Red Ball - World Record Progression (Speedrunning History)

[Music] [Music] [Music] the year is 2008. eugene fedosiv a concrete mixer salesman from russia is sent a link to a blog where someone shares their experience about how they made money creating flash games intrigued he decides to purchase a book about actionscript 3.0 the programming language that is the backbone behind flash games after taking just two weeks to learn the programming language eugene starts work on two simple puzzle games fast stone pyramid and raindrop the games release an early 2009 but too limited success in little to no monetary gain eventually eugene stumbles across a simple platform game tutorial with box2d as its physics engine in this simple game the player controls a red box able to interact with a green circle and a stack of boxes eugene starts to play around with the demo adding different obstacles and allowing the box to rotate finding the box to be too hard to control eugene changes the character to a circle with this the character known as red ball is officially born after three months of development eugene releases red ball platformer with 12 different levels in the spring of 2009 a little while later king.com a flash game website approaches eugene with a sponsorship opportunity for his game also suggesting that the name of the game be changed from red ball platformer to simply red ball per this agreement eugene makes five additional levels to be exclusively playable on king.com quitting his concrete mixer sales job in the process just like the blog writer that had inspired him to make flash games in the first place eugene was rolling in the big bucks for the next few years red bull would frequently be the most played sponsored game on the site reaching over 6 million plays by 2011 on king.com alone the red ball series would continue to have massive success apexing with the release of red ball 4 mobile in 2014 which would go on to receive hundreds of millions of downloads and youtube views with the genesis behind red ball fully explained let's go back to 2009 to take a look at the beginning of the game's speedrunning history it's no secret that a large portion of flash's popularity came from the school environment flash games could be easily accessed by any web browser just by typing in the url of any flash gaming website any five-year-old dell optiplex with dust bunnies on the inside and cheeto dust in the keyboard could run these things so i find it quite fitting that the speedrunning history of redball started in a primary school after finding redball on friv.com in 2009 classmates jazz and zephy start doing speed runs of the game using the pc system time as a timer but as you might have guessed from 8 to 9 year olds who didn't even know how to safely download software there are no unregistered hypercam recordings from this time the first speedrun with an actual recorded time came from zephy obtaining a 2105 in the 12 levels category on march 11 2010 with no video unsurprisingly the first actual recording of a red ball speed run was uploaded to youtube by someone named katarina v on february 7 2012 with a time of 15 20. however this was more so just an experienced casual playthrough and the video title and description give no indication that this was done as a speedrun the video was found and added to the speedrun.com leaderboards many years after it was actually uploaded taking a look at the video you can see that iconic unregistered hypercam 3 in the top left corner truly a specimen of its time i would use this run as an introduction to the game but there's no game audio there's a mouse cursor on the screen the entire time it's in 360p is probably around 10 frames per second and there's major artifacting all over the place it doesn't get much more 2012 than that going strictly by what information is currently available it would appear as though the next records were set by oblivion rr on february 2nd 2014 with a time of 8 10 and graham is a lizard on april 24th 2014 with a time of 6 30 both with no video evidence as all the runs were being recorded on a google sheets leaderboard at the time with video proof being optional runs like these with no video proof would not be allowed onto the speedrun.com leaderboard in its current state however all of these runs predated the inception of speedrun.com in late 2014. however these runs were almost certainly never world record as jazz claims to have a run around five to six minutes in length before oblivion rr and gram is a lizard ever submitted their times meaning that they never actually held the world record unfortunately the google sheets leaderboard that just maintained did not keep track of obsoleted runs so the time and date of this claimed world record is completely unknown thankfully on may 5th 2014 jess finally uploaded the first actual red ball speedrun with recorded video evidence getting a time of 4 minutes 43 seconds however you can tell by the bottom left corner that the claimed world record at the time was actually a 442 by him being set on april 28 2014 meaning that the 443 wasn't actually a world record the date of this 442 is known because it just so happened to be archived in the google sheets leaderboard version history nonetheless this 443 marked the beginning of the well-documented era of red bull speedrunning and the video quality is good enough to serve as an introduction to the game so let's take a look just starts on the title screen of the game which displays a logo for and con arcade a flash gaming website the game is not being played on king.com meaning that only the first 12 levels are available jez clicks the play button to go to the level select menu and then enters level one red ball is now placed in level one but timing does not begin until the first keyboard input which is usually the right arrow key level one is an extremely basic level that only requires jumping and holding right to complete upon collecting the flag red ball's momentum grinds to a halt and there is a 2.8 second wait before entering the next level level 2 is quite basic as well but it does add a couple of moving obstacles into the mix level 3 has two upward moving platforms and it introduces both the checkpoint flag and the spikes into the game the latter of which will instantly kill the player if they are touched level 4 contains multiple deadly moving obstacles which force the player to wait for certain cycles the video hits a bit of a lag spike on the stairs but it is clear that jazz struggles to climb them smoothly entering level five the first speedrunning skip in the game