Framewalk: SM64's Most Controversial Speedrunning Trick

speedrunning controversy ladies and gentlemen my friends and family of the speedrunning community buckle yourself in today I bring you something with some sauce and a little bit of girth Super Mario 64 has one of the biggest and most dedicated communities for speedrunning players have continued to push the limit of the game as movement gets optimized and strategies are discovered now before we get into what the controversy is I want to lay a little bit of groundwork for y'all Super Mario 64 has been known to not be the most tolerant of quote-unquote easy time saves the leaderboards are split up into three tabs Nintendo 64 Virtual Console on Wii and emulator on PC taking a look at a community like Ocarina of Time you could see that all records fall on the same leaderboard and are fine with playing whatever version happens to be the fastest for that category while players do play on Wii and emulator early and their super mario 64 speedrunning career as they get better almost all players eventually switch to the Nintendo 64 console emulator and we eliminate virtually all leg from the game and are thus easier and faster to play on even if someone gets a world record with emulator or vici most players will dismiss it as not the real record unless the time adjustment due to no lag and faster loading would cause it to be faster than the n64 record which has never been the case you have to use certain camera angles to reduce lag on n64 levels like Jolly Roger Bay and dire dire docks have a lot of lag and pretty much require the claw grip to speed run them properly on Nintendo 64 the reason for playing on Nintendo 64 mostly dates back to the days when Japanese players dominated the top of the leaderboards and would play on Nintendo 64 because virtual consoles in Japan ran the shin due version of Super Mario 64 which has backward long jumps patched and different pole grab mechanics eventually the players from other countries using Virtual Console without this issue found out about the time save and wanted to compete on an even playing ground so they decided to switch to the Nintendo 64 platform that has been the story ever since now what does all this have to do with what I bring you today well let's get into it the controversy but Adam recently cheese puncayshun Liam kings and Perry kuzia all top five players in Super Mario 64 120 star have started taking an advantage of frame walking to get the star blast to the stone pillar in Jolly Roger Bay this trick has been known about for a long time but didn't seem to pick up any traction until siglemic had performed it live at pace global speed on associations live competitive event in which he used a box to do it players are currently doing it by using a raffinate adapter which allows one to use a GameCube controller on a Nintendo 64 as well as remap buttons however they please by mapping analog stick up to a button you can simply mash that button once you're on this pillar to gain height now before I go any further I will be mentioning analog and digital signals often so let me elaborate on this an analog signal can be expressed in a large range of values a digital signal in our case only has two values on or off on a Nintendo 64 controller the only analog signal is the control stick it has many different values it is not simply on or off the buttons our digital signals the button is either pressed in or it is not anytime that I mentioned mapping analog to digital I am talking about having a digital signal like a button output an analog signal like moving the control stick to do one frame walk input you have to be able to tap up on the analog stick and on the next frame immediately let it fall back into its neutral resting position and repeat within a very small window this is very difficult to do with an analog stick but extremely easy to do with a button that is mapped to analog up as soon as the button is pressed analog up is inputted and as soon as the button is unpressed the analog signal is back to neutral simply making it a game of mashing this is the only possible way to climb the slope as it is too steep to jump kick or run up [Music] it is also a trick that is possible on an unmodified controller but it's much more difficult to do without the aid of a remapping for the longest time players would open the cannon and either go for an instant cannon shot and hope it works or adjust the cannon to get the shot correctly which isn't the easiest thing to do quickly cheese the current world record holder for Super Mario 64 120 star had grinded cannonless a very difficult strat that saves a small amount of time in which you skip opening the cannon and instead use a precise long jump wall kick to get to this platform cheese has since picked up frame walking and it's the last one to do so out of current players competing for world record in 120-star as it is much easier and saves 3 seconds over what he was doing the long jump wall kick cannonless strat would be able to save one to two seconds over using the cannon and frame walk saves 3 seconds over cannonless so about 5 seconds over using the cannon when it comes to switching versions top players all tend to gravitate towards in Nintendo's 64 despite the easy time safe coming from playing on emulator or virtual console however when it comes to modifying the controller's intended functionality players are all in to get that juicy 5 second time save I know these two things aren't the same but they do have similarities changing some external variable in order to get a time save remapping the controls to do the frame walk saves 5 seconds which doors in comparison to minutes saved from changing the version of the game from Nintendo 64 to something else the plot thickens however as the new world record from cheese as well as recent personal bests from Liam King's pear kuzia and puncayshun have the frame walk in their run how do we deal with it now obviously this is no simple issue of my man but where do we draw the line what if all of a sudden frame walk saved a minute or some other trick that requires this remapping to be done is this a can of worms we're opening here as a community I had the chance to sit down and talk to some of the runners using this trick to hear their thoughts parakou SIA currently rests in fifth place of 120 star as of August 10th he finds it to be a cool new strat that makes it easier to get a good beginning going and thus less resets and more runs getting further along parakou she has stated that it took him about 10 minutes to get it down and that it is extremely easy and consistent his argument for not banning the remapping of analog signal to digital signal is that players may want to play the game on a box or use a mapping they are used to and thus it should be allowed pair kuzia also stated that a frame walking saved a larger amount of time like 1 minute then the trick should be banned not the remapping however he also mentioned that in 120-star where this trick is useful there is meant to be no restrictions so banning the trick would also require rewriting the rules of 120-star I also got to sit down with cheese and spoke