The run series is arguably the most popular
trilogy of flash games ever created. Released in September of 2008, the first game in the series,
simply titled “Run,” was an instant success, spreading from Albino blacksheep.com to other
flash game websites such as Coolmathgames and Kongregate. People loved the game for its
simplistic, yet fluid gameplay and it’s easy to pick up and start nature. You selected
a speed, clicked on adventure mode, and you were off to the races, seamlessly moving through
the game’s 50 levels. The game also featured an infinite mode and an unlockable intense speed
to give the game replay value. The second game in the series, run 2, took the game in a bit
of a different direction, or rather, a different dimension. The Two-dimensional surfaces that
the player used to rotate on were replaced with three dimensional objects. The levels were split
into a runner level set and a skater level set, with 25 normal levels and 6 unlockable bonus
levels in each category. For run 3, the series went back a bit more two its roots, having 2d
object tunnels, but the game was an improvement over the first installment in almost every way.
There were many characters to select from, there was a much better infinite mode, the controls were
more fluid, rotating no longer caused the gameplay to temporarily halt, there were more levels and
many branching paths containing extra content, and there was a storyline… that 95% of
people just skipped through. These games were fun and were super popular, with run 2
specifically being the most popular game on coolmathgames, the largest flash gaming site, for
many, many years. With all of this popularity, it comes as no surprise that speedrunners would
want to take a hand at trying to beat the games in the series as fast as possible. With so many
different speeds, characters, and ways of playing, it feels as though it would have instant success
as a speedgame. But, hold on a minute. The games in the run series all share one attribute in
common; the character is constantly pulled forward at a seemingly fixed speed; there is no way to
manuver the character forwards or backwards with the use of keyboard input. It appears as though
you can’t go any faster than the game allows. So, wouldn’t this make the games in the
run series autoscrollers? And, how are you supposed to speedrun games like this? That is
the question that this video will aim to answer. By the way, because I always get a million
comments about this on all of my videos, if you are wondering how to still play flash games after
2020, please check out BlueMaxima’s Flashpoint. It is a collection of tens of thousands of flash
games that you can play offline once downloaded in the official standalone adobe flash player, which
us speedrunners have been using for many years now for convenience and less lag. Now that I have let
you know about this uh, top secret information, I would appreciate it if you could subscribe and
leave a rating in return. Now, on with the video. Autoscrollers, you’ve probably seen them before.
In almost every 2d mario game, you will approach a level at some point that forces you to
wait. A lot. The bounds of the screen move extremely slowly, with a speedy completion of
the level being impossible. For speedrunners, these levels are horrible because they represent
the antithesis of the idea of speedrunning as a whole, beating a game quickly through skill and
determination. While the games in the run series don’t really fit the definition of an
autoscroller in the traditional sense, and it’s a bit misleading to refer to them
as such… alright look, i needed people to click on the video… However, the game’s complete
control over the player’s z velocity does produce a very similar outcome. Like autoscrollers, if the
player doesn’t die along the way, all speedruns of games in the run series should end with the
exact same time, right? Well, not exactly. Speedruns of Run 1, or more accurately, Run, are
split between two main categories. Adventure mode and Infinite Mode. There are subcategories
for the three different speeds, for whether the player is using the runner or the skater,
and for the two different versions of the game: Flash and HTML5. For simplicity sake, we will only
be talking about runs using the runner character on the flash version of the game, as that is what
people are most familiar with. In adventure mode, there are a couple of tenets to follow in order
to score the best possible time, don’t die, rotate as little as possible, avoid obstacles,
and go through the menus as fast as possible. The not dying part is pretty self-explanatory, but
it actually extremely difficult to accomplish, especially on intense speed. At high speeds on the
later levels, the gameplay precision needed to not fall into the void is monumental. To date, only
one deathless speedrun has been performed on intense speed by a runner named rubiksmath,
which is a name you are going to be seeing a lot of throughout this video. Because of this, he
is likely the only person to have ever completed all 50 levels on adventure mode on intense speed
deathless, even not in a speedrunning context. You would expect fast to have a lot more runners with
deathless runs, but, in fact, Rubiksmath, Epicoz, and bman12three4 are the only people who have
done so. Normal speed, despite being much slower, still only has 6 players who have completed
all of the levels without dying. However, what accounts for the small, but notable
time fluctuations amongst these deathless runs? How can rubiksmaths’s normal speed record
be over 5 seconds faster than the slowest normal speed deathless run by dha. Well, let’s move
over to the second tenet of run speedrunning: rotating as little as possible. Whenever the
runner touches one of the two adjacent sides in the tunnel, the gameplay will completely
freeze, as the camera takes a fixed amount of time in order to adjust to the new perspective.
