Speedruns - 2021 Review & 2022 Preview

Speedruns - 2021 Review & 2022 Preview

I didn't really do a lot of streaming this year, and even less speedrunning at that, but I know I accomplished some things that I just wanted to list and reflect on a bit. I currently am in the "end-of-year motivated to stream again" mood that lasts for about 2-3 weeks, so making this review partly due to that.

/// PokéPark Wii: Pikachu's Adventure - Ice Tree (ENG/PAL) / 50:28 on Jan. 6th ///

Did a single run to commemorate the category being added to the leaderboards. Run was decent, had one SUPER scuffed fight that lost a bunch of time. Sub 50 isn't that hard, but you do need a minimal amount of not-bad RNG to get that. I unfortunately am the unluckiest person at this game and have rarely been blessed with good RNG in the last 2-3 years of playing this game lmao. Maybe someday I'll sit down and just grind some attempts for sub 50.

/// Super Mario Sunshine - Any% / 1:18:37 on Mar. 4th & 1:18:24 on Mar. 12th ///

https://twitter.com/deathline77/status/1367701685590663175?s=20 This tweet sums up the first PB, the second PB was actually really well-played outside of Pianta and Noki/Corona. I had a 12:23 Sirena with 1 extra on King Boo which is really good for my level and how infrequently I play (though at that point I had been grinding for about a month straight due to the Super Mario Sandbox Relay Tournament I was participating in at the time. Shoutout to Team Name comprised of Deku for SM64, myself for SMS, and Mitch for SMO.) The run was mid 1:17 pace entering Noki where everything just fell apart and I proceeded to only save just over 12 seconds on my first 1:18. Someday, I may eventually try to go for 1:17 but for now I will set it aside and be proud that I finally managed to PB in this category that I hadn't pb'd in since November 2016.

/// Super Mario Sunshine - 120 Shines / 3:34:57 on Mar. 9th ///

Was somewhat coerced into doing this run by Juan due to it being 120 Tuesday. Used a new route that I hadn't entirely learned prior to  doing the run, managed to PB by about 1:30 just from playing a little bit better. I really do enjoy 120 Shines, but over the last few years I've come to realize that focusing for over 3 hours on a game as technical as Sunshine is really difficult for me, so grinding this category is also usually out of the question. I hope in 2022 I can lower this time to a 3:1x and have it somewhere that actually represents my current skill level, instead of whenever I randomly run the category with the latest route with little practice.

/// Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon & the Blade of Light - Any% / 5:49 on Apr. 1st ///

Was done as my April Fool's joke of the year. The game got a re-release on Switch as part of the FE 30th year anniversary commemoration, and I knew before hand that the run was only ~5 minutes long, so I learned it and did it a couple of times. Decently fun, but Switch is slow and you are very not likely to finish most of your attempts just due to the nature of needing to hit multiple coin flips.

/// Pokémon Sword/Shield - Alt Routes (Candyfloss) / 4:27:32 on Apr. 5th ///

Was a decent run that I had put 2-3 days of relearning into. Beat my previous PB by just under 7 minutes, and was a pretty significant improvement in overall movement and menuing from what I can remember. I do know that I lost 3 minutes on Opal in the mid-game, which I can still gold by 1-2 minutes, so there's a huge chunk of timesave there for when I do revisit this category (which I eventually will). I still have yet to get a Ninetales that either has good SpA or isn't -SpA nature in any of my attempts as well, which would help a bit. Still, was my first main-series Pokémon game that I learned and ran, and it's very fun, so I'd like to go back sometime when I can.

/// Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm - All Flashback Missions / 1:14:01 on May 13th & Any% / 2:11:55 on May 16th ///

Picked the game up during a Steam sale, this game was one of my all-time favorites growing up. Started out with the AFM category as it's basically just NG+, going from a 1:28:19 --> 1:23:54 --> 1:18:04 --> 1:17:36 --> 1:14:01. The category relies heavily upon the enemy AI not trolling which you're guaranteed to get trolled at some point (I lost over 1 minute on the final segment of the game, unfortunate), but I learned how to improve quite quickly and created some strats on some of the bosses to save a cycle. Will revisit at some time to lower AFM. As far as Any% goes, this is the NG category. Created an entire route based off the one existing run at the time, made one of the stupidest strats that saves 2 minutes in which you replay a side-mission 6 times to earn enough points to unlock one of the final story missions. Due to the nature of the game as aforementioned, and with the category being even longer and having to do worse side-missions to unlock story-missions, a TON of time was lost, particularly in the Hide-n'-Seek missions. Can be improved significantly if the game cooperates, will come back to it someday for a 2:07 or better.

