<glacius:metadata>

    <title>Video Game Feats</title>

    <description>Wherein I describe my numerous video game feats</description>

    <category>Video games</category>

</glacius:metadata>

<p>

    Once upon a time in college I got into <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speedrun">speed runs</a>.

    Back then most of us would record ourselves playing on VHS and then send the tapes

    to some dude at <a href="https://speeddemosarchive.com">Speed Demos Archive</a> who

    would digitize them and then put them on the website if they were good enough.

    Nowadays things like YouTube and Twitch exist and it's a little easier to record. This

    may have led to a very surprising result (to me, at least), which is that speedrunning

    became a <em>lot</em> more mainstream. To the extent that a select few actually make

    a living by just doing speedruns on Twitch or YouTube.

</p>

<p>

    But for a while it was a smallish group of people geeking out on SDA (and

    a few other sites, like the precursor to <a href="https://tasvideos.org">TASVideos</a>)

    over playing video games really fast.

</p>

<p>

    Anyway, enough nostalgia.

</p>

<hr />

<h2>Speedruns</h2>

<table class="table table-hover" data-sortable="true">

    <thead>

        <tr class="header">

            <th data-sort="string">Game</th>

            <th data-sort="string">System</th>

            <th data-sort="date">Date</th>

            <th data-sort="string">Time</th>

            <th data-sort="string">Category</th>

            <th>Comments</th>

        </tr>

    </thead>

    <tbody>

        <glacius:macro name="speedrun row">

            <properties>

                <gameName>Super Mario Bros. 2</gameName>

                <gameLink>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Mario_Bros._2</gameLink>

                <systemName>NES</systemName>

                <systemLink>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Entertainment_System</systemLink>

                <date>2005-07-04</date>

                <timeMs>655000</timeMs>

                <videoLink>https://archive.org/details/Mario2_1055</videoLink>

                <category>any %</category>

                <comments>This was the inaugural run for this game, so it's not very good.</comments>

            </properties>

        </glacius:macro>

        <glacius:macro name="speedrun row">

            <properties>

                <gameName>Super Mario Bros. 2</gameName>

                <gameLink>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Mario_Bros._2</gameLink>

                <systemName>NES</systemName>

                <systemLink>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Entertainment_System</systemLink>

                <date>2005-09-04</date>

                <timeMs>1596000</timeMs>

                <videoLink>https://archive.org/details/Mario2_2636</videoLink>

                <category>warpless</category>

                <comments>This record lasted for a long time (about 10 years). The video quality is very bad.</comments>

            </properties>

        </glacius:macro>

        <glacius:macro name="speedrun row">

            <properties>

                <gameName>Kid Icarus</gameName>

                <gameLink>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kid_Icarus</gameLink>

                <systemName>NES</systemName>

                <systemLink>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Entertainment_System</systemLink>

                <date>2006-01-25</date>

                <timeMs>2024000</timeMs>

                <videoLink>https://archive.org/details/KidIcarus_3344</videoLink>

                <category>any %</category>

                <comments>

                    The best part of the game isn't featured in the run, which is being turned 

                    into a terrible half-man/half-eggplant abomination.

                </comments>

            </properties>

        </glacius:macro>

        <glacius:macro name="speedrun row">

            <properties>

                <gameName>Contra</gameName>

                <gameLink>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contra_(video_game)</gameLink>

                <systemName>NES</systemName>

                <systemLink>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Entertainment_System</systemLink>

                <date>2006-02-18</date>

                <timeMs>685000</timeMs>

                <videoLink>https://archive.org/details/Contra_1125</videoLink>

                <category>any %</category>

                <comments>

                    This is the only game I ran out of spite. Everybody wanted to see Contra beat 

                    quickly, but no one would do it. Then some guy said he was running it, and it 

                    seemed promising. And then a year went by. Then he posted again that he was 

                    working on it. But he didn't. So I did instead. The fastest time on video 

                    before that was an emulated run that clocked in at around 13 minutes.

                </comments>

            </properties>

        </glacius:macro>

        <glacius:macro name="speedrun row">

            <properties>

                <gameName>Zelda II: The Adventure of Link</gameName>

                <gameLink>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zelda_II:_The_Adventure_of_Link</gameLink>

                <systemName>NES</systemName>

                <systemLink>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Entertainment_System</systemLink>

                <date>2006-05-08</date>

                <timeMs>4697000</timeMs>

                <videoLink>https://archive.org/details/Zelda2_SS_11817</videoLink>

                <category>deathless</category>

                <comments>

                    A very difficult way to play this game. This goes through the entire game 

                    without dying on purpose. Dying is a very good strategy in speedrunning in 

                    general, because it usually restores your health/magic/whatnot. I end up 

                    dying by accident near the end of the run, after I got screwed by a red 

                    potion not spawning, but it doesn't count as "abuse". This run was so 

                    difficult and time consuming that I thought it would last forever. It's 

                    turned out to be one of more hotly-contested variations. I'm proud of this 

                    run; it took a lot of effort to devise the experience strategy, and I was 

                    the first one to to attempt this category.

