UnWanted - Director's Commentary

One of Kurt Vonnegut's famous tips on how to write a good short story is to "start as close to the end as possible". It sounds counter-intuitive at first, but it's a brilliant piece of advice that ensures the readers comprehend the gist of the narrative and the motivations of the protagonist before they waste any time reading something they might end up not enjoying.

So I'm just gonna ignore that advice for a second and go all the way back to 2002. My brother and I had been playing Ty the Tasmanian Tiger at a friend's house, and asked our mother for that game for Christmas. She, not being the best at English, instead of getting us Ty the Tasmanian Tiger, got us Taz the Tasmanian Devil. Close enough, I guess? That happy little accident (as well as, of course, the name of the game itself) is the origin of the movie's name – UnWanted. I love you, mom, bless your kind soul.

Sappiness aside, let's blast through the next couple of years. We played through the game, beating it, I might have replayed it once or twice throught the years, can't really remember for sure, to be honest. Then I got interested in speedrunning, tool-assisted runs and glitch-hunting around 2010, and tried my hands at a couple of games. In 2013, I looked at Taz: Wanted, saw a somewhat unoptimized record by my now good friend Jovine, and started playing this game seriously. I glitch-hunted, I strat-hunted, I routed the entire game from scratch, and only then I started doing runs. By 2014, the record was 1:05:43, by myself. I then entered college, which was a horrible, depressing period of my life that I don't particularly want to remember, so let's fast-forward to 2016, when I was slightly happier and returned to the community (I was so busy and stressed in those two years that I basically just abandoned my online persona for a while). In early 2017, I got interested in GoldenEye 007 and Perfect Dark speedruns and their community, and their talent and passion rejuvenated my passion for speedrunning. That was also when I first heard of kapap and kapap 2, and later that year kapap 3, speedrun hoards that really showed me the artistic and creative potential that speedrunning had. Future hoards such as PD, CenturyClub and k4 had always made me ponder: "Should I do a Taz hoard?". I knew it'd be a lot of effort, but I had plenty of ideas of times I could get and songs I could use, I just needed a reason to start it. And then I got one.

Backstory over, let's start talking about the actual runs now. We're in 2019 now, and I just got done recording a Looney Lagoon Perfect 100% run. You already know what happened afterwards, I mentioned it in the movie. I got that Ice Burg PB after not running that level for nearly a year, first try. The run was pretty bad, but I got both main HVEs and an okay OoB Clip after the Christmas Tree Sign, so it was good enough for a PB. And though the run was bad, the story was good, and that's what really matters for the unhoard. At the time, fellow ex-Taz runner IIuigi was streaming Osu!, and I heard that Cold As Ice remix there, and it fit pretty well, so I went with that.

At that point, the project's development name was Tazpap, in reference to the GE & PD hoards (in reference to the original kapap trilogy, the suffix -pap is used to indicate a hoard (e.g. Acepap would refer to a hoard by Ace, one of the top GE & PD runners)). It took me a surprisingly long time to come up with the name UnWanted, given that it's so simple and obvious. I guess that just means that I chose the perfect name, doesn't it? =P

Next was my Looney Lagoon 2:12.5 – a simple run with all the main HVEs, which hadn't been done at the time. It took me a while to decide what song to use, but I decided to go with Welcome DANGAN IsLand!!, from Danganronpa 2. I had been listening to that absolute banger at the time, and Looney Lagoon's summer beach aesthetic matched Danganronpa 2 fantastically. It was also really funny having a minute-long scene of a two-minute-long run (i.e. funny and creative editing). Surprisingly, it took me many months to decide that that would be the opening run of UnWanted. The reason I went with this run as the opener is both because of Taz's line (explaining that he had destroyed all the signs, and now needed to head for the exit, would help explain the gist of the game to someone who's never played Taz: Wanted before) and to contrast with the dark and gloomy intro. More on that later.