/// Giraffe and Annika - Any% / 30:56 RTA, 30:41 IGT on Jul. 8th ///

Easily my #1 achievement in speedrunning over this year, even beating out my first 1:18 in years in Sunshine to me personally. I picked up this game on a whim on Steam and looked up the speedrun, learned you could beat the game in just over 30 minutes with a number of skips, learned those skips and got a 32:42 (all times listed will be RTA) as my first run on May 24th. Over the course of the following day, I went to a 31:28 --> 31:26 --> 31:20. I was convinced sub 31 was impossible and left the game there, even though the run had a 10s death. I returned July 6th to achieve a 31:11 and realized I could definitely hit the sub 31 if I just played riskier in the hardest section of the run without taking a death, which I followed up on two days later. The sub 31 run is near-perfect for the current route and movement that I do, with only 6s of timesave from PB to best segments. Really happy with this time and proud that I achieved it. Someday, when I have enough motivation, I will revisit the game and play some of the other categories (All Dungeons and 100%).

/// Super Mario Sunshine - All Blue Coins / 2:09:11 on Aug. 21st ///

There were a handful of PBs for this category in March (2:19:50 to beat my unrecorded 2:4x from 2015, 2:19:22 cause lol, and 2:14:49). The important PBs I want to note are my 2:11:01 on Aug. 20th and the 2:09:11 on Aug. 21st, where I really felt like I had gotten my foot into improving at the category. From learning Rocket Nozzle strats in Gelato 4 to effectively using Rocket Rollouts to just generally playing well (and getting bullied by Seedy Pods in Bianco 8), my 2:09 felt pretty good to achieve. This 2 week session I had in August also spurred on a few players in the community to play ABC (damn speed bullies) for a little bit, so I'll take it as a win for the contributions to the category. I will revisit this category again in 2022 to hopefully achieve a 2:07 or 2:06 if possible with the route I use (not the fastest route, but way easier for me to perform).


/// Super Mario Sunshine - Any% (No Major Skips) / 1:31:57 on Dec. 9th ///

Was bored and did it on a whim, beat my years old 1:39 (and unrecorded 1:35). Lost over a minute on Bowser trolling as per usual, but generally was actually pretty good of a run. Would like to get sub 1:30 at some point as I was around pre-GBS, so the category does hold some minor sentimental value to me, as back then the record was a 1:29:50 by toobou, a SMS legend and someone I respect heavily for their years of commitment to this game. I'd like to achieve that same sub 1:30 even if I'm using significantly updated strats and techniques compared to 2014.

/// PokéPark Wii: Pikachu's Adventure - Gyarados's Aqua Dash / Various ILs in March and October ///

Throwing this in at the bottom mostly to acknowledge that as of October I have either TWR or WR in all ILs in Gyarados's Aqua Dash attraction. Easily my favorite attraction in the game and there're a couple of ILs I'm very proud of my improvements in, most specifically the Manaphy IL. I am the first (and currently, as of writing this, only) player to achieve a 17.58 in the IL, which is a damn solid time (though still improvable by at least one frame!). Shoutout to Glennjamin for giving me tough competition and being the player that I am tied with in a majority of the ILs.

Other achievements/notes:

Super Mario Sandbox Relay Tournament - 1st place on Team Name
Super Mario Sunshine BTRL - Commentary
Super Mario Sunshine Bingo League Season 3 - 1st place in Division 2 (11-4 season record, 5-2 main season, 4th seed in D2, 6-2 during playoffs)
Speed Stuff 4 Charity 8 - Ran Giraffe and Annika for the marathon, helped organize the marathon, overall the marathon raised over $1,500 for charity.

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2022 Preview

Honestly, not sure. I almost always want to do speedruns, but lack the motivation to actually do so. I will probably inevitably play Sunshine as I usually do. I would like to revisit Candyfloss again in Sw/Sh and get a lower 4:2x time, or even a sub 4:2x time. Potentially time to sit down and learn Any% in that game as well, but there's also the potential to sit down and learn Any% Glitchless for Pokémon Brilliant Diamond/Shining Pearl. I would like to play Gir-Ann more as well. There's also the potential for me to pick up some JRPG runs in the future as well as I have been quite entertained watching them over the last year.

Again, not entirely sure, but as of now, I do want to try streaming something, anything, more regularly, even if it's casual (or in-between my casual playthroughs of games). I will almost certainly be playing Pokémon Legends Arceus on stream when that game comes out, which it's going to allegedly be a long-game to play through, so hopefully that'll keep me streaming for a few weeks.

Thank you to everyone this year for the support via watching, chatting, moderating, hosting, raiding, subscribing, lurking, or any other way! Hoping that 2022 blesses everyone with great gameplay and great RNG for speedruns.