proto's #SGDQ2018 paste

Proto's post-SGDQ2018 pastebin

This GDQ was as hectic as ever, so I have quite a lot to talk about. There's a tl;dr at the bottom. 2.2 mil is awesome, yo.

INTERVIEW TEAM WORK

We absolutely killed it this year and I'm overjoyed to have been a part of this event. The preshow went FANTASTICALLY in almost every regard. Even the night before the preshow's practice run was nowhere near as good as what the public saw. I was worried it wouldn't be well-received but I think I was wrong!

I think all of my interviews went really well this year! My ability to come up with good questions, especially follow-up questions, is improving even if I do have a ways to go. The couch setup this year was a huge improvement, and despite my initial resistance to Lavalier mics, I ended up enjoying them a lot. Staying up until 2:30am for the meme games interview ended up being super worth it. I'll have more to say about particular interviews once I sit down and watch all of the VODs back. Tentatively, my favorite was the interview with Bobby for Megaman 9 - we vibed super well and Bobby is beautiful on a microphone. The handshake at the end and the resulting meme was glorious.

I want to give kudos to Sent and the interview production team. Sent once again stepped up his game, both in terms of doing fun silly stuff and being an excellent actor/performer. The interview production team did an incredible job this year. Their skill with the camera production software was admirable and it was obvious how much work they put in. Since they never get enough credit, I just want to make it clear how talented MunchaKoopas, Skavenger216, YNH, Musical_Daredevil, and Phant are and how much I appreciate what they do for our team.

HOSTING

My hosting shifts went well this year! I don't have a lot to say on this. I think I improved a bit, and was much better about doing more than just The GDQ Host Voice(TM) and using a variety of introductory lines for donation reads. During Megaman 8, the donation tracker was having issues so I didn't have almost any donations to read which sucked a lot but I powered through. I was in a really horrible mood during Kirby Block but hopefully it didn't show on the mic?

COMMENTARY

Only run I did commentary for this GDQ was Megaman 9 but that run was enough by itself. We never practiced and I didn't do as much research as I wanted to so I was worried going in, but I quickly established a good dynamic with Slurpee and Bobby and was able to get them to do most of the technical explanation. That run seemed really well-received and I'm glad to have been a part of it.

And that's a nice transition to...

MEGAMAN

Let's start with the runs...

The MM6 race was incredible. I was kind of angry that I wasn't invited to be on commentary, but Darkman, Richard, and Orsa did an incredible job so I don't care anymore. All 3 racers performed spectacularly, sad for no bomb skip, and unfortunately #TeamPPot S T E A M P P O T wasn't the winning party.

I already talked about Megaman 9 a little, but here's more - Bobby KILLED IT.

Kuumba's Rockman No Constancy run was great! I was worried initially that our music guessing game bit wasn't catching on, but people started chiming in a little bit into the run and it was pretty fun. LVCreed's commentary was really good, and though Kuumba started off clearly nervous, he settled in after a few stages and performed admirably.

Megaman 7 was super awesome, shoutouts to Team Roll.

The Megaman 8 race was great. Poor Orsa had top-class execution but Bliking and Devil chose Tonic. Both of them played excellently.

I spent almost all of my practice room time playing Megaman. I learned about half of Megaman 3, practiced / learned new strats for MM5, derusted MM2 and 6.

On Saturday, I raced Megaman 1-6 with the Classic Mega Crew. This has been a major speedrunning goal of mine for like a year and a half and I'm super proud of myself for getting it done. The final time was 4:04:11, which is really bad, but I'm just glad I finished. Here's a breakdown of the individual runs:

Megaman 1 - 22:27 - the only truly GOOD run of the 6. This run was about as smooth as I could ask for.
Megaman 2 - 37:30 - oh god why. I took like 2 manual game overs. I did not practice this game enough.
Megaman 3 - 44:59 - eh. About what I was expecting given this was my third completed 3 run.
Megaman 4 - 54:34 - this run was absolutely awful. The robot masters were super slow and I had TWO console crashes / resets in Cossack 2 forcing password resets to Cossack 1 (thanks, Seathorne). Wily stages weren't much better.
Megaman 5 - 42:04 - this is where the exhaustion kicked in. I wasn't mentally ready to play this much Megaman at once. I got Bubble Skip, so that's neat.
Megaman 6 - 42:36 - i was way too tired to play well even though I derusted, oh well, but I pushed through to the end and that's what matters.

More multi-Mega runs coming to a stream near you soon, I could easily get a 3:40 or better. Biggest room for improvement is 2-4.

I had fun with what little time I spent with the Classic Mega Crew. Still super anxiety that none of them like me. Oh well.

OTHER PRACTICE ROOM FUN

I raced Yoshi's Island with Gooby and it was awesome. I want to play that game more, but I need to actually learn it soon.

