Speedrunning thread 3.6: Oh my god ball block

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Speedrunning thread 3.6: Oh my god ball block

SuccinctAndPunchy: Mar 29, 2013; People are supposed to get hurt by things. It's fucked up to not. It's not good for you.

I use an Elgato and it's fine but like, you can do better at that price point. It functions without too much and has its own passthrough so you don't have to fiddle about with splitting the video signal which can vastly simplify your setup and I like this, but I've known it to be somewhat temperamental, sometimes requiring a reboot of my computer to actually output signal for seemingly no good reason.

Such things are called "capture cards" and which one is best depends mainly on what you're trying to capture and your budget and/or whether or not you're willing to install an internal one inside your computer (these are almost always better but like again, busywork) or stick with external cap cards. Lay it out for us, my dude.

# ? Jul 17, 2018 17:25

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# ? Jun 6, 2024 13:27

Peewi: Nov 8, 2012

RoboJoe posted:

1) I've often read of the LttP randomiser in this thread and it sounds interesting to try when I get a better feel for the game, plus when I asked about the SNES classic someone mentioned it could be played on there, but I don't really know how to do it. Is it some kind of setting in the game?

Randomizer is a romhack and not an official thing by Nintendo. You'd add it to the SNES Mini the same way you'd add other games (also not something supported by Nintendo).

# ? Jul 17, 2018 17:50

Zereth: Jul 9, 2003

Peewi posted:

Randomizer is a romhack and not an official thing by Nintendo. You'd add it to the SNES Mini the same way you'd add other games (also not something supported by Nintendo).

Doesn't it also work by randomizing the location of things in the game, and then making a new rom with the layout in it? So you'd need to load it onto the SNES Mini each time you want to play a new seed.

# ? Jul 17, 2018 17:58

Panzeh: Nov 27, 2006; "..The high ground"

Zereth posted:

Doesn't it also work by randomizing the location of things in the game, and then making a new rom with the layout in it? So you'd need to load it onto the SNES Mini each time you want to play a new seed.

Yes

# ? Jul 17, 2018 18:07

Oyster: Nov 11, 2005; I GOT FLAT FEET JUST LIKE MY HERO MEGAMAN; Total Clam

RoboJoe posted:

I've just picked one up and I plan to start playing some things on there when I'm done playing a couple of games I've been playing a lot lately. I think I might try playing LttP first and trying some speedrunning with that because I'm in a big Zelda mood lately - I'm playing through Twilight Princess for the first time in many years and I'm planning to replay Breath of the Wild too, albeit casually, but LttP is something I want to do and figure out how to go fast. I do have a couple of questions related to this, if I may:

1) I've often read of the LttP randomiser in this thread and it sounds interesting to try when I get a better feel for the game, plus when I asked about the SNES classic someone mentioned it could be played on there, but I don't really know how to do it. Is it some kind of setting in the game?

The SNES Classic is good for experiencing LttP, but if you're intending on learning the speedrun of the most popular category, No Major Glitches, you'll need the Japanese 1.0 version, as the American version on the Classic patches out many of the minor glitches used in the run. That is also the ROM used for rando. It can be loaded onto the Classic with the wonderful and easy to use tool Hakchi (myself and Nep-Nep almost run exclusively on our Classics), but finding that ROM is completely up to you.

# ? Jul 17, 2018 18:10

Kaubocks: Apr 13, 2011

Lynx Winters posted:

Congrats! I'm planning to start learning this game for the 12 Hour Challenge, it is rad as hell.

bloodstained kicks rear end, and imo is pretty easy to pick up. unlike other castlevanias there�s not a ton of fiddling with subweapons� you just get the overpowered poo poo by stage 2/3 and crush the rest of the game with it.

it�s also not very mechanically demanding. it�s a relatively slow paced game. that said mistakes can be very punishing, so there�s a lot of time to gain by just... not dying.

it�s fun!

my sub-22 time from last night was supposed to be enough to jump me to 5th place but it seems this morning someone else had a run verified for slightly faster than me so i�m still in 6th. :argh:

next goal, sub-21!

