Brief Speedrunning History

Late 2013: Start watching A/SGDQ VODs. It's okay but just for watching. My favorite run is Dram's SMW 11 Exit Run.


I watched AGDQ 2014 live and I still had the same mentality until I saw the F-Zero GX run by CGN. Something about the intense speed, the high skill, and the crowd reaction made me want to try out speedrunning myself.

After that marathon I decided to start running Megaman V gameboy because there were no super solid RTAs of it and it was a game that I really liked anyway. I ran it for a while and submitted it to SGDQ 2014. Somehow that got in? it was a race with Mrcab. Because I was so new to speedrunning I didn't really know how to prepare for a marathon (SGDQ was the first marathon I ran in period, live or not). So I just reset a bunch on the first stage. Because of this I was unprepared for full runs and my run at the marathon was shoddy. After that as I learned more and more about the proper methods of speedrunning I really started to hate that run, and wanted to get a run into another GDQ to get a runback, but we'll get there.

SGDQ 2014 was overall meh for me. The venue was good for me, even though I know a lot of other people had problems with it. I met some cool people there (mrcab, pj, crak_atak, others I'm blanking on rn). I went with my mom/sis and stayed in the room with them which was meh but I didn't know anyone at the time so it was okay.

A fun fact, directly after the Megaman V gameboy run was The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures. I didn't know ANYTHING about this run at the time of SGDQ and was really only into platformer speedruns to FSA didn't intrest me. In later 2014 though I started to watch more Zelda speedruns and wanted to try it out myself. I thought FSA would be a really unique run to try so I