this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2024
131 points (89.2% liked)

RetroGaming

19666 readers
502 users here now

Vintage gaming community.

Rules:

  1. Be kind.
  2. No spam or soliciting for money.
  3. No racism or other bigotry allowed.
  4. Obviously nothing illegal.

If you see these please report them.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Key Points:

  • Suigi has secured all five major speedrunning categories in Super Mario 64, effectively declaring the game's speedrunning community 'dead'.
  • Suigi's dominance is so profound that his records in all 5 main categories remain largely unchallenged.

The Five Star Categories:

  • 120 star: Completes every single star in the game.
  • 70 star: Completes all normal requirements to reach the final level.
  • 16 star: Uses glitches and techniques to significantly reduce required stars.
  • 1 star: Further optimizes the 16 star run for a single star collection.
  • 0 star: Eliminates stars entirely, focusing on time.

Background Details:

  • Some of Suigi's records were set over a year ago; his 16-star record alone still leads by 6 seconds.
  • Suigi estimates it could take up to a couple of years before someone else beats his current world records.

How do you feel about the dedication and skill demonstrated in these ultra-optimized speedruns? Do such efforts bring value to gaming or are they more of an academic exercise?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] dwindling7373@feddit.it 67 points 6 days ago (22 children)

Do such efforts bring value to gaming or are they more of an academic exercise?

Neither? Speedrunning is entirely nihilistic. It rejects the rules of society to the point of rejecting the rules of games themselves in favor of meaningless tantric repetition. It's the eternal pointless chase for a meaning that was never there and never will.

I find it fun and dreadful at the same time, as a concept, I would never do it myself in a million years.

In short, it's an artistic performance.

[–] Stalinwolf@lemmy.ca 6 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (5 children)

I can't fully articulate the reasons why, but I dislike the entire speed-running culture. I've always been someone who sinks as deeply as I possibly can into the environments that games provide, placing a lot of value on carefully crafted details, flora, object clutter and ambience.

Speed-running is essentially the exact opposite of this, and it takes what was intended to be an enjoyable escape and gamifies it beyond recognition. It becomes a sweaty, disgusting mess of button mashing, sprinting, wall-glitching, exploitation, and a bastardization of mechanics. I definitely get why some people find this interesting, but I just can't find the off-switch for how much I hate watching it. It's in a similar ballpark as extreme min-maxing in modern MMOs, where people get so addicted to arbitrarily raising numbers by the smallest margin that the game itself just evaporates into the background.

To me, it's like someone took art, sucked the creative soul out of it, and turned it into a math game.

[–] DmMacniel 13 points 6 days ago

It's more like they made an optimization puzzle out of a game they really likes.

Also before you speedrun you gotta understand the game and it's capabilities first and well.

load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (20 replies)