At 60fps, on normal speed, it takes 20 frames, or a third of a second, on fast speed, it takes
14 frames, or .233 seconds, and on intense speed, it takes 10 frames, or a sixth of a second.
However, this doesn’t paint the full picture, as the runner needs to take a few frames in order to
accelerate to top speed again. Thus, speedruners have come up with routes in each level in order to
achieve the lowest amount of rotations possible, with some of these paths certainly being more
difficult than a normal completion of the level. Some prominent examples are the zero rotation
routes in levels 34 and 37, where the player must constantly perform tight jumps onto very
thin platforms. There is also a very difficult strategy called the wall jump, where the player is
able to execute a jump input on the top edge of a vertical wall to avoid rotating. The window
for executing this jump is extremely small, but thankfully, the game allows for jump inputs
to be buffered, so the main challenge comes with positioning the character correctly on the
wall. Too far left, and the wall will be missed, or the jump just wont happen, and too far
right and the game will perform a rotation. This exploit has the potential to save rotations
in levels like 17, 25, 30, and 39, but it has only been performed in the top 2 normal speed runs, as
the trick becomes even harder at faster speeds. The third tenet, avoiding obstacles, doesn’t have
that big of an application in Run 1 since, well, there aren’t really any obstacles, but what is
actually an obstacle is the edges of all of the square tiles. While moving around or rotating,
if the player bumps into these edges or gets caught on them, it will cause some timeloss as the
player spends a few frames not at top speed. This is especially important in the later levels, where
the jumps and rotations are much more difficult. A rotation that barely clips the edge and causes
the player to lose more speed versus a rotation that lands cleanly on the platform can make all
the difference in a game where the top times may just be frames apart. However, the most silent,
yet very crucial tenet of run speedrunning, is menuing speed. After every single level, the
player is prompted with a “Level Complete!” menu that prompts them to hit the spacebar to move on
to the next level. Because this menu appears 49 times throughout an adventure mode run, how fast
this spacebar input comes is vital. At 60fps, let’s say a runner takes two extra frames to
menu after each level on average compared to the first-place time. This is only 1/30th of a
second slower, pretty much imperceptible to anyone playing or viewing. However, throughout the run,
this would add up to 1.633 seconds of timeloss, which is anything but insignificant. Most runners
will begin mashing the spacebar before the prompt comes up so there is no need to react to it. Using
a 3 finger mashing technique, I can average around 13 presses per second, so, disregarding possible
loading times, I can expect my menus to be between 1 and 5 frames. However, during hours of attempts
having to perform hundreds of these mashes, it is extremely difficult to menu consistently,
especially while having to juggle everything else like actually playing the game well. This
tenet, unfortunately, is the most annoying out of the four, and can certainly put people
off from playing the game at a high level. Thankfully, for most people, who aren’t trying to
become the very best of the best, menuing is not nearly as vital, with the possible time save from
fast menus just being an added bonus. But, wait a minute. Adventure mode is only one of the game
modes present in Run 1. How does all of this stuff apply to infinite mode, and how does it even work?
