Spyro's Hidden Gem of a Category | The Art of Speedrunning

if you've been involved in the world of speedrunning you're probably familiar with the concept of speed run categories each is defined by a set of rules determining where timing starts and ends and what needs to be completed in between some categorizations are so common that they've become the standard across speedrunning as a whole categories like any percent and 100 percent or if you're a platformer in the 1990s more than 100 percent are so ubiquitous because they're easily understood and recognized however it's important to remember that nothing in speed running is the end-all be-all the fact is you can make a speedrun category in whatever way you'd like stick around any community long enough and you'll start to see some unique and unorthodox categories sometimes these are just memes within the community other times they're created in an interest to view the game differently and sometimes these categories can develop into something amazing [Music] [Music] our story starts in the summer of 2015 with the playstation 1 collect-a-thon platformer spyro the dragon speedrunner forward 1 aka f1 had been grinding for a new personal best in the full completion category 120 since a single run took f1 about an hour and 40 minutes to finish he seldom had time to do more than one run per stream however he was interested in streaming for a bit longer so he created his own category both of the main spyro categories any percent in 120 are heavily focused on collecting the gems dragons and eggs that are located throughout the game and f1 was interested in making a category that didn't focus on these collectibles excluding all of the special flight levels and the final boss nasty nork each level has these special golden pedestals that can send players back to the homeworld once they're entered referred to by the community as vortexes in any percent in 120 percent the vortexes were often ignored as it was possible to exit the level through the pause menu f1 opted to end his streams with the category focused on these vortexes the goal start the game from a fresh file travel to each non-flight level exiting only through the vortex and finally cap off the run by defeating nasty nork the bonus level nasty's loot was not required as it would only open after reaching 100 which was something that f1 was trying to avoid with this category and the need for grabbing collectibles was eliminated thanks to a cheat code i'm cheating yep with an end game unlock all levels cheat code you see the blueness in each world have a required collectible threshold that needs to be reached before allowing you to move on to the next world these thresholds serve as the basis for the any percent category which focuses on reaching these thresholds as quickly as possible without the use of this cheat code the category would just end up being a slightly longer any percent route which didn't seem interesting at all now while it might seem strange to allow a cheat code in a speedrun this code is what allows this category to be so unique now runners are able to focus solely on moving from point a to point b as quickly as possible the category was originally given the name childhood percent by a runner named yes wally1 this was kind of a goofy name given to it because a lot of runners in the community remember going to the vortexes instead of exiting a level through the pause menu when they were kids the category was soon properly given the name vortex percent and much much later the percent sign was dropped from the official name as a group of community members rallied against the unnecessary usage of percent signs and categories where it really didn't make sense i was one of those members and yes looking back it was probably silly to care that much since this category was simply designed as a way to pass the time before ending his stream f1 didn't really take things too seriously there was no competition early on and the timer was just more of a formality around the category's inception he would get a time of a 2555 which would stand as the uncontested world record for a few months footage of this run no longer exists but we do know that the level routing was pretty simple and there wasn't likely to be any unintended skips happening at this time that being said there was one clear optimization this category used that was unique from the main categories using the all levels cheat had an added benefit of allowing runners to reorganize the order in which they tackled worlds artisans was still always going to be the first because that's where we started and nasty's world was always going to be the last because that's where we had to finish but the remaining worlds could be rearranged without any significant time loss most interesting is the interaction you can have with tuko the balloonists and magic crafters tuko normally requires runners to have collected at least five of the dragon eggs located within the first three worlds of the game and even though the cheat bypasses this requirement all the balloonists have a set of dialogue that plays when you lack the required amount of collectibles for them tuko's dialogue is unique in that it suggests a few locations where eggs still remain to be collected and for three of these locations he offers to take the runner directly with the balloon it's completely random what level he would suggest but runners are looking to have him suggest either dry canyon or clifftown both levels existing within peacekeepers using this runners can do magic crafters before peacekeepers with hope that tsuka will offer to drop spyro off at one of these levels if tuko does do this it skips the entire process of flying to the homeworld and running to the level on your own saving about 20 seconds outside of this there was really little to note about this run and many of the skips that were used were pulled from any percent in 120 percent like this 50 50 grind in town square and this wall glide to skip into toasty on august 31st 2015 a few months after the category was