can be seen found by graham as a lizard by building up speed and jumping at just the right time at the end of this slope red ball can collect the flag without having to solve the extremely difficult puzzle in the level saving around 2 seconds level 6 introduces downward facing slopes into the game which allow red ball to gain a large amount of angular velocity and thereby speed but hold on a minute what is angular velocity well angular velocity refers to how fast red ball is spinning which is made visible by the black line on red ball's character however the large amount of video compression in jez's run makes this line almost completely invisible and on the subject of velocity there is another type of velocity that is even more important linear velocity which dictates the current vector that red ball is moving on essentially tracking his speed and direction there is a maximum linear velocity that is set for moving left and right on flat ground but the usage of slopes allows this limit to be exceeded for the angular velocity that red ball generates directly contributes to the amount of linear velocity that he has if you didn't understand any of that it's honestly not too important back to the run itself jess then gets a couple of short jumps on these falling platforms jez is able to control red ball's jump height because of the fact that it changes based on how long the jump key is held with tap jumps giving red ball much less height than jumps where the up arrow key is held the entire time next jez moves red ball off the right side of the large gear to skip the funnel and slope section on the first small turbine jazz first jumps on the circular part and then a few frames later jumps off one of the spokes the combined velocity of these two concurrent jumps allows him to land right next to the flag level 7 introduces bounce pads into the game which spring red ball pretty high into the air after being landed on jez navigates through some moving platforms and then lands on the second bounce platform on the right side there is a red wall that is supposed to block red ball's path to get rid of it the player is supposed to go to the left hit down some boxes and then disable the red switch however similar to how jazz used the compounding of two normal jumps to his advantage in level six jez executes a normal jump just as the bounce pad starts to give him momentum compounding their effects and allowing him to clear the top of the red obstacle without having to remove it this strategy was found by oblivion rr earlier that same year jess completes the rest of the level with ease and moves on to level 8. this level starts with a massive slope at the beginning which allows red ball to cross this huge gap jazz navigates through the obstacles and jumps into the car this purple vehicle allows red ball to navigate these deadly red slopes safely delivering the player to the flag simple right [Music] in level 9 jazz quickly makes it to the first checkpoint flag and then intentionally decides to hit the r key to reset the level this causes all objects in the level to be placed in their default position that they were at the beginning of the level all except for red ball it was placed at the last checkpoint flag that has been collected the green platform's default position just so happens to be closer making it faster to intentionally reset there jez attempts to dodge the spinning ninja on the bridge but he fails to do so however red ball happens to graze the ninja in just the right way so that red ball is able to jump but the red object death detection has not yet been activated thus jez is able to jump off the ninja and continue playing the level jazz avoids the plunger climbs up some stairs navigates through some pendulums and then completes the level level 10 starts off with some tricky jumps leading into a bounce pad section which jazz happens to fail on his first try i guess that third jump was just a little too difficult next up are some spinning boxes and a rolling ball challenge where jez attempts to push the ball as fast as possible without falling off the left side and dying this is a speed run after all level 11 thrusts red ball into the caboose of a train and red ball must work his way up through the train to reach the flag in the first compartment before the train completely falls off the edge the level is extremely restrictive and methodical making it pretty much a no reset point in the run jazz would have collected the flag shortly after it exited the underground section but he gets a bit stuck on the cart beforehand losing some time in level 12 the player must knock down this small stack of boxes to cross the spike pit but where the boxes go is essentially up to pure luck sometimes the pattern is extremely easy sometimes it is extremely hard and sometimes it's just completely impossible just thankfully is able to complete the challenge on his first try jess is able to avoid pushing this box by jumping a couple of times to gain height however his first attempt at this death defying trick was unsuccessful its challenge rivaled only by that of the last bounce pad jump at level 10. jazz enters the ski lift and collects level 12's flag almost faster than anyone had ever done it before with red ball and its mechanics now mostly explained let's take a look at the next world record on the timeline on the 29th of november 2014 jezz toppled both his recorded 443 and his unrecorded 442 with a time of 427. the bulk of the time save in this run came from not messing up the stair climb in level 4 the bounce pad jump in level 10 or the large box skip in level 12. jezz did put one new strategy into use at the end of level 12 where he jumps off the left side of the ski lift to ride the top of the ending ramp down to the flag saving a tiny bit of time over using the ski lift in the intended way at the end of this run jez expressed his satisfaction with his time i am so pleased with that i am so pleased with that i'm done with red ball for now at least three days after this run was performed red bull received its own leaderboard on speedrun.com completely replacing the google sheets leaderboard and its poor documentation with this change video evidence started being included in the vast majority of submissions going into 2015 there was radio silence from jazz with no new personal bests being posted from him in the span of about 4 months sure the 427 had some pretty solid execution but the run certainly wasn't perfect improvement into the 4-1 x range was definitely possible however on april 25th 2015 jazz shocked the world by getting a