One Handed Speedruns are PAINFUL

over the course of a few days i decided to learn a speedrun that very quickly started to hurt my hands or i guess really only one of my hands i ran super mario world with only one hand let's briefly talk about one hand runs in general and then talk about my own personal experience and why it may not be as easy as it seems sometimes after playing a game so much and doing the same thing over and over again you need to spice things up people naturally want to challenge themselves and try bigger and bigger things and in the lens of speedrunning it usually starts with running a specific category and having a certain goal time in mind after doing the same thing so many times it sometimes gets a bit stale and that's where the beauty of extra categories or category extensions come in a lot of games especially popular ones have an extra leaderboard that keeps track of a handful of categories that are both too arbitrary to include on a mean leaderboard and are also serious enough that multiple people have decided to run it but hey just because there isn't a leaderboard doesn't mean something can't be run over the years a handful of games whether it has a leaderboard or not have been tackled by a handful of people by just using one hand instead of the traditional two while virtually everyone does this by a matter of choice that's not entirely the case possibly the most well-known one-handed speedrunner half-coordinated does these runs for a bigger reason than most others having a physical disability that impairs their coordination on their entire right side they picked up speedrunning a handful of games with only one hand over the years they have gone on to do multiple runs at gamestone quick and advocate a lot for accessibility in gaming i'll put their links down below if you want to check them out more moving back to the general topic at hand there are many games where this challenge has been done but if you've known me long enough you'll know my specialty lies in mario i'd say out of the bunch that the most properly established leaderboard for one-handed runs resides in super mario bros and the record's been beaten multiple times this year and was even beaten during the making of this i wanted to try this challenge for myself but i wanted to do it in a game that i had more of a grasp of so for today let's talk about super mario world just in super mario world there's an unbelievable amount of category extensions today i obviously want to tackle one specific category 11 exit one-handed eight people have ran the category and the main interesting thing is that only one person on this list used a real snes controller for their run while it doesn't have video proof i am good friends with the runners so i trust them everyone else uses a variety of controllers whether it's a gamecube playstation and even a third-party one-handed snes controller this definitely can lead to a discussion about emulators and controllers that are often talked about in the speedrun community and i plan to make a video on this sooner than later so don't worry but anyways for this specific category i would argue that every other controller used here gives you an advantage in one way or another obviously this one-handed controller makes it simple to just grip the buttons with one hand and then when it comes to the playstation controllers the record holder uses the analog stick for moving and then uses the shoulder buttons for jumping with any controller being allowed i'm not surprised that the record is this good this specific controller setup eliminates a few struggles that anyone using a normal controller would face and please don't hate on any of these runners i'm just talking about the rules not the actual players themselves oh yeah we should probably talk about my experience because who cares we can get back to whining about an obscure leaderboard later on besides having to practice and decide what strategies i want to use there were a few different factors i had to think about first which hand do i use which fingers do i use how do i place a controller how do i grip it and as someone who is a lefty you may think that i would have tried this with my left hand first but i surprisingly chose my right my logic here was that i've been forced over the years to use the computer mouse with my right hand so maybe it would apply to this as well not really sure where that weird logic was but i quickly shifted to my left using just my thumb for the d-pad felt wrong and my right pointer didn't feel any better you'll see in my earliest clips that i ended up using my left pinky for the d-pad once i squished hands and i don't know what the heck i was thinking doing that because look how awkward that looks you'll also notice pretty quickly i became more comfortable with my ring finger and even my middle finger hopefully i don't accidentally flip off the camera anywhere between each clip it becomes obvious over time too that it became more comfortable to just have my controller at a 90 degree angle rather than having it being placed traditionally or sitting at a slight angle looking at one-handed runs in different games this seems to be a common trend with anyone that uses a real old controller by the end of the entire experience i fully relied on the 90 degree controller angle and i kept my thumb on the four action buttons and i primarily