This Discovery Almost Killed Goldeneye Speedrunning!

hello you absolute legends as speedrunners our goal is simple beat the game or level as fast as possible in theory you think that players would use any means necessary to achieve this goal but in reality the manner in which speedrunners beat games quickly is extremely important and differs from person to person some people are willing to do whatever it takes to achieve the quickest time while others will restrict themselves to specific strategies even if it means ultimately going slower this is one of the main reasons that most games have multiple categories available to compete in with each category giving different strategic limitations at the end of the day it all boils down to whether speedrunner has the most enjoyment doing a great example of how different preferences and play styles can cause a split is mario kart 64 but there are two completely separate rankings for each course one that allows for the use of shortcuts and one that bans shortcuts completely some players prefer to focus on the different glitches and skips that are possible within the game and some players prefer to focus purely on the driving aspect alone it really all just comes down to personal preference sometimes when a new strategy or technique is discovered it is met with universal praise this could be because it skipped a difficult part of the game or because it decreased the amount of luck required maybe it just made the game more enjoyable to play other times a new strategy or technique can be met with disappointment frustration and anger in rare cases new strategies can be banned outright because they completely destroy any enjoyment from playing the game a great example of this was the pause buffer strategy that was found in the world is not enough with constant pausing it was possible to get much lower times but the technique is so monotonous it was barred from use as it completely ruined any fun runners may have had the game new discoveries can also create brand new categories to compete in speedrunning for super mario 64 originally began with two categories seventy star which is the minimum amount of stars you need to complete the game in normal play and 120 star which requires getting every star in the game when new glitches were discovered allowing players to complete the game with 16 stars some players continued to focus on the older categories while some moved on to the newer strategy thus a new category was born eventually when strategies were found that enabled players to beat the game with one or even zero stars two more categories were created now Super Mario 64 has five main categories that people compete in and certain players tend to stick to the categories that they prefer there is also one other outcome that can occur when a new strategy is discovered which is the entire point of this video in 2002 a new strategy in Goldeneye was found that was met with heavy disapproval it wasn't a strategy that could be banned or made into a new category either it led to many players simply quitting the game including myself for many years I'm talking of course about lookdown which is what gold and I speedrun is called the act of looking at the ground in order to run faster the story of how this discovery came to be is really interesting and traces back to the entrance of one john colita who joined the Goldeneye war record forums under the username supernova on July 22nd 2002 John made his very first post it was a simple post only containing three times 115 157 157 he didn't mention the level but at the same time John had updated his times page to reflect these times on the levels streets the world records on streets at the time were 115 158 158 so the times that colita was claiming instantly drew attention as it turns out though he had made a mistake as confirmed in his second post his real times were 115 158 and 150 the current world records he also mentioned something in that post that flew completely under the radar he said I use 1.1 with mini cruise control no auto aim and I strafe looking down to where I can barely see the next turn or objective it seemed like no one noticed this extremely important comment when it was made instead people were focused on requesting proof for times that he was claiming colitas writing style was completely insane as highlighted by his third ever post in response to requests for proof this post can be deciphered but it's obviously outside of the norm and the next two replies summed up the general atmosphere it seemed like there was always something off about colitas replies when prompted for his real name he responded John colita Burbank Illinois v 947 six-foot blonde golden eye player if true colita would have been 55 years old at the time by far the oldest person to have ever been involved with the community this definitely explains the difference in communication style and colita even mentioned that his posts on his forums were his very first online posts on the 9th of august 2002 a topic was created titled john colita here more users requested proof for his insane streets x in the topic a classic old-school runner by the name of peter austell and a skelita exactly what he was doing to achieve these times colitas reply listed off his general strategy and again mentioned the fact that he looked down this time someone noticed the webmaster Derek Clarke asked what's this business of looking down you strafe looking at the floor an explanation please colita replied about looking down when perfect dark came out I read a walkthrough by Marshmallow who advised put your nose down to the grindstone and haul ass been doing it ever since sure seems faster when I'm strafing at the very top of the screen I want to see the bottom of my next turn or objective put your nose down means speed now the technique was clear but funnily enough no one tried it that is of course until the absolute legend Brian boss art tested it out just over two weeks later on August 27th Brian created a topic titled looking down on missions where he stated I've been messing around with streets agent and I think if you look down for most of the mission it saves a hell of a lot of time I think this is what John Collier is doing to get his times so this could be a huge discovery if this is what he did the same day that Brian made this topic all three of the streets world records were broken taking them down to 114 157 157 the reason look down is effective is because the Nintendo 64 has difficulty running goldeneye at a smooth 30 frames per second it just so happens that Bond's running speed is affected greatly by the frame rate so a higher frame rate means that bond will run faster looking at the ground instead of the environment allows the game to render less total polygons which greatly increases the frame rate so essentially looking down is almost always optimal when speedrunning goldeneye giving bond a very small speed boost the boost is extremely slight saving approximately one second for every minute of looking down so it's understandable that this wasn't realized immediately and from colitas own admission this technique was born from taking an expression too literally rather than from any logical conclusion the reaction to this new technique was extremely mixed with a lot of the older players showing their frustrations Brian yes he was very prolific in that time said this may be a huge discovery but if everyone starts looking down every run to get that 0.5 second advantage then I will stop playing Goldeneye because that really takes all the fun out of the game the webmaster Derek Clarke simply stated I quit Walter Johnson showed his disappointment as did Matthias and ham who is another classic old-school player sterling Neve 'let one of the greatest champions of all time was extremely upset with look down and of course there was myself look down was a massive blow for me that caused me to leave Goldeneye entirely and move over to perfect dark I wouldn't return to Goldeneye for another ten years a lot of these older players either stopped entirely or barely played Goldeneye after lookdown was discovered playing the game while looking at the ground he's definitely not something that everyone can enjoy and a technique like this is essentially too hard to separate into a distinct category so those players who didn't want to look down basically had nowhere to go and were forced to move on from the game as history has shown goldeneye speedrunning did survive and the new strategy was beheaded by legendary players such as Brian Basit and while 2y Anson over the years look down has become less of an area of contention and has become much more accepted by both speedrunners and the general public I do think it was close to swinging the other way if the amount of lookdown required to gain the advantage was more severe it definitely could have destroyed the game's ultimate popularity and perhaps if looked down was not a technique that was advantageous goldeneye speedrunning may even be more popular than it is today I'm really curious how long it would have taken to discover look down if John colita hadn't shown up with this technique it definitely would have been found at some point but who knows how many years it would have taken as looking at the ground is definitely not at all intuitive one thing is for certain though look down has had a tremendous impact on the game and has massively shaped the community perhaps lookdown has given the game character and helps distinguish it from other first-person shooters look down always draws questions and attention from casual viewers and maybe that is a good thing sadly John colita passed away in 2012 at the young age of 65 but his legacy and impact on this small community of speedrunners will continue to live on he will always be remembered as an absolute legend you