run with a time of three minutes in 56 seconds smashing the 41x barrier the 40x barrier and even the subfloor barrier to smash the record by over 30 seconds some crazy new strategies must have been found so let's take a look at some of the new additions the first major addition was in level 9 where a couple of well-timed jumps on the beginning slope allowed jess to just barely land and jump off the green moving platform before it disappeared saving a boatload of time over the checkpoint reset method every level in this run just appeared to be more refined than in the 427 with the most apparent examples being a faster ball roll in level 10 and a faster flag grab in level 11. now on level 12 jazz lined himself up for the hardest known strategy in the game something that was discovered in 2014 by oblivion rr by clipping the corner of this small stack of boxes in level 12 in just the right way red ball could reach the top of the large block of land past the spike pit the setup for this trick involved resetting at the checkpoint flag rolling red ball back as much as possible without going past the corner moving red ball back to the checkpoint flag and then holding jump hoping that red ball had the perfect speed and position to clip the boxes perfectly after the second jump the reason that this strategy had never been attempted before in runs was because of its sheer unparalleled difficulty getting the trick first try in an already excellent run was almost out of the question despite all of this jez went for the trick and appeared to absolutely nail it on his first try he kept jumping first on the block of land then just past the spikes then right in front of the saw blade and then on the corner of one of the small stair steps giving him just enough height to land on the top of the ramp without having to use the ski lift rolling down victory lane jess had seemingly accomplished the unthinkable a speed run of red ball with no clear mistakes which incorporated every difficult strategy in the book it appeared as though all of his hard work had finally paid off there was just one small problem with the run it wasn't real on the 25th of april 2015 i uploaded a speedrun of the original red ball claiming a time of 3 minutes and 56 seconds i hate to say it but this run is spliced here i was using a new and very inconsistent strategy discovered by oblivion rr that involved a precise jump clipping the corner of a box and sending red ball to a high part of the level allowing you to skip past the puzzle below unfortunately in the run i cocked up the strategy a couple of times and ended up finishing just shy of four minutes expectedly i was livid but unlike a normal thinking person instead of taking a break and returning to attempts at a later date i decided to edit the failed attempts of the box clip out of the run and take my time below four minutes the video had been tampered with jess hadn't actually gotten the box clip on his first try but rather on his third or fourth attempt the only reason why the spliced run is being covered so heavily is because the video without being tampered with was actually a world record a time in the 40x range and as you probably guessed the actual unedited video for this run no longer exists just understands that the decision to splice his run was a regrettable one and though he was just a young teenager when he made this decision he acknowledges that there are no excuses for cheating a speed run after coming clean on his own volition jazz managed to claim a genuine 357 in 2020 with hand cam using almost the exact same strategies proven that he could have gotten a genuine sub 4 back in 2015 without resorting to taking the easy way out the short-term satisfaction gained by splicing a speedrun does not make up for the long-term guilt that comes afterwards and jez's faked 356 affirms this reality even with the actual record being an obviously beatable 40x nobody managed to get a run in this range for the next year and a half a runner by the name of ast 56 achieved a 410 shortly before the cheated 356 was released to the public but that wasn't fast enough to be a world record however on the 10th of september 2016 a runner by the name of flower unknowingly claimed the world record with a time of 404 this run actually managed to get the box clip first try in level 12 but a slow train segment and an unfortunate mistake near the end of the run prevented this run from being a sub 4. one thing that you may have noticed is that up until this point every single world record and claimed world record has had zero game audio why you may ask well primarily because it's extremely irritating to listen to the same two minute long song over and over again during an attempt session that could potentially be multiple hours in length don't get me wrong the red ball ost can absolutely slap given the right doses if loud annoying saxophone solos are your thing but just like radiation getting too much can be extremely damaging to your personal well-being despite this a forum post was made on the 12th of march 2018 outlining a new rule that would force all runs faster than 4 minutes and 30 seconds to have game audio enabled to serve as a barrier against future splicing this rule would also be applied to pre-existing runs which would cause the removal of the faked 356 from the leaderboards without jazz having to face the embarrassment of having to oust his own run as being spliced yeah i guess that plan didn't really work out between the time of the rule change announcement and the planned date of its enforcement ultra aug an up and coming red ball runner made a monumental discovery that would usher in a revolution of red bull speedrunning he was going to listen to steam hams alongside redball's high quality music to drastically increase his performance during runs oh yeah and he also figured out how to jump in those pesky spikes without dying by pausing and unpausing the game at any point during the run red ball would gain a short immunity to spikes given that red ball had a high amount of speed before coming into contact with them with this new ability the ground beneath various patches of spikes throughout the game could now be jumped on enabling new massive skips and time saves throughout the game its earliest applications were in level 10 to skip the arduous rolling ball section and in level 12 to jump through the spike pit without having to nail the extremely difficult box corner jump with this the difficulty of the run dramatically decreased and jezz was able to hastily snag a new world record with a time of 352 which