use my pointer finger with the d-pad and i only used my middle finger if i needed assistance this ultimately was the most comfortable and i said we're comfortable very lightly before diving into how i learned these levels just simply doing this for five minutes i could already feel my fingers that this was something i probably shouldn't be doing those feelings would eventually turn into pain by the end of this going level by level world 1 wasn't too bad which generally is to be expected yoshi's island 2 is just running and occasional jumps yoshi's island 3 was the same thing but with more frequent and precise jumps and yoshi's island 4 was where i had my first slight roadblock things are all nice and pretty but then there's this one little gap you need to get past your two options are either briefly entering the water and getting out or doing a shell jump i obviously wasn't gonna shell jump one-handed so the water it was to jump out of the water you need to hold up while jumping so after brief testing this is what i came up with if i was in the mood to use my middle finger i would temporarily bring out my index finger to help support my middle but i eventually just got used to using my pointer fingers so this became less of an issue iggy's castle was pretty interesting i could have taken this first room with the cages aggressively but i wanted to be able to finish runs what i ultimately did really wasn't too bad and it was the equivalent of doing the yoshi's island 4 jump twice the auto scroller allows you to calm down a little bit and when grabbing the fighter flower the iggy fight wasn't too bad i wasn't too worried about power-ups in world 1 and as long as i could kill iggy i was happy sometimes i could swiftly do a fire flower kill and other times i took a hit in the process in world 2 i had to start being aware of another element the cape right at the beginning of donut plains 1 traditionally you instantly start k-pumping and then get enough height to stay at the top of the screen but i personally had one issue it was really hard for me to gain cape height really quick just with one hand i found it easier to spin five through the level which fortunately has a lot of relay a handful of times i hit this yoshi block towards the end but it didn't really matter i was prioritizing consistency over being the absolute fastest after a mostly laid-back level we were straight back in the water and this time i was swimming whether i liked it or not in donut secret one i originally tried swimming onto the level to avoid as many fish as possible but i got sick of getting down the timing and matching swim so i eventually just took it safer and batted my way for the fish i also decided it was way too much to try and swim while holding the p-switch due to needing to hold both y and pressing down i was more than happy to suck up the time loss casually walking over to the keyhole and fortunately the ending section isn't too bad but that doesn't mean that i never struggled here on paper you would think donut ghost house would be a really tricky level but this probably ended up being one of the levels i practiced the least i took the same approach as donut planes won and was constantly spin jumping and flying there was no way i was going to challenge the boorang in room one so i took my sweet time i also wanted to make sure i didn't run too far right at the beginning because i didn't want to spawn this eerie too early this was just asking for something bad to happen assuming you did exactly that you could easily spin flight to the door and in room 2 i used the same philosophy as the previous waiting for their boost to do their thing and then keep going normally you do a spin fly through the boos briefly come down to grab this p-switch and then activate it right next to the door one-handed i was able to mimic this as best as i can i was able to do a small spin jump under the p-switch and it was just enough to grab it but it wasn't too much to make me land on where it was actually sitting this allowed me to start running red again and get p-speed right away the bu fight can be a little scary at first with just a singular hand but you honestly get used to it pretty quick it's a huge strategy game for your best interest you want to keep the booze here as high as possible so they aren't in your way i also grab blocks while standing on another block which allows me to not have to jump again with that all now being put together we now get to star world the last proper world you need to traverse through before warping to bowser this world goes by quite quickly even one-handed for star world 1 i spin jump go to the right side of the screen and give my hand a rest before i have to run left with the key star world 2 is mostly swimming off screen at the top when first starting to learn this i would do a quick b tap to gain height so i wouldn't scrape the ground but when moving to proper attempts later i didn't feel like risking anything so i just let mario run to the right get to bb yoshi and that was good enough all you need to do is be aware of when you need to start pressing down to get to the final key section and then tapping y a couple times to first ditch the baby yoshi and then grab the key star wars 3 is probably the trickiest out of the bunch you need to get enough p speed to fly up in the gap that is between the key and the keyhole i