# ? Jul 17, 2018 18:24

KennyMan666: May 27, 2010; The Saga

Kaubocks posted:

bloodstained kicks rear end, and imo is pretty easy to pick up. unlike other castlevanias there�s not a ton of fiddling with subweapons� you just get the overpowered poo poo by stage 2/3 and crush the rest of the game with it.

That was one of my issues with the game, each character has a subweapon that is so extremely good that you never want to pick up any other with them (okay, magic man has one other you sometimes want, but usually not). I guess there might maybe be some situational ones but eh. And Miriam is so much better than the other three it's dumb. The balance of Curse of the Moon is all out of whack.

Now, this comes from having played through the game casually on Normal and Nightmare, and not yet having done the thing where you only have one character. So I suppose some things might differ for a speedrun. But anyway. I should look up some runs of it some time, but I don't think I'm interested in running it myself at this point in time.

# ? Jul 17, 2018 19:17

Kaubocks: Apr 13, 2011

KennyMan666 posted:

That was one of my issues with the game, each character has a subweapon that is so extremely good that you never want to pick up any other with them (okay, magic man has one other you sometimes want, but usually not). I guess there might maybe be some situational ones but eh. And Miriam is so much better than the other three it's dumb. The balance of Curse of the Moon is all out of whack.

Now, this comes from having played through the game casually on Normal and Nightmare, and not yet having done the thing where you only have one character. So I suppose some things might differ for a speedrun. But anyway. I should look up some runs of it some time, but I don't think I'm interested in running it myself at this point in time.

i think in terms of a speedrun it works out pretty well. it's a short enough run that you get to see bosses get utterly destroyed when in a normal playthrough they would take considerably more time. it's also got a couple cool-looking zips that skip good chunks of some levels. the zips get crazier when you play nightmare mode and have access to the other characters earlier. miriam in particular you need to switch between sickle and axe a couple times. alfred you're constantly swapping between ice, fire, and lightning. gebel is great because you can burn weapon energy to pretty much skip rooms by flying through them but you need to know when you can do that and still get WE back

i personally find it interesting in the sense that... miriam, alfred, and gebel all have things that make them wildly overpowered, and it's fun to try and combine those in ways to blast through the game. that said, it's true that in my category (normal/veteran) zangetsu only sees serious play for the first stage. you see him a bit in stage 2 but mostly just to tank some hits, power up miriam, and then smack the boss a little. then you never touch him again from stage 3 onwards. that said i'm theorizing about a way to fit him a little into stage 5... need to test and see if it works for me

anyway tl;dr i like bloodstained

# ? Jul 17, 2018 19:51

KennyMan666: May 27, 2010; The Saga

It's a pretty good game and I absolutely do mean to give it more time, though I don't quite agree with the people who say it's better than Dracula's Curse and I don't know if I would have bothered with it yet if I didn't get it for free for backing the Kickstarter.

# ? Jul 17, 2018 19:58

SuccinctAndPunchy: Mar 29, 2013; People are supposed to get hurt by things. It's fucked up to not. It's not good for you.

You should do the thing with Zangetsu Only, then Zangetsu is not The Worst but The Best and it's both very cathartic and quite a lot of fun to play.

he even gets a dash kinda move which makes the speedrun fun times

# ? Jul 17, 2018 21:41

RoboJoe: Dec 30, 2006; We cleanse.
You are the filth.

SuccinctAndPunchy posted:

I use an Elgato and it's fine but like, you can do better at that price point. It functions without too much and has its own passthrough so you don't have to fiddle about with splitting the video signal which can vastly simplify your setup and I like this, but I've known it to be somewhat temperamental, sometimes requiring a reboot of my computer to actually output signal for seemingly no good reason.

Such things are called "capture cards" and which one is best depends mainly on what you're trying to capture and your budget and/or whether or not you're willing to install an internal one inside your computer (these are almost always better but like again, busywork) or stick with external cap cards. Lay it out for us, my dude.

