I've always found myself a bit fascinated by the concept of speedrunning video games. Like many people, I watched that Mario 3 speedrun about 10 years ago when it came out. You know, the one where the guy bounces on every bad guy for the autoscrolling levels so that he finishes with 99 lives. I later found out that this was tool assisted, which means that the inputs were programmed into an emulator, accounting for its pure perfection. But the concept has always been interesting, particularly in games where the difference between a tool assisted speedrun and manually inputted speedrun are very close. Super Mario Bros., for example, is very close to "optimized" for human play, as the record for a tool assisted run (2:54 and milliseconds) is only a few seconds off the unassisted run (2:56 and milliseconds).
I used to speedrun extremely casually, if only against myself. On my train rides into D.C. for work a few years ago, I used to beat Pokemon Emerald over, and over, and over again, trying to beat the elite 4 as quickly as possible. I had my time under 10 hours, which I thought was pretty good (and is still better than anyone else I've ever met), but the world record time, without using any glitches, is 2:33. Oh boy. Keep in mind that this is not even a competitively run game in the speedrunning community, and the wide range of outcomes in the records, spanning nearly half and hour from the 1st place finish to the 10th, shows the variability and lack of consensus on the "best path" to complete the game. In Super Mario Bros., the "best path" is absolutely known, although they may make a gamebreaking discovery of a new glitch or trick at some point, so the spread is about a second between first place and tenth.
So I casually have tried out speedrunning against myself in the path, and have enjoyed it. But the most serious recent attempt at speedrunning I've had is in the Mega Man Legacy Collection for PS4. I've been beating all of the Mega Man games on it, and enjoyed them so very much that I decided to give the challenge mode a shot. In this mode, you undertake various challenges, trying to complete them as quickly as possible. These can include things like "beat Dr. Wily from Mega Man" as quickly as possible. When you complete it, you are rewarded with either a Bronze, Silver, or Gold Mega Man head. You can also have your time posted on the leaderboards, which anyone can watch to see the tricks you used to finish the challenge quickly. I have found that repeating these challenges over and over and shaving seconds at a time off my best time has been oddly therapeutic and immensely enjoyable. I set a personal challenge to get gold on all of them, and thus 100% my first set of achievements on PS4 or PS3, which will be fun to show off. But it's very invigorating to set a new PR, and even more so to reach the pinnacle of human perfection and get a Gold. I've finished over 20 of the 50+ challenges with a Gold, and am committed to finishing all of them, which is definitely setting back progress on Mega Man 10 and my other games in the backlog. But I'm really having fun, and think that for a certain subset of the gaming population, this would be a really fun opportunity to greatly improve at a game. I now know that I could probably clear Mega Man 2 without continuing after practicing all of the bosses over and over, and working the most challenging parts a ton. And each of the games from Mega Man to Mega Man 3 would all flow much easier for me due to my repetitions in those games in the challenges. I'm working through the Mega Man 4 challenges now, which means to me that I'm approaching the 50% mark, which is great. I'll be very excited to see that 100% in my profile for the game.
To be clear, I'm not a great speedrunner. Most of my times, even the gold ones, are a solid 30% slower than the top of the leaderboard. But I'm improving, challenging myself, and enjoying the fruits of my labor. That's enough for me.
-TRO
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