Infinite mode operates on a difficulty percentage, which correlates to how many tiles are placed in
the level. 5% barely has anything missing, while 99% can sometimes feel impossible to complete due
to how many gaps there are. The game generates a tunnel of a fixed length at 5% difficulty, and if
the player manages to complete it without dying, the difficulty will increase by 10%, maxing out
at 99%. However, speedrunners purposefully take a death in the first level so the difficulty will
only increase by 5% upon completing the tunnel. While this will initially lose time, because
higher difficulty tunnels are slightly longer, this will end up saving time in the long run, as
the difficulty of every subsequent tunnel will be 5% lower than the normal amount. Because 90%
difficulty will still jump to 99% upon completion, the player still plays the same amount of tunnels
using this method. Once the player completes a tunnel at 99% difficulty, infinite mode is counted
as being completed. As you may have guessed, all of the tunnels that are generated in this
game mode are completely random, and there is no way to be prepared for what is to come. The
player must constantly think on their toes, mapping out a route to prevent dying, while
also minimizing rotations as much as possible. However, both the normal and fast speed records
are so optimized that they don’t feature a single rotation. The player is completely at the game’s
mercy to get a pattern on each level that is even possible to complete without rotating. On
intense speed, things are a bit different, with most runners opting to actually reduce their
speed to fast at around 50% difficulty to avoid dying in the later levels, where the difficulty
of playing the game at intense speed just becomes unreasonable. Well, except for this badass,
who managed to complete every single level at top speed, thanks in no small part to the
amazing rng they got, allowing their run to be 14 seconds faster than second place. Now
that we’ve given a pretty extensive overview of speedrunning the first Run game, let’s now take
a look at its very different successor, run 2. As mentioned earlier, Run 2 is made up of 62 total
levels, with there being 31 levels for the runner and 31 levels for the Skater. These 31 levels
are further divided into 25 normal levels and 6 unlockable bonus levels. Each level in the game
has a yellow bonus in it that can be collected, and for every 5 bonuses that are collected
on a character, 1 bonus level unlocks. The bonuses in the 25 main levels allow for
the first five bonus levels to be unlocked, while the bonuses present in those 5 bonus levels
allow for the sixth bonus level to be unlocked. This level also has a bonus in it, which doesn’t
help unlock anything but it still required for 100% completion. The three main categories in
the game, Runner Level Set, Skater Level Set, and Both Level sets are therefore split into Any%
and 100% subcategories, where the player either completes only normal levels while not having to
collect any bonuses or all levels while having to collect every bonus. Like Run 1, Run 2 has Normal,
fast, and Intense speed subcategories for Runner Level Set and Skater Level set. However, for
the both level sets category, the game has to be treated like it is on a new save file, where only
the normal and fast speeds are unlocked. Thus, the any% category, where the player must complete
the 50 normal levels in the game, is locked on fast speed the entire time. 100% is initially
locked on fast speed for the first character, but the second character can actually be
played on intense speed. This is because, to unlock intense speed on one character,
you have to complete 100% of the levels and collect all of the bonuses on the other character.
Skater is the most optimal choice to start with since intense speed saves much more time on runner
due to it being the longer level set of the two in terms of completion time. The main tenets of
Run 1 speedrunning all apply to run 2 as well, with avoiding deaths staying crucial, difficult
and/or inventive strategies to save rotations becoming vital, menuing staying important, and
avoiding obstacles becoming much more pertinent. To save rotations, speedrunners will rotate on the
back of platforms when not intended, perform large jumps that are barely possible, and execute
movement that becomes near impossible at high speeds. However, the most interesting rotation
save of all is this corner launch in level 23 of skater (found by yours truly) that can save two
rotations. Unfortunately, this save is also one of the hardest in the entire game, and it comes at
the very tail end of the level set. There are only 3 runners that have ever pulled off this strategy
first try in a personal best run, speaking volumes to its sheer difficulty. Staying deathless is