At the time, I started running both Cartoon Strip-Mine for sub-4, and Taz: Haunted 100% for a good enough time. Both runs would take me over an year to achieve. Instead, the next time I got was Tazland 0:51.5. I found two new optimizations that made me want to run this again: the wallride next to the spinpad, to reach the bridge respawn faster, and the out-of-bounds near the rolling logs to reach the final island respawn faster. I got that 51.5 in 20 minutes, and my jaw dropped when I saw that time. The music was once again an obvious choice – Off the Hook's Now or Never!, to match my 0:59.3's video from a year and a half prior.

Next were the vehicle minigames. I wanted something different than just one of the main ILs, so I decided to try those out. I started with the Granny Canyon minigame, as that was the hardest of the three to beat (I was trying to beat my emulator PBs). It was a miserable, despair-inducing two hours, but I got it. The Looningdale's minigame was first try (thankfully, as that minigame absolutely destroys your arm), and Museum took about an hour or so as well. I immediately knew I wanted to use an Initial D song, and was stuck between Deja Vu and Gas Gas Gas for a while. The latter ended up winning. As for the IRL scene on that run, I filmed it a few weeks later. Do not fear that I touched a shopping cart's handle with my bare hands: that scene was filmed in July 2019, before all of human society started its downward spiral. =)

So umm, what made me want to do 50/20 anyway? I don't even remember, it was so long ago. I'm glad I went through with it, even though it was quite stressful (try having Toy Freddy randomly scream at you for 20 hours, see if you like that). I immediately knew that that was going on UnWanted, even though it wasn't a Taz run, and it would be the most impressive run of them all, and no one watching it would even realize it. I hope it got people curious about the game, though (it's free if you want to play it), I really like it a lot, very fun. The music choice was between two Epic Touhou Remixes, and I went with the Venerable Ancient Battlefield remix – it was my favourite of the two, and it just fit better anyway. One little anecdote on Ultimate Custom Night: when I played it in 2018, back when it had come out, I was like "Bro, this game is actually so fun, wtf, game of the year so far, but Smash Ultimate is gonna surpass it unless it's delayed to next year or is somehow way worse than it should be, but it's extremely unlikely either of those is gonna happen lmao". AND GUESS WHAT HAPPENED? Yes, I think Smash Ultimate is trash, I never touched it again after Christmas 2018, Smash 4 is better (even with Bayonetta), and Ultimate Custom Night was 2018's Game of the Year, fight me.

Museum was next, and the reason I chose to run this level was pretty much just for the Egg Quarters reference, which was also a reference to my 4:29.3 Strip-Mine video (and I also wanted to improve my mediocre Museum PB). I somehow got that run in 20 minutes (have you noticed that I've been caking pretty much all these times?), and I still don't know how. Shoutouts to ZFG, I was watching his stream during that run (I paused for a long time before the Tunnel OoB because I was muting his stream, as to not get distracted by it). Took me like a year and a half to actually edit the run, because I had to record some voice lines (and I quite dislike my voice, like everyone else... at least it actually came out pretty well, all things considered).

I then did basically nothing between August 2019 and February 2020. Or at least, I can't really remember what I did during those months. I guess I just didn't feel like playing Taz for all those months, which is really nothing out of the ordinary for me. March 2020 was when I decided to do March of the Elephants – to stream at least an hour of Elephant Pong every day, during which I improved my Elephant Pong PB from 0:44.6 -> 0:43.0 -> 0:41.7 -> 0:41.1 -> 0:40.033 -> 0:40.000. By the end of the month, I was even less satisfied with my Elephant Pong PB than I was at the start, with how stubborn the sub-40 was. I played for ~38min after the month ended, and managed to get that unbelievable 0:38.8. Truthfully, it was rather bittersweet: the first 7-scare game – unbelievable, all I needed was an 8-scare game with at least 2/3 good animations, but I got 1/3 twice – but that 7-scare game had 0/3 good animations, and the 2nd goal was the 1-scare goal strat on a failed typical 2-scare goal strat – something exceedingly rare, but in actuality slower. I basically got the slowest 7-scare game imaginable – the fastest possible one being around a 0:36.3. Nevertheless, I had finally achieved the sub-40, and what better music to showcase it to the world than Toto's Africa. During March of the Elephants, I would change my stream title every day to something dumb and/or witty, and March 30th's title was in fact "I bless the elephants down in Africa". The editing was a lot of work, but it came out excellently.

