Dawn of a New Day

DAWN OF A NEW DAY

What do you do when you've achieved a goal you have been working towards for over 2 years? Make a new goal? Maybe, but I don't want to make a goal for the sake of making a goal. If I do make another main speedrunning goal, I want it to be something that I care about and want to be proud of when it's done. I'm not sure if world record is going to be the goal in any game that I will play from now on. I will say that a new game will remain with the NES or SNES. Candidates are my current 'projects' - SMRPG (top 5), SMB1 (sub-5), Link to the Past (no goal yet), Link's Awakening (learn the game).

I've been playing Zelda 1 when I began speedrunning, grinding out runs and improving my PB 26 times since I submitted a 42:51 in August of 2013. The time has dropped to a blistering 28:50, which I admit is beatable, but going to be very hard to do. It's not an untouchable record, but there's currently only one person at this time who can actually beat it on his next run. He says he's going to go for it, and I wish him well. If the time is beaten, I have no plans to return to the game. I really had the storybook ending to my Zelda 1 career, getting under 29 minutes and winning the Zelda 1 tournament, beating the top players in 4 straight matches in a win-or-go-home situation. I ran the game at AGDQ 2015 (2 player race), SSS (both quests), JRTA (2nd quest), Retro Raisers (randomizer race), Best of NES (2014, 2-player race; 2015, 4-player race), and this tournament. Out of all the races, I lost just once to Saver. Since the last tradeoff of the World Record in February 2015, I have broken my own record 11 times (one was a .4 second improvement) with upwards of 40 to 50 sub-30 times, which ultimately ended with a sub-29. I have nothing left to prove in Zelda 1.

I think part of being successful is knowing when to stop, when to walk away from something in which you are really successful. Speedrunning is an interesting domain for this, since you set your own goals and there is still room to improve the body of work. Zelda 1, according to sum of bests, could potentially get to low 28. With the current knowledge/route, I don't believe that is achievable. I also thought a sub-29 time was not achievable, so I could be proven wrong. Looking at my best time, the first third can be improved by about 15 seconds. The middle third (5,2,7) can be improved by about 10 seconds. The final third of the game was so good in my PB that it's unrealistic to expect to improve. L6: 2:59, L8: 1:54 (gold), L9: 5:05 for a 9:58 finish (my best ever). Basically everything needs to be executed properly AND you need good RNG at the end of the game to get a faster time.

The tournament brought in many new faces to Zelda 1, brought up controversy about deathwarping :( in races, but ultimately brought more people together than I could have hoped for. I've made a bunch of new speedfriends that I've shared some awesome times with. Others found out they were really good at broadcasting races, whether it was commentary or the stream engineer. We had someone make an item tracker to use during the restreams to track progress of each runner independently. It all culminated lastnight in one of the best streams of all time in my opinion. 4 top racers, 5 matches, all hosted by BestOfNES who was generous enough to host our event and get 2K viewers PogChamp. They even worked to get the tournament on the front page of Twitch, a first for Zelda 1 I believe. I'm obviously happy to have won the tournament, but I think the race between Eunos and Saver was the most epic, plot-twisting, jaw-dropping races I've ever seen. And that was on the heels of probably the most intense race up to that point between myself and DWD which was room for room for the majority of the race all the way up to Gannon. Thanks to everyone who participated, contributed, or watched the tournament. Thanks cad1486 for giving me a second chance when my console did not.

Thanks to everyone who made this time possible. Darkwing Duck is the reason that I am good at this game, or anyone for that matter. He laid the groundwork and found many things in this game that are common knowledge today. I don't think he gets the credit he really deserves with the new era (which I call post-randomizer) of Zelda 1 speedrunning, but he definitely should. Cantoutfapme got within 3 seconds of my time when I knew it could be improved and that lit a fire under me to destroy this game once and for all. Also, congrats to new kids on the block Eunos and Saver for getting under 30 minutes, with Saver going white sword(!) route. New runners have come up with the 'flex' racing route, which introduced red candle as a feasible alternative to the traditional, tougher blue candle route.

What's the future for Zelda 1? The biggest question for me: What will happen first, another sub-29 or a new sub-30 runner? How long does DW go at it before breaking the record or giving up? If (When) he beats the record, I don't see myself coming back to beat the time. Does Eunos or Saver or Cantoutfapme or an unknown contend for the best time? If you are reading this and thinking about trying Zelda 1, go for it. It's my favorite speedgame because of its complexity, nostalgia, and the necessity to adapt constantly. If someone like me can put in the work and get the best time, anyone can. Just go for it, who knows what will happen. You even might write a mushy pastebin like this one day.

I want to thank everyone on #TeamLack for watching me and cheering me on the last 2 years. Some names I want to point out from people I haven't met, but feel like I've known for a long time: MikeStone1979, Rep2369, Leysa, Lizzie, LiquidFlood, MagicScrumpy, ImpliedKappa, fcoughlin, KHAN, Dazzle, Forever, Trendy, DavidB, Horsedad, genbrad, chaseworld, GTM, Billy, GiraffeMe, Xio, Skavenger, ategenos, BT, Jam, Eunos, Saver, and a ton more. Hopefully our paths will cross at some point.

Long live Dumb and Dumber/Airplane/Seinfeld quotes, run number 1000, palindrome runs, runs #1975-1999, 31:02, 29:56, and 28:50.

I'm going to go grab a tissue now. See you on Twitch.
-Lack