included game audio this run also marked the first sub 4 minute time in the game's history overall the run was nothing to write home about execution was pretty average the bridge skip on level 9 was much safer and slower an extra bounce platform was used in level 10 and level 12 was fairly slow at least in comparison to what was now possible with the spike glitch the large amount of time saved from the boulder skip in level 10 and the spike pit skip in level 12 are ultimately what allowed this run to eclipse flowers 404 by over 10 seconds shortly after this run was performed jazz released the first ever red ball speedrunning guide in the form of a 37 page long google doc on the 23rd of march it covered everything from timing and recording software to detailed explanations and diagrams describing how to most optimally play all of the 12 main levels of red ball this ended up being a great community resource for new runners and it served as a hallmark example of how dedicated the red ball speed running community was at perfecting their craft two days later on the 25th of march a runner by the name of six rock snagged the world record with the time of 3 48 where after it was improved by jazz to a 347 on the same day with the main improvements over his 352 coming from levels 4 10 and 12. in level 4 he managed to get up the stairs with just a single corner jump he quickly reset at the flag setting him up for a faster act cycle than he would have gotten by just waiting he first used this checkpoint reset in his 352 but his stair section was too slow to allow it to save any time levels 10 and 12 were overall faster and cleaner though he still missed the stair corner jump at the end of level 12 and was forced to take the bottom route with spike glitch still only having two useful applications it was a relief to see that ultra aug had found another application for the glitch in level 7 which he shared via a form post on the 27th of march applying the extremely difficult jump on the first bounce pad in level 10 to the first bounce pad in level 7 the player could gain enough height to reach the top route of the level where the red barrier switch is normally spikes would block the player from garnering any future progression but the usage of spike glitch allowed this gap to be crossed the top route strategy for level seven saved around two seconds on average over the existing bottom route method however the frame perfect bounce jump and the inconsistent box stack topple made the strategy anything but consistent because of this reality it didn't come as much of a surprise that the next red ball world record set by six rock on the 26th of march 2018 with a time of 3 45 did not incorporate the new strategy there isn't much to note about this run but one interesting tidbit is that six rock actually got a super bounce on the second bounce platform in level seven though this didn't really save him any time the next world record set by flower on the 13th of april 2018 did not incorporate the new level 7 strategy either this run clocked in with a time of 340 which would have been quite unattainable had it not been for this new strategy that flour implemented in level 9. [Laughter] [Music] that's right flower managed to discover and implement top route 9 a strategy that would prove to be an absolute inconsistent nightmare for future runners of the game level 9 which once involved a great deal of stop and go can now almost be completed entirely in one mad sprint flowers ingenuity had completely blown the community away so much that on the 8th of may 2018 the run was removed from the leaderboards for being spliced alright before you get mad at me for bringing up yet another spliced run in the context of a world record history video this situation had a much different ending so just hear me out for a little while in the description of flowers run the following statement can be found not a splice on ninja on the bridge just a reset as to not die of spikes you can see the exact reset that he is referring to right here at the start of level 9. i understand how this could seem pretty suspicious to mention but you have to keep in mind that people were mistaking checkpoint resets for splices in the comments of jez's 347 and even on the red ball speedrun.com forms flower claims that this reset helped him not die on the first set of spikes and with current knowledge known about the game this actually does hold some merit six rock a red ball speedrun.com moderator claimed to have discovered that the run was spliced by finding a desync between the game audio of flowers run and the game audio of the second place time but when another look was taken at the run's validity in early 2020 it was found that this supposed discrepancy didn't exist and was caused by six rock using the car noise to sync up the audio of the two runs a noise that starts and repeats depending on when you enter the car in level 8 making it completely nonsensical to analyze between the two runs flower failing to provide a local recording of his run session at the time responding simply by saying ahaha okay didn't really help his case but aside from that all signs pointed to his run being legitimate thus the decision was made in april 2020 to restore the run to the leaderboards this situation thankfully had a happy ending but it wouldn't end up being the last time that questions over a run's validity would become a source of contention after the initial hype of spike glitch died down flowers 340 set uncontested for a span of around six months however in early september the community was shocked to see a brand new runner by the name of rare eg achieve a time of 344 as his first submitted red ball speed run ever a run which was believed to be world record at the time due to flowers 340 being absent from the leaderboards and the craziest part about this run is that rare didn't even hit the top route 9 strategy losing him around 7 to 8 seconds this run proved to be one of the first to implement ultra aug's top route 7 strategy which eg absolutely nailed eg claims to have gotten his start with red ball speedrunning by racing against his sister using the ios version of the game which has completely different physics after his swift transition to speedrunning the flash version of red ball eg was now easily a world record contender eg was refining his movement to a level that had never been seen before as he began unlocking the maximum potential of redball's sandbox-like physics his sum of best segments of 324 was a true testament to his sheer mastery of the game all eg had to do to claim