with him before he picked up frame walking she's had first expressed that he preferred doing his candless method because he had put so many hours into practice in it and didn't want it to go to waste he agrees that map and a joystick to a button is not normal but he doesn't mind it and as I have stated before he has now picked up the strat and got it in his most recent world record cheese also brought up that this is the only advantage that remapping offers in the game so it's not that big of a deal now do we sweep it under the rug or should the Super Mario 64 community have a discussion and perhaps a vote on what should be done when faced with difficult decisions it can help to look at how others have handled similar situations to look for some guidance however in speed-running it's not that simple every community has their own guidelines the Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask communities bans any mapping of analog signals to digital signals however digital signals may be mapped to analog the main reason for this is to prevent players from having an ESS or extended superslide button part of what makes an ocarina of time or Majora's Mask speedrun difficult is holding es s position as well as being able to change their direction while you are slide in which requires a very precise movement of the analog stick if you aren't aware of what es s is I will give you a quick rundown when holding just outside of the dead zone or the area of the thumbstick control that doesn't respond to stick movement blink will do this shuffling animation in place this is the SS position it is very useful as holding it allows users to turn during extended super slides as well as start them out of water as well as out of damage there are other applications but that's the gist by adding a button that does this for you it would take away most of the difficulty and skill required to do precise super sliding it would also be changing the functionality of the controller the acronym time community does allow remapping but with a specific scope that you may pause and read if you like clearly it would be a much bigger problem in these games to have this ban lifted than it would be in Super Mario 64 another example also in Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask was the ESS adapter discussion and vote the point of having an adapter was for players using Virtual Console to be able to remap the dead zone to feel more like a Nintendo 64 which most players would agree is the best as the dead zone is a lot bigger on Virtual Console making it clunkier and harder to use Ocarina of Time ended up having a vote on it most people voted in favor for it as it is convenient it's hard to detect and it's not adding functionality it's simply restoring what the original Nintendo 64 is a version dead zone is interestingly enough Majora's Mask a game with very similar mechanics and glitches has ESS adapters banned the difference between Majora's Mask and Ocarina of Time being that the Nintendo 64 version isn't used for any of the categories at Majora's Mask where it is the best version for some Ocarina of Time categories majora's mask players are already used to the dead zone for Virtual Console and thus didn't see the need for allowing an ESS adapter as one can see communities tend to settle their own quirks as the players themselves know best about the situation currently all controllers are allowed besides those that have turbo or macro buttons but that's more of a catch-all in speedrunning in general it is also worth noting that it isn't uncommon for players to switch to a hoary pad many for Bowser throws as it offers a durable GameCube style control stick in order to prevent the control stick on their main controller from deteriorating this controller does not add any functionality however as it stands frame walking is legal and isn't against the rules but think about it it is yet another barrier that you must get past if you want to be one of the best a potential five-second time save and a lot less resets and runs if you go out and buy a GameCube controller and an adapter basically playing the game in a way that it was never meant to be played the verdict on one hand yes it's only five seconds saved but that is a lot of time in 120 star players have grinded for upwards of 20 to 30 hours or more on tricks that save a fraction of that time it's basically free time save given that you have the hardware you also have players on emulator like the legendaries to go to who uses keyboard and thus requires the mapping of an analog signal to digital do we bansa go to do we ban the trick do we ban the remapping and how do you enforce the remapping ban the frame walking can technically be done without it I have grown with the community since 2012 and I personally think that banning the remapping of analog to digital signal on Nintendo 64 for sm64 should be put to a vote the community has long stuck with Nintendo 64 however now we have something threatening the very nature of the Nintendo 64's intended of functionality there are no players that I know of exclusively playing on a box unless it is meant for this trick nor do I know of players that have specific remapping zuv analog to digital signals that let them play the game the way that they want to besides players on emulator likes to go to who uses keyboard which I don't think is a huge problem anyway since the emulator leaderboard is separated from the Nintendo 64 leaderboard I'm not sure what it will lead to if we allow this but I believe that the very core idea of speedrunning is using the given hardware that any other person would have and doing your best job with that where do we draw the line in terms of the runs already with the trick in them I don't think banning them or unverified perhaps grandfather in them into the leaderboards and increase in the time of the run by 5 seconds could be a solution but that doesn't make much sense either maybe we don't touch them at all and move forward assuming that the community does a vote to be in it of course we are our own grassroots community we can solve it however we'd like to if it ends up staying in the run it obviously won't be the end of the world but I would at least like to hear others thoughts what do you think should the trick be banned should remapping analog-to-digital be banned maybe we can meet halfway and ban some remapping schemes and allow others as Ocarina of Time does I don't usually make videos like this but please let me know if you enjoyed it and if you'd like to see more YouTube exclusive content like this don't forget to leave a comment like subscribe and bop that Bell dope thank you for watching [Music] you [Music] you

Channel: Simply

Views: 550,461

Keywords: super, mario, 64, sm64 trick, controversial speedrun, controvery in speedrunning, framewalk, sm64 framewalk, framewalking, speedrun trick, speedrun controversy, controversy, debate, siglemic, cheese, puncayshun, liamkings, simply, ezscape, summoningsalt, apollolegend, gaming, news in gaming, framewalk controversy, sm64 controversy

Id: kegmqzJ8g2U

Length: 14min 16sec (856 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 16 2019