The History of Castlevania World Records

[Music] how do you speedrun one of the hardest games ever made the original castlevania has gotten that reputation over the years whether it be from its strong enemies and bosses or its strict gameplay mechanics castlevania isn't an easy game to take down however to speedrun it or beat it as quickly as humanly possible is on another level for the past decade and a half a group of gamers has been working to lower the world record for completing castlevania it's been a quest of discovering new strategies grinding across multiple years and working together this is the story of their journey this is the history of castlevania world [Music] records [Music] [Music] so picture this it's 2003 and you're tom vadava a nintendo speedrunner who would go on to set world records for some of the most famous games one of your first projects however was going to be castlevania how would you pull it off six of the toughest levels on the nes it takes most people hours to beat this game well that april tom vodova took the whole game down in 14 and a half minutes the way to understand how vadava is able to break the difficulty of this game is by analyzing it level by level the first level isn't normally too difficult and he made quick work of it by upgrading his whip and tearing through the ghosts all over the level whipping them in the air rather than on the ground means simon belmont slows down less or not at all saving a fraction of a second each time vadava did this as much as he could he also picked up the axe sub weapon before the boss fight and used them to help him slowly but surely take the bat down at the start of level 2 he simply jumped over most of the enemies before picking up the holy water sub weapon in stage six each level is broken up into three stages meaning stage six was the last stage of level two he got beaten up a little bit by the statues but used the holy water to take down the level 2 medusa head boss easily level 3 is where castlevania is known for making a pretty big jump in difficulty there's hunchbacks that jump on top of you skeletons that jump around and throw bones statues that shoot fireballs at you and birds that fly around and try to hit you and whenever you do get hit you fly backwards often towards one of the many ledges that will kill you if you fall off but luckily tom vodafone had the holy water it's pretty well known how overpowered the holy water is but vadava was able to take it to another level [Music] seed dropping the holy water on an enemy freezes them in place makes them take damage and temporarily prevents them from dealing damage to you so often instead of having to whip down the statues nevada just dropped holy water on top of them stopping their shots and letting him walk through that combined with careful usage of his whip allowed him to make it past most of the enemies and beat the dual mummy bosses at the end of course there were still some really tricky sections like this part with several birds and a skeleton in stage seven moving into level four ivanova still had its holy water he expertly rode on the moving platforms whipped the bats then moved upstairs where birds came in to drop hunchbacks down these hunchbacks sometimes randomly dropped axes if killed so vadava had to carefully jump over it to not lose his holy water for the boss fight frankenstein in a hunchback he stunlocked them with several holy water throws thanks to the triple shot upgrade which allowed three holy waters to be on the screen at the same time level 5 is infamous for its difficulty the knights each take 9 hits to kill and they throw axes that you have to whip duck under or jump over on top of that there's hunchbacks everywhere medusa heads that float around more statues and the grim reaper boss at the end and all of them were no match for vaudiva's holy water of course there was still a ton of skill involved in what vadova was doing many of the enemies patterns were still sporadic and had to be whipped or avoided appropriately he had to be honest game at all times throughout level five and he made it through quite cleanly level 6 the final level featured vodava temporarily abandoning the holy water to pick up the stopwatch which froze all enemies when activated this was used against the hunchbacks to stop them from jumping all over the place then it was on to the final boss fight which has two forums dracula and the beautifully named cookie monster dracula teleports after attempting to hit you and each time he teleports it's referred to as a cycle every time dracula reappeared vadava tried to hit him a couple times with his whip it was pretty slow and since it took 11 appearances by dracula to kill him or 10 teleports it was an 11 cycle dracula fight then to fight the cookie monster ivanova used the holy water that he had re-picked up from the leftmost candle he stunned him in place and used his whip to hit the cookie monster's head over and over until he was killed this process took a while but once he was dead the final orb appeared and tom vadova had finished castlevania in 14 minutes and 25 seconds it was a nice run with some pretty sick usage of holy water to blow through otherwise tough enemies and he didn't die a single time however there were notable slowdowns especially when he stood still to whip enemies and had some slow boss fights it was good but could have been better his run was the first of four runs that i considered to be in the early age of castlevania speedrunning [Music] the second of those four runs would be completed two and a half years later by a retro 2d gamer the biggest improvement about his run was the usage of boosting in castlevania when you get hit by an enemy you get knocked back quite a bit this can be used strategically to reach certain areas faster for example in level 1 you're normally supposed to take the stairs down go to the basement and come up on the other side of the wall but retro 2d gamer simply did this [Music] instead known as the bat boost this trick saved about seven seconds in the first level and as retro would show off boosting could be used all over castlevania [Music] boosting wasn't allowed under twin galaxy's rules which is where tom vadava submitted his run but since retro 2d gamer submitted his elsewhere he was free to do them these boosts added together saved around 30 seconds