The Man Who Broke Spyro in Half

good afternoon I'll admit it glitch hunters are underappreciated every time a new record is set a barrier has been broken a lot of the time we cherish the players that broke through and pushed for the amazing feats but in the background there are tons of brainiacs in each respective community working together in finding new tricks optimizations and sometimes coming up with a full reroute for an entire game without the creative minds of our communities certain time barriers would not have been possible today I want to shed light on one of speed runnings most low-key underappreciated glitch hunters wild glitch hunting is what the man in question is mainly known for he's still a respectable Runner and multi time world record holder in his own right he is somebody that just lets his discoveries and videos speak to themselves somebody that has saved multiple minutes in a plethora of games somebody with an eye for breakthroughs this is the story and legacy of to Vaughn you [Music] let's take it back to 2013 around this time a young man from the UK our hero to Ville was getting into speedrunning his primary speed game of choice was Spyro the Dragon for the PlayStation he mainly started out with any percent and highlighted all of his Peavey's on his twitch page but later down the line he would pick up the one 20% category where he would set his first world record it was at this moment that he started uploading his runs to YouTube since he probably figured it was a better place to archive his stuff he would lower his own 120 percent record multiple times from a 141 down to a 135 his movement and knowledge of the game was very apparent in these runs and it was very clear that touval had a good grasp of how the game worked already early on in his career he started experimenting with smaller tricks that would help save time in any percent and 120 percent for Spyro he would upload various videos to his YouTube channel of neat optimizations such as a damage boost from a bird in dry canyon or a proxy off of the TNT barrel enemy in north cove to skip the entire level he would also propose new routes for certain levels such as an early kill on the plane in nasties loot granting you the key early which would be useful for the 120 percent category he also uploaded a video of a proposed alternate route for dry canyon in any percent all these smaller discoveries would just be the warm-up for to hole as his experience and knowledge was shining through ultimately culminating in his first major discovery [Music] for those unfamiliar with Spyro the Dragon I'll explain how beating the game works first as it's important context for tools discoveries this knowledge is somewhat transferable between all of the ps1 Spyro games so keep all of what I'm about to say in mind in Spyro the Dragon there are six worlds you have to traverse through in order to get to the next world you have to meet a specific requirement from the balloonist of each respective world sometimes it's needing to have freed a certain amount of dragons other times it's gems or dragon eggs the standard procedure are progressing through the game for home worlds one through five is collecting stuff homeworld six or nasties world works a bit different from the other home oils in that you can't just run around freely and enter whichever level you want you are forced to reach the end portal of north cove in order to unlock the next level the way the level unlocks is linked to the big dragon heads in the homeworld the mouth of the orange dragon will open once an orc Cove is complete this leads into Twilight harbor and once that is complete the mouth to the final boss nasty NORC opens up as well the last green dragon head is nasties loot a bonus level needed for the full 120 percent completion so yeah the objective is simple go through the levels collect dragons gems and eggs until you reach nasties world beat the three required levels there and the game is complete on August 6th 2013 2 volt uploaded a video titled nasty NORC early this showcased a video of touval reaching the nasty north portal entrance by going through the top of the mouth with a well-timed to charge jump into a regular jump you have just enough height to clip through it this was only possible on the European PAL version of the game since spyro jumps a couple of units higher this however was later performed on the American NTSC u version as well this skipped the need to play through Twilight Harbor to open the dragon head to nasty nork which saved around 50 seconds and 80% to quote touval to make sure i wouldn't be wasting my time trying to do something impossible i used a cheat program that let me moon jump I used this to check to see if anything in the hub lacked collision giving potential to a possible skip as luck would have it the dragon head encasing the nasty North portal lacked collision on top on the other two dragon heads which were completely solid after making this discovery I was more determined than ever to find a way in before intended to vil would follow his amazing discovery up two months later on October 16 2013 with another video this one titled skipping Dallben North Cove and Twilight Harbor Delvin refers to the dragon you rescue at the center of the homeworld this shows two love doing a rat proxy to get on top of the North Cove portal where you can then glide into nasty NORC this is unfortunately not viable for RTA the proxy is simply too precise but still an amazing find by touval proving his creativity where the game really didn't give him any options to vil said that these two discoveries was the inspiration to look for more now that he knew he was capable of finding them and oh how right he was because he would go on a complete rampage from here on out let's jump forward to the third spiral game you're the dragon where to Volt's next big discovery would take place in order to