the world record from flower was to hit top route 9 on any decent pace so on the 13th of september he did just that [Music] [Applause] [Music] this monumental run by eg would mark the start of a new era of post spike glitch optimization for red bull a second wave if you will unfortunately for eg this 335 was missing one crucial piece game audio just like many world record holders before him eg couldn't stand listening to red bull's ear splitting ost this cost eg from having his run verified on the leaderboards but like the many runs without video evidence that were mentioned earlier in this video it will still be treated as a legitimate world record for the purposes of this documentary eg continued to do attempts getting a 341 followed by a 339 both with game audio but he was still unable to top his unofficial 335 despite the numerous runs he had that were on insane paces with his motivation somewhat dwindling eg wanted people to start playing red ball again to brew some competition and thankfully his request was answered [Music] his maximum uploaded his first red ball speed run on the 24th of september 2018 achieving a time of 4 minutes and 4 seconds in less than a week he would swiftly improve his time to a 337 on the 30th of september garnering him first place on the leaderboard on that same day talks began in the red ball speedrunning discord about making the last five levels of red ball playable again you see in 2014 king.com the only site where the five bonus levels could be accessed completely restructured their website after the success of the mobile release of their new hit game candy crush saga the sponsored games and pseudo gambling activities that once made up the site's image had now completely vanished with this red ball became completely inaccessible on the website and so too did the last five levels after looking into red balls swift file it was seen that the last five levels were present in the game's files but access to them was locked out by a url check a common drm tool employed in many flash games essentially if the game was not being played on king.com the last five levels could not be accessed however on the 7th of october its maximum was able to nullify the url check by changing a single boolean value in the game's code from false to true genius i know with this the last five levels of red ball became playable for the first time in around 5 years and the 17 levels category could finally be played again one day later during a 17 levels attempt its maximum claimed his own 335 time in 12 levels but ended up being just .4 seconds slower than eg's unofficial world record but before its maximum could finally snag the record for himself eg once again stunned everybody by uploading a time of 3 minutes and 30 seconds on the 9th of october so how did he manage to save 5 seconds over his already excellent 335 let's have a look [Music] eg was willing to go for every strategy in the book and his perfect execution of the insane ending strategy in nine dubbed yolo balls is a perfect testament to this reality though he did lose around four seconds from messing up the bounce at the beginning of level seven twice his seemingly impeccable execution throughout the rest of the run certainly made up for it the run was tantalisingly close to shattering the sub 330 barrier and with this run people knew that a time in the mid 2x range was now humanly feasible with eg and its maximum in heavy competition for the world record the quest for sub 330 was now in full swing despite red ball being littered with seemingly uncontrollable inconsistencies such as being able to jump after landing in level six the box stacked toppling level seven the car in level eight and dying to the spikes in levels nine and twelve despite having enough speed with the spike glitch active the two had managed to optimize the game to heights that would have been laughed at even a month prior breaking the sub 330 barrier was essentially seen as the game's final frontier so who is going to be the first to get it the bloker was less than a second off or the fella that was over five away [Music] despite its maximum not getting the greatest six and making a mess of the yolo ball strat in level nine his solid execution throughout the rest of the run including a gold in seven and the superbounce in ten made it just enough for him to claim the first sub 330 with a time of 329.833 following this eg retired from red ball speedrunning leaving the discord server in the process only to return just a month later and reclaim the world record with a 328 ending with the greatest pop off in red ball history [Music] with this the second wave of spike glitch hype had come to a close with world record competition drying up due to the sub 330 barrier being broken and both its maximum and eg moving on to play other games in the series around nine months would pass without any new records being set but then seemingly out of nowhere eg made his comeback on the 27th of july 2019 eg uploaded a new world record in this run he got a phenomenal six he got an insanely lucky car as he discovered that purposefully ejecting himself had the potential to be much faster than writing it normally he nailed yolo balls in level 9. he got the super bounce intent and then this happened three seconds this death cost him three whole seconds but eg pressed on collecting the flag in level 12 eg had still managed to get a 325 he messed up the end of level 7 he died in level 10 and he still managed to get a 325 this run proved that a mid 2x was no longer the limit for the game a low 2x was with every level played to near perfection maybe a sub 320 would be achievable but let's not get too ahead of ourselves here on the same day as his 325 eg achieved another world record this time being a 3 23 going into level 10 the run was near perfection an amazing six a blazing fast seven a lucky car yellow balls in nine if he had a perfect ending the run would have been dangerously close to being the world's first 319 but unfortunately for him he missed the super bounce in 10 costing him about 2 seconds and he missed the last stair jump in 12 costing him around a second playing without splits eg didn't even think it was a world record at the conclusion of the run due to the mistake in 12. i missed it man i missed my jump and that's it that's [ __ ] it i guess he forgot that he died in level 10 in his 325. eg still wasn't satisfied with his time he wanted to get the fabled 319 a time that was pretty much treated as a meme until just a day prior eg kept going and he achieved this run on the 6th of august 2019 [Music] this 322 would have been just a fraction of a second off 319 but he missed one of the easiest strats in the entire game the puzzle skip in level 5 costing him around 2 seconds funnily enough he made the exact same mistake in his 328. in the description of this run there were two words 319 soon eg tried his best to achieve it but the milestone just proved to be too difficult besides eg needed to do more than just replicate his 322 without missing the early flag grab in 5 he needed a new strategy that could save over half a second to be able to push him over the edge in september of 2019 some theory crafting between its maximum and xzcc led to the creation of a new strategy in level 9 the plunger jump by falling on this jointed obstacle and jumping off of it at just the right time red ball could gain a massive amount of horizontal and vertical velocity giving him the ability to go straight to the flag platform skipping the pendulums entirely this strategy had the potential to save almost a second over yellow balls but it proved to be extremely difficult and inconsistent all of the puzzle pieces for a 319 were finally there but nobody not even eg himself was able to put them together thus the world record progression went through yet another era of inactivity around the same time as eg's insane 12-level world record improvements red bull began to have some individual level competition established for the first time over on the red ball category extension site with this each level in the game started being pushed to its absolute limits with entirely new strategies being discovered in the months to follow some of these strategies proved to be completely unreasonable to attempt in a full game setting while other optimizations actually showed some promise with the isle competition brewing runners other than eg had the opportunity to master the game's mechanics and refine their movement to an insanely high degree most notably its maximum norzer and yellow skarmory were really pushing it at this time by the end of march yellow skarmory would achieve a 326 pushing maximum back to third place and norzor would achieve a time of 331 putting him in a comfortable fourth place at this point the immense optimization of the il world records had pushed the theoretical best time for red ball well into the 30x range it was undeniable at this point that any runner with an immense amount of dedication had the ability to achieve a 319. with red bull competition being at an all-time high its maximum announced on the 23rd of march 2020 that he was going to go for the fabled 319. here is how that went [Music] so just like that maximum was within one second of rare's world record max had begun to implement a new yellow balls technique in nine that involved an extremely short jump on the ground before the pendulums to land on the second ball in just the right position to be able to reach the end of the level with just one more jump overall it was a little bit faster and easier than the previous method in level 10 he implemented a safer version of the il strategy that saved just over half a second finally in level 12 he would sometimes go for the il strategy which involved getting two jumps in the beginning spike pit as opposed to just one and allowed red ball to stay ahead of the saw blade in the ending section rather than be behind it one thing you may notice about these videos is that the game is really really laggy this is because it was discovered around a month prior that the more the game was zoomed in on any given web page the more consistent that spike glitch would become people had been unintentionally accomplishing this for years because the game was nearly impossible to see in its standard window size without the aid of a microscope when this discovery was made people began zooming in their game as much as possible as the lag produced by flash's poorly optimized spaghetti code was well worth the benefit of not dying at the beginning of level 9 16 times in a row so close to the world record after just a few days of attempts maximum knew that he could topple eg's record any day now and on the 29th of march 2020 while on a call with many of the other red ball runners he did just that come on i did it dude i did it i did rare's almost one and a half year long reign over the game had finally been snapped however maximum wasn't done playing red ball just yet he still had a 3 19 to get and another key strategy that would aid him achieving this goal was a huge discovery made by him in level 10. [Music] [Applause] overall this strategy saved around 2 seconds over rare eg's method of doing level 10 making it yet another reason why maximum's job of getting 319 was much much easier than it would have been for rare 319 may not have been the nearly impossible milestone that it once was but that certainly didn't make it easy to achieve and besides that new level 10 strat relied on a frame perfect bounce pat jump to be accomplished so it certainly wasn't making the game any easier to play on the 7th of april maximum was on an incredibly good run going into level 10. after nailing the bounce pad jump his nerves began to skyrocket he entered level 11 with the best possible time of 3 17 11. this had the potential to be an absolutely insane run level 11 has always been known as the calm before the storm where an essentially free auto scroller is followed up by one of the hardest levels in the game from a speedrunning standpoint level 12. while waiting on that train the runner is given time to think more and more about what is coming up ahead because of this the train doesn't help settle people's nerves at all it makes them skyrocket barely able to control his own hands maximum entered level 12 with one goal in mind 319 and this is what he ended up coming out with [Music] no no in his spur of extreme nervousness maximum jumped a little too early before the wood box placing him squarely in the spikes a situation which spike glitch unfortunately did not save him from thankfully while streaming three days later maximum had another chance [Music] [Music] holy 319 it was real after around six active years of speed running competition rivalries advancements and discoveries red balls last 10 second barrier was finally shattered well at least its last realistic 10 second barrier but this didn't mark the end of the world record competition remember nauk saw the guy who had a low 3x as his pb at this point he was long long overdue for getting a 2x but nobody could predict what would happen on the 12th of april 2020. just like its maximum he entered level 