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?
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.
Speedrunners are the people who are the most dedicated to a game, having analysed it for hundreds of hours, they deeply understand every corner of it and appreciate everything that the game has to offer.
And then they break it over their knee.
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.
I get where you’re coming from, but understand that your way of enjoying things isn’t necessarily the right way to enjoy them. Some would say that ignorance of the technical aspects of a game’s design betrays a shallow appreciation of the work based entirely on its aesthetic value.
This is a bit like telling athletes that they should appreciate the human body for what it is, rather than try and lift the heaviest weight or run the fastest. Part of a holistic appreciation for the human body/a work of art/a video game is an understanding of what makes it tick, what its limitations are, and how far you can push the limits.
I also don’t much like watching speedruns, but I can understand that while some speedrunners are only in it for the numbers, the vast majority of them appreciate the games on a deeper level than I ever could.
Speedrunners tend to be superfans, and I’m sure their first playthrough of a game is done in the intended manner. Also consider that beloved games tend to have more active speedrun scenes - People speedrun Majora’s Mask precisely because of its wonderful atmosphere.
But yeah actually watching speedruns isn’t for everyone
I agree but I don’t come to the same conclusion. It’s akin to saying cubism is weird and paintings should be naturalistic.
Beside the artistic value, though, it leans more toward obsessively abusing rather than loving a videogame, as far as his intended purpose was.
To an extent is an act of rebellion and vandalism.