Motivated by my pachydermic success (and from all the newcomers lighting a fire under my feet), I started wrapping up all the times I still wanted to get. First on the list was Haunted 100%. Not much to say about this one, just played well, did a new strat (sniping the Golden Sam switch) and bingo bango bongo. Self Control was the song I chose because it's really good and because of its lyrics, which relate to the starting IRL scenes of UnWanted. I had the cute idea of adding the fast-forward symbol during the sped-up parts of the run, which Difixed later emulated on his Bank of Samerica run – that added a bit of flourish to an otherwise simple edit.

Nobody cares about Granny Canyon. And, unfortunately, that includes me as well. I came up with the idea of using a Portuguese song first, then realized that Portuguese music was awful, and that's when I knew I had to run Granny Canyon (not the other way around, as some might have presumed). I didn't actually want to pick a bad song, I wanted an actually decent one that fit the run. This was harder than anticipated, as I don't actually know a lot of Portuguese songs. I went with "O Amor é Assim" – it's pretty good, and fits the run impressively well if you know Portuguese (I'm not gonna explain how here, this commentary is already long enough, go learn the language if you really care! =^) ). The editing was also based on my thinking process for the song I wanted to use. Though I am very happy with how the scene turned out, I am not at all satisfied with the run I got. I missed the Invisible Water Tank glitch and the ending was really slow. I definitely want to improve this time one of these days.

Alright, it's time for the two main runs: Looningdale's and Cartoon Strip-Mine. As of writing this (March 2021), I've been speedrunning Taz: Wanted for ~7.5 years, and I've been following speedrunning and glitch-hunting communities for over 10 years. I say this because I love smugly bragging about how much more intelligent I am about this extremely niche topic than all of you (/s), but also to make the point that I've seen and experienced a lot of things, in all sorts of different communities. One of those things being the feeling of losing one of your records. Those feeling can range from relief and hilarity that one of your awful times finally got beaten, motivating you to finally improve it, to wrath and depression, from losing a record you've invested hundreds of hours into. As there is enough toxicity and cynicism in the world (and especially on the internet), I always do my best to congratulate the new record holder, and to motivate the previous record holder to improve their skills and take the record back. This goes for myself as well: I never cared too much if my own records got beaten, I knew that I could always improve and take it back, or that I got outskilled, and lauded the runner that beat me. Well, maybe not always...

On September 29th, 2020, Cap.Adam beat my Looningdale's record (2:58.1) by getting a 2:56.3 of his own. Truthfully, my record there wasn't great, but for some reason his run just looked way worse to me. I could only think "How is this run even sub-3, it looks so bad". If I had to say why I felt so strongly about this bop in particular – which was far from the first one – was due to the video I made for my run, which is still my favourite music run I've ever made, even after UnWanted – not so much for the run itself. Regardless, it was time to strike back, and this time I would make sure I'd give them a run they wouldn't soon forget...

The clip into the mall area is not new, I found it in 2013/14, and the same goes for the triangle sign clip down to the TV Store Sign. Why was that never in any route? Well, because the routing from there got kinda slow. You had to go to the battery and then to the Stadium Sign, which was overall slower than stealing the shopping cart and driving it there. Also, the clips are pretty inconsistent. A few years later, in 2017, I found the Battery Clip, for Low%. Again, it was considered a bit too inconsistent, and would still not be used, even in ILs. And at the time, I was thinking how awkward the routing would be if you want to enter the mall area after the Battery Clip. It wasn't until I realized how much less awkward it was to enter the stadium after the Battery Clip, that all the pieces started falling into place. Mall Clip: that's faster; Triangle Sign Clip: that's faster; Battery Clip + HVE: double faster; charge spin to stadium: oh baby. The best part about this route is the Geometry Triathlon Clip: you clip through a wall, then you clip through a floor, then you clip through a ceiling.