That's great info, thanks, it helps me understand them better. I'll admit I don't have much of a budget for this, I'll probably consider a refurbished or used capture card if I decide to get one. My PC isn't too good (I haven't upgraded it for many years now but saving towards it, as it's got issues), so maybe one that's external would be best. I can stream okay with OBS, even if games aren't really going on high settings, so I think it would be okay for a streaming console related things.

Peewi posted:

Randomizer is a romhack and not an official thing by Nintendo. You'd add it to the SNES Mini the same way you'd add other games (also not something supported by Nintendo).

Oyster posted:

The SNES Classic is good for experiencing LttP, but if you're intending on learning the speedrun of the most popular category, No Major Glitches, you'll need the Japanese 1.0 version, as the American version on the Classic patches out many of the minor glitches used in the run. That is also the ROM used for rando. It can be loaded onto the Classic with the wonderful and easy to use tool Hakchi (myself and Nep-Nep almost run exclusively on our Classics), but finding that ROM is completely up to you.

Ah, I see. I don't really know much about ROMs and whatnot, that's a shame I'd need the Japanese version too if I wanted to learn it. I thought it could use the LttP on the SNES Classic itself for this sort of thing, I guess I misunderstood a post someone made about that. I'll look into that tool you mentioned but I guess as I don't have a Japanese version that wouldn't help me. Thank you both for the info though.

Are the other games, such as Super Metroid, on the SNES Classic okay for learning to speedrun? Nothing really complicated or long of the games it has, I just want to try a little now I have one.

# ? Jul 17, 2018 22:45

xamphear: Apr 9, 2002; SILK FOR CALDÉ!

RoboJoe posted:

I don't really know much about ROMs and whatnot, that's a shame I'd need the Japanese version too if I wanted to learn it.

The SNES (and NES) Classic is a little linux computer running emulators. There's a USB port on the back and if you plug it into your PC and use the Hakchi2 software, you can load it up with all the ROMs you want. You can even play NES games on the SNES classic. Hell, you can play GameBoy, Genesis, etc... If you're interested in learning, you can turn the SNES Classic into a hell of a retro box.

https://github.com/ClusterM/hakchi2

This is fairly off topic for this thread, but fortunately there's a thread where it's all very on topic. Check out the Retro Gaming thread here: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3837622

# ? Jul 18, 2018 00:47

fadam: Apr 23, 2008

Is there any advantage to emulating games on a SNES Classic versus just using Retroarch or something?

# ? Jul 18, 2018 01:15

big deal: Sep 10, 2017

SNES controller, fun interface

# ? Jul 18, 2018 01:25

Double Punctuation: Dec 30, 2009; Ships were made for sinking;
Whiskey made for drinking;
If we were made of cellophane
We'd all get stinking drunk much faster!

fadam posted:

Is there any advantage to emulating games on a SNES Classic versus just using Retroarch or something?

You get Starfox 2 with it, and I don�t think there�s any other legal way to get Starfox 2.

# ? Jul 18, 2018 10:26

RoboJoe: Dec 30, 2006; We cleanse.
You are the filth.

xamphear posted:

The SNES (and NES) Classic is a little linux computer running emulators. There's a USB port on the back and if you plug it into your PC and use the Hakchi2 software, you can load it up with all the ROMs you want. You can even play NES games on the SNES classic. Hell, you can play GameBoy, Genesis, etc... If you're interested in learning, you can turn the SNES Classic into a hell of a retro box.

https://github.com/ClusterM/hakchi2

This is fairly off topic for this thread, but fortunately there's a thread where it's all very on topic. Check out the Retro Gaming thread here: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3837622

Oh I see, that sounds really interesting, I didn't know any of that! I'll check out that retro thread for sure.

Still somewhat disappointed about not really being able to do a lot of the glitches and things with the LttP that's on the SNES classic though because I really wanted to try doing some speedrunning with that. Hopefully other games on the system would still be okay if I felt I liked the games enough to want to try learning those.

# ? Jul 18, 2018 11:22

Double Punctuation: Dec 30, 2009; Ships were made for sinking;
Whiskey made for drinking;
If we were made of cellophane
We'd all get stinking drunk much faster!

RoboJoe posted:

Oh I see, that sounds really interesting, I didn't know any of that! I'll check out that retro thread for sure.

