The History of Speedrunning - Did You Know Gaming? Feat. Remix

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] did you know speedrunning earliest beginnings can be traced back to Activision's 1980 Atari 2600 game dragster not only was dragster one of the first commercial video games based entirely on beating a timer but the game's instruction manual also challenged players to achieve a time of under six seconds anyone who sent Activision a picture of their sub six second time would join the company's world-class dragster Club making it the first video game included in a speedrunning contest as well the concept of speedrunning would resurface for the 1990 Nintendo World Championships according to the competition's rules players had 6 minutes and 21 seconds to achieve the highest score possible across Super Mario Brothers rad racer and Tetris there were also score multipliers for example collecting 50 coins in Super Mario Brothers gave the times one score multiplier completing the course in rad racer granted at times 10 multiplier and getting a high score in Tetris gave at times 25 multiplier Eric omnigamer Koziol author of speedrun science commented on the events impact Koziol wrote doing even reasonably well in Tetris would dwarf your combined score from the other two games the strategy became to complete Super Mario Brothers and rad racer as quickly as possible the final time limit also spurred competitors to play for speed and Tetris the Nintendo World Championships had unintentionally included all the makings of a modern speedrun learning the fundamentals behind your targeted games and mechanics exploring strategies for optimizing the time taken coming up with the best route and then finally performing that route however speedrunning wouldn't truly take off until the release of doom dooms contribution to the speedrunning scene came from it featuring savable gameplay demos in short a demo is a timed recording of every single input all saved in order to a file the demo file can then be reloaded into the game where it's played back effectively producing a perfect recording demo files were commonly used in arcade games to record gameplay footage for attract modes but doom became one of the first games where players could make share and playback these demos this was groundbreaking as video capture and coding tech was virtually non-existent at the time for hobbyists the demo files his small size also made them easy to share online which was essential due to the limited internet speeds at the time the team behind doom decided to include demos late in development largely for kicks and had no idea what impacted leave on the gaming community doomed designer and coder John Romero recalled we thought that demos would be shared for skillful play and we thought it'd be for showing really cool death matches but we didn't think about it for speedrunning in particular because speedrunning was not a thing we hooked into the game as a special way of playing it speedrunning was just a concept and it wasn't a big thing back then either it's something that some people did but it was very rare following dooms release a few online communities formed around sharing demos many demos were shared for bragging rights which led to the creation of challenge runs some were straightforward such as beating any level with 100% kills whereas others were more obtuse like the Tyson challenge this challenge requires players to get 100% kills using only fists chainsaw the pistol or the berserk powerup when simply achieving these challenges was no longer impressive players began to compete on who could complete them fastest Romero stated speed demonstrates your skill at the game so you've got 100 kills and how fast you didn't shoot anything with the pistol but how fast did you get it done so speed was always the highest-ranked thing without the score being any part of it this is because it spoke to your knowledge of the game and how good you were anybody could achieve things slowly but that's not competitive one of the most important websites born during this time was compete n which had an online leaderboard for all the doom challenges players devised furthermore each challenge was categorized and graded on speed and runs could be easily submitted verified and watched by gamers from around the world these features led compete and to become the first major organized speedrunning community in history doom speedrunning seen continued to grow from there but the next step in the sport came from another its software game in 1996 quake much like doom quake allowed players to save and share demo files and once again online communities formed around sharing these demos among these websites was nightmare speed demos which hosted speedruns exclusively in the games nightmare difficulty setting Oh the websites creator a speedrunner known as Nolan radix Pflug and various members of his community found bigger aspirations at the time most demos only recorded speedruns of single levels but radix and three other speedrunners banded together to create a single demo file speedrunning the entirety of quake this was done by stitching together the demo files of the best individual runs for every level in the game to create a complete quick speedrun known as quake done quick radix said there was a team of four of us that did the first quake done quick movie in early 1997 as a team we came up with all kinds of tricks that I don't think an individual would have then we did quake done quicker a few months later and then quick done quick with a vengeance came a few years after that eventually the nightmare speed demos quake done quick and other quake speedrunning communities banded together under a new website dubbed speed