speedruns are too intimidating!

Some common concerns about getting into speedrunning that I've heard:


1. "Speedrunners have so much mechanical skill, pulling off triple frame perfect pixel perfect tricks left and right. I could never be that good!"

Getting good at anything takes practice. If you put in the time, there is nothing that top speedrunners can do that you can't. With really good practice habits, you'd be surprised how little time it can take to get relatively good at most speedgames.

I wrote a pastebin last month that lists some tips for improvement and practice: https://pastebin.com/7tmQDYm1


2. "How do I get started? I can't find a tutorial or anything."

When you're starting to learn a game, if there is no tutorial available, the best thing to do is to follow a video of a top run (preferably several top runs). When following the video, you should not only try to replicate everything, but also mess around a bit and try to figure out which strats work the best for you. A tutorial is useful, but most things in a speedrun are self explanatory. For the things that are not, you can ask the runners of the game for help (join the community discord ASAP if it exists). Runners are more than willing to answer questions and explain things to new runners.

If there's no video of a run available, you'll probably have to route the game yourself. This requires a lot of critical thinking, timing, and exploration. The most useful thing to do before you start routing is to try to understand the game as well as possible - know where everything is; how long everything generally takes; how to get between certain places as quickly as possible.


3. "What game do I start with? I already asked Reddit and they told me 'your favorite game'. The problem is that my favorite game is Barney's Hide and Seek which isn't a very good speedgame. What do I do?"

The question "How do I get into speedrunning?" reminds me of a similar question, "How do I get into programming?", because the answers that people give usually just describe their own experiences without considering that it is unrealistic to expect the person asking to actually follow the same route. Many programmers get into it just by messing around with some sort of program or game that they are passionate about, eventually gaining experience purely through experimentation. Speedrunning is the same way because many runners are introduced to the hobby through a deep interest in a game, and their intense passion for it is what drives them to explore the game and start running it. Anyone asking what game to start with is already past that point, so telling them to just pick their favorite game doesn't really work as good advice anymore.

I don't actually know what the best advice is, but I believe that the enjoyment in speedrunning comes more from enjoying certain aspects of the hobby (competition, self improvement, exploring/optimizing games) than from the games themselves. Because of that, someone who is starting out should try to figure out which of these aspects they enjoy the most. You should try to answer the question, "why do I want to speedrun?" You can try SM64 or SMS if you think you're interested in competition, or start with a relatively unknown game if you're more interested in routing/glitch hunting. A good casual game is not necessarily a good speedgame, and vice versa, so it'll take quite a bit of experience before you know what types of speedruns you actually enjoy.