Still somewhat disappointed about not really being able to do a lot of the glitches and things with the LttP that's on the SNES classic though because I really wanted to try doing some speedrunning with that. Hopefully other games on the system would still be okay if I felt I liked the games enough to want to try learning those.

I have been wondering if it would be possible to make a patch file to convert the LttP/TotG ROM on a Japanese SNES Classic to 1.0. Of course, there would be no patching the English version, since there is no English 1.0. You�d have to distribute the entire script, fonts, and any other Japanese-only assets, which would be just as illegal as distributing the ROM. However, I would think it would be a lot easier and cheaper to import an SNES Classic than to find a 1.0J cart, which go for hundreds of dollars.

# ? Jul 18, 2018 11:34

Hyphen-ated: Apr 24, 2006; Not to be confused with endash or minus.

Double Punctuation posted:

than to find a 1.0J cart, which go for hundreds of dollars.

I see a lot on ebay selling for $15-$20, are those all counterfeit or something?

# ? Jul 18, 2018 12:18

SeXReX: Jan 9, 2009; I drink, mostly.
And get mad at people on the internet

Hyphen-ated posted:

I see a lot on ebay selling for $15-$20, are those all counterfeit or something?

yeah IDK what they're on about I got mine for like 35

I haven't like, cracked it open to confirm it's not a bootleg, but if it IS they did some serious work making this cart look like it's been around for nearly 30 years.

# ? Jul 18, 2018 13:18

Takoluka: Jun 26, 2009; Don't look at me!

RoboJoe posted:

Still somewhat disappointed about not really being able to do a lot of the glitches and things with the LttP that's on the SNES classic though because I really wanted to try doing some speedrunning with that. Hopefully other games on the system would still be okay if I felt I liked the games enough to want to try learning those.

If you were to go out and buy a Super Nintendo and a copy of A Link to the Past, you wouldn't be able to do it there either. You would have to find an original Japanese 1.0 copy, which can only be played by having a Super Famicom or by physically modifying the Super Nintendo itself or the Super Famicom cartridge.

The SNES Classic offers probably the best possible and most convenient solution for you.

# ? Jul 18, 2018 13:29

Oyster: Nov 11, 2005; I GOT FLAT FEET JUST LIKE MY HERO MEGAMAN; Total Clam

fadam posted:

Is there any advantage to emulating games on a SNES Classic versus just using Retroarch or something?

I use Retroarch within the SNES classic to rebind buttons. I like binding start to L for LttP.

Also yeah I think the only thing run-worthy on the SNES Classic is Star Fox 2. Come submit a run and give me something to do!

# ? Jul 18, 2018 13:42

RoboJoe: Dec 30, 2006; We cleanse.
You are the filth.

Takoluka posted:

If you were to go out and buy a Super Nintendo and a copy of A Link to the Past, you wouldn't be able to do it there either. You would have to find an original Japanese 1.0 copy, which can only be played by having a Super Famicom or by physically modifying the Super Nintendo itself or the Super Famicom cartridge.

The SNES Classic offers probably the best possible and most convenient solution for you.

Ah I see, that makes sense then. I didn't realise that before I bought the SNES classic, I just misunderstood a post or two I read in this thread and a couple of other bits of information I saw elsewhere, but no problem. I have the SNES Classic and I'm very happy with it though, especially as I can causally play a whole bunch of games I've never played before! I also looked into the Hakchi tool someone mentioned and installed that on it, I have a button combo to go back to the menu instead of pressing the reset button now which is fantastic.

I can still learn to speedrun some of the others on the SNES Classic I'm sure (super metroid seems fun!), which is why I've been posting here about it, I've always enjoyed watching speedruns but never really tried it myself. I've probably derailed the thread enough though, apologies for that everyone (especially when I was asking about capture cards). Thank you for all the advice and information, I'm sure I'll post more speedrun specific questions to games and whatnot as I try it more.