12 on 318 pace and then choked it however he still managed to finish the run with a 322.833 making it the craziest pb the community has ever seen and naught saw wasn't done not even close nor saw choked 319 time and time again and the new world record of 317.833 set by its maximum on the 10th of june wasn't making things any easier for him this run made use of a new strategy in level 3 found by noxor himself which abused the fact that moving platforms are only hinged on one center point whenever one of these platforms became tilted by red balls downward velocity they would quickly kick back into place by combining a jump with this platform kickback red ball had the potential to reach great heights so great in fact you could manage to reach the flag in level 3 from the right hand side saving around 2 seconds another notable thing about this run is that it was the first world record performed on the standalone adobe flash player which avoided using the web entirely i'll briefly hand over the metaphorical narration baton to its maximum to explain why this has significance people continued to play red ball via an html file on an internet browser for two reasons one you could actually zoom in the game which was essentially necessary for spike glitch to work well and two this jump in level 10 which saved around a second was only possible on web for whatever reason standalone always came up short the first of these problems was solved by re-enabling the show all option in the right-click menu which caused the game to look like this as opposed to this when it was full screened and problem 2 was solved by digging through a multitude of different flash player versions to find the one that behaved the same as the flash web plugin did in level 10. this new way of playing the game dubbed definitive edition made the game much more accessible and enjoyable to play overall and it also provided a solution to the looming threat of flash being removed from all internet browsers in late 2020 using definitive edition narksar finally achieved his well-deserved sub 320 with a time of 318.967 on the 20th of june this run would have broken the world record if not for him missing the stair corner jump at the very end of the run on the 19th of july noxual missed the bounce pad jump in level 10 making him lose over two seconds but with the rest of the run going smoothly he managed to take his pb down to a 318.6 on the 22nd of july noxar entered level 12 with his heart rate monitor reading over 190 beats per minute he had the potential to get a 316 this run he jumped into the small patch of spikes and died later that same day nauksov failed to jump at the beginning of level 10 causing him to die and costing him around 2 seconds entering level 12 it was still possible for him to get world record but this small hold up on the corner of the ending rail cost him around half a second he ended with a time of 318.100 on the 23rd of july noxor was on 317 pace going into level 12 and yet again missed the corner jump on the stairs costing him the record later that same day nox are entered level 12 on 315 pace but died on the second jump in the spike pit even later that same day knoxville entered level eight on good pace when this happened a three and a half second long lag spike this is a flash moment that had never happened before and has never happened since he finished the run with a mid 318 which would have been a high 314 if not for that dastardly lag red ball had beaten knoxville to the ground time and time again with the world record just out of grasp every single time he completed the last level but thankfully knoxville wouldn't let the curse last forever that's it 317.367 nauksov finally achieved the gold however this wouldn't mark the end of the world record progression narxo proved that at the very minimum a 314 was attainable using the current strategies so who would get the next world record would it be nor saw or its maximum actually it was rare eg eg whose pb was still sitting at 3 22 when nauk saw set his record decided to make his return to red ball after quickly learning all of the new strategies on the 30th of july 2020 he entered level 12 7.6 seconds ahead of his personal best if everything went well he would have a 314 to his name but an unfortunate death in the first spike pit in level 12 cost him world record with the run ending at 3 17. thankfully for eg the very same day he snatched the world record with a time of 316.850 coming back from being 2.4 seconds behind out of level 11. on the 4th of august its maximum achieved to 315.868 a time marked by the newly developed red ball auto splitter his only significant time losses were around a second and a half from a slow six and another second and a half from messing up the stair jump in level 12. only two days later eg snapped back with a 314.433 boy baby the scary thing about this run is that there appeared to be little to no mistakes a trained eye could find some sub-optimal gameplay in levels such as nine and ten but this run seemed to further enforce that red ball had somewhat of a hard cap around 312 with the current known strategies some of the current il only strategies at the time such as task 3 double jump 6 and 8 cycles skip could be implemented to unlock a time in the 30x range but the success rates of these strategies were all seemingly slim to none things would go quiet for a while but eventually noxore would achieve the legendary 312 on the 5th of september 2020 [Music] the run had a sub optimal seven but naught saw saved some time by nailing the plunger jump in level nine and getting a one-jump ball bounce in level 10. a time like this was well overdue for narxo whose previous personal best sat at a 3 16. with norcza's run there was a possible time save of a second and a half in level seven just by adding eight cycle skip into the run which saved a little over a second 309 would become a very feasible time sub 320 was once believed to be the last 10 second barrier this game would ever see but now the path to sub 310 was clearer than ever it was no longer a matter of if it was a matter of when the 5th of september also marked the beginning of the second red ball 12 levels tournament which drew in 14 participants eg who was now third place on the leaderboards tore his way through the winner's bracket whitewashing every single one of his opponents in the winner's final he faced off against its maximum who had just defeated narxor in the nail-biting losers final few expected that eg would maintain his winning streak all the way to the end but that's exactly what he did