overall other than that he saved time from even more abuse of the holy water enemies that normally stood in his way were demolished with the holy water including many of the boss fights it was cleaner than vodka's run he didn't get hit as much and he slowed down less overall in the end combined with the boosts it was enough to beat him by over a minute with a 1308. retro's run seemed to stand for much longer than vadavus did close to five years in fact it's very rare that world records stand for that long although in the early 2000s when speedrunning wasn't as big it certainly was more common but in 2010 a guy named bablo beat it a few times with his final time being 12 21 the third record of the early age his run was a cleaner more refined version of retro's record in level 1 for example he had a faster bat boost by having the bat spawn from the right instead of walking with it all the way from the left in level 3 he did more boost at the start and made his way through stage 8 by abusing holy water more in levels 4 and 5 he was more efficient than retro by not stopping to attack as much but rather using the holy water or jumping and whipping and in level 6 he saved a lot of time from hanging onto the cross sub weapon and attacking dracula with it retro used the cross once and then let it go to pick up holy water but babylon was able to throw it to the right and then catch it when it came back to the middle as long as it didn't go to the left it wouldn't hit the candle to spawn the holy water so when dracula respawned on the right pablo hit him again with the cross for more damage it turned an 11 cycle fight from retro into an 8 cycle fight for pablo bablo's run stood throughout 2010 and then in 2011 welver's speedrunner funk dock set the fourth and final early age record a 1206 it would garner a pretty big amount of attention and was one of the more popular records in the speedrunning community funk doc's run really was a technical marvel his method of beating pablo was through very inconspicuous yet crucially important techniques like here at the level 1 boss fight funkadoc knew the bass pattern was determined by where simon is on the screen he wanted the bat to swoop down in a specific way so that he could be pelted with axes quickly the position for that pattern happens to be right around here so funk dock intentionally stood still and avoided picking up the double shot upgrade until after the bat started moving and his pattern was set the level 3 boss had another technical trick when two hitboxes overlapped in castlevania a strange glitch occurs if a sub weapon hits the overlapping part it'll deal one damage per each frame it comes in contact given that castlevania runs at 60 frames per second that's a lot of damage very quickly the two mummies in the level 3 boss fight each have their own hitboxes so a guy known as retrogaming 2084 figured out that if you use the cross sub weapon when the mummies overlap each other they can be beaten really quickly funk dock used that to his advantage but the best of all had to be what he did in level 4 the cave skip once again discovered by retrogaming 2084 funk dock picked up the time stop sub weapon at the start of the level then used it a few seconds later when bats spawn they do so based upon your vertical positioning so when the time stop ran out it was time for the bat to spawn and funktoc had gone to the appropriate height in time then he froze time again to freeze the bat's horizontal position so he could do this by doing this boost doc didn't have to wait and ride on the slow moving platforms below saving him a few seconds he continued to abuse holy water in level 5 then was able to match babel's 8 cycle fight on dracula before taking the cookie monster down with holy water so that's where the record stood in 2011 funkdock's 1206. he was considered the top castlevania runner and as the months and years passed on his record still stood it was a very clean run set by an extremely talented runner over the next couple of years he would run the game at many of the games done quick marathons including one of the coolest runs of all time a speed run by funkdoc while qureshi provided the soundtrack on piano [Music] but eventually by 2013 funk talk was no longer alone on top someone was streaming attempts on twitch.tv to beat his long-lasting 1206. meet kmack [Music] in late 2013 kmac began pushing his castlevania personal best close to the world record he got good at the same tricks cave skip the boss fights all the boosting his time went from a 12 45 down to a 12 26 then do a 12 10 just four seconds behind funk doc's world record had it not been for a slow level 3 particularly the boss fight kmac would have gotten it in october 2013 he was on a run that was bleeding time early in level four for instance he messed up the boss fight by mistiming his holy water throws causing the hunchback to jump around and hit him so heading into the last level he was five seconds behind funkdoc's world record but kmack had a trick up his sleeve in level 6 to make a last-second comeback castlevania has a pretty obscure trick called the critical hit if you hit an enemy with the whip on the same exact frame the enemy hits you you deal an additional 5 damage to the enemy for a total of 6 damage the most relevant places can be used is on boss fights particularly the dracula fight at the very end dracula shoots projectiles whenever he respawns so kmac had to jump and get hit by one of them on the same 60th of a second he whipped dracula if he could do that he would have a shot at the record [Music] yeah mission accomplished in just one cycle more than half of dracula's health bar was taken down the fight would end up being a 5 cycle fight was it going to be fast enough to beat funk talk [Music] oh my god really a tide world record it couldn't have been a great feeling to have come so far yet still not beat funk doc all he could do was keep trying and the very next day he had another shot the first 9 minutes of this run are lost but we do know he was about 4 seconds behind the tied record he had set the day before going into the last level he did have time to make up though in yesterday's run he didn't have enough hearts which are currency for the holy water to optimally beat the cookie monster but this time he did he just had to land the crit on dracula there we