World Record Progression: The Legend Of Zelda (NES)

there's no denying that the Legend of Zelda is one of the most successful video game franchises of all time practically every game in the series has sold well and gotten raving reviews from both critics and casual gamers it's got a great mix of action puzzle solving and story that keeps the gamer entertained for dozens of hours but through all the millions of copies sold and all the 10 that attends from IGN the success of the series can be traced back to one game that game of course is the one that started it all the original Legend of Zelda for the NES it was the most ambitious game that had ever been created up to that point released in 1987 in North America it left players in shock when playing it the amount of depths had never been seen before and for many it was the game that first introduced them to how amazing videogames could be to this day the game is cherished by the gaming community but some people take the game to another level instead of the occasional casual playthrough they speedrun it play through the game from surf definition as fast as humanly possible and over the course of several years these gamers have been able to take a game as a long and Zelda and beat it in half an hour let's see how they got there this is the world record progression for The Legend of Zelda the origins of Zelda speedrunning go back to a contest that was held over the summer of 2003 Twin Galaxies the lope said they used to be the headquarters for speedrunning offered a hundred dollar bounty to anybody who could beat The Legend of Zelda in under 36 minutes players were close to it some reported they could beat in 37 minutes but nobody could break that 36 minute barrier but finally a player named Tom vltava made a fool out of everybody else trying he didn't just beat 36 minutes he smashed it in July 2003 lot of a beat the game in 34 minutes and 5 seconds in the Legend of Zelda the route through the game is largely up to you you have to get eight pieces of the Triforce from the eight levels but the order in which he go through them is your decision so the first thing what if I did after getting this sort of the start of course was head into level 2 he was trying to get as many bombs as he could early from enemy drops when you kill an enemy they can drop an item for you to pick up during thought of his run there was almost no way to control what you would get from each enemy he picked level two first however because the room before the boss the dango is guaranteed to give you a bomb drop and dodongo himself is guaranteed that are often two if you hit him in the correct way so with the help of these two drops and a few other random ones a lot of a left level two with eight bombs in this inventory as he progressed through the other dungeons one trick that he constantly used was the continued work by plugging in a second controller and pressing up in a the game kills you and gives you a chance to continue from the start of the dungeon this can be used to get back to the start of the dungeon more quickly and save the Vltava around that minute of walking in total in later stages such as level 5 he went out of his way slightly to quickly kill enemies to get more bombs it ended up working perfectly for him by the time he answered levels 8 and 9 he had just the right amount of bombs that he needed to fly through them he entered into the final fight against Ganon and level 9 and had a really beautiful fight he got hit only once taking one heart away from the top bar and it looked like he knew exactly where Ganon was going to be at all times so he could hit him all in all a lot of his run was really well done for how old it is he didn't use any glitches in his run and considering the basic strategies he had he executed very well he may not have known as much about the game as players do now but what he did know he took full advantage of now lot of his run was done in 2003 as years passed some minor strategy changes were found but people were still finding it incredibly difficult to be this run it really was executed well well enough that a considerable amount of time passed before it could be legitimately beaten and by a considerable amount of time I mean nine years although a couple of people did try to submit fake runs that were faster they were both eventually caught nine years later speedrunners found it hard to believe that still nobody could beat Tombaugh dava his strats were primitive he had little knowledge of any glitches and his run was done at a time when speedrunning was hardly even a thing yet it was so good and so well executed that even with the explosive growth of speedrunning in the mid-2000s nobody could beat him finally in 2012 somebody was able to get a faster non cheated run this someone was named hell yield Suba a japanese speedrunner who that April was finally able to talk about of his run from 2003 finishing was a time of 33 minutes and 14 seconds from a pure strategical standpoint there's not too much that how did differently he was still using up and made to do death warps when needed and still wasn't using any major glitches but over the nine years that have passed since part of his run runners have been able to get a stronger understanding of how the game worked parts were evolved us struggled how was flying through this run was just what would naturally happen to any records that nine years in the past execution would get better and everything would look cleaner so Tom vadas record stood for nine years how long did he'll yield subas records sent for one month starting in early 2012 a twitch streamer by the name of darkwing duck was on a mission to push his time as low as he could in Zelda but his runs were a little different than the runs that came before his you see whenever the game was played in a marathon format such as agdq or sgdq the players always decided to not use the up and a that's work darkwing duck decided to adopt this method of playing for his runs into this day this method is stuck by far the most popular category Brasil that nowadays is no up in a standard any percent just having a few runs so from now on the record that I'll be covering will be the know up in a record but anyway darkwing duck was getting runs very close to the house record even though he wasn't using the best walk which put him at a time this is he bushes time from 37 minutes 34 minutes to 33 minutes now I'm June 5th 2012 he pulled it off after he pushed his sword into Gannon for the last time he went up to rescue Zelda and close out the first-ever 32 minute run the Legend of Zelda and everybody was going through fighting good a little cuckoo now up to this point nobody been able to improve on their own record as good as a lot of as run was for the time he himself was never able to beat it how was he able to beat his run either but darkwing duck was a little bit different he improved his record seven times in a row first again that was pretty good [Music] Oh [Music] yeah [Music] ah [Music] [Laughter] [Music] by May 2014 he had taken the record all the way to 30 107 the key to him being able to do this repeatedly was a trick known as forced item drops normally to the average player it seems to be completely random what each annual drop if anything at all and for many years speedrunners felt the same way but by 2012 it was realized that it's not actually a random at all it can be nearly completely controlled it all comes down to this church whenever you kill an enemy you have a chance of getting either to the corresponding item in the chart or nothing at all for example if the first enemy that you kill is from Group A you will either get a rupee drop or nothing at all if the next one you kill is from Group C you'll either get a heart drop or nothing if the next is from group X you will not get an item no matter what it goes like this all the way through the chart and then loops back to the beginning at first darkwing duck was hardly able to use this to help him he only used it to get a bomb from first enemy and then play the rest of the game without thinking about it but as time went on he realized how much this chart was able to help him if he needed help and he knew he was on the sixth position in the chart all he needed to do was look for an enemy from Group A or D to kill anything that he needed to help him progress through the game was now available to him it was just a battle with himself to see how much he could use the chart to help them move through the game and on top of that he was able to use a trick known as the screen scroll by standing exactly 5 pixels from the edge of the screen you press both up and down on the d-pad for 1 frame only after link turns himself around you simply walk off the edge of the screen and link appears on the other side this can be used to not only save time walking but also to skipped over certain areas such as going past this river right at the start of the game by mid-2014 darkling ducks dominance over the game with a pair of nobody had taken the record from them in two years even though in those two years he himself had broken the record more than half a dozen times it seemed like nobody was up to the task of being him but then a new challenger emerged I don't believe it I don't believe it for two years nobody could beat darkwing duck but himself but in July of 2014 lackattack 24 decided he would be able to do it and by using mostly the same strategies that darkwing duck used he was able to stop his reign as king of bloody Missoula go go go go go we got it go go go yeah baby boy record what happened over the following months has got to be one of the best rivalries in speedrunning history it started with darkwing duck quickly firing back beating lakhs run by about 25 seconds just a month later [Music] and then in early 2015 it started to get pretty crazy still there were no major strategy changes but just these two players getting better and better at the end of January Darkwing Duck once again lower the record with a 30 29 but lack fired back with a 30 25 two weeks later go yes Stano d-10 darkwing duck lowered it then Locke lowered it it just kept going back and forth and as they traded the record they knew what their goal was somebody was going to beat the game in under 30 minutes after Lac got 3006 in late February it seemed so close but nobody knew which them was going to get it first finally that March black attack was in position to do it he was ahead of his splits and all that was left between him and the sub 30 was Ganden oh my god we did it [Music] lack had done it he had prevailed in the battle against darkwing duck and he was the new champion of zelda he himself admitted he couldn't see the record going much lower than a few seconds so it seemed the category was just about at its limit but his lack would soon find out the category was far from being said he got to work looking for more strategies he could use to save time and over the course of 2015 he realized just how much he could still do to the game world record [Music] phone records go yes in order to get more runs that went deep into the game you had build up as many resources as he could early on [Music] yes you did it [Music] intentionally running out of bombs on the level 5 boss so you didn't have to go to the menu to use the recorder another world record world doing bunny hopping on the staircase in level eight you can make it past poles voice without stopping getting a backed-up quick kill on cannon in case you don't get the stun lock on them yeah by December black attack knew that a 28-minute run was possible he was the first to get a twenty nine minute run and he knew he could be the first to get a 28-minute run he was far ahead of anyone elses time he just needed to battle himself to get it and on December 9th 2015 he got it [Music] I don't believe it I don't believe it [Music] since that monumental day in 2015 black has broken the record a couple more times 28 47 and 28 43 but he says that he thinks that his best run is the 28th 50 the only other person to get a 28-minute run since then is cantaloupe me but he's still 14 seconds behind lacks world record so that's the world record progression to the Legend of Zelda over a decade of Zelda speedrunning has brought the record to where it is today there's been long-standing records long-standing rivalries and periodical dominance from a couple of different runners where will the record go in the future who knows but if how far it's come so far as any sign we've got a long way to go before the Legend of Zelda has seen its final run thanks for watching [Music] [Music]