demos archive in 1998 the website continued to serve as the major quake speedrunning hub in the following years but speed demos archive eventually spread its wings with the help of retro studios as Metroid Prime in 2002 radix was a huge Super Metroid fan who sent his best completion times to Nintendo power in his youth and was enamored by the Metroid Prime community on GameFAQs the board found several tricks and sequence breaks to play the game faster this along with the Metroid 2 k2 community pushed radix to complete a Metroid Prime speedrun radix ed so I decided gosh I have this device I can use to capture video I'm going to record myself playing Metroid Prime and see how fast I can do it after about three months I had completed my speedrun and my time was one hour in 37 minutes so I thought well now I have to publish this but YouTube didn't exist I did have this site called speed demos archive and that's nice and generic it doesn't say anything about quake in there so I thought I'll just post it there not only was his Metroid Prime speedrun 30 minutes faster than the prior best run but it was also publicly available via direct feed video on a website with enough bandwidth to easily host it for all to enjoy although radix originally just decided to host the run on his website out of convenience the decision paved the way for a new age of speedrunning following the runs immense popularity speed demos archive began to accept runs from games besides quake while other speedrunning communities had their own website it's typically focusing on a single gamer series speed demos archive became the major hub of the speedrunning scene for both PC and console games alike the next chapter in the speedrunning scene came from Japan after a gamer under the name Morimoto published a Time Attack video of Super Mario Brothers 3 online that took the internet by storm in 2003 the impressive speedrun used perfect jumps and glitches without a single mistake beating the entire game in 11 minutes and 3 seconds flat however Morimoto later updated the description of the video stating the run had been achieved using speed hacks to slow the game down and that they used countless emulator safe States to achieve the result this would be known today as a tool-assisted speedrun or tas according to speedrunner pj2 caesar the reveal proof to be polarizing stating Morimoto's run was world-shaking when it came out it was like what you can beat this game in 11 minutes that's crazy I just thought it was the coolest thing and I was interested in watching more videos like it then the classic misconception of tasses came out boo he didn't play the game he just stitched together a video frame by frame in all actuality Morimoto's run was far from the first tas ever created a website simply named tool assisted speedruns collecting such runs from games like doom and others existed for years earlier in 1999 however the popularity of Morimoto's runs spread awareness of the speedrunning scene and opened up a new world of possibilities to speedrunners of the day as emulators continued to grow improve and become more accessible into the mid-2000s so did the TAS seen advancements like frame counters frame advancing memory viewers lag counters input editing and more gave rise to better and better TAS as as the year went on although the TAS and speedrunning scenes got off to a rocky start at first relations warmed over time TAS video co-owner Adela cat wrote Morimoto's TAS was often misunderstood to be a real speedrun I think this led to speedrunners his initial impression of tasses as deceptive and cheating I think better understanding has made that friction largely go away TAS is often serve as research and the proof-of-concept movies that speedrunners can take adapt and practice in the early days speedrunning wasn't very collaborative these days everyone is sharing ideas with everyone else it truly is a communal effort everyone wants to see the best possible real time and task movies and do what they can to contribute meanwhile the decision to open speedrun demos archive to any game quickly caused issues radix who ran the site by himself at the time was unable to confirm whether or not speedruns for games he wasn't familiar with were legitimate or used some kind of cheat this initially forced radix to only accept runs for games he personally knew such as quake doom half-life Super Metroid Super Mario Brothers and The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time regardless even with this limited list radix struggled to keep up with the onslaught of speedruns that were constantly sent his way thus the verification process was born allowing others in the community familiar with the game to confirm if the run was legit or not during this time rules were established for what was and wasn't allowed in runs and how runs were ranked on the archive some significant decisions included determining speedrunning categories for each game only accepting direct Game Capture thereby denying runs that used a camera pointed at the TV screen and timing runs from the instant a player gained control of their character until they've lost it at the end of the game these rules have continued to evolve over the years alongside advances in technology and the speedrunning scene overall although improvements in emulation internet speeds and video capture technology helped speedrunning become more accessible to more people the impact these advancements had on the popularity of speedrunning paled in comparison to the dawn of live streaming as life streaming took off in the late 2000s and into the 2010s speedrunning rapidly transformed from a solitary hobby where runners spent weeks alone perfecting runs to a spectator sport era Koziol