go [Music] for the second time in one week he had tied funkdoc's record the only thing worse than that would be if he tied it three times in a week ah another tie of the world record again yeah that's exactly what happened between october 20th and october 28th 2013 kmac tied the world record three times but finally later in october kmack had another run although he lost time from the level 1 boss fight he gained it right back in level 2 and more in level 4 since his last 1206 had failed level 4's cave skip he got the crit on dracula and closed out the run [Music] finally kmac had his world record but he wasn't done quite yet the 1203 had some notable slowdowns he messed up throwing axes on the first boss fight got hit by a statue in level 3 and had to turn around to pick up a heart in level 5 after he didn't have enough holy water ammo so there was still some time on the table his goal was to take the run under 12 minutes [Music] and a few days later that's what he did he had a better level one boss fight avoided getting hit in level three had a cleaner level five and although his final boss fights weren't perfect it was enough to get the sub 12. [Music] an 1157 record was enough to satisfy kmack for about two weeks just 15 days after his first sub 12 he was back at it on a run into the last level of the game problem was he was more than three seconds behind the record but he still had one last chance at getting it getting the double crit on dracula see the 1157 featured a five-cycle fight with one critical hit kmac could instead do two crits on dracula instead of one dealing 12 damage with just two hits getting a 3 cycle fight and saving between 5 and 10 seconds of course getting the double crit was incredibly difficult he had to line up a hit on dracula and get a hit on himself on the same 60th of a second twice in a row that's like asking santa claus but it was his only shot to get the record [Music] yes double critical santa claus brought me my million dollars [Music] and still kmac wasn't done there was still time he could save particularly on the boss fights the bosses all gave different patterns depending on a number of seemingly random factors the speed at which the mummy's overlapped the speed at which the bat swooped down these speeds varied from run to run with the faster the pattern the better it was also possible to get a critical kill on the bat in level 1. when the bat swooped down kmax stood on the stairs and used his whip just like on dracula if he got hit on the same frame as whip hit the bat it would deal 5 damage to the bat however all damage to the bat is doubled and being on stairs increases damage here as well it ends up being enough to kill the bat with just one whip so with these boss fight improvements in mind kmac kept doing attempts through the end of 2013. he was in a class of his own for castlevania it was time to see how low he could take it [Music] oh [Music] 11 48 was kmac's final time it had the back grit the boosts and a double crit on dracula at the very end he was on top of the castlevania speedrunning scene and it seemed like nobody could touch him throughout the rest of 2013 all of 2014 and well into 2015 kmax 1148 was the world record but then a year and a half after he originally got the record another player began the challenge's time double armory and in april 2015 it finally happened how was he able to knock kmack off the top it wasn't anything too major but once again small optimizations he used mostly the same strategies as kmac but his boss fights were a little better overall in level 1 for instance he got the bat to swoop faster than it did for kmack allowing the critical hit to be done sooner and against the medusa boss in level 2 double armory used the holy water instead of the cross making for a slightly faster kill of course this meant he didn't have the cross for the mummies in level 3. so he had to use the holy water to pick up the axe then use the axe to pick up the cross from this candle it was some careful but very well done routing and it was enough to beat the record by a couple of seconds well kmac wouldn't stand for that so he responded by setting three world records in the same week lowering the record down by five seconds he had held the world record for a year and a half his response to losing it for four days was to do that how did he do it it stemmed from two main improvements the first was the dracula fight kmac began going for a new three-cycle dracula fight that only used one critical hit instead of two he intentionally lost zero frames leading up to dracula by only whipping candles while simon was moving up whipping them on the way down means the whip animation may need to complete before the screen can move again losing a few frames arriving at dracula the same frame every time guarantees you'll respawn on the left so he can be pelted with the cross more consistently by using the cross more only one critical hit on dracula was necessary and it made the fight more consistent overall the other big improvement was in level 1 enemies in castlevania seem to sometimes randomly drop items they can be stuff like sub weapons the holy water or the axe or potions that make you invincible the thing is these drops aren't actually random every 16 frames there's one frame where if you kill an enemy it'll drop an item what that item is is determined by this chart the first item drop you get will be from the first column with the item itself determined by the level you're in if you get your first item drop in level four for example it'll be a potion then the second item drop you get will be from column two the third from column three and so on with the column position carrying over from level level the first item you can get in level one is a stopwatch and kmac wanted it to do a trick a guy named vandal discovered so he figured out approximately when he needed to whip the ghost to land on the specific frame he needed to get the stopwatch he had a 60th of a second window to aim for but since it looped every 16 frames and there were a few ghosts he could try it on he at least had a chance at it after hopefully getting the stopwatch he would move into the next screen and try to use it on the very first frame possible after entering if done correctly it would freeze time before the bat spawned allowing time for him to walk all the way