created wally who we mentioned earlier would snag the world record with the 24-29 which would stand for over a year due to lack of competition it's important to note that at this time the record didn't have a proper leaderboard and the only one that was actively playing was f1 when he decided to wrap up his streams with an attempt as a result there really wasn't anybody that knew about this category at the time so there wasn't any competition it was looking like the category would have the same fate as many other meme categories a couple runs here and there by the person that maybe created the category and routed it themselves only to fade into obscurity once the creator loses interest dude let's jump forward a bit to october 15 2016. i had been grinding the 120 category for a few years at this point and i was streaming attempts to get a sub 1 hour and 30 minute time luckily for me the stars chose to align as i capped off a run with a 128 55 when f1 popped into my chat to suggest i tried vortex as sort of a victory lap i decided i'd give it a shot wally quickly chimed in to suggest that we race it and while i had never really done a run myself i was in good spirits and knew the run was extremely straightforward oh [ __ ] no they won't glide no i missed it oh my god my final time was atrocious uh 2813 but more importantly it put the runner count up to three later that day another 120 runner named gazco would bump that count up to four runners f1 was starting to realize if he could convince enough people to give the run a shot we could have a real leader board on our hands on october 22nd top level runner ssbm stuff more commonly known as saboom was doing world record attempts of 120 percent and after he got a pb of 124 22 only two seconds off a world record f1 convinced him to do a vortex victory lap as well now saboom had a much larger twitch audience so him doing this run brought a lot more interest into the category viewers recognized that the category was short it was easy to pick up and perhaps most importantly getting a world record in it wouldn't really be that challenging right now the next day gazco would come back to the category to snag a world record of 24 minutes and 18 seconds the day after that three more runners joined the boards including alex dest with a new record of 23.37 a few days later on october 26th gazco would shrink the gap between first and second to just one second while the category still had a lot of untapped potential it would seem that alex's record quickly set the bar much higher than it had been previously the prospect of a free world record faded just as quickly and with that the interest in the category went dormant for quite a few months perhaps one of the reasons for this was alex getting a new trick in the world record that would serve as a gatekeeper to many new runs in the future the metalhead wall glide you see in spyro games gliding into a wall has this interesting effect where you can maintain and sometimes even gain height during a glide every wall in the game behaves slightly differently so difficulty in performing a wall glide can vary the speedrunner jumpy luff found that a precise wall glide in this early section of metalhead allowed runners to go out of bounds using this position he found you could glide over to some swamp planes that exist out of bounds which could conveniently be used to navigate back inbounds beside the vortex room while this skip was a significant detour from the intended path it would allow runners to skip both phases of the metalhead boss fight this difficult trick saved 10 seconds off of doing the boss fight normally but single-handedly raised the world record barrier around this time another skip was found in metalhead to skip the second phase with a damage boost but it was only used if runners were afraid of tackling the wall glide as it was about 5 seconds slower than the wall glide strap damage boosts are an exploit in the game that take advantage of how the game stores spyro's speed after bonking into a wall after you bonk into a wall the momentum is stored and taking damage from certain enemies suddenly releases this momentum doing this on a sloped wall will redirect the forward momentum to go up the wall instead keep this exploit in mind because we're going to see it a lot more in the future it wasn't until march 7th 2017 that the world record would be beaten again by gasco with the 23-28 for this record gasco didn't really change anything from alex's run but instead focused on routing his worlds to put metal head earlier so that he wouldn't have to worry about choking the wall glide since his last pb gasco had been hard at work in the 120 category and as a result had much stronger movement however gazco wasn't the only one with mastery over spyro's moveset following a sort of tradition at this point chris obc decided to give vortex a try after reclaiming the world record in 120 percent in july it's the same [ __ ] time except i got the gym [ __ ] the gym the gym was mine on july 20th after a few days of runs he would achieve his one and only submitted time of 23.20 [Music] all right cool it's like an eight-second world record it's pretty cool the story here was about the same nothing major happened in the run that was different from the previous world record chris was just that much better with his movement gasco excited to see some competition came back and quickly nabbed the world record back with the 23-13 on august 7 2017. this was another seven seconds of improvement but still only came from further optimization of the movement and strats that existed with the lack of new developments and gasco happily sitting at the top of the leaderboards the category once again went dormant for over a year you see at this point in vortex's life there wasn't really much focus on seeking anything new and exciting a route was determined for each level with many of them just being plain and simple paths through a level to reach the vortex and not many questions were asked beyond that just optimize your lines don't bonk anywhere and