Channel: Karl Jobst

Views: 1,524,086

Keywords: speedrunning, speedrun, speedruns, goldeneye, 007, james bond, n64, karl jobst, speedrun history, speedlore, gdq, games done quick, best speedruns, gaming, gaming history, nintendo 64, n64 classic, n64 mini, ezscape, apollo legend, world record progression, summoning salt, world record, wr, speedrun fails, gladjonas, speedrunning salt, speedrunning news

Id: FKkhzioZVD0

Length: 12min 51sec (771 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 13 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

This has to have been very hard for the GoldenEye community to deal with. It's such a small time-save, but it's so important. Yet how would you make a different category for people who dislike the technique? How far are you allowed to "look down" before it's a different category?

And for myself as an outside viewer, it certainly is hard to watch WR videos where all I see is floor plates for 90% of the run.

[u/MolderOn]

This is a great video but your title reads like clickbait

[u/zendeavor]

In response to the question: How long would it take before someone else discovered such an unintuitive technique?

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Lag reduction is a very common theme in speedrunning, so it would be interesting to to dig up the origin of manipulating the camera for this purpose. It even finds its way into speedruns in another form; some games require players to destroy obstacles, blow up boxes, kill enemies, or otherwise remove entities from the local area to increase the framerate. And the inverse is also true, such as in DK64 to clip through walls with orange spam, where players introduce lag to create an environment that allows them to break the game's rules.

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And that brings me back to the original question. It's not about how long before someone discovers this technique, but how long before someone applies lag reduction to this game.

[u/Sprudelpudel]

Holy cow, this video was awesome! thank you for this, great insight, super interresting! I for sure will tell all my friends this story who are absolutely not interested in speedruns at all!

[u/[deleted]]

[removed]

[u/therealgano]

I believe a similar strategy was adopted by Pokemon Snap runners for the same reasons. Thanks for the video! Didn't know the history behind this in GE.

[u/ethixz]

it seems to me like the 2002 response was pure salt that someone else discovered a technique that they couldnt.

[u/[deleted]]

Dude takes an idiom literally, ends up discovering a record-smashing speedrunning technique.

Even if you don't appreciate look down, you have to appreciate the situation that spawned it.

[u/[deleted]]

I’d argue that 2.X control style is almost as bad.