2021 Review / 2022 Plans

Hey all!

I wanted to review my speedrunning/streaming/gaming year and also talk about the future of my stream and my speedruns going into 2022. This is probably going to be quite long so grab some food/drink =P


The year started in possibly the best way, which was my very first speedrun at a games done quick event with my favorite speedrun of all Diddy Kong Racing 100%. Honestly, i could have not asked for a better run than what happened (maybe except getting a new WR live). The run was great, commentary was great (shoutouts to TridentTail, SweenerDog and Gizamaluke) and reception was great. I got so many possitive message on my twitter and on my stream and honestly it was quite overwhelming (in a good way) and did not really know how to get this much possitive attention as i am usually someone that like to just do my own things and not be the center of attention. But it made me so happy that something i was part of got so many people happy. It also felt like a really big relief as i tried to get into a gdq for many years and it kinda felt at that moment that i had done everything a speedrunner could dream. Shortly after that, i also got the very first 1:44 in DKR 100% but then i had to switch to another game: Donkey Kong 64.

See, i had submited to a marathon by NoResetMarathon, which is a group that runs speedrunning marathon like GDQs but is based here in quebec. So i usually end up submitting some runs to help out. But i ended up submitting DK64 because i wanted to force myself to learn No Levels Early on VC. The reason i did this, is that i thought i could bypass my dislike of the input delay and get used to it if i had a end goal of doing a marathon and also trying to close in on WR, but i just ended up REALLY disliking the game even more because of WiiU VC issues. So after the marathon run, i turned off my wii u and to this day have not done DK64 again. It might come back in the future but it would 100% be on N64.

This is also around the time i stopped streaming. At that point in time, i believed i could only really stream speedruns, and since i was not doing DKR or DK64 i stopped. Looking back, this was a dumb decision since my stream was actually doing pretty well, thanks to the influx of viewers i got from my succesfull GDQ run. But i just kinda gave up on it and went full time into playing a game i had been playing for over a year: WoW Classic. I went and played Phase 6 (Naxx) to death and ended up also playing the start of TBC Classic an insane amount. I did eventually get tired of it around the same time the DKR Time Trial tourmanment started.

So the tournament main organizer is actually me. Even tho i dont play time trials all that much for a few reasons, i always wanted to do something for the folks that do, since most of DKR's player base is actually playing time trials instead of grinding speedruns. Unfortunaly, litteraly day 2 of the tournament, i did lose my last grand-parent (not covid related) and my mood for obvious reasons was not great. Sweener and the rest of the DKR64Races Crew did take up on my duties of running the tourney and i just want to say i appreciate it alot and it did help me since i could deal with that and not think to much about the tourney. In the end, the tourney was a success and i somehow ended up winning the tournament again, staying undeafeated in both editions of the tourney. I do plan on bringing it back at some point, but it will have a vastly different format most likely.

So by this time, it was about the start of august, i had plans to come back to streaming, but my setup was all messed up, the audio had a ton of buzzing and the video was wierd, ended up basicly duplicating my entire setup (except capture card/retrothink) and it would still not work probably until one day it just did. And to this day i have no idea what happened. so i ended up not streaming for all of august because of that. Before we go into septembre, i need to talk about what i did instead during august.

So i used to play this game called Trackmania Nation Forever way back in the day, and in 2020, they release the lastest game in the series. I  had been playing maybe 2-3 times a month of average until that summer, but that august there was a event i always wanted to try. That event is Kackiest Kacky. For those of you that dont know what it is (which is probably most of you haha), it is a month long competition where you have to try and complete 75 of some of the most ridicilously hard and/or lucky maps that often exploit game mechanics/bugs that you would not see in regular maps) I ended up playing the game multiple hours every day of that month grinding on those maps and honestly it was some of the most fun gaming i had all year. Ended up finishing 32/75 maps, which for a first timer like myself is actually pretty good. So that pretty much made me addicted to the game and i play the game on most days ever since. The reason im talking about that which i will touch in the 2022 goal section, is that i will most likely start to stream this game along side regular speedrun content, but more on that later.

So in september, i started to grind DKR 100% again, it was very hard at the start since i was no where near the level i was at in January, but by mid October things were looking alot better. Ended up getting a new WR in late November which was nice but no where near my goal of 1:43. During this entire time, the support for my stream was quite crazy. I honestly expected to go back to being a 10/20 viewers streamer like i always had been until AGDQ 2021, but even after multiple months of not grinding, people came back and the stream grew alot. All of this made it so that on Decemeber 6th, i became a twitch partner. It honestly still feels kind of surreal that there is so much people that want to watch my speedruns and hang out with me. Never thought i would actually reach the point of becoming a partner. But thats all thanks to you guys. If you are reading this, you are probably part of why it happened. So thanks alot for supporting!

At the end of the year, these are the few pb's i got:

DKR 100%: 1:44:34 (Was WR but now 2nd)
DKR All Trophy Races: 23:26 (Was WR but now 2nd)
DK64 No Levels Early VC: 2:18:31 (24th meh)

Plans for 2022:

Speedrunning
-DKR
	-100% WR / 1:43 (or better if i feel like it)
	-ATR WR /23:0x
-Learn new speedgames (potentially new 3d kirby game?, mario games? not sure yet)
-Challenge myself to explore new consoles/games and trying to beat certain goals/times in a limited amount of time
-Get another speedrun that i feel confortable/good enough to showcase in big marathons

Streaming/Content
-Finally fill all of my emotes slots
-Start streaming non speedrunning content (such as trackmania/community games for exemple)
-Start creating content around speedrunning outside of twitch (mainly youtube)
-Stop being afraid to stream games that i dont usually stream.
-Keep improving the quality of the stream
-Be better about going live earlier than later in the day and more consistent with how often i go live.

Thats about it for 2021/plans for 2022. Sorry if there were mistakes in my text, i try my best with the english knowleadge i have. I hope yall can forgive me for that! :)

I hope yall have a good 2022!, take care :)