pray that you get metal head wall glide and good rng on tuko in november of 2018 gazco decided to head back to vortex for some more attempts there were a few small tricks that he decided to add in as he set his eyes on a new milestone sub 23. he implemented a wall glide and dr schemp that skipped the intended whirlwind and a damage boost in blowhard allowed him to skip the indoor section of that level both of these strats were known for years but introduced quite a bit of difficulty into the run if gaz wanted a 22 with the strats available he needed to add them in [Music] so [Music] the time was getting closer to a 22 but it still seemed so far away something needed to happen to shake this category up even though things were quite at the top level the category was still growing in popularity amongst the community going from 12 runs on the leaderboard in august 2017 to 21 runs by the end of january 2019. to someone that might be watching this that hasn't tried speedrunning themselves i feel like it can be easy just to focus on the world record the best of the best and i wanted to be clear that there's nothing wrong with that world records do deserve to be celebrated but often there's an entire history behind each record that isn't told a story of the community that helped the runner get there the rivalries discussion glitch hunters routers and people that strive to push the meta for everyone and challenge the top runners the speedrunning channel lois percent actually has a video that demonstrates this very very well and i'll link it down below old school vortex was stagnant yes but a new breed of runners would set the pace in motion that would change this category forever one runner who was slowly climbing the leaderboard during this time was zando toaster toaster had some experience running both any percent and 120 percent but at the same time was also experimenting with another miscellaneous category referred to as lucas percent this was a short experimental category which consisted of starting from a fresh game entering the all levels cheat heading directly to wizard peak and magic crafters and rescuing a dragon that was named lucas that was right beside the vortex the category was silly but it didn't stop toaster from seeking out new ways to save time in it through experimentation he found a piece of scenery that could be used as a ramp with a supercharge and a damage boost that would skip him about halfway up the climbing section to get to lucas since lucas was so close to the vortex these both worked as optimizations for vortex as well this moment piqued toaster's interest in vortex and he chose to give the category a real shot in the final months of 2018 toaster would bring his 3102 that he got earlier in the year down to a 24-53 before switching back to 120 meanwhile around the start of 2019 a new skip and toasty that was found by glitch hunter hopkin combined with the new wizard peak optimizations found by toaster would serve as the key for gasco getting the sub 23 that he was seeking this new skip and toasty which was referred to as the toasty proxy allowed runners to skip the third phase of the toasty fight by jumping into the sheep right before their hitbox activates once the sheep's hitbox activates the game recognizes that spyro's hitbox is overlapping it and forcefully ejects him out luckily for us this launch which is referred to as a proxy gives spyro enough height to glide over the wall that's blocking the vortex hopkind was new to hunting for skips and vortex at this time and noticed that toasty was the only level in artisans that wasn't a straight line to the vortex his familiarity with proxies and other sections of this game and other spyro games led him to look for something similar here this skip was huge and for the world record this was exactly what gazco needed for sub 23 but even more important was this really opened up hop in toasters eyes to what could be possible in this run the hooks were in and the drive to uncover everything in this category was very very high on february 8 2019 gazco would finally achieve a sub 23 with a 22-56 but this submission would come with a very interesting comment i got the 22 that was my end goal like four months ago it took so long but it's just not a good time anymore now it's not uncommon in speed running for a milestone to be a very difficult goal only to have new developments make that milestone depreciate in value this can end up feeling very bittersweet at first a world record with amazing optimization can be rendered obsolete by a few skips but this is something that makes speedrunning so special and really lends itself to the collaboration that we see in all these communities only one person has the ability to have world record but anybody can be a part of the history of that world record with that first 22 in the books it was time for the community to go to the lab over the next six months the leaderboard was fairly quiet but developments were taking place slowly but surely toaster continued to improve in the game spending a significant amount of his time learning the 120 category for the game and during this period he dropped his time from a 155 to a 139 this greatly helped him improve his general movement in the game and since he was happy with the sub 140 he was interested in picking up vortex again when toaster returned to vortex he had two goals in mind one to get second place in the leaderboards and two to do so using new strategies he and others had found [Music] 23 21 boo boo toaster [Music] just a few months ago gazco's 2256 was a huge milestone even being considered at the time as the final minute barrier for the category gazco's pb was only 23 seconds off of his summer best meaning if he played perfectly for each level his time would still only be a 22-33 toaster's 2250 was 34 seconds off of his own sum of best and still lacked some of the optimizations that were available with gazco back in second place he decided to pick the game back up on september 1st he'd claim a 22-48 followed by a 22-46 on september 13th