that exist are rarely played. Because we cant put together a ruleset that everyone agrees on. Hell, it is almost impossible to get even two people to agree on a ruleset.

 

[Denizen]

Speedrunners are so awesome. Speedruns are awesome. Speedruns can range in no-glitch runs, only this glitch runs, assisted-runs, 100 completion in fastest time, a combination of all of the above, etc. But speedrunners have the same thing in mind, they love the game and they love it so much that they've dedicated parts of their whole lives mastering one game. If they didn't love that game they wouldn't have bothered looking for new things in it, learning to beat it in so many different ways. Could you imagine as a kid after beating OoT so many times, wanting more from it, and then learning about the glitches & exploits - and it goes from there. It's like another area of the game just opened up. That's how speedrunners think. The game never ends because it doesn't have to.

That's also why I don't understand how people can easily dismiss what they do. Speedrunners have played the game so many times that beating it normally is probably boring for them. They're not thinking about beating it fast in a petty attempt to ignore as much of the game as possible, they're looking for a challenge in a game they've loved longer, completed ad infinitum, and undoubtedly more than the person complaining that they don't respect the game. I admire speedrunners because if gaming needed an example of a zenith of loving one game and all it has - it's them.

And of course, speedrunners can love more than one game. So where does the love for the game(s) end? It doesn't have to.

 

[General Winter]

I think the wrong questions are being asked in this discussion.

First, answers to some of the questions that have already been brought up for posterity.

Did Cosmo really beat the game?
Not really. He didn't do it "legally". It doesn't really matter though.

Is the speedrun Cosmo did legitimate?
Yes

Does Any% speedrun take skill?
Definitely.

But, the question that I think deserves discussion here is which type of speedrun do you believe is the most legitimate?
Any% gets done the fastest, but other ways do it more legitimately, for lack of a better word. Which of the speedruns do you believe is the bigger achievement?