                </comments>

            </properties>

        </glacius:macro>

        <glacius:macro name="speedrun row">

            <properties>

                <gameName>Zelda II: The Adventure of Link</gameName>

                <gameLink>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zelda_II:_The_Adventure_of_Link</gameLink>

                <systemName>NES</systemName>

                <systemLink>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Entertainment_System</systemLink>

                <date>2006-05-19</date>

                <timeMs>2509000</timeMs>

                <videoLink>https://archive.org/details/Zelda2_SS_NewGamePlus_4149</videoLink>

                <category>New Game+</category>

                <comments>

                    This run starts from a "New Game+" file, which means you start with all your 

                    powerups from when you beat the game. This beat the world record (at the time) 

                    by one second, although that record had no video proof, so I had to devise 

                    my own strategies.

                </comments>

            </properties>

        </glacius:macro>

        <glacius:macro name="speedrun row">

            <properties>

                <gameName>Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure</gameName>

                <gameLink>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitfall:_The_Mayan_Adventure</gameLink>

                <systemName>Genesis</systemName>

                <systemLink>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_Genesis</systemLink>

                <date>2006-07-05</date>

                <timeMs>1092000</timeMs>

                <videoLink>https://archive.org/details/PitfallMayanAdventure_hard_1812</videoLink>

                <category>any % (hard)</category>

                <comments>

                    A fun game that extends the story of Pitfall Harry from the famous Atari 

                    2600 game Pitfall! You play as his son, who is trying to rescue the original 

                    Pitfall Harry from WARRIOR SPIRIT, which is, by far, the best name for a 

                    final boss ever.

                </comments>

            </properties>

        </glacius:macro>

        <glacius:macro name="speedrun row">

            <properties>

                <gameName>Ninja Gaiden</gameName>

                <gameLink>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninja_Gaiden_(NES_video_game)</gameLink>

                <systemName>NES</systemName>

                <systemLink>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Entertainment_System</systemLink>

                <date>2007-02-18</date>

                <timeMs>829000</timeMs>

                <videoLink>https://archive.org/details/NinjaGaiden_1349</videoLink>

                <category>any %</category>

                <comments>

                    A notoriously difficult game. This was faster than the only other run that I

                    could find at the time by ~2 minutes.

                </comments>

            </properties>

        </glacius:macro>

        <glacius:macro name="speedrun row">

            <properties>

                <gameName>Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday</gameName>

                <gameLink>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_Rogers:_Countdown_to_Doomsday</gameLink>

                <systemName>Genesis</systemName>

                <systemLink>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_Genesis</systemLink>

                <date>2007-03-15</date>

                <timeMs>5455000</timeMs>

                <videoLink>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iR6rDMsikqM349</videoLink>

                <category>any %</category>

                <comments>

                    I never submitted this anywhere because the VHS quality was so bad. Years

                    later I converted it to digital myself and uploaded it to YouTube. The

                    music in this game is terrible but it's one of my favorite RPGs.

                </comments>

            </properties>

        </glacius:macro>

    </tbody>

</table>

<hr />

<h2>Tool-assisted speedruns</h2>

<p>

    I also made some <a href="https://tasvideos.org/Glossary#ToolAssistedSpeedrunTas">tool-assisted 

    speedruns</a>. Even by the standards of the day, these weren't that good. But they did actually

    get published on the site.

</p>

<table class="table table-hover" data-sortable="true">

    <thead>

         <tr class="header">

            <th data-sort="string">Game</th>

            <th data-sort="string">System</th>

            <th data-sort="date">Date</th>

            <th data-sort="string">Time</th>

            <th data-sort="string">Category</th>

            <th>Comments</th>

        </tr>

    </thead>

    <tbody>

        <glacius:macro name="speedrun row">

            <properties>

                <gameName>Crystalis</gameName>

                <gameLink>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystalis</gameLink>

                <systemName>NES</systemName>

                <systemLink>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Entertainment_System</systemLink>

                <date>2006-09-06</date>

                <timeMs>3164470</timeMs>

                <videoLink>https://tasvideos.org/1322M</videoLink>

                <category>No wild warp</category>

                <comments>

                    The only other TAS of this game used the Wild Warp, which was a 

                    cheat/debug code to warp to about a dozen different places in the game 

                    instantly. I didn't like that, so I made this one which didn't do that.

                </comments>

            </properties>

        </glacius:macro>

        <glacius:macro name="speedrun row">

            <properties>

                <gameName>Spiritual Warfare</gameName>

                <gameLink>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiritual_Warfare_(video_game)</gameLink>

                <systemName>NES</systemName>

                <systemLink>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Entertainment_System</systemLink>

                <date>2006-09-27</date>

                <timeMs>1007540</timeMs>

                <videoLink>https://tasvideos.org/2193M</videoLink>

                <category>any %</category>

                <comments>

                    A strangely fun Legend of Zelda clone made by Wisdom Tree, a company that

                    made a bunch of generally poor Christian-themed video games in the 90s.

                    The music is truly terrible, however.

                </comments>

            </properties>

        </glacius:macro>

    </tbody>

</table>