beat this game you need to collect dragon eggs to move from world to world you need to collect the final dragon egg from each level where a resident of that world will help you with the air balloon to reach the world's boss you do this three times until you get to the fourth and final world where the final boss the sorceress all the sudden has a 100 egg requirement on the door so you can't exactly just go to each level go to the end get the one egg and leave that would leave you severely under your required amount so the speedrun consisted of getting the fastest 100 eggs then going to the sorceress it was two Bulls quest for glory to skip this 108th requirement barrier for the final boss fight it was already known for a while that you could get on top of these sorceress castle walls by doing something called a helmet proxy by walking under the gladiator helmet that houses the desert ruins portal spiral can be launched backwards off the wall with a ton of speed this is because the game assumes Spyro to be stuck under the helmet thus trying to fling him out of there a clever softlock prevention mechanism that speedrunners took advantage of once you have enough height you can reach the castle walls this was first showcased in a 2013 highlight from Runner T smart send me money dinner [Music] whoa [Music] what was that I thought I was doing like a extended super slide touval felt that T smart didn't really explore around the area very much so he went to work he got a helmet proxy on to the castle walls and well I'll just let this speak for itself [Music] on November 18 2013 the long sought after sorceress Kip was found by touval a no-joke 28 minute time-saver in 80% the loading zone for whatever reason extends extremely far up above the portal so if you can simply be right above the coordinates where the trigger is you go into the boss the current world record by Jeremy Thompson only collects 20 dragon acts to complete the game with sorceress skip at 2358 the skip was so influential and so game-changing that a 100 egg category was created on Spiricom that doesn't allow the use of this glitch this often becomes the case for minigames once the any percent category becomes so short you hardly play the game at all - whole was really on fire around this time he found a level skip for the first fire game and a massive sequence break for the third game Spyro - riptos rage was sweating intensely after the stunning work he had done on the other two titles it was inevitable that spyro 2 had something coming as well - volt set his sights on what many believed was an impossible task gulp skip [Music] [Music] in spyro 2 the collectibles you need to beat the game are much simpler three home worlds with three big bosses you need six talismans to get into crush 14 talismans to enter gulp and for the final boss rip though you need 40 of the 64 available orbs a swim in air glitch in the third homeworld was found quite early this bypasses the 40 orbs for ripto a skip and a crush was also found which bypassed the need of the first home world's six talismans but the issue was gulp there was not even a close to conceivable method of skipping in the gulp the boss loading trigger is a huge pit sealed away by a wooden door skipping in a crush is also pointless since you need all 14 talismans for gulp and six of them are located in the first home world the second home world autumn Plains is where gulps overlook is located and getting in was going to be tough [Music] [Music] this castle I tell you is so well made compared to many other parts of the game it's so huge yet there are practically no holes swimmin err glitches proxies or anything really I actually remember around 2011-2012 trying to look for gulps skipped myself I wasn't even speedrunning properly at the time but I remember being completely stumped right away in my progress I was hanging around a community who are more on the casual speedrunning side with some occasional glitch hunting here and there but even way back then the word was still thrown around that gulp skip might be possible if you can reach the loading trigger but reaching the loading trigger might be impossible in literal gears nobody had managed to find anything resembling and out of bounds in Auto Plains so it seemed almost hopeless I kid you not eight days after finding sorceress skip to ville had done it [Music] he found a way into gulp early he demonstrated his method with a 20 minute long highlight on his twitch I will shorten the footage down a lot but I really want you to see this skip it's just cosmic brain levels of creative so I'll try to show you for the beginning everything basically involves this broken wall here and you have to go to it from the other side let's say stay here in case I fall [Music] now this is very hard I'm not sure if I can show this again quickly why I'll show you the position again you end up in this position and then from here you can sort of you have to move even more sort of not in bounce or even more to the right and you end up you end up in this position like that if you do it right and I'm not even sure how I got in this position but ends up here then I [Music] mean it like that I sort of I'm past the wall now and past the broken wall but I'm out of bounds sort of halfway well I'll show you the end of the skip like I'll save sit here I'll show you the end right so if eventually you get like here you can just spam X and hopefully get out bounce just going to go [Music] one funny thing about all three skips that to will found there are all relatively big notable run killers for the speedruns gulp skip being no exception people have gone a lot better at it over the years so it's not too difficult to perform but doing it fast is the issue the run now for spyro 2 was essentially a boss rush once again a category split was made when sculpt skip was found now with any percent and fourteen talisman if