Though the route was cool, attempts were painful. The second clip was okay, but the other two were very inconsistent. And that means it was frustrating. Now imagine I get a run with all three clips and it's pretty quick, and now I still have to destroy 5 signs, and I'm not as practiced on the latter half of the run, and my brain is still half-frustrated from an hour of trying to go through walls. Nevertheless, I persevered, and settled on a 2:41.1. Though this time eventually got beaten between UnWanted and me writing this, this route still stands as the fastest we know. I didn't get any of the main HVEs in my PB – and there are four of them – plus my Mall Clip wasn't too great, I can still save a few seconds there. All in all, this level can still be ~20 seconds faster, and my legacy on the level shall forever remain.

I don't have as much to say about the editing. I just picked a song that I was really into at the time, and added that IRL scene to add to the solemnity of the run and the movie as a whole. As you may have noticed, the movie goes through a whole day: walking home at night, going to the park in the morning, going to the beach in the afternoon, then gazing at the moon at dusk. The credits also have a night scenery in the background. I will leave the theorizing to the viewer – just know that I tried to add a little story to the movie. A simple story, but a story nonetheless.

That was great and all, but I still had Sub-4 Strip-Mine left to get, and this time there no were excuses: enough putting it off, let's go for it. I timed different strats, mainly for the Platform Sign, I weighed several different options so as to not lose time going for extremely hard strats when sub-4 would be doable without them, I practiced a lot, then I got to doing runs. I think this time took me around 50 hours of all that combined. I managed to get a 4:02.1 on Xbox and I almost gave up there. So close, yet so far. I can give up there, right? I have that Looningdale's time, that can serve as the finale, I'll get sub-4 another time. Well, let's try GameCube for a bit and see if it's better there. Four days later, "I GOT A 4:01.9, ARE YOU KIDDING ME!?"

I somehow didn't give up there, and I'm glad I didn't, because that same night I finally got it: 3:58.7.

The run was amazing. I got all three Projector Sign HVEs, followed immediately by a great Drill Sign Spit Clip HVE. I paused after that HVE every run to see what my time was, and it was a 0:20.3 on my PB. My fastest time there was 0:20.1, and my average time there was ~0:29.5. That's how insane my start was. I missed the Basement HVE, which loses a whopping ~14 seconds, but that just goes to show how insane the rest of the run was. In my planning, I said I'd do Piggy Bank Shield if I didn't get the Basement HVE, as it would otherwise be impossible to get sub-4. Well, that was still true, except that I could get sub-4 without both by having an insane start like the one I got. Instead, I went for a strat I found while routing: speeding up with the conveyor belt, then going down the normal path. My nerves were through the roof during this part, I had gotten to this part on quite a few sub-4-pace runs before, and then choked the Platform Sign Snipe like an idiot. Thankfully, I practiced that a lot and got much more consistent at it – and as a reward, I got the Platform Sign HVE on my run, which saves you from having to tilt back the platform due to the awful camera after the sign is normally destroyed. The out-of-bounds clip after the Water Maze Sign was also very troll, but that was a bit my fault, my camera wasn't the way it should be for that clip to work best. That clip, however, immediately made me switch my strategy for the final Bubble Gum Sign HVE – I was going to PHVE it, since I had lost a sub-4 run to missing that HVE, but now I had to IHVE it or I'd lose too much time. I got it, then had one final HVE before being home free: the Elevator HVE: Not nearly as difficult or time-wasting, but hard to get when your nerves have left the stratosphere and the blind movement in case you fail it is really stupid. Plus, I wanted to do a Rant at the end to mirror the sub-5. And I got it.

If you watch the raw footage, you'll see that I stay at the Level End screen for almost two minutes. I was taking some photos and videos of the endscreen, to keep for myself.

Some runs take a bit more time to find a good music for them, but I had the perfect music planned since mid-2019: 物凄い勢いでけーねが物凄いうた, by Halozy. This is a crazy song, with a crazy title that even though I don't really know much about Japanese, I know that it is basically pointless to try and translate. It is the most high-energy song I know, and a perfect fit for the intensity that is Cartoon Strip-Mine. I apologize if your weeb-tolerance is low and you don't enjoy it as much as other runs in the movie, but I chose that song for myself, and I think we can all agree that that is what's best for Art. I also asked Jovine to voice act the first few lines, and despite my awful directing, he gave me some fantastic takes.