I played Tetris for less than an hour which sucked because I spent a ton of packing space and effort on bringing my arcade setup. I love the TGM crew and wish I'd spent more time with them.

I didn't play Pringles.

FOOD & THE VENUE

This was my favorite GDQ venue ever. This is in large part due to the real MVP of this GDQ, Coffee & Bagels, because of whom I managed to actually eat HEALTHY AT A CONVENTION for probably the first time ever. I was having 1-2 meals there a day. Anyways, the hotel was really nice, the space layout was good, the pool & other amenities. My hotel room group split the cost of a car rental and I honestly don't think it was worth it. I ate offsite 3 times total and could have ubered back and forth all of those for barely more than my portion of the cost of the car rental. Dairy Queen sure was Dairy Queen (I have no complaints). We ate at Perkin's twice and I really liked the food, but the service the second time was really, REALLY bad. Red Robin, similar to Dairy Queen, was in fact Red Robin.

Biggest issue with this hotel was the lack of signage and clear directions of how to get to event spaces, but that's an easily fixable issue. The layout of the practice and casual rooms was good. I actually ended up spending some time in the Smash room playing 4 with friends and watching Claris compete in the 4 tourney.

OTHER SOCIAL STUFF

I spent the largest portion of my GDQ with my roommates / polycule, particularly Violet. I had a ton of fun being with all of them and the time we spent as a group just chilling in the room watching runs was some of my favorite time at the event. The eternal difficulty of spending time with a poly group is division of attention - it's hard not to feel left out when others are getting the attention from your partners, but I think we made it work.

I went to the pool twice and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Mall Of America sucks. It's just a regular mall, but too big. Got mansplained really annoyingly by a guy working at the tabletop games store.

Went to the Todd Rogers room once, hugged people, and played Quiplash. A generally good time was had.

I didn't have much free time this GDQ all in all, but I genuinely don't mind since I love the work I do for the event.

NOTABLE RUNS I WATCHED

I watched a lot more runs than ever before at this GDQ. This was due in large part to how much time I spent in my room relaxing with my partners/metamours. Here's a rundown of everything I saw and how they rank 0-5 stars:

Meta Knightmare Ultra - **** - Kinnin did great! I had a lot of fun with this run's interview, too.

Resident Evil 4 - ***** - was watching idly on the TV in my room but got engrossed in this run. The commentary was stellar.

Ninja Gaiden Black - *** - same deal. This game is way less bad than I was expecting!

Already talked about Megaman blocks. I need to go back and watch Z4 and X2.

CVIII - *** - was good.

Metroid: Zero Mission - *** - watched this run since I was doing the post-interview. I couldn't hear the commentary. Race felt kinda one-sided, and I feel bad for DragonFangs because of hardware failure, but the runs were good. This game is neat! Interview was fun.

Monkeyed Ball - *** - some really neat levels. Monkey Ball speedruns never fail to impress.

Both Spider Man games were alright.

Batman Returns - ***** - LRock's performance on this run was spectacular. The run was great, the commentary was fantastic, and LRock's passion for the game was very clear. I'm super proud of him! Our interview was likewise really good.

Metal Gear Solid - **** - another comfy room watch. I was surprised that this game was practically the exact same game stylistically/genre-wise as Metal Gear MSX but in 3D, but I guess that's what I was expecting. I should play an MGS game, they look fun.

Club Drive - **** - saw it because was awake for Baby Game. It sure is a video game. Entertaining in sleep deprivation.

Bio Miracle Bokute Upa - ***** - holy shit, EON did AMAZINGLY. Casual marathon world record, killer commentary, and a ton of energy brought to the meme interview. I'm super glad I got/stayed up for this run.

Tar-Chan - **** - holy shit, aweglib, what the fuck is this game.

My first hosting block...

Xeodrifter - ** - JBuzzyBee was mad passionate about this game which I have a lot of respect for, the speedrun is neat, but the game is kinda lame. I'm bored of games that look like this one.

Titan Souls - ** - pretty much same feeling as Xeodrifter.

A Story About my Uncle - **** - surprisingly cool game. 3D grapple physics speedruns never fail to impress. Good job, TheRealVincentio!

Strider - *** - Strider.

The Legend of Zelda - **** - low% is impossible, but Lack is a beast. Mad props to BeeTeeas for finishing the run out.

Super Mario World - ***** - Reze did awesome. Excelllent comfy hotel room watch.

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe - **** - great job, AeonFrodo! Comfy run as always. Stayed up late to finish this one. 200cc is wild fast.

Kirby's Dream Land - **** - well done, EBC, and congrats on joining the "retired from KDL after a GDQ" club.

Kirby's Adventure - **** - still one of my alltime favorite speedruns. 100% was neat. Maybe I'll run this someday?