toaster quickly fired back with a 22-41 on september 16th only to have gazco's snag it back with the 2237 on september 21st this 2237 would serve as gasco's final time that he would submit to speedrun.com as after this he decided to move on to bigger and better things at around the same time that the record was being passed between toaster and gasco toaster was also putting work into a project that would be presented on november 10th 2019. starting in 2015 the spyro speedrunning community formed a weekend event called the spyrothon that would showcase different runs races and discoveries that the community found over the past year for spyrothon 5 with a drive to uncover as much as he could with vortex toaster was planning to reveal a vortex task that would show off all these discoveries with the additional commentary of gasco and myself the task was met with wonderful receptionist toaster with the help of hopkid found several new strategies for completing levels quickly the only issue was that at the time most of these tricks were deemed too difficult for actual runs one runner was particularly interested in making some of these tasks only tricks viable for runs his name is farnia one of his biggest discoveries was making a new dog proxy in toasty a viable strategy getting this proxy with the dogs and toasty was something that was known about for some time interestingly the first instance of it was during a two-player's one controller one twenty percent run that runners saboom and jumpy left were doing on stream oh [ __ ] that was [ __ ] awesome how did that happen along with assistance from a runner in chat named super door was able to recreate the proxy in a task setting which would prove to be extremely useful in launching spyro up and to the vortex immediately from the start of the level farney was particularly interested in this trick considering it was early in the run and would save such a good amount of time he was motivated to make it part of actual runs turns out it was very possible in runs and only took a little bit of timing practice to implement in january of 2020 toaster would return to attempts and vortex but this time his approach was different with gasco no longer pushing the meta toaster was interested in reshaping how runners would approach the world record contention and vortex he wanted the world record to have all these skips that were deemed viable and wanted to send a message that if you wanted to get a world record in vortex you needed to adapt to the strats toaster added in the newly viable dog proxy and toasty performed a very difficult damage boost into a wall glide and dark passage used a completely revamped haunted towers route with wizard proxies and a new challenging supercharge route [Music] and skipped past the second and third phases of dr shim by performing a wall glide and roll bouncing up the platform most of these discoveries were found many months ago but this was finally the time to add them into the run if vortex was going to change and the run was going to be respected the top runner could not shy away from doing these big skips [Music] [Applause] [Music] how am i taking these jumps so risky 22-12 finally i'm done with this [ __ ] the run wasn't perfect even toaster knew that sub 22 was now possible but he had done what he set out to do toaster some of best had dropped all the way down to a 21-14 toaster's goal wasn't to get a world record but to showcase what the category could be when comparing this run to some of the first runs by forward and wally it was apparent that this game had changed a lot from simple a to b routing to now a run with many unorthodox and difficult skips to shorten the time spent in each level this would be the final pb on the leaderboards by toaster as of this video having done what he set out to do he chose on to move on to other projects with an ever-present interest in pushing what was possible in a category he returned to lucas percent and implemented a very difficult and lengthy wall glide that was originally only considered to be tas only he practiced and learned the absurdly challenging kova strategy to make it more viable and completed a cheaper scent run by using the trick 2 12 69 dissatisfied with how long one 20 was and quickly losing interest in grinding the category farnia elected to shift his interest to vortex in early 2020. he had been present in toaster's channel as he was grinding for world record and toaster's mantra of pushing the meta resonated with him with a decent amount of movement experience from 120 and knowledge of all the tricks available in vortex frania set out to see what he could do you see farnia didn't have a ps2 in order to play this game on console and instead had to rely on an emulator when playing the game loading times cause a significant amount of time to be lost when compared to a ps2 with the fast disk speed option enabled this means that runners that are unable to play on actual hardware are at a disadvantage because the load times are not removed or standardized in runs initially farnia's goal was to snag a top three time with the understanding that he was at a significant disadvantage by running on emulator much to his surprise he was able to reach this so easily that perhaps world record contention was even possible thus the legend of willie wallglide was born farney was out to prove a point in shitpost a little bit along the way under the pseudonym willie wallglide he started submitting runs to the leaderboard with submission comments describing where his time would be if the loads were standardized eventually it became apparent that farnia's technical skill and vortex was far ahead of anyone else before him it was looking like farna could still achieve a world record time despite the handicap of running on an emulator holy [ __ ] dude oh my god had this run been on console he would have had a world record shattering 2138 and a few new tricks helped him get there a new damage boost in terrace village that was found by toaster allowed runners to quickly reach the vortex without having