# ? Jul 18, 2018 18:05

Lutha Mahtin: Oct 10, 2010; Your brokebrain sin is absolved...go and shitpost no more!

if you've never done speedruns before just go nuts and have fun. play whatever you want and don't get discouraged if nerds say you aren't doing it right. if you ever want to do "proper" well-established categories for a game you can figure that out later, don't feel like you have to jump in to a really difficult category right away or anything

# ? Jul 18, 2018 18:21

Pash: Sep 10, 2009; The First of the Adorable Dead

Don't know if anyone has posted it here yet but the 2018 12 hour speedrun challenge is scheduled for the 27th-29th. Sign ups.

# ? Jul 18, 2018 19:59

Takoluka: Jun 26, 2009; Don't look at me!

RoboJoe posted:

I can still learn to speedrun some of the others on the SNES Classic I'm sure (super metroid seems fun!), which is why I've been posting here about it, I've always enjoyed watching speedruns but never really tried it myself. I've probably derailed the thread enough though, apologies for that everyone (especially when I was asking about capture cards). Thank you for all the advice and information, I'm sure I'll post more speedrun specific questions to games and whatnot as I try it more.

My genuine suggestion to you is to start trying to get good at the games you like the most and just set times for them. Don't worry about rules; set your own rules, and just go.

See how quickly you can beat Contra 3. Use as many continues as you need.
Grab as many or as little upgrades in Mega Man X. Whatever Capsules, Heart Tanks, and Sub Tanks you want are yours for the taking.
See how quickly you can beat Bowser in Super Mario World through whatever path you want to take.

Just enjoy. Speedrunning is just a method of challenging yourself, and in the end, you should see if that's something you even want to do. If you beat Super Mario World any% in an hour and a half and say to yourself "...Can I do an hour and 15 minutes?", give it a go! If you do and suddenly feel like going sub-1 hour, it might be worth getting into! If instead you go "That was fun, but I think I'm done!", then don't worry about it. Enjoy your little emulator machine.

# ? Jul 18, 2018 20:27

KennyMan666: May 27, 2010; The Saga

ESA threads are here!

Seriousposting thread
Chillposting thread

# ? Jul 20, 2018 09:30

Hobojim: Oct 31, 2011

Hello, I�m Hobojim. I�m here today to talk to you about a classic NES game from my (and possibly your!) childhood, and why you should consider speedrunning it.

Startropics. Good old Startropics.

I, like possibly many of you if you�re from North America, played this game a lot when I was a kid. The game was reasonably popular here; I�m unsure of how it did in Europe. I know it had a much later release there, and was never released in Japan at all despite being developed by Japanese developers. For me memories of this game were fond and vivid, memories of exploration, of mysteries, of ghosts and snails, and of pain.

Pain and despair.

The game was notorious for unfair traps that killed the player instantly, of secret passageways that led to nothing but hatred, and of high damage in a game where the good weapons required a certain level of health to use. This game is all of these things for a casual player. But I�m not here to convince you to be a casual player. I�m here to convince you to be a speedrunner.

Herein I shall record a list of reasons you should speedrun Startropics.