mindlessly pressed buttons and struggled at first but i quickly found a surprisingly easy strap after getting enough p speed you need to hold b long enough to get just the right height and at the same time you need to alternate left and right inputs in order to squeeze your way through the gap the ending is similar to star wars 2 where you need to just let go of the switch grab the key and jump over out of all the levels in this run star world 4 is the closest to what i do in real runs in fact it's exactly the same minus the controller grip obviously remember how in donor planes 1 i decided to spin fly because i couldn't get height quick enough with k-pumps well in star wars 4 you don't want to gain height here in fact optimally you want to stay towards the bottom of the screen for most of the level i did it for a struggle of timing k-pumps but just like with two hands you get into a rhythm normally with two hands you would also worry about adjusting flight speed which can vary between values of 47 and 51 but that for sure wasn't a priority in this case as long as i could keep flight i was a happy camper now we have one more stage bowser and boy is this the hardest part of the whole run well to start the actual front door level is pretty simple in normal glitch close runs you take doors two and five and this is exactly what i did here in door 2 instead of flying i just simply jumped onto the cage grabbed on and stayed low enough to not lose my power up door 5 was even easier i just had to time my run under all these crushers the final backdoor room was just as easy and i've been able to frequently do this just as fast as i can do it with two hands it requires a few specifically timed spin flies and then you're at the one thing stopping you from finishing bowser this guy right here is the reason why i fear this run you need to hit him two times for each of his three phases and it only gets harder phase one is really simple because he just stays in the air and then just swings back and forth this leads to a lot of leeway for just throwing up the mecha koopas base 2 is where things really start to hit the fan instead of swinging back and forth he now stays at the same height and follows you so instead of just being able to throw a koopa in the air you also need to move back and forth to make sure his car is not in the way you also probably want to jump while throwing it you technically can hit him in this phase without jumping but it makes things a lot harder to be honest i never developed proper strategies here this was more of a situation of play it more and more and just naturally get better at handling it same can be said for the final phase 3 where this time he is now bouncing up and down things here can go really wrong whether you are prepared or not i would say this technically is easier than phase 2 but harder than phase 1 but in regards to a full run this could be labeled as the scariest since this is the very last thing you need to do before you officially beat the game having practice for a couple days over the span of a few hours or so i felt pretty good and put down the controller for the day i still hadn't beaten bowser all in one piece but i had made a lot of progress for such a short period of time now let's get to the real meat of the process the actual runs if you want to catch runs like this and other similar shenanigans then head over to twitch.tv soarster where i ended up streaming a lot of this before my first proper session i planned i got a little impatient and did a couple offline attempts i guess this was kind of like a warm up but i never really got anywhere i did finally beat bowser in one piece during my practice though so fortunately i had that going for me i was expecting my first proper session to take quite a while to get anywhere but i made progress on my very first run my goal for my first few attempts was to try and finish the run no matter what went wrong i just wanted splits to compare against this one i died both in yoshi's island 3 and iggy but no worry cause i still have three more lives to use with the dumb under the level strategy i first used in donut secret one i died for a third time and from that point forward i'm pretty sure i just stopped doing that except in this run where i guess i didn't learn from that and also very nice note block graphic on the top of the screen when i died forgot that was even a thing that could happen at least i can say the rest of this run was pretty straightforward especially considering it was my first run of the session bowser was the only thing that was going to mess me up and sadly that happened quite a lot i made it all the way to phase 3 after losing all my power ups at this point i struggled quite a lot and with having only one life and one more shot it sadly ended after phase 2 gave me even more issues while i couldn't get a clean bowser fight i was still pretty proud of myself that i got so far so quick the next couple attempts were exactly how i expected the first session to go but attempt number seven was special after a slight struggle in world one things picked up pretty steadily i made both donut planes one and donut secret one look like a piece of cake and after escaping a scary situation in the buu fight i was on my way to star world once again just like mentioning during practice star world luckily isn't too bad one-handed and i was