Channel: Summoning Salt

Views: 2,077,773

Rating: 4.9245439 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: kDluReuJDOk

Length: 15min 53sec (953 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 25 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/gnostechnician]

To any Zelda 1 runners in the thread: is there a particular reason why No Up+A is more common? Are there issues with the category that make it worse to run?

[u/Iamfivebears]

I still can't believe that the OoT any% is faster than Orig any%. If you told that to someone who knew the games but nothing about speedrunning they would call you insane.

[u/GensouEU]

Regarding the screenscroll glitch @9:48 how dou you press up+down at the same time on a dpad?

[u/Hollyingrd6]

I really enjoy Salt's content it's really incredible. I think what blew me away in the video was item drop manipulation. I'd love to explore and tinker with it more if anyone could link me to the chart that would be appreciated.

[u/terretsforever]

Dude you were on that like the instant it was uploaded, GG.

[u/porkchop487]

Finally a Zelda video!

[u/notconquered]

has anyone done a TAS of this and/or knows what a realistic endgoal is for the world record?

[u/emc3142]

I realized that although these videos do not get massive play counts, they are the type of videos that I could see myself watching once every year or two for decades to come. Great work, SS.

[u/Upboats_Ahoys]

Darkwing, Lack, and Fap and others hype! Tag for later watching.