extremely challenging in some categories, with skater on intense speed only having two players
that have submitted a deathless run. However, it gets far worse than that. The current 100% skater
intense world record by rubiksmath has… 18 deaths (i counted) with rubiks switching from intense
to fast speed after completing level 20. This is allowed since, like run 1, the speed subcategory
just marks the highest speed that you played on in the run. The current full game any% record also
by rubiks is deathless since every level has to be played on fast speed and no bonuses are required,
with rubiks actually pulling off a lot of difficult rotation saves like the back rotation in
level 18 of runner. 100%, however, is a different story, with rubiks taking 12 deaths throughout
the course of the run, mainly due to playing the runner on intense speed. However, rubiks has
to take a time hit while changing the speed in some levels. After obviously having to change the
speed to intense when first playing the runner, he changes his speed down to fast in level 25
since the bonus route is almost impossible to nail first try on intense speed. Rubiks then changes
the speed back up to intense for bonuses 1, 2, and 3, where he then goes all the way down
to normal speed for bonus 4. In this level, the player can’t jump at all, and the platforming
is insanely difficult, even at slower speeds. Only a handful of people are known to have ever
completed this level with the bonus a single time on intense speed, so it is extremely unlikely that
a 100% world record in the future will ever omit this speed drop. Rubiks then finishes out bonus
5 and 6 on intense speed to complete the run in 6:19. By dying significantly less, using some
currently unimplemented 100% rotation saves, and executing the necessary speed changes much
quicker, a time under 6 minutes is thought to barely be attainable. However, time will tell if
we ever manage to get there. By 100%ing the game, the player is rewarded with a cheat code that
allows each of the level sets to be played with double jumps, either with the normal character
or the character from the other level set, so there are subcategories on each level set for
these three combinations. Most of these categories do not have that many runs in them, but Skater
Level Set with double jumps at intense speed is actually more popular than it is without double
jumps. Again, the full-game categories do not have these divisions since the file is treated as
fresh, so the cheat isn’t unlocked. Altogether, this means that Run 2 has 38 different categories
to speedrun in a game that can be 100%ed in less than 7 minutes, which I think is pretty awesome.
However, what isn’t awesome is that Run 1’s menuing problem is even worse in Run 2, since the
levels in run 2 happen to be much shorter, greatly increasing the average amount of level transitions
per minute of gameplay. To emphasize how important this is, speedrunner Gradient41 managed to beat my
skater fast PB by .267 seconds without using the rotationless 23 strategy, which can save up to .7
seconds. This means that gradient saved an entire second compared to me just off of menuing. When
the top 5 in the category are just around 1 second apart, this is an enormous deal. Thankfully, like
run 1, this only becomes a large problem at a high level, and there are also plenty of categories
that players can choose to optimise instead that are not so heavily reliant on menuing. Such
as the skater intense 100% record that has 18 deaths and only actually plays on intense
speed for 20 out of the 31 levels. Now, to wrap up this video, lets take a look at the
most recent installment in the run series, run 3. Contrary to run 2’s massive amount of categories,
run 3 has just 4. Any%, NG+, All Levels in the Original Release, and Reverse. The main tunnel
is made up of 65 different levels that the player must complete on a fresh save file. However the
first three levels can be skipped by clicking on the credits button, so that is actually when
timing starts. Levels 4-10 must be played on runner, whereafter the skater can be switched
to which, like in the other games in the series, is much faster than the runner. This comes with
the tradeoff that the later levels of the game are extremely difficult to complete first
try on skater. Thus, some runners switch back to runner once the the levels become too
difficult. However, to compete at the very top, the game must be completed deathless while on
skater from level 11 onward, like dha does in his current world record of 10:46. In ng+ the
objective is still to complete the main tunnel, but any unlockable character may be used
from the start. However, skipping levels 1-3 using the credits button is not allowed.