wrote chat services accompanying most broadcast enabled direct interaction between runners and viewers with questions and comments breaking up the sometimes tedious task of grinding away a tear on speedruns themselves were still largely personal projects but the act of finishing them was made that much more pleasant by sharing it with others on the flip side this loosened speed demos archive zazz dominance in the speedrunning scene over the years runners who didn't like the website's rules or couldn't stand waiting for their run to be approved found instant gratification by streaming records online in fact as many runners developed fan bases to support them during record tense streaming rapidly became closely tied to the act of speedrunning itself according to Koziol anyone who ran games was almost expected to stream as well but speed demos archive wasn't done turning the speedrunning community on its head quite yet as the website or rather its community led the charge into the next evolution of the scene marathons the speed demos archive community weren't the first to come up with the idea that honor goes to a group of speedrunners under the name the speed gamers who were inspired by desert bus for hope an event by comedy troupe loading ready run were members live streamed a marathon of the minigame desert bus for charity in March 2008 the speed gamers blasted through every single mainline Zelda game within three days live to raise money for st. Jude's Children's Research Hospital in the first speedrun marathon ever the speed gamers followed this up with seven more live marathons over the next two years although while each event proved to be successful they failed to break into the mainstream nevertheless the idea inspired the speed demos archive cz's community including site administrator Mike ooyama who yama recalled in summer of 2009 people on the forums saw the speed gamers as marathons and the community went we should do these marathons ourselves when I stepped in I said whoa this is a good idea but we need to give it some focus from here lianna decided the event should take place at the already established gaming convention Magfest and that the game should focus on 8-bit and 16-bit games this led to the name classic games done quick unfortunately despite the group's best efforts last-minute internet issues with the mag fests hotel ultimately forced to Yama to cancel his convention plans and stream the event out of his mother's basement regardless classic games done 'quick managed to raise ten thousand five hundred thirty one dollars for charity over January 1st to the 3rd of 2010 next in 2011 the group returned under the new name awesome games done quick allowing modern games into the marathon the event was also extended to 5 days this time around the team managed to raise fifty two thousand five hundred nineteen dollars nearly five times as much as the year prior after this success they were hooked whoo Yama stated right after the event there was this realization that hey this was really fun had a real magic that speedrunning didn't have before let's do it again I've made a lot of mistakes from each marathon because there's always a growth in learning process but I've also had a lot of success and grown the community a lot because each marathon gets bigger and bigger the organization reached a turning point at the awesome games done quick 2014 arcing the first time charity donations broke into seven figures with a total of 1,322,000 of attendees hundreds of thousands of live viewers online and millions of dollars every year the numbers have continued to grow annually with 50,000 donors banding together giving three million thirty nine thousand five hundred ninety six dollars at summer games done quick 2019 speedrunning zev Ellucian has intended with marathons either the streaming age has helped many new and unique forms of speedrunning flourish such as speed run races at its core speed run racing pits two or more speed runners against one another to see who can beat a game the fastest in a single sitting this brings a whole new dynamic to speedrunning as restarting a run brings a heavy price making certain tricks and glitches incredibly risky while the speedrun racing scene is still somewhat new a number of variations have already emerged there are multi game speedruns where speed runners race through a number of games in succession to see who can beat them all the fastest there's also blind speedrun racing where runners don't know and often haven't even played the games they race on as well as randomized runs where runners go through a classic game that's been modded typically randomly switching out the locations of power-ups speed running has come a long way from its humble origins and its future looks bright Koziol concluded I don't ever see speedrunning dying off the activity will continue to grow and change but the competitive drive at its core is part of human nature so long as humans are driven by a need to develop and improve skills there will always be room to add a timer on top to measure just how well it can be done did you also know that 50 cent was rumored to avoid poni and Twilight Princess or that an official Nintendo website lied about Dragonite evolving into Yoshi for more facts check out our videos on Zelda rumors and Pokemon rumors [Applause]

Channel: DidYouKnowGaming

Views: 574,629

Keywords: speedrunning, speed running, history, speedrun, speed run, history of speedrunning, agdq, sgdq, gdq, speedruns, awesome games done quick, summer games done quick, games done quick, did you know gaming, didyouknowgaming, dykgaming, dykg, gaming

Id: 47dNILcpP4I

Length: 15min 54sec (954 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 11 2020