Sick of games with lots of text requiring Japanese versions to make them go faster? Good news! There IS no Japanese version! All speedrunning is done on the English version!
Grid-based movement in four directions! Because diagonals are for chumps and who needs fluidity when you can drive a human tank!
Tired of trying to learn frame-perfect tricks? You�re in luck! Everything you do can be frame-perfect with little-to-no effort on your part, because you can buffer absolutely everything during a previous action!
- By this I mean if you hit attack, release and then hold the button again, you�ll attack twice with the second attack being on the first frame possible. No longer how far away that is. This is integral to Startropics as a speedgame, and you can do this with ANY INPUT. Hold up and jump when you enter a room to jump forwards on the first frame. Hold A during a long text box to move past it on the first possible instance, and then release and hold it again to do the same for every text box in the game. Hold A then left and B, then B again to jump, turn left in mid-air and attack twice with frame-perfect timing while jumping. You get the idea. Watch the inputs in the gifs below for an illustration of what I mean.
Learn all of the puzzles you couldn�t do as a child and kick your past�s rear end by clearing bosses at record speeds! Alternatively if you don�t hate yourself, get revenge for all of those assholes that killed young-you and traumatized you for the next years/days/hours!
Only one real glitch is known for the game, and it�s on the last boss, and your time will be the same regardless of whether or not you get lucky and get it because of the way we time the game! No need to learn weird crazy glitches, or alternatively, tons of possibilities to explore to find weird crazy glitches!
Experience a Bible story but with ROB-64 in a submarine instead of dumbshit singing vegetables!
Tons of references to early nineties America! Learn to love baseball, yo-yos and cola all over again!
It�s an NES game with zero lag! As such, the community is generally okay with people using emulators!
Hit things with three different types of yo-yo, or alternatively three different types of �island stars� if you�re playing on the Wii VC (Thanks, Canada!)
A fun assortment of weapons that you will use with varying frequency over the course of a run, from baseball bat (once) to torches to karate� cleats? Whatever those are supposed to be!
Drugs that make you red!
Don�t dip your drat collectible letter in water for your two and a half viewers on a twitch live stream you god-damned savage!
Witness the most irritating low-life beep in video game history, made all the worse by having it repeat every time you do anything like jump or attack! Motivation to not get hit bitches!
There are only thirty times on the leaderboards and my second run would have been good enough for 28th!
Finally, the game looks and sounds fantastic with a great soundtrack (including a midi version of God Save the Queen or My Country �Tis of Thee (I think? I don�t know all of the weird patriotic �Murica songs sorry)) and the world record is only just over an hour long, so you can practice a ton!

The game is legitimately a lot of fun to play as a speedgame, due in no small part to the fact that you can buffer absolutely everything. There is SOME RNG in the game but it isn�t that prevalent; the bad thing is that it�s at its worst right at the end of a run, so expect a lot of runs to die late if you do start picking this game up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFygvb22I5U
This is the aptly-named Bottleneck, right at the start of Chapter 7 (out of 8). My gold split for this segment is a minute and thirty three seconds; my average split is close to eight minutes. You will die here a lot. Deaths in Startropics don�t cost you a ton of time, but if you�re chasing that PB it�s obviously a setback. There are tools to make this section go very smoothly but they�re out of the way. This is the single segment that makes this speedrun troublesome, but the game is fun enough to play fast that it isn�t THAT hard to put up with.

Tips for new players:

Practice chapters 3 and 6. A lot. They�re the longest and require a lot of health management to do well, so know where you can afford to take a hit and have contingency plans if you do. You can do this through savestates on emulator or review mode if you�ve beaten the chapter already from the main menu.
Get a strategy for The Bottleneck. It probably won�t be a consistent one, but see what some of the top players do and ask yourself why, then adjust to your tastes. You�ll want a reasonably consistent way to get past the first few hurdles of it without getting hit, and then wing it for the last section, because randomness is gonna random sometimes no matter what you do.
Learn who you do and don�t have to talk to in order to progress in towns. There are a sometimes surprising number of NPCs you can skip over.
Understand how the input buffering works in dungeons as well as text sections. Some text boxes will ask if you �understand� or �want to read it again� and you have to learn when those will pop up; thankfully if you hold right and A instead of just A for those text boxes the game reads the direction first and you�ll select the correct option. Buffering!
Learn to save 4 frames by doing this unbufferable tightly-timed trick, the only one in the game, that only loses a half-second every time you screw up! Or don�t, whatever, it�s really not worth it.

That�s a lot of words written about Startropics. Feel free to post your experiences with the game and how it was so hard it ruined your childhood and killed your dog or whatever!

# ? Jul 21, 2018 04:49

Carbon dioxide: Oct 9, 2012

Hobojim posted:

Hello, I’m Hobojim. I’m here today to talk to you about a classic NES game from my (and possibly your!) childhood, and why you should consider speedrunning it.

Startropics. Good old Startropics.

I, like possibly many of you if you’re from North America, played this game a lot when I was a kid. The game was reasonably popular here; I’m unsure of how it did in Europe. I know it had a much later release there, and was never released in Japan at all despite being developed by Japanese developers. For me memories of this game were fond and vivid, memories of exploration, of mysteries, of ghosts and snails, and of pain.