only a couple seconds ahead of maximum one incredible performance rarity is the champion of the red bull 12 levels tournament with the pop-up and it wouldn't be oh and he's got the champagne oh man the the rare crew popping bottles for this uh this victory in the trophy the tournament proved once again a fact that many in the red ball community already knew eg was destined for greatness no matter what game in the series he was playing eg always had an uncanny ability to achieve high rankings with great improvements over his previous personal bests by keeping calm and collected during the later levels if anyone was going to be the first to score a 0x eg would most likely be the one to do it following this tournament its maximum eg and noxore would all start streaming multiple hour-long 0x grinds at certain points all three would be streaming at the same time the three had begun to master the cycle skip on level 8 sometimes hitting it three or four times in a row a strategy that was once thought to be impossible was now beginning to get mastered on top of this eg started to implement a modified form of six ramp double jump which saved a respectable amount of time over naxxor's strat the major downside to this is that it was plagued by the random ground jump just before the end adding even more randomness into the run despite all this all three were more than capable of attaining an ox all three were willing to do grinds almost every day for weeks if not months to be the first so who is it going to be [Music] let's [ __ ] go three oh [ __ ] seven come on yes come on baby i'm [ __ ] tired [Music] let's go so where do we go from here taking a look at the 17 levels category the world record is currently a two-way tie at a 448 flat between eg and i both of these runs had 12 levels times that were in the mid 1x range so improvement can still be made there however with levels 14 and 17 both being quite difficult to nail a faster 12 levels time certainly does not guarantee a 17 levels world record eg's 307 12 levels time is an absolutely masterful speed run it is possible that it will stand for years without ever being beaten eg has little reason to go back and try to improve his record norcsur yak attack and i have all had runs that have been ox pace into the late game but none of us have been able to close them out additionally none of these late game runs were on pace to topple eg's world record as of now eg noir i and yak attack are the only people to have ever attained even a 1x that's not to say eg's record isn't beatable though the essentially theoretical limit of the game is marked by the time of the segmented run which has been created by the culmination of hundreds of hours of il attempts put in by various members of the community so what do you think the time of this segmented run is a low ox a sub 3 try 245 that's right 245 around 20 seconds faster than the world record a large chunk of this time save comes from just one strategy sub 20 train which i have made a whole video about the discovery and implementation of this trick has the potential to save a massive 8 seconds over the traditional train strategy unfortunately this trick has a success rate of at best 1 out of 200 with little hope of that success rate ever being improved so unless you want to match eg around 200 times going into level 11 sub 3 will remain completely unattainable all the other time saves come from the fact that red ball is simply a physics sandbox there is no speed cap and really weird things can happen if enough attempts are drilled into a certain level just ask me i put around 20 hours into level 7 ielts to save a single second over the rta strategy putting every strategy that is even remotely rta viable into the run produces a ceiling of around 302 so the only way to theoretically make sub 3 possible is with the use of sub 20 train so yeah the future of 12 level world records certainly looks discouraging but you still can't help but smile looking back upon all the amazing history that has led up to eg's monumental 307 all of the previous world record holders of red bull each pushed the envelope of what was believed to be possible in their own unique way and their accomplishments were made possible by the help of numerous glitch hunters strat finders and supportive community members the story of redball's world record progression is one that should inspire any speedrunning community big or small through being the metaphorical little engine that could redball's very existence as a speed game is somewhat of a miracle it is a simple three minute long flash game from 2008 it was completely ditched by the site that sponsored it in 2014 and the platform that it was made for flash had been kicked to the curbside before competition even started getting serious despite all of this red bull persevered with its storied history producing a truly amazing world record and more importantly an extremely active dedicated community that shows no signs of dying out anytime soon and all of this was made possible because in 2008 a russian concrete mixer salesman was sent a link to a blog thanks for watching [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] do [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: ItsMaximum

Views: 380,723

Rating: 4.9315405 out of 5

Keywords: speedrun, red, ball, history, progression, wr, gdq, red ball 4, wr history, red ball, itsmaximum, documentary, games, speedrunning, speedrun world record, world record, world record progression, world record history, speedrun world record progression, red ball speedrun, speedrun progression, speedrun history, EazySpeezy, red ball wr, red ball world record, red ball flash speedrun, eazyspeezy red ball, flash games, flash game speedrun, flash speedrun, ball speedrun, ball game speedrun

Id: z_NlBKngBVs

Length: 65min 34sec (3934 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 29 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/YTK_Bowser]

such a good vid, worth a watch fo sho

[u/BNMC0919]

actually really sick video, this little flash game has a super rich history

[u/NorXor000]

absolutely amazing video :)

[u/YellowSkarmory]

I AM IN THE VIDEO

[u/Sinja1]

I love progression videos, this is awesome!

[u/ItsMaximum]

Feel free to ask any questions about the video in the comments!

[u/Megaloshark]

Fantastic video, loved it. No idea there was such a rich history of competition surrounding a single red ball.

[u/TheSkeeterBronson]

This video was so good it inspired me to derust on the game. Thank you

[u/xatrixx]

This vid deserves WAY more attention! Very well done!