even comfortable enough to adjust my flight speed in star wars 4. if this was a two-handed run i would have been on pace to get a 12 minute time but unfortunately that was not what i was doing this time around i struggled in bowser instantly and on my first try died in the second phase fortunately my second try started a lot stronger and didn't slip up until phase three i eventually was able to get in some hits and with that i got my first ever completed time 18.39 yes we finished after my first completed run the session went exactly as i expected it to go with multiple early resets but on attempt 12 i got tired of resetting even though i died in yoshi's island 4 i continued going forward the run didn't get any prettier after losing both power-ups entering donut planes but i was able to back it up pretty well even after losing my cape a second time i was only 30 seconds behind after even more minor mistakes in star world i was now 40 seconds in the red but if you take even a slight peek at my first finish run bowser took forever i didn't even need to play that well to improve by quite a lot instead of spending 9 minutes in bowser like before this time my stay only lasted 4 minutes which led to an overall 4-minute improvement with a 14-24 with such a sloppy run till bowser which wasn't even close to perfect either i knew i could make way bigger strides with two improvements over the course of 90 minutes though i was already pretty happy and oh yeah also my fingers and wrists were screaming at me i don't think i could do this for more than two hours at a time unless i was asking for further issues to happen needless to say i took the night off and i gave my hands a bunch of stretching and some well needed rest the next day i was ready to correct my wrongs having practiced a bit more i was pretty confident i could shave more time off considering how far behind i was for most of my last finished run only a few attempts in i was able to get well into the green after world 1 even after messing up a bit while i may have forgotten to split with a cleaner world 2 i was a solid minute ahead entering star world sadly i completely blanked in star wars 3 and didn't get p-speed right away to continue i had to kill akitu and steal his cloud to get to the keyhole there was no way i could do star wars 4 being small only using just one hand so of course i grabbed the nearest available cape which happens to be in star world 1. even after that tremendous time loss i was still 11 seconds ahead entering bowser which was pretty surprising this was definitely not going to be the run to end them all but hey i was still ahead and had plenty of time to save in the bowser fight just like always said fight was still pretty sloppy but it was faster than last time and was just fast enough to get barely under 14 minutes i wanted to push this even further considering how unoptimized it was but my fingers at this point completely hated me and if i kept doing this for a while without any breaks this would make the carpal tunnel like symptoms i was already having even worse while i really would have loved to push for a 12 minute time my health is more important maybe at some point i'll do more one-handed runs and i've even had possible ideas of running a 96 exit one-handed run not sure how well that would go but if i ever did that it'd probably be a one-off thing remember earlier how i was ranting about people using different controllers and such uh yeah i'm not done with that yet after doing these runs since i'm a mod i propose replacing the hand variable with a controller variable or simply just making a proper category split while it is cool to see who used what hand it really is unnecessary and generally it's pretty obvious on people's webcams which hands they used anyways other games such as super mario bros have solved this issue by having a certain controller requirement this made nifski use a proper nes shaped controller which i didn't even know was possible no matter what actually happens to the board i wouldn't take this run too seriously so whatever happens happens i am happy to say that i got the fastest time using real hardware and controller and i guess i was also the best using my left hand as well so that's cool even if this was a more serious run i wouldn't take it too seriously due to how much time there still was to optimize maybe if i want to aggravate my left hand again sometime i'll return to get the coveted 12 minute time and who knows what the limit to this category is using a real controller but i can promise you that i am not eager to stretch that limit anytime soon i am confident in saying that i don't plan on becoming a primarily one-handed speedrunner and i commend anyone else that even wants to try these kind of runs because trust me you will question yourself quite quickly people's definitions of fun can vary a bit and i guess this fits under my definition at the end of the day it's all about what you want to play and what you want to run got any other cool runs that you want me to talk about or maybe even try to attempt like i did today let me know in the comments i definitely want to try some more fun challenges anyways thank you so much for watching

Channel: Storster

Views: 17,257

Keywords: storster, speedrun, gaming

Id: c5zIdlEty90

Length: 20min 9sec (1209 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 10 2022