Pain and despair.

The game was notorious for unfair traps that killed the player instantly, of secret passageways that led to nothing but hatred, and of high damage in a game where the good weapons required a certain level of health to use. This game is all of these things for a casual player. But I’m not here to convince you to be a casual player. I’m here to convince you to be a speedrunner.

Herein I shall record a list of reasons you should speedrun Startropics.

Sick of games with lots of text requiring Japanese versions to make them go faster? Good news! There IS no Japanese version! All speedrunning is done on the English version!

Grid-based movement in four directions! Because diagonals are for chumps and who needs fluidity when you can drive a human tank!

Tired of trying to learn frame-perfect tricks? You’re in luck! Everything you do can be frame-perfect with little-to-no effort on your part, because you can buffer absolutely everything during a previous action!

By this I mean if you hit attack, release and then hold the button again, you’ll attack twice with the second attack being on the first frame possible. No longer how far away that is. This is integral to Startropics as a speedgame, and you can do this with ANY INPUT. Hold up and jump when you enter a room to jump forwards on the first frame. Hold A during a long text box to move past it on the first possible instance, and then release and hold it again to do the same for every text box in the game. Hold A then left and B, then B again to jump, turn left in mid-air and attack twice with frame-perfect timing while jumping. You get the idea. Watch the inputs in the gifs below for an illustration of what I mean.

Learn all of the puzzles you couldn’t do as a child and kick your past’s rear end by clearing bosses at record speeds! Alternatively if you don’t hate yourself, get revenge for all of those assholes that killed young-you and traumatized you for the next years/days/hours!

Only one real glitch is known for the game, and it’s on the last boss, and your time will be the same regardless of whether or not you get lucky and get it because of the way we time the game! No need to learn weird crazy glitches, or alternatively, tons of possibilities to explore to find weird crazy glitches!

Experience a Bible story but with ROB-64 in a submarine instead of dumbshit singing vegetables!

Tons of references to early nineties America! Learn to love baseball, yo-yos and cola all over again!

It’s an NES game with zero lag! As such, the community is generally okay with people using emulators!

Hit things with three different types of yo-yo, or alternatively three different types of “island stars” if you’re playing on the Wii VC (Thanks, Canada!)

A fun assortment of weapons that you will use with varying frequency over the course of a run, from baseball bat (once) to torches to karate… cleats? Whatever those are supposed to be!

Drugs that make you red!

Don’t dip your drat collectible letter in water for your two and a half viewers on a twitch live stream you god-damned savage!

Witness the most irritating low-life beep in video game history, made all the worse by having it repeat every time you do anything like jump or attack! Motivation to not get hit bitches!

There are only thirty times on the leaderboards and my second run would have been good enough for 28th!

Finally, the game looks and sounds fantastic with a great soundtrack (including a midi version of God Save the Queen or My Country ‘Tis of Thee (I think? I don’t know all of the weird patriotic ‘Murica songs sorry)) and the world record is only just over an hour long, so you can practice a ton!

The game is legitimately a lot of fun to play as a speedgame, due in no small part to the fact that you can buffer absolutely everything. There is SOME RNG in the game but it isn’t that prevalent; the bad thing is that it’s at its worst right at the end of a run, so expect a lot of runs to die late if you do start picking this game up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFygvb22I5U
This is the aptly-named Bottleneck, right at the start of Chapter 7 (out of 8). My gold split for this segment is a minute and thirty three seconds; my average split is close to eight minutes. You will die here a lot. Deaths in Startropics don’t cost you a ton of time, but if you’re chasing that PB it’s obviously a setback. There are tools to make this section go very smoothly but they’re out of the way. This is the single segment that makes this speedrun troublesome, but the game is fun enough to play fast that it isn’t THAT hard to put up with.

Tips for new players:

Practice chapters 3 and 6. A lot. They’re the longest and require a lot of health management to do well, so know where you can afford to take a hit and have contingency plans if you do. You can do this through savestates on emulator or review mode if you’ve beaten the chapter already from the main menu.

