Can YOU Spot The Fake Speedrun? Episode 2

hello you absolute legends do you think you have what it takes to spot a fake speed run over the past couple of years i've covered some notorious speedrunners that have tried to pass off cheated runs as their own all of them being foiled by some combination of stupidity laziness or ignorance once faked gameplay has been exposed and the evidence has been compiled for easy consumption it's easy to sit back and exclaim that such a run would have never gotten by you but how hard is it really to detect evidence of tampering i see a lot of comments from armchair moderators claiming that new world records are cheated so now it's time to put their expertise to the test in this video i'm going to show you two example speed runs from two games zelda ocarina of time and minecraft one will be real and one will be fake the test will be to see if you can spot the difference this won't be easy though so be prepared to have no idea which is which if you don't want to spend the brain power trying to figure it out that's fine too this video will still be entertaining as i will give you the answers and break down exactly how each faked run was created for those who do want to take a deep dive into each example i'll put the raw video and files in the description i hope you enjoy now legends before we go on there is something very important i want to talk about just because we are huge nerds that doesn't mean we don't get laid which is why it is super important that you are grooming and today's video sponsor manscaped has everything you need to look your best i strongly recommend the performance package it comes with the absolute essentials the lawnmower and weed whacker these two weapons will trim unsightly hair in all of the most important areas the nose the ears and of course below the waist it also comes with a ball toner and deodorant yes a ball deodorant just take my word for it partners want men to groom and happy partners will treat you better by clicking my link in the description you'll receive 20 off free international shipping and two free gifts again just click the link in the description the legend of zelda ocarina of time is one of the most iconic speed running games of all time for many years it was even the most popular some of the most influential speedruns ever stemmed from this game you can't talk about classic runs without mentioning narcissa right 1810 or her run during agdq in 2012. these definitely took speedrunning to the next level in terms of popularity but even 15 years ago ocarina of time speed runs were turning heads everywhere a perfect example of this is an mtv article from 2005 about a player known as tsa tsa was the first ocarina of time speedrunner in 2003 he claimed a run of 6 hours and 45 minutes which at the time was out of this world i remember sinking dozens of hours into completing the game so the thought of doing it in a single setting was pretty crazy back then speed runs of longer games like this were almost unheard of so this obviously attracted a lot of attention you can tell from this ancient article that speedrunning at the time was a real novelty it proclaims that tsa spends a whopping 3 weeks training for a speed run which is but a sliver of what players these days sink into preparation i remember downloading one of tsa's speed runs back then and doing something i would never do today watching a 5 hour speed run from start to finish but it truly was a spectacle tsa was a pioneer and a legend which is why it was pretty shocking when many of his speedruns were found to have been spliced of all of the various cheating methods that players have used over the years splicing is probably the most common it's incredibly difficult to play a 5 hour speed run in one sitting without game ending mistakes so cheaters will play individual segments separately and then edit them together there actually exists a separate category for this which is called segmented speed runs and if the runs were labeled as such no one would care but these segmented runs don't have the shock value of a full run and aren't nearly as popular tsa's splicing was poor to say the least i'm about to show you a clip from one of his runs and listen carefully to the music which should be continuous through the change of location [Music] [Applause] there were other obvious signs of splicing as well when you leave the pause menu it remembers which screen you had selected so when you pause again it should be the same one that pops up but in tsa's runs it switches all over the place indicating many splices surprisingly aside from tsa all those years ago there hasn't been any high profile instances of cheating in this game all of the top players over the years have been avid streamers and every world record that i can recall was done live making the odds of a faked run much lower though of course it's still possible now i'm about to show you two clips of what is likely the most well-known and famous trick ever discovered in the game the wrong warp using this glitch players can transport from the very first dungeon to the very final fight with ganon it was never intended for you to fight ganon as a child but it is possible and the game even gives you the key item you need to finish him off people who have ran this game before should be able to immediately tell which is fake but if you haven't it's going to be a lot more difficult good luck and a big thanks to ocarina of time legend torje for supplying the original clips [Music] oh [Laughter] [Music] hmm ah [Music] hmm this example actually features an older version of the wrong warp which is the version i personally learned way back in 2014. it has a ton of moving parts to it and would take way too long to explain but the setup itself is relatively simple it isn't the same every time though and there is a very important cue that players must pay special attention to near the end of the setup link walks over a bump separating the entry hallway from the main room the location of link at this moment is determined by which frame he threw the decu nut a few seconds earlier there are five possible frames that work and each different frame requires a specific setup in order to work in example one link crosses in this location which correlates to frame two in example two he crosses up against the closest wall this correlates to frame one but both clips do exactly the same setup before going through the door this makes it clear that one of the warps should have failed and therefore is obviously spliced i think my splice was pretty good and if you compare the audio spectrograms it doesn't seem to give anything away but honestly you don't need to examine this too deeply a speedrunner should be able to immediately see that one of these clips isn't possible to test this out i showed the two clips to ocarina of time world record holder richard sage and this is what he had to say when analyzing speed runs for ocarina of time the main thing that i look for is if the setup is done correctly if it is done correctly the trick or intended outcome should happen and if it is done incorrectly it should not work when looking at the two clips that carl sent me one of them was done correctly and one of them was done incorrectly for this wrong warp setup there are five frame adjustments and depending on when you throw the decker nut that'll determine what you do afterwards so this is the slope that link passes when doing the wrong warp setup depending on how forward or behind link is on the slope i can tell which frame the deca nut has been thrown and which corresponding setup should be applied afterwards so this is example one where link throws the