NG+ does not require a fresh save file, so there are no cutscenes that need to be mashed
through or skipped. The fastest character to play through the game with is actually the bunny
since it has a higher top speed than the skater, which is what randomkid999 uses in his current
world record of 9:48 which has 0 deaths. All Levels in the Original Release requires
the levels in the main tunnel and all of the side tunnels to be completed. The reason that
there isn’t a 100% category for any subsequent releases is because the game has been updated a
multitude of times since 2014, and many different levels have been added along the way. Since it
is pretty much impossible to keep track of this, it has been decided that a true 100% will not
exist until the game receives its final update. Finally, the miscellaneous reverse category is
like the NG+ mode, but you start at the end of level 65 and try to reach the beginning of level
1. Not only are the levels in reverse order, but you are also playing them backwards as well,
which changes all of the memorized platforming in the game. This mode is activated by holding down
the previous button in the pause menu. The current world record of 9:55 by randomkid unsurprisingly
uses the bunny, with the run only being 7 seconds slower than the NG+ world record. In run 3, the
rotations were altered to not lose any time, removing that avenue of potential timesave
and timeloss. Additionally, the levels are all continuous, meaning that menuing is no longer a
factor either, right? Well, not exactly. You see, you can actually save some time on every single
level transition by exiting to the main menu right when the level completes, and reselecting
explore mode. This causes the player to skip the small buffer region present between every
single level in the game, which adds up to a decent timesave throughout the run. However,
it is not quite as big as one would expect, since the player has to regain acceleration
upon being placed at the start of each level, causing each menu to save just a handful of
frames, with slow menus actually losing time. This exploit also allows for the mashable cutscenes
at the end of levels 10 and 40 to be skipped, allowing for some additional timesave in any%.
The faster that a menu is performed, the more time that it saves, and it is the reason why dha’s any%
world record of 10:46 is 7 seconds faster than the second-place time of 10:53 by marc2427, despite
both runs being deathless and using the skater the entire time. However, this technique actually
doesn’t save time in the NG+ categories since the bunny has such a high top speed that the loss
of acceleration would make it slower. Finally, run 3 also has a Level leaderboard for speedruns
of the 22 side tunnels present in the game. These categories are not nearly as competitive
as the main ones, but they still provide a unique experience due to the wide array of
possible character sections and the special tiles and blocks that are present, such as the ice
blocks, which give the player additional speed. Run 3 is quite a complex, diverse speedgame,
and its apparent disconnect from the normal speedrunning tenets present in Run 1 and 2
gives it a much different feel and experience. So, there you have it. A comprehensive overview
of the speedrunning landscape present across the run series, games that most people would not
expect to be so thought out and competitive. All of these games could be perceived as
an autoscroller in some capacity, but due to a variety of factors such as rotations,
obstacles, menuing, character selection, routing, avoiding deaths, and much, much more, the
speedrunning landscape of the series is anything but simplistic. A game as short as run 1 and
2 are able to have so many speedrun categories due to the large amount of options that the game
provides, ensuring that there really is something there for everyone. Run 3, while having less
main categories, does have a bunch of unique individual level categories that players
can compete in due to it being a larger, more fleshed out game. The series having the
name Run shows that going fast is something that is baked into the identity of these games at their
very core, and for speedrunners, we appreciate being able to push these games to their absolute
limits to see how fast they can really go. Thank you all so much for watching to the end of
this video, though I urge you to continue watching through these ending remarks, as there are some
extremely important things that I still need to mention. While I was wrapping this project up,
Rubiksmath sent me this really interesting stream of dms along with this accompanying video him
launching the runner into the stratosphere for around 7 seconds by getting a really janky
corner boost off the side of this platform. After 8 more hours of corner boost attempts,
he became the first person to complete level 16 of runner rotationless, which saves around .37
seconds on fast speed. This discovery shows us that run 2 may not be as solved as we think from a
rotation standpoint, however, only time will tell if a player ever actually manages to pull this
off in a full run. And speaking of runner fast, speedrunner rubiksMETH recently got a new
world record in the category with a 2:31.700 using the run legal among us character hack
of the game. Rubiksmeth didn’t stop there, also getting the the records in the runner dj and
skater dj categories one day later and two days later respectively. When I finished this script,
rubiksmath had an astonishing 37/38 of the records in run 2, dangerously close to sweeping every
single record, but because of this he currently sits at *just* 34/38. Let me know in the comments
if you would like to see a video covering more of the history side of run 2 and rubiksmaths’s
quest for the full world record sweep. If you are interested in learning how to speedrun
games in the run series or any other flash games that i’ve covered on my channel, make sure to
join my discord server linked in the description, as I have created a resources channel that
contains links to various other speedrunning discords and tutorials. Thank you all once again,
and I hope that you have a great rest of your day.
