Full Interview

Email #1:


What drew you to speedrunning initially? What games would you consider your mains?

What things do you keep an eye out for on early runs? Are there particular control quirks or AI behaviours, for example, that indicate potential areas for exploitation?

Do you prefer to route alone, or with other runners? If with others, how do you organise that? Do you each play independently and pool your discoveries, or do you divide a game up between each of you?

Once you've run a game, are you able to go back and play it without focusing on optimising or finding exploits? And does your speedrunning mindset ever bleed over into games that you're playing just for fun?

Is there anything else you'd like to add, any other elements of routing that you feel are under-recognised or under-appreciated?



Response #1:

So what drew me into speedrunning was a series of casual races I had with my friends. I never intended for it to get serious but here we are! Those races were of Megaman games, which lead to my first serious speedgame being Megaman V for gameboy which I optimized to eventually get the world record in. Eventually I moved onto other games. My main games are Knytt Stories, Zelda: Four Swords Adventures, and Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow. Aria of Sorrow is the one I've put the most work into routing.

What I mostly do with Aria of Sorrow is route what we call "meme" categories. These are categories that aren't meant to be taken seriously but are really fun. All of the main categories of the game have such concrete routes that branching out into these wacky categories is a good way to still have unique fun with speedrunning the game. Because Aria of Sorrow is so broken there's so much you can do with the game. So for an example a challenge I've come up with is the "dashless" challenge. Dashing in the game leads to many different glitches, so trying to accomplish goals without it means you have to get really creative and dig deep into glitch and general game knowledge.

I mostly work on these alone, but I obviously wouldn't be able to do these without the accumulated knowledge the community has gotten throughout the years. One of my favorite Aria of Sorrow memories however was working on a very difficult All Bosses route with Hetfield90, we stayed up until late at night working on the nuances of this route. It gave me a real feeling of community.

I really can't play the game "casually" in the way most people think of casual. I do mess around with the game without the intent of doing any routing/glitch finding, but it's certainly not something someone playing the game for the first time would be doing.

The final thing I want to add is just how much goes into routing and running a game. On top of routing Aria of Sorrow I also run it and have competitive times in several categories. Most routes of the game don't make it off the drawing board, there's usually some random glitch or item you could grab that ruins the whole thing. It's always a long drawn out process to route a category, and the same idea applies to running. It takes hours and hours of practice to get some of the tricks needed for these "meme" categories down consistently. Some I've routed aren't even realistic for a real time speedrun because of their difficulty.


Email #2:

Thanks Adam! That's really interesting how running Aria of Sorrow has evolved in response to routes being optimised so heavily. Out of curiosity, how did you go about working with Hetfield90? Was coordinating both your efforts a challenge?

Lastly, what moniker would you like to go by in the article? And where would you like me to direct readers? (Twitch, YouTube, etc...)

Thanks again! Your perspective is tremendously helpful.


Response #2:

We have a discord server where we coordinated, we also used unlisted YouTube videos that we created to share specific parts of the route we created.

In the interview you can just refer to me as VB. You could link to my twitter, the handle is @vb_srl.

Thanks again :)


Email #3:

Ah, very nice!

Once I've wrapped up the article and it goes live, I'll make sure to email you with the link. Thanks again; you've been a huge help!