over to the right once he got there the bat would unfreeze right away and he would be able to do the bat boost much quicker you can see from this comparison that it cuts out the time he normally had to spend waiting for the bat to spawn again in all it saves about 4 seconds so now in order to get an optimal level 1 you had to land a frame perfect whip to get the stopwatch use the stopwatch frame perfectly to get an optimal bat spawn and land a frame perfect critical hit on the bat boss each of those had a 60th of a second window to time them getting all that was super super difficult because of all these tricks level one got the reputation of being like a jail since very few runs were able to escape it regardless it took kmack just 4 days to be able to beat double armory's record with the level 1 tricks barely beat it it was a close call though because he lost a lot of time in the dracula fight from missing critical hits and getting a 4 cycle fight kmac would lower it to an 1141 pretty quickly with a run that actually didn't feature the stopwatch trick in level 1 but had essentially everything else a fast bat pattern a fast mummy pattern cave skip the boosts and the new one crit three cycle dracula fight that 1141 was enough to satisfy him for a while he was back on top and he was on top by a large margin months passed and when 2016 came around kmax 1141 was still the world record but in october 2016 someone did beat him baze 86. he took down the video for his record a while ago and it can no longer be seen today the final time was reportedly in 11 39 a two second improvement over kmac but not much is known about the run itself today but we do know that this time kmac waited exactly 20 days before getting the record back it's almost like he wasn't allowed to not have the world record the way he saved time this time was by skipping picking up the meat in level 6. runners normally turn around here to pick up the pork chop hidden in the wall which replenishes your health but since kmac was only planning to do one crit against dracula instead of two he didn't need the extra health to get hit a second time so he saved a few seconds by not having to bother turning around to pick it up and again kmax record remained on top for several months but just as before another runner eventually beat him jampe in april 2017 he was able to get a run past the level 1 jail with the stopwatch trick and was 3.5 seconds ahead of the record he lost some time in level three to a slower mummy fight but was still about a second and a half ahead it came at going into the last level he nailed the crit on dracula for a three-cycle fight and prepared to fight the cookie monster he'd messed up a couple of his holy water throws and didn't grab the orb until it fell after re-timing it it was determined that he had beaten kmack by about a 20th of a second once again kmac had been dethroned but of course three weeks later the record would be his once more only this time it wasn't even close [Music] kmac beat jonthai's run by five seconds rather than one big improvement it was because of several small improvements over the course of the run kmac got a slightly faster bat swoop than jaunte by manipulating its pattern by standing in specific locations on the stairs in level 2 he hung onto the stopwatch from level 1 in order to freeze time at the start of stage 6. this prevented the spikes from moving so he didn't have to hesitate like jaunty did he got a fast bone boost in level 5. these skeletons can give either a fast or slow boost pattern with about half a second time difference between them jonte got the slow pattern while k-mac got the fast one and of course no run is complete without the dracula fight at the end which k-mac was able to get a three-cycle on his cookie monster fight wasn't perfect but it didn't really have to be at the end of a run that far ahead of the record castlevania was getting to the point now where improvements were going to be extremely tough to come by as the run approached the sub 1130 barrier players could no longer expect to beat the record by 5 seconds an improvement by a fraction of a second would be a big deal kmack decided to retire from castlevania speedrunning after 11 32 and left the game in the hands of others to take the record down further the first step of course was beating his 1132 for that we arrive at furious paul he's best known for running super castlevania 4 but in 2017 he decided to try the original castlevania 2. on september 30th 2017 he was streaming on twitch.tv with his personal best just two seconds behind the record he was about to stop streaming for the day but decided to do one more run just because fast forward 11 and a half minutes later and this was the result [Music] what just happened what just happened the final time was 11 32.7 about a tenth of a second ahead of kmac's record furious paul had gotten really good at getting out of the level one jail and he also changed up a few strategies to give himself better odds at it he whipped more ghosts overall giving him better odds of picking up the stopwatch he also used the whip then jumped after using the stopwatch to force the bat to spawn higher making the boost quite a bit easier of course he still had three different 60th of a second tricks to time throughout the level but these improvements helped a bit he gained time in level 3 from an extremely fast mummy pattern but missed the jump and did a safer version of the cave skip in level 4. a guy known as bran again discovered that by doing these whips at the start of the level it sets up the timing perfectly so that you have a visual cue for when to freeze time with the stopwatch when the merman's feet are either on this pixel or this pixel time can be frozen and the cave skip will work it was also possible now to pause and unpause if you missed the visual cue since the bat's spawn position is partially based upon when you arrive beyond that furious paul had a cleaner cookie monster fight and it was enough to just edge out kmac for a new world record shortly after furious paul's run a pretty big new discovery began to be utilized for years now players have been trying for a three cycle dracula at the end of the run but it turns out it can be better this is the two cycle dracula [Music] a guy known as true false first found a two-cycle setup in march 2016 but