Having obtained all the times I needed, it was time to edit everything. But before that, I asked my good friends Jovine, Mitsuray, and Difixed if they wanted to guest star in UnWanted. Jovine and Mitsuray were busy, but Difixed accepted, and he did not disappoint. I suggested various levels that I had not done, in order to not be too repetitive, and he delivered. Less than 24 hours after my Strip-Mine run, he had a Bank of Samerica run ready to go. A few days later, full-game Any%. A few weeks later, Looningdale's Any%. That exact same day, Ice Burg Any%. What. Then Looney Lagoon, then Hindenbird, then Zooney Tunes, dude! Thanks to him, we managed to get a run of every main level, which I initially wanted at first, but never got in the mood to improve my Zooney Tunes PBs. He also delivered a full-game Any% run, which was almost the first full-game run in an unhoard, if not for Amalgamates literally two days earlier. Insane times, great music, amazing editing. What a hero, could not have asked for a better teammate in this project.

While editing, I took a few breaks to get some runs I still wanted to get, but I wouldn't necessarily wait on them. One of them was Meloetta in Pokémon Picross. It should be obvious why I went for that, shouldn't it? Picross is a bit annoying to speedrun (and to record), both by design and the game's inner mechanics, but I wasn't going for an insane time, just a clean-looking run. My goal time was 0:24, but I somehow skipped it and got a 0:23. How do you even skip a one second gap in a game like this that rounds to the full second? Must have been from some of the lines I drew. I was like, "Yeah baby, let's do this!"

Another time that almost didn't make it in was Dodge City 1:12.7. That was gonna be my first run after UnWanted, had I not gotten it, but I'm glad I did, I think it ended up being one of the most memorable runs of the whole movie. Everyone watching it live was in complete shock and utter disbelief at the new route. The music might have contributed to the memorability, quite a shock even to me that I went with such a "normie" mainstream song, but hey, it's a pretty good song, isn't it? Again, I wasn't going for an insane time, just the world record (lol). I knew this time would get beaten within the week, I just wanted a decent run with the new route, and I knew that such a run was enough for the record. I managed to skip 1:13 too, never seen it and never will (wow, two paragraphs in a row with Streets 1:12 references, truly remarkable!)

I spent a lot of time in December and January editing the movie, so let's quickly go through some of the notable moments of that process, starting with the logo. Graphic design is NOT my passion, but I have to say: the logo turned out actually incredible. Hard to believe that I was the one who made it (well "made" it might not be exactly right, I used a lot of parts and tools from the internet, so let's go with "put it together" instead).

The park scene was filmed in January, unlike the beach and shopping cart scenes which were filmed in Summer 2019. I avoided filming any people in the park scene both for storytelling reasons and to avoid any reference to the current pandemic – I wanted UnWanted to be timeless, not timely. I can perfectly understand that hoarding speedrun times and quarantining go together like bread and butter (shoutouts to Project Quarantine btw), but that wasn't the story I wanted UnWanted to tell.

The credits scene is probably the coolest part of the movie, I love, love, love how it turned out. I'd like to thank one of my IRL friends for the music (I found it thanks to him), it's an amazing song and fits the tone of the movie perfectly. Took me a hell of a long time to edit it though, maybe like 6 hours in total or something. The ratio of appreciation/effort for credits scene is miniscule, so try to show more appreciation for them!

At long last, after 22 months in development, the movie was finally done. Fun fact: it takes around 22 months for an elephant to give birth. I just can't get away from elephants, can I? All I had to do now was set a date, send out invites, and premiere it to the world!

The premiere went off without a hitch. All the homies were there (well, almost all the homies, we miss you Sponged...), we watched some crazy runs, we jammed to some sick tunes, and we all had a great time!

Final thoughts: UnWanted took a long time to make, and it was a lot of effort, but it turned out better than I ever imagined it would. I don't think I'll ever make something this complex again, but I still want to make Art through Speedrunning. The future is a blank canvas, and I hope I can paint something beautiful with it. I hope UnWanted helped you appreciate the kinds of things that can be done with speedrunning, and I hope this inspires people to do creative projects with speedrunning one day.

Anyway, I'm kinda sick of looking at Taz. I'm gonna go play Touhou for a bit.

~ CycloneFN