Get a strategy for The Bottleneck. It probably won’t be a consistent one, but see what some of the top players do and ask yourself why, then adjust to your tastes. You’ll want a reasonably consistent way to get past the first few hurdles of it without getting hit, and then wing it for the last section, because randomness is gonna random sometimes no matter what you do.

Learn who you do and don’t have to talk to in order to progress in towns. There are a sometimes surprising number of NPCs you can skip over.

Understand how the input buffering works in dungeons as well as text sections. Some text boxes will ask if you “understand” or “want to read it again” and you have to learn when those will pop up; thankfully if you hold right and A instead of just A for those text boxes the game reads the direction first and you’ll select the correct option. Buffering!

Learn to save 4 frames by doing this unbufferable tightly-timed trick, the only one in the game, that only loses a half-second every time you screw up! Or don’t, whatever, it’s really not worth it.

That’s a lot of words written about Startropics. Feel free to post your experiences with the game and how it was so hard it ruined your childhood and killed your dog or whatever!

A good post. There should be more like it.

# ? Jul 21, 2018 07:24

Captain Invictus: Apr 5, 2005; Try reading some manga!; Clever Betty

I refuse

# ? Jul 21, 2018 08:22

TeaJay: Oct 9, 2012

I like Star Tropics a lot and had it as a kid and I like speedruns of it. It was quite popular in Europe as well, it's one of those games at least one of your friends seemed to have.

There should be a category like letter% where you actually dip the letter to proceed, though.

# ? Jul 21, 2018 08:33

Hobojim: Oct 31, 2011

TeaJay posted:

I like Star Tropics a lot and had it as a kid and I like speedruns of it. It was quite popular in Europe as well, it's one of those games at least one of your friends seemed to have.

There should be a category like letter% where you actually dip the letter to proceed, though.

Good to hear it was popular there too. It�s a pretty straightforward game to pick up, and deaths don�t lose much time so even bad runs aren�t so discouraging. I might stream some attempts this weekend to test my new fancy internet.

# ? Jul 21, 2018 14:16

802.11weed: May 9, 2007; ^no

Hobojim posted:

Great post. Too bad that I�m complete trash at this sort of game or I�d be interested in running it. Also, an hour is a bit long for me. :goleft:

# ? Jul 22, 2018 05:43

Boogalo: Jul 8, 2012; Meep Meep

Startropics fukkin owns.

# ? Jul 22, 2018 05:52

Kaubocks: Apr 13, 2011

i've never been so owned by a video game before

# ? Jul 22, 2018 05:55

Nep-Nep: May 15, 2004; Just one more thing!

More video game final bosses should let your victory count even if you die at roughly the same time, I got a laugh out of that.

# ? Jul 22, 2018 06:12

FirstAidKite: Nov 8, 2009

That reminds me of when I killed the final off of ultionus just as I died, I decided to just let the video count since I ended up softlocked where it respawned me but not the final boss and I couldn't make the credit happen but time is on the final hit of the final boss so it didn't really matter that the game softlocked after the moment I'd have hit time.

# ? Jul 22, 2018 06:23

Xerol: Jan 13, 2007

PB/WRed by over 3 hours now to go speedrun sleeping for 15 hours.

# ? Jul 22, 2018 07:30

RoboJoe: Dec 30, 2006; We cleanse.
You are the filth.

I realise I've been asking about the SNES Classic a lot in this thread (and I still plan to play those games soon) but do any of you have any experience with speedrunning Dragons Dogma: Dark Arisen?

I've recently started playing it casually after getting it for my PS4 and I remember how much I love this game from playing it back on the xbox 360. After I've completed a playthrough or two casually to re-familiarize with the game, I'm thinking I might try my hand at speedrunning it. It has a inbuilt speedrun mode too which is pretty awesome! It's such a fun game and I really think I want to learn it.

I've found a couple of guides for a speedrun on normal new game mode and also for the speedrun mode (although the setup section for the speedrun mode isn't there as far as I can tell so I'm not sure what level or items I'd definitely need are) but I'm definitely very interested in giving that a go and I was wondering if anyone here had any experience or advice.

# ? Jul 22, 2018 10:42