A 14 Year Old Trackmania Record Was Finally Broken

this is e4 one of the campaign tracks in trackmania nation's esports world cup a formula one racing game released in 2006. at first glance this track might not look particularly interesting but for the last 14 years it's been home to the oldest world record in the game until now [Music] the oldest shrekmania world record has just been broken a legendary record that stood on top of the leaderboards uncontested for over 14 years usually when such old fabled world records are beaten the accomplishments are widely celebrated in gaming the oldest track media world record being beaten is something that should have been massive news but very few people have even heard about it happening so today in this video i'll tell you the incredible story of the record that stood for 14 years and the long and difficult effort to beat it just before we begin i've noticed that a lot of my viewers aren't subscribed so if you haven't subscribed to the channel yet then please consider doing so it really helps me out and it lets you know when new track media content is coming out thanks [Music] to start off let's have a look at the map e4 starts out with a big drop down where you fall down to the ground landing in a quarter pipe to preserve speed it then continues with a right turn and some booster blocks where the car rapidly gains speed before going up the hill and over anti-boosters where the car rapidly loses speed after that you jump through the checkpoint go down the hill and build up a lot of speed with the boosters before going up the loop and into the finish at a first glance e4 is a fairly simple track with only a few distinct parts where you can gain or lose significant amount of time which begs the question just how could a record last 14 years on e4 and to answer that question we'll have to go back all the way to 2006. in april of 2006 three months after the game was released the world record on e4 was a 22.33 second run by nero despite e4 being a fairly linear track nero already had some good strats to save time on the first drop down he released the acceleration mid air so that he could land as early as possible in the quarter pipe temporarily losing him a bit of time but gaining it back again and having excess speed over the following straight then after jumping through the checkpoint he slowed down so that he could maintain full grip on the downhill getting a lot more speed for the ending for its time this was a very solid one by nero and the track already seemed close to optimized but that's when things were about to change drastically on the 3rd of june 2006 victor started driving a run on e4 that would become legendary on the first drop down victor didn't release the acceleration like nero and lost a significant amount of time the following turn wasn't optimal either and coming up towards the ending he was over half a second behind nero's world record but here's the thing victor wasn't really trying to beat nero the reason victor was playing e4 on this particular day was because he wanted to go on top of the stadium roof and his idea was to use the loop on e4 as a launching ramp to get there so victor drove a casual run through the track ready to jump on top of the roof when this happened [Music] that day victor never reached the stadium roof when he went out of the loop he missed and flew straight into the pole and the redirection of his crash sent this car flying straight towards the finish he then hit the finish line from underneath and the run counted effectively skipping the entire last loop and beating nero's world record by almost a second 21-37 this run is perhaps the single greatest happy little accident in trackmania history victor had not even conceived of the idea that there might be a shortcut on the track all he wanted to do was just explore the stadium roof and because he missed and failed the jump to get there he ended up with a world record instead when people heard about victor's new record they were shocked and rightfully so even victor in his own words said i don't know what happened but i'm very very happy but what had actually happened a small developer oversight when creating the game had the finish line clipping slightly into the floor of the finished block meaning that it could be crossed from underneath a bug that would later be known as a bug finish now the race was on to be the next person to do it since the shortcut saved so much time any completion would be good enough to land yourself in the top 10. and remembering that victor start wasn't the greatest a completion could even be enough for a world record the idea that one pull hit into bug finish was all that stood between you and your first trackmania world record was an alluring one and over the following days many players tried to beat it but no one succeeded players eventually realized that this wasn't just an ordinary luck-based shortcut where given enough time and attempt eventually you're gonna get a completion this was different to make matters worse as you go down the booster hill the game locks your car in the internal camera perspective to help you with seeing where to go in the loop but on the flip side it makes seeing where you're flying to on the shortcut nearly impossible all you could really do was flip out of the loop and hope for the best and despite thousands of players trying exactly that no one else managed to complete it 2006 came and went and the record would stand all the way through 2007 as well with no contestants in april of 2008 things would once again change when adio released their brand new game trackmania nations forever a rework of track media nation's eswc with better graphics and also a better multiplayer nations forever was an instant hit and many eswc players quickly shifted over to the new game both games would still have active player bases for the next little while but eventually nations forever established itself as the go-to track mania game leaving eswc in an awkward spot as 2010 and 2011 came and went there were just a handful of competitive players left in the game the general consensus at the time was that victor's record might stand forever most players had moved on from the game and those that were still around didn't want to bother with such a lucky track and as time went on there was an ever increasing problem for those that actually did want to try the track windows you see trackmania nation's eswc was released for the windows xp operating system and in order to prevent piracy the game had a star force driver the star force driver would spill disaster for eswc as with each new iteration of windows the driver would cost more and more errors preventing players from launching the game but in october of 2012 windows 8 was released and if you install the latest version of windows then eswc would become impossible to access the amount of players who had old enough computers running old enough operating systems to launch the game became ever fewer but in 2015 there was a small resurgent activity a generational shift in track mania where all players were quitting the game and new players were coming in many of the new players had heard the legendary tale of the accidental world record that was set on e4 and wanted to give the track a shot themselves including me in 2015 i myself started playing e4 i didn't have access to drake media nation's eswc so i was playing a remake of the track in trackmania nations forever tmn race e4 where the shortcuts still hadn't been done by anyone playing the track i got to experience first hand just how incredibly difficult the shortcut was it felt impossible but having said that i knew that i could get the shortcut i was getting more consistent and getting excruciatingly close attempts that were just a few pixels away from hitting the bug finish i would keep playing tm and race e4 on and off amassing over 100 close bounce attempts towards the python and over 200 hours of play time hoping to recreate the miracle that victor had done all those years ago and on one night in march of 2018 two and a half years after i first started playing the track i finally got this run [Music] it had taken 12 years but finally the e4 shortcut had been done for a second time victor's record though would still stand unbeaten as i drove my run in trackmania nations forever in order to beat victor's record you'd have to have access to eswc and at this point basically no one did but two years later in may of 2020 there was a spark of hope when seemingly out of nowhere the russian youtube channel reactive cd uploaded this video to youtube how to run trackmania eswc on windows 8 and windows 10. in order to get the game to boot reactive cd had made his own patch for star force all by himself that was compatible with modern versions of windows and sure enough when players downloaded the game and tried it the patch worked all of a sudden track mania players had access to a goldmine of maps and leaderboards that had stood mostly untouched since 2012. a treasure trove had just been discovered that had been buried from the world for the past eight years in the days following the patch many world records would immediately fall as players skill levels had risen much higher than what they were in the old days but one record that still stood strong was e4 victor's record at this point had stood for 14 years unbeaten but now that having access to the game wasn't a problem anymore who would actually be crazy enough to try to beat it well that's where tmb comes in tmb was also one of the players that had tried to shortcut tmn race e4 all those years ago and as soon as he caught wind of the new patch he immediately downloaded the game and booted up the original track over the following weeks and months tmb would get many close attempts sometimes just barely missing the bug finish he knew that he could get the record and people were motivating him to push onwards and then on the 9th of august 2020 history was made when after having stood up the world record for 14 years and 2 months victor's record was finally beaten [Music] tmb had done it 21-13 2400 of a second faster than victor commenting about his run tnb said that it took him over 150 hours of grinding to achieve it but at last victor's immortal world record had finally been beaten it is crazy to look back and think that this entire series of events would have never happened if victor hadn't failed to jump up to the stadium 14 years ago but alas here we are at the end of a decade-long effort to go just a few hundreds faster in a racing game because in track media just as with other things in life it is in our nature to want to push the limits and as a wise man once said the difference between the impossible and the possible often lies in a man's determination if you found this video interesting then subscribe so you don't miss future uploads and i will see you all in the next video thanks for watching [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Wirtual