we jump forward to march of 2014 Tuva would start competing for the world record and Spyro 2 is 80% category and would eventually be the first person to nail a sub 11 and then eventually the world's first sub 10 with a run of nine 41 the run garnered a lot of praise and decent views on YouTube a huge barrier break like this is something we would have never seen coming just a couple of months ago this run has the remarkable waterfall proxy to get into ripto at the very end of the run this skip is substantially more difficult than gulp skip to perform but saves a huge chunk of time to Vil essentially created the end of the road for spyro 2 with the discovery of gulp skip today the world record sits at 754 by spora seven minutes is actually mind-blowing for a ps1 game Tuva would do a full rotation back to his roots with the first viral game to explore a skip that was considered theoretically possible and would save around three to four minutes in the one twenty percent category you need every gem dragon and dragon egg in the game in order to achieve the max one twenty percent and normally the final boss is just a means to say you've finished the game but the boss drops four purple gems that count is twenty five each so normally you kill the boss and as he drops to the ground the gems fly toward Spyro as he taunts nasty knork the game fades out and the final cutscene plays out it is possible to die in the lava or in the out-of-bounds area next to Nestene orc but you need to be alive long enough for all the gems to be obtained if you die too early you won't get all the gems and if you're still alive by the time the fade-out approaches the cutscene will play so of course to vil set out to find a way merely another week after finding gold skip to say that he was on fire is now a severe understatement at this point about that it was a hit to bowl once again did another proxy jump by gliding into nasty North's body at the right time and at the precise moment he got flung back flamed tinted nasty as he flies away the launch was just right to give him all the gems and skip the final cutscene and the credits sequence the clip you just saw was the first time it was ever performed but this method of doing it has since been obsoleted the new and consistent way involves getting a proxy still off of nasty NORC to go out of bounds gliding a full 180 and then barely scraping below the lava to hit nasty nork and then flying into the part where you came from into the lava once you hit nasty nork you lose control of Spyro so your angle has to be just right to hit the lava at the correct moment just like that to we'll skip the need for watching the credits at the end of the game usually taking several minutes for massive skips in such a short amount of time to Vil had caused earth-shattering changes to how the Spyro games were ran he left his mark in history but what he would go on to find after his Spyro discoveries is something I don't think anybody could have seen coming to Vil would shift his focus away from spiral to pursue probably the most sought out after skip in any game around 2014 I'm talking about gelato Beach skip in Super Mario Sunshine the level gelato Beach is a bit different from the other levels in that the 8th shine of the level is always sitting there behind the glass tube if you could just get into this glass tube somehow and collect the shine you would unlock episodes 1 through 7 of gelato Beach this means you can select the 7th episode beach shadow Mario and that's all you would have to do for this level this would cut out episodes 1 through 6 which are all more or less boring autoscrollers so it was crazy when we all woke up one morning and saw this or GBS was found on February 21st 2014 by toe ball one who doesn't even run SMS this just goes to show that sometimes having a fresh pair of eyes is exactly what you need to solve a problem and if he or she is already a talented glitch hunter that also help SMS was and still is one of my favorite games to watch in any percent gelato Beach was a generally disliked stage due to the annoying mirror shine and the sand bird autoscroller so most people wouldn't miss it if it was bypassed I had known about gelato Beach gift theoretically being possible to skip for a while but I thought that given how popular a Speed game it is many people would have tried and failed to find a way to skip it and I'd bring nothing new to the table however after finding major skips in the Spyro games I had more confidence in my abilities to glitch hunt and I finally gave it a look I think I spent two or three solid days looking for GBS most of that time was spent on unsuccessful attempts trying to cliff through the glass using the cat aquatics once I had the idea to use the coconut it didn't take me long at all before I managed to actually cliff through the roof the setup involved ledge grabbing the edge of the roof and centering the camera to perfectly align the camera so Mario wouldn't get pushed to the side as he ran into the coconut as soon as I found it I uploaded a vid to YouTube and posted it to a Spyro speedrunning skype group jumpy Lofton sent it's a samurai man on Twitter for me because I didn't have twitter at the time said this day this moment is still the highlight of my speedrunning career [Music] and rightfully so the skip was met with the universal praise from runners of SMS but also from viewers and top runners of other speedrun communities the skip would total in a 10-minute time safe for any percent and would skip the most boring world in the run okay quick little fun story I thought I'd go into regarding another skip tubule found around the same time gelato Beach skip was found to will also found a 50 second time saver in Spyro answer the Dragonfly which is a notoriously disliked and buggy game the 80% category was already only two minutes long and consisted of going to a different part of