to perform a difficult jump that gazco had found years before there is no realm of possibility that is fake i've seen it been done before this is not possible in twilight harbor an old strategy of using a supercharge in a wall glide was reworked to be viable in vortex runs additionally while the wall glide was faster a new runner named absent friend found this squeeze proxy which was found to be significantly easier and only had a small time loss much how all of the previous world record grinds led to an influx in runners farnia regularly streaming attempts really helped to boost the size of the leaderboard from toasters world record to farnia's world record the category saw a jump from 27 runners to 36 runners one of these runners was absent friend as we mentioned earlier who picked up the category casually in may of 2020 but only started submitting runs in june absent also was an emulator runner and found that if fernie was able to achieve a world record on emulator perhaps he could as well his time was coming down very very quickly month after month and by the time frania achieved his world record on september 5th absent was sitting at fourth place oh my god holy [ __ ] [ __ ] you know that feeling when you get like your blood pressure taken and they put that cuff on your arm that's the feeling i have in my arm right now where farnia was taking a break to focus on 120 absent was still hard at work over the month of september as september was wrapping up a new discovery from farnia would push absent even further while farney was messing around with the game after wrapping up 120 attempts he was experimenting with a possible proxy off the first enemy with a goal to land on the arch at the start of the level attempts eventually bore fruit and as franny was standing on top of the arch he looked down and noticed something interesting instead of running off the edge the enemy took a detour in the opposite direction and tucked himself into a corner through some additional experimentation farney was able to get the enemy in the spot consistently he also found that you could get spyro sandwiched between the wall and the enemy and by rolling into the wall spyro wouldn't get squeezed out as the enemy animation played out finally acting as the final puzzle piece falling into place if spyro jumped at the same frame that the enemy begins to swing his knife it would launch spyro in the air with just enough height conveniently placing him right beside the vortex cutting a whopping 20 seconds off the previous fastest option despite this being a frame perfect trick the new dr shim strat was actually pretty easy to implement on october 1st armed with this new time save absent would achieve the first ever sub 22 time and vortex with a 2154 oh my god [ __ ] charge jumped into him let's [ __ ] go absent's quick ascension up the leaderboard is truly remarkable as he accomplished so much in under five months of running the category now it's starting to seem a little surprising right near the end of 2020 with more than 30 seconds of a handicap the top two vortex runners are emulator runners surely the cult of willie wallglide won't expand beyond this right well it turns out frania's surprise discovery and dr shem seem to garner a lot of interest amongst the viewers one of the greatest accomplishments a speedrunner can do alongside getting a world record or finding a huge skip is inspire others with their efforts and this new finding and dr shemp did just that one of these newcomers was nova spell nova had been interested in running 120 in the past but found that the category didn't really suit her she had been watching a few runners grinding vortex in 2020 and the dr shem discovery seemed to be just the push she needed she initially planned to do a race of the category against a runner named waffle wizard1 with farnia showing them the ropes of the category just to get them started on one hand the race never came to fruition but nova took what she learned in the category and chose to grind the time down as far as she possibly could dude hell yeah sub 24 dude [ __ ] yeah that's awesome interested in pushing his time lower with the new chem strategy farnia returned to runs in november and december for a sub 22 time of his own [Music] okay well uh you all just witnessed a world record so and to this day as i'm writing the script for this video the world record for vortex stands at a 2147 by far oh wait what is this let's do a quick pause as we look at the production process for this video i started writing the script on january 22nd and finished it on january 26th some of the runners mentioned in this video were helping me with proofing and i was still in the revising process when january 28th rolled around remember not too long ago i mentioned nova spell as being an up and comer within the vortex scene well [Music] [Music] so [Applause] [Music] [Applause] yay let's [ __ ] go a new world record in the middle of writing a video about the history of this category if that doesn't show you that there is more to this story than i do not know what will so yeah i'm writing this as january comes to a close recording this voiceover will take some time beyond that and editing everything together much longer i can't say for sure when the words i'm typing out on this thursday afternoon in january will reach the public but i have a feeling more history and vortex will be written in that time regardless of what does happen in the future i think it's been made clear that vortex has completely changed over the past years what was started by f1 as a silly way to finish his streams has evolved into a mind-blowing speedrun that takes advantage of just about everything the game has to offer it brought members into the community and has given runners an opportunity to discover something in a game that was often referred to as figured out i gotta say i've been a part of spyro 1 speedruns since the end of 2013 and i'm really excited to see what's in the future while this is the end of the video the journey for vortex is far from complete you

Channel: Hummeldon

Views: 185,380

Keywords: speedrun, speed run, speedrunning, world record, WR, analysis, platformer, art, playstation, any%, hum, hummeldon, speedrunner, skips, classic, spyro, spyro the dragon, history, leaderboard, progression, proxy, vortex, category, 120%, damage boost, spyro 1, ps1, gems, dragons, eggs, collectables, meme speedrun, meme, speedrun world record, spyro speedrun

Id: w-Tjn9J0tcc

Length: 36min 12sec (2172 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 05 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/XandoToaster]

I am ridiculously happy to see this history put out there. You really did a great job with this!

[u/Mayrink]

An amazingly well put together video. Not only was the typical WR history format great, but this video also touches on topics I don't see discusses very often.

The arbitrariness of categories; the fact the even literal cheats are ok if the community agrees on it and is clear about it; the infamous Name Percent Shenanigans; the importance of inspiring others to run a category; the obsoleteness of records once a new trick is found; the fact that routers/glitch-hunters/etc are just as important as record holders.

All great points about the culture and the hobby you don't see in this much detail in other SpeedTube™ channels. Also don't think I've ever seen a WR history that ended with a final world record holder that happens to be a woman. The grind-montage at the end was pretty badass. Great stuff. This and the other couple good videos from the channel have convinced my to subscribe. Keep it up!

[u/Roggieh]

More like "YouTube's Hidden Gem of a Speedrun Channel". That was a masterclass in video production and presentation. You earned a sub from me!

[u/KuroShinki]

Really well done video! I didn't know about this category and it was really enjoyable learning about it!

[u/_toopercentmilk_]

WillyWallglide maybe good at spyro but he's a total noob in comparison to DennisDoubleJump

[u/Cortye]

I instantly subscribed to your channel. Great editing and very informative!

[u/gimmedatpretzel]

I’m a simple guy, I find a new speedrunning content creator and immediately inject their entire backlog into my brain.

This, along with your other videos were a great watch, looking forward to your next projects!

Also the quick turn transitions in your RE4 video - chef’s kiss - so damn clean

[u/ItsSansom]

SummongSalt has some competition. The editing is superb

[u/KeepYourHornsOn]

My main thought coming away from this was "I have too many thoughts to even know where to begin" but then u/Mayrink captured most of them. Obviously this was incredibly beautifully edited - I was stunned less than a minute in - and I imagine it's very accessible to people who don't know about Spyro or even much about speedrunning in general, and like Mayrink said in their comment, this did such an amazing job using the history of Vortex% as a framework to illustrate so many points about speedrunning communities. Really great stuff.

And as I've been chatting in Vortex streams lately, it's kind of surreal to start seeing someone I know make a video like this about people I've interacted with haha. My mediocre time is even on the leaderboard! I'm glad there's some focus here on the number of runners, too, since I've tended to have the mindset that even if my time isn't good, at least it shows a little more love for the game or category.

There is so much to dig into here, I already want to watch it again haha. You made so many excellent and positive points here and this was an absolute treat to watch to say the least