it went under the radar until about october 2017. the first cycle consists of jumping the throw across and then whipping twice which deals a total of five damage for the second cycle you have to hope that dracula spawns close to you which has a 50 chance of happening if he doesn't a two-cycle fight can't happen the execution for the second cycle assuming you get the spawn is really precise jumping forward and throwing across landing on the double shot to pick it up then jumping backward while facing forward and throwing another cross upon landing there you'd jump up and throw yet another cross land then jump and do a critical hit if anything is off by even a little bit the two-cycle kill won't work but if it does work it saves a good three or four seconds once people realize the usefulness of this trick there was a mad scramble to get a new world record with it from october through december 2017 there were four people going for the record at more or less the same time jonthey who had previously held the record earlier in the year endy who had held world records in various nintendo games like duck tales and batman heirixon who had gotten world records in games like panic restaurant and tiny two adventures and bednak who pretty much only ran castlevania and was very close to the world record these four guys were top tier runners and all had the skill needed to get the record the time to beat was furious paul's 11 32.7 over the last few months of 2017 this was their battle to obtain one of the nes most coveted world records [Laughter] yes yes [Music] oh it's so close [Music] bam [Music] [Music] ah that's good one [Music] [Music] you [Music] oh [Music] no that was one hit that was that i got the crit holy holy oh my god something missed somewhere endy was one damage short one damage short from a new world record probably the first ever sub 11 30 run of castlevania these four guys did thousands of runs between them yet after three months of work only one new world record had been achieved castlevania had turned into an absolutely brutal speedrun the runs started and ended with two of the toughest parts of any game out there the level 1 jail and getting the pattern for and executing the 2 cycle dracula fight and in between that was a run filled with precision tight timings and the need for close to perfection getting all of that was just so difficult naturally castlevania entered an era of no new records for a little while throughout the first few months of 2018 the record stayed at jonthey's 11 31. the game went from four top tier runners clashing for the record to none but then in april a brand new runner began making a push for the record and this guy had a lot of experience getting world records this is jc [Music] jc had held the world records in castlevania 2 castlevania 3 and battletoads three of the most iconic nes games and by april 2018 he was ready to try tackling the original castlevania over the next month he took the time to lower his pb down into the 1130s getting very close to jonte's 1131 world record and on may 2nd 2018 jc got this run past the level 1 jail in level 3 he got some bad patterns from the enemies he got hit by a bone thrown by a skeleton at the start of the level and a raven nearly ran into him a screen later he also mistimed his cross throw on the mummy boss despite getting a pretty good pattern in level 4 he nailed the cave skip but got knocked back by a bat moments later no no no i disagree completely disagree with that so he was just over two seconds behind the world record going into level six but he had time to save he could get the two cycle dracula fight which would save a few seconds over the fight junk they got he also was going to go for the machine gun cookie monster strats that hirikson first used by stepping into the cookie monster sprite and mashing jump sub weapon and whip in a rhythm it's possible to deal damage faster since the holy water hits the cookie monster's top hitbox and deals damage instead of just hitting his bottom half jc was gonna try to get all of that and make a huge comeback for the record [Music] oh no [Music] oh no [Music] oh my god [Music] no death ruler dead chance ruler welcome aboard the j cruise hop aboard the poop deck and with that jc had finished the first world record with a cycle dracula he was on top but he still had one more second to go jc wanted to take the record lower and the sub 11 30 mark was right in front of him a time of 11 29 would represent a major milestone in castlevania speedrunning the last time a 10 second barrier was broken was baze's 1139 back in 2016. this time the number was 11.29 it would take an amazing run jc kept pushing onward looking for that mythical 11 29 but he wouldn't get an 11 29 instead he did this oh my god i'm done i'm done oh [Music] whoa [Music] and 11 27 this blew the world record out of the water how was he able to get such an incredible time he pretty much just cleaned up the mistakes from his 11 30. remember the slow mummy fight bad enemy patterns and the knock back by the bat none of those were present in his 1127 and of course to top it all off at the end was a two cycle dracula fight all in all it was a really clean run with a nice level six at the end jc stopped grinding for the record after this run and who could blame him he had nothing left to prove he was the first to break the 1130 barrier and he absolutely smashed it for the rest of 2018 jc's 1127 would go unchallenged but starting early in 2019 that all changed it's time to talk about three players who had one of the greatest world record chases of any speed game out there first up is to snek he pretty much exclusively ran castlevania he started streaming his attempts in mid 2017 and slowly improved over the course of 2018 he had a bit of experience running the other nes castlevania games too but the first game was a specialty next up is ouijoi he ran many different nes games over the years getting world records in games like kung fu mike tyson's punch out dragon warrior and rc pro-am he had a lot of experience getting world records and when he started running castlevania in the middle of 2018 he improved really really quickly finally we have sb dewolfe he was best known for his cuphead runs for which he was a top contender for many months toward the end of 2018 he made a drastic change and started focusing on