the homeworld to get swimmin air and then you fly into the final boss well touval found out you can simply head bash through the floor into the final boss loading zone I'm actually serious look how long it takes from gaining control of Spyro to entering the final boss yeah it's a joke - we'll finish this run you're currently watching with a new world record time of 1 minute and 9 seconds this game sucks don't play it years would go by and Tula would go on to post smaller bite size clips of skips and optimizations he found in various games such as Super Mario Odyssey and the new Link's Awakening remake on his two Twitter accounts at touval underscore and at two volt he would go on to find a pretty big glitch in the Link's Awakening remake that allows you to walk on one tile higher than Link's height this was first showcased in a clip on his Twitter where by killing link mid jump and getting his dead body pushed by an attacking Fox he landed on the sign where afterwards he got revived by medicine another runner used tools to find out that this could be used to enter the fourth dungeon early - will also found what is known as a likelike launch which is where a chicken is used to redirect the direction link is thrown after being spat out by a like like the height from this is enough to get on top of the trees and is used early in the run to enter the second dungeon without needing to rescue bow-wow saving around a minute souville claims that there is also one really big sequence break out there that would break Link's Awakening like no other the current GPS of Link's Awakening is early rooster the rooster has been the source of so many late-game skips and glitches that accessing it as early as before d3 would break the game open even more all the pieces for the puzzle for early rooster has been solved except one actually getting into the rooster cave without needing the level 2 bracelet to move the statue blocking the stairs please go ahead and drop to below follow on his Twitter pages with what we've seen today he could just drop early rooster on us tomorrow or perhaps another major sequence break time will tell what's next up his sleeve so I'll end the video on this perhaps the most crazy story of all let's go back a bit in the video where I talked about a particular rat proxy in spiral one that allows you to skip both the North Cove and Twilight Harbor well two months after finding gelato Beach skip an SMS to fulfilled an alternate way to enter nasty North early without completing noir Cove or toilet harbor first this would widely be known in the community as a Ovilus and is insanely hard so hard in fact that the current world record doesn't do it as mentioned before tubule is also a very good speed runner and was a top-level player in spiral one for a while in 2016 Tuva wanted to come back to spiral one to compete for the record he started up another attempt just as usual it was a pretty average run with some minor time losses in the first two worlds in world 3 he was ahead by a tiny amount but the run crumbled by the fourth and fifth world being behind by half a minute he was simply too far behind so pretty much everyone thought the run was dead except for one drunk individual in the chat entering nasties world to bowl glances the chat duke Ovilus and BP PV sorry drunk well to be honest with you I don't know if tubule had plans to go for it anyway or if you really listened but I assure you I wasn't ready what hello okay no like this well then touval pulled it all the way back saving an insane amount of time with a first trike Ovilus resulting in a new world record by four seconds this is the only time in existence that Koval is in somebody's PV and even after four years when this was first set this run is still a top three time a testament to two whole skill and understanding of the game maybe most importantly clutch factor I honestly thought codeless was going to become the standard to do in runs after this but it seems that this run really was ahead of its time if someone could nail a perfect run with covilhã s-- 37 is out there surely but as it stands right now touval is the only person who has nailed it call it accident I say it's fate well that was the story of tools he doesn't stream on twitch or post to his Twitter that much anymore but let's still give him a follow for his contributions to all the games he's laid his hands on you might just witness a new discovery if you're lucky you might also witness him doing attempts of something again his streams were super cozy and very laid-back if you enjoyed the video make sure to subscribe as there is more speed on history and lore coming to this channel very soon thank you so much to my continued and new supporters over at patreon I really appreciate your kindness even with the state of the world currently if you want to support me you can ship in two dollars a month to get your name in my next video but of course no pressure just make sure you stay indoors and wash your hands in any case I hope you enjoyed the video there will be more coming soon take care and have a good one [Music] [Music]

Channel: ThaRixer

Views: 964,294

Keywords: ps1, spyro, the, dragon, spyro the dragon, speedrunning, speed, running, run, runs, speedruns, wr, world record, world, record, glitch, skip, trick, exploit, touval, touval1, playstation, play, station, super mario sunshine, super mario odyssey, link's awakening, spyro 2 ripto's rage, spyro year of the dragon, sony, nintendo, playstation 1, super mario, zelda, legend of zelda, major skip, proxy, gulp skip, sorceress skip, coveless, discovery, gamesdonequick, game, gaming, esa, gamecube, switch, playstation 2, ps2

Id: Kazy_M2vA0E

Length: 26min 50sec (1610 seconds)

Published: Tue May 05 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/MisterMonopoli]

Touval is the man! Great video!

[u/eggyinabready]

the goat. please touval, fuck my bitch