Views: 3,735,842

Keywords: Wirtual, Trackmania, World Record, Speedrun, Explained, world record progression, WR progression, world record history, Summoning Salt, Karl Jobst, world record beaten, world record broken, trackmania world record, speedrun history

Id: KS0AwoEYHZU

Length: 15min 10sec (910 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 20 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/bluemoon1993]

Wirtual made a great job in GDQ, and now I find he has a YT channel? Sign me up!

[u/incomparability]

No one being able to play the game seems like a good reason for no one to break a record

[u/Wflagg]

This video missed covering the most important question. did victor ever make it to the roof?

[u/Oranos2115]

Is there a listing for the music/songs used in this video?

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I expect Wirtual will edit his video's description at some point, but I'll link & timestamp what I can identify:

• 0:00-1:17 = "Secret of the Forest" from the Chrono Trigger soundtrack
  
• 1:18-5:26 = ??? from ???; perhaps multiple songs
  
• 5-27-6:56 = ??? from FTL: Faster Than Light's soundtrack(?)
  
• 6:57-9:17 = ??? from ???; perhaps multiple songs
  
• 9:18-13:41 = "En aften ved svanefossen" by Tristan001, also found [here]
  
• 13:42-15:10 = ??? from ???
  

(it's kinda hard to tell due to the fade in/out of the background music, please reply if I need to edit in any corrections)
The YouTube user who figured out what song was playing after 9:18 also suggested some of the music was from the game FTL: Faster Than Light. I'm not familiar with that game or soundtrack, so I don't know what music he/she was referring to.

[u/DrNoodles247]

I think video titles have a lot to do with the news. The DOOM video led off with how old the record was while the Trackmania one just said new WR.

[u/[deleted]]

[removed]

[u/TheFeelsGoodMan]

The presentation of this video is really good. Wouldn't mind in the slightest if there were more speedrun history videos in this style.

[u/funtonite]

"the oldest shrekmania world record has just been broken"

[u/tinystranger]

i really dislike when the author tells me to suscribe and then shows his channel statistics, i dont care about your stats.

something along the lines of if you liked my video consider subscribing is reasonable and enough