a different game castlevania he too improved his personal best very quickly by march 2019 these three players were very close to jc's world record ouija and sbd wolf each had an 11 32 while two snake had an 11 28. it was obvious that all three of these guys were about to make a serious push for the world record two snake had a shot at it on march 19th he was using a few new small strategies to help him out probably the biggest one was when developed by fellow contender weejui many boss patterns are determined by how many frames of a lap since the screen began we just we figured out that by slowing down exactly 66 frames the mummy bosses would always give an extremely fast pattern those frames were lost by standing still twice to throw two crosses and standing still once the whip it worked beautifully he also used a different strategy in level 5 thanks in part to a mechanic used by several different nes games the frame roll system whenever you go through a doorway in castlevania it checks every 16 frames to see if you've arrived the door or not if you haven't made it you have to wait however many frames are left until the 16 frames run out basically it means you can only gain or lose time in increments of 16 frames between two doors a good example for this is to imagine you're waiting for a train to arrive that leaves every 16 minutes once you get to the stop you might have to only wait a minute for it to arrive but if you barely missed it you could have to wait up to 15 minutes for the next one to arrive this comes into play all over castlevania it means it's possible to not play perfectly and bleed a few frames but still not lose any time to as if you had played perfectly as long as you get to the door on the same frame rule or before the train leaves you won't lose any time sometimes you have lots of time to play with while other times you had to play very very well anyway this mattered for a new bone boost to snek used at the start of level 5. normally you got either the fast or the slow bone pattern but now if you got the slow pattern you could go for a couple of backup strategies either the alternative bone which works every time to save one frame rule or the task bone which doesn't always work but saves two frame rules if it does if it didn't work the player could lose more than two seconds in this run two snap got the alternative bone so he saved 16 frames over what he otherwise could have gotten he then got the pattern four and executed the two cycle dracula and had a slightly cleaner cookie monster fight than jc it was enough to just barely edge him out and get a new world record is that it is that it holy is that it six days after this run ouija was dead even with two snacks world record going into level 5. the splits compare with his personal best which he was slightly ahead of he had gotten out of the level on jail nailed his own mummy strategy in level 3 and got the cave skip in level 4. however he got the slowest bone pattern in level 5 and when combined with a couple other small slowdowns he felt 2 seconds behind the world record but he nailed the 2 cycle dracula fight and it was enough to get him a pretty nice personal vest he submitted this run to the speedrun.com leaderboards and in his submission comments he simply said one phrase world record soon [Music] all right plus rng [Music] no and jump backwards [Music] you got [Music] why [Music] there we go get wrecked [Music] nice [Music] okay oh [Music] wow [Music] [Music] this is the great one well easily meaning i still need a two cycle track i wouldn't call that easy oh here we go well triple bones that's a lot of time least right there [Music] [Music] oh son that's a pv and damn that's close to the record too upon re-timing this run it was determined that it missed the world record by just nine frames unfortunately for ouija we this is as close as he's gotten to the world record he's a great player and will probably be back to try for the record again in the future but as of now he just hasn't quite gotten there yet but of course we're not done yet they're still one of the three record contenders we haven't talked about yet sbd wolf spd wolf was grinding for the record around the same time luigi and two sneck were in may 2019 he lowered it down to 1127.13 he got the bat crit cave skip and the fast bone in level 5 but he accidentally went up a staircase that he wasn't supposed to with the two cycle dracula at the end it was enough for the record uh [Music] excuse me what but spdwolf wanted more he knew there was still time to save so with the help of more strategies he began grinding even more one such strategy was the short whip players normally upgraded their whip to the long width in level 4 since you could reach enemies from further away with it however although it made the run a bit easier it wasn't necessary you could skip picking it up and save three frame rules by doing so nearly a full second he also started going for more item manipulations in level three if the opportunity presented itself the first part was to manipulate the potion drop from this bird and the rosary from this bird as long as you're able to hit another item drop between them those were the items that you would get it saved time by temporarily not having to deal with any enemies spd wolf then took it a step further thanks to a route discovered by twosnick further manipulation could be done before the boss fight it was possible to get another rosary and then a potion from two more birds saving significant time by not having to deal with all the enemies unfortunately this made the boss pattern random once again as 66 frames aren't lost on the way to the mummies ouija was going for the short whip strategy and two snack was going for the level 3 manipulation however spd wolf was going for both so he had potential to take the time even lower and over a few months in the middle of 2019 this is what he did [Music] 11 26 yes that's it new world record and that's probably in 1125 okay um sorry that wasn't a huge [Music] reaction even apparently it is [Music] oh god okay [Music] after 15 years of attempts after countless tricks shortcuts and glitches after battles for the world record after heartbreak and eventual success that's where the world record stands today this has been the history of castlevania world records thanks for watching [Music] you