knot and we can tell from here that this is the frame two adjustment so when doing the frame two adjustment links should be walking to the left to the correct point walk up to the wall target turn around target and then enter the door and this should work for the frame two adjustment now this is the second example as we can see link has thrown the knot and gone to the left based upon where link is on the slope we can tell that this is the first frame adjustment which has its own setup but when looking at this clip link goes ahead and does this frame 2 setup so this should not work and from what i can see this would be the fake one of course he was absolutely correct the first example used the correct setup based on link's position and therefore example number 2 was the fake speedrun even though minecraft speedrunning has only really been in the spotlight for a very short time it has already spawned a couple of the most well-known instances of cheating in history of course everyone knows what happened with the dream but who can forget jerem an unknown runner with a basically non-existent social media blueprint that became infamous on youtube for crafting a fake speedrun a video on the subject by the creator of xiphon received 11 million views it just goes to show how powerful the popularity of minecraft is at the moment an unknown runner posting an obviously fake run can just blow up on youtube if there was ever a cautionary tale this is it if you don't want to be exposed in front of millions of people don't try to fake a speed run i know some speedrunners think exposed videos aren't good for the niche but there is definitely a case to be made for the good they do in dissuading people from even considering cheating as an option especially if they have hopes of becoming a content creator later on the most competitive category by far is random seed glitchless and by its very definition luck plays a huge part overall things do tend to balance out though the best players usually have the best times sure each individual run may be impacted heavily by random factors but when you play many different seeds the luck eventually evens out this does take a long time though and some players just don't want to wait that long they want to have the luck they need right now there are two main ways a player might consider cheating adjusting the drop rates of key items or secretly playing a seed they are already familiar with and passing it off as random the first is relatively easy to spot if the player is streaming you can very quickly prove impossible drop rates as long as there is a sufficient number of them but if the player isn't streaming this becomes far more difficult which is why people have often championed the idea of forcing top runners to stream if they wanted their runs to count playing a siege of hand selected beforehand is something that gives the biggest advantage all of the top runners have been handed terrific seeds before but because they are always brand new it is extremely difficult to capitalize on them not only do you need to see and identify everything without hesitation but you also need to get lucky with drops blaze rods ender pearls and obsidian are all necessary for modern strategies and getting unlucky and not receiving the trades you need will kill your run even if the seat itself has amazing structural locations so if you want to avoid this dilemma you can just play the same seed over and over until you get amazing luck and then splash the footage onto the end of a session on the surface you can make it look seamless you wouldn't even be able to tell but there are definitely ways to identify if a splice has occurred which i will discuss after the examples you could also use external software to inject a seed into the game which would also look legitimate on the surface but again there are genius methods to weed this out now i'm going to show you two minecraft clips and i want you to see if you can tell which has been faked i'm going to make this one a little bit easier than the first game but it will still require some detective work the world folders and log file will be linked in the description good luck foreign um up so it should be pretty obvious with these clips that either a splice or a seed injection has happened i mean what else could there be to look at in the first 30 seconds of a run and i'll give you a spoiler one of these clips is indeed spliced but which one when drem's spliced speedrun was caught it was because the loading animation didn't match with the seed he was playing so it was pretty clear that he created a random world from the menu but then spliced a completely different seed just before the loading animation began this ended up being a big mistake if you are going to splice you have to do it at the right time now unless i've missed something there aren't any visual signs that either of these runs have been tampered with in order to get to the bottom of this we need to look at the files top speed runs must have accompanying files submitted in order to verify their legitimacy for example the five previous world folders and also the log file the log file is extremely important as it tracks important events such as when you create worlds and when you leave worlds along with miscellaneous events such as achievements but the critical thing about log files is that it tracks the timing of events down to the second so if a splice did occur and footage was removed the video should be out of sync with the log file i'm going to jump over to example 2 first according to that log file i left the previous world at 202.18 and 6 seconds later a new server was created at 202 24 so let's compare that with the video in this example the video does match with the log file now let's go back to example one in the log file here i left the previous world at 2 42 55 and a new world was generated 27 seconds later let's compare this with the video in the video it shows that only four seconds have passed which means there is a discrepancy of around 23 seconds obviously 23 seconds of footage has been removed therefore we can confidently ascertain that example number one is the fake speed run these 23 seconds of missing footage hold the key and it's in these 23 seconds that i entered a previously known seed i won't go into specific details about how the splice was done but it was a little bit trickier than i thought it would be i sent the examples to a minecraft moderator who was able to spot the discrepancy very quickly if i wanted to make this more difficult i could have entered the seed quicker and then pasted in some more menu time to make the log match up with the video but even then there are further checks mods will do to spot the splice which of course i won't give away here so how did you go were you able to spot the fake speedrun please let me know in the comments a big thanks to richard sage for coming on and sharing his expertise you can follow him on twitch the link will be in the description as always thank you so much for watching you legends i hope you are having a fantastic day and i will see you in the next video you

Channel: Karl Jobst

Views: 559,745

Keywords: super mario bros, nintendo, NES, nintendo enterta, super mario speedrun, badabun, karl jobst, speedrun cheaters, cheater caught, fake speedrun, fake speedrun exposed, nintendo speedrun, speedrun, speedrun news, retro gaming, classic gaming, gaming documentary, doom, fake doom speedrun, doom speedrun, super mario odyssey, new super mario bros, super mario maker 2, zelda speedrun, minecraft speedrun, drem

Id: dM_SD7ChH1A

Length: 18min 41sec (1121 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 30 2021