New Super Mario Bros. 2 - ** - the run was good, but I still find the New SMB games pretty lame.

RUNS I NEED TO WATCH LATER:

Catherine, Hob, TASbot stuff, Pac-Man 2 & the rest of Tar-Chan, Zero 4 & X2.

MY PANEL

I was on the How To Run a Marathon panel. We did pretty well! People seemed to like my parts of it. I wish we had requested more time, i think we needed it. I really liked having panels at GDQ and hope to see those return next event.

PERSONAL STUFF, YAY

So, some of you may have noticed I was a bit absent the last few days of GDQ, physically and emotionally. Some really rough stuff was/is happening that I'm not quite ready to talk about. It took most of my focus to not sob during my Kirby block hosting shift.

Astute observers may have noticed that I'm back in Rochester now when I said I would be going to Sweden for a while after this GDQ. I had to cancel that trip. Additionally, I will not be attending ESA since I cannot afford to get to Copenhagen for the event after cancelling my Sweden flights. I feel really bad about having to drop from hosting and my 3 runs (Megaman 5 race, Megaman 8, and TGM block), but sometimes life happens like that.

I'm dealing.

OVERALL THOUGHTS

This wasn't my favorite GDQ, but I had a lot of fun. I love my friends a lot, enjoyed my free time, and had fun with work.

I caught the GDFlu and feel like hot garbage so that kinda sucks.

GDQ power ranking:

S Tier: AGDQ2017, AGDQ2018
A Tier: AGDQ2016, SGDQ2016, SGDQ2018
>>>> POWER GAP <<<<
F Tier: SGDQ2017

THE FUTURE

As I said, I will not be attending ESA, but here's some other upcoming events:

GFA August - will probably be at this, where/whenever it is, since I'm not in Sweden. Yay!
Matsuricon - will be there most likely and I have a cool cosplay planned! Need to figure out how to make some speedruns happen.
BSB - we're still trying to find a hotel and I'm getting worried the event will be pushed back again or cancelled...
GDQx - this is a probably that will become a definitely if I'm a) working/volunteering or b) running. Not sure what I'm submitting yet.
GFA @ EGLX Winter - same weekend as GDQx, so looking unlikely. If I don't go to GDQx, I'll definitely work this.
AGDQ - a lot of people are asking if this can be now, but can we, like, wait ONE WEEK, and then let it be AGDQ? Please?

Here's what's coming up on the speedrunning docket:

Megaman - more 1-6 content in varying forms, especially grinding 3, 6(!), and 8. Dunno when I'll work on 7-10. Will 90% speedrun MM11.
NES Metroid - my next 12 hour challenge, probably. Excited!
Yoshi's Island - no date yet, but I do want to learn this for real.
The Girl and The Robot - will stream the rest of my casual play of this and probably speedrun it. I haven't watched the actual run yet, so that may change how I feel. This game is really neat and completely different than anything I've run.
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe = eh. Maybe.
Hex and I are still looking for co-op run suggestions.
TGM - honestly not feeling this, but I really should play more after how much I spent on arcade hardware...
Castlevania - still want to learn I and III Sypha but idk when I will.

SHOUTOUTS

The interview team - y'all are great and I love working with you. Hobz, you did excellent in your stepped-up role this time around.
The producer team - as I said, incredibly talented people, and I'm grateful we have you to support us.
Violet - I spent more time with you at this GDQ than anyone else, I think. You're pretty great!
Liz - I didn't spend enough time with you, but I love you lots! Hope you recover from early GDFlu soon.
Cassie & Kaylee - y'all are wonderful roommates and friends.
Claris - I really enjoyed spending time with you and I hope things start to get better for you soon. I hope you can find the help you need.
Kinnin & Bobby - S tier huggers and friends, and y'all's runs were amazing!
Gooby - thanks for Yoshi and putting up with my busy schedule :)
LRock - you did amazing, buddy!
Cat - it was awesome to meet and spend a day with you!
Skybilz - you continue to be one of my greatest inspirations in this community. Eventually, we'll find 1-on-1 time together at a GDQ.
Uko - <3
Everyone else - my memory sucks, but you deserve a shoutout. You're great! Yes, you! Even if you didn't attend GDQ!

TL;DR

Interviews, preshow, hosting, my panel, and MM9 commentary were awesome. I played a lot of Megaman, which was fun, and did my first MM1-6 run even if it was bad. I loved spending time in my room / with my roommates/polycule and going to the pool. Coffee & Bagels is the real MVP. If I spent time with you, you're cool and I enjoyed it. If I didn't, I wish I did. Personal life is kinda rough right now and I will not be attending ESA. Will probably go to GDQx. More Megaman speedruns for sure soon, and Hot Maybes to The Girl and The Robot, Castlevania, Yoshi's Island, and NES Metroid.

<3

- alexis