Channel: Summoning Salt

Views: 2,718,460

Rating: 4.9465375 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: AtDUnJCoTb8

Length: 55min 23sec (3323 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 09 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/NicoleL88]

Summoning Salt is literally one of my favourite YouTubers. Great content. Wish he'd do a video on the WR for glitched Tomb Raider II runs!

[u/Thorneto]

My only issue with summoning salt is that I've already seen all the videos.

[u/naclownfiesta]

IMAGINE A BUS

[u/2snek]

Hey everyone, if you're interested in getting into Castlevania speedrunning, come check out the discord - https://discord.gg/j9vNXGK

Castlevania is a great game for a new speedrunner to pick up because the first goal of a sub 12 minute time isn't hard to achieve and will teach you a lot about general speedrunning. It also has the capacity to keep veteran speedrunners engaged, because of the demanding nature of getting a top 10 time and the game has very low RNG compared to other speedruns.

Please reach out if you have any questions.

[u/[deleted]]

Can summoning salt do one on the original Mario Kart? Does that have much of a speedrunning community?

[u/killstreakblues]

Summoning Salt is the man

[u/DANGERMAN50000]

I started watching this and was like "whoa, an hour long?? There's no way I'm finishing this. No one likes Castlevania speedruns that much" and now I'm subscribed to his channel and trying to find more content. Excellent video.

[u/d1223]

Summoning salt is great. I’ve tried watching other people’s videos about speed run records and they just don’t grab me the way his videos do

[u/Nobody1441]

Good to see SummoningSalt on r/documentaries! As usual, the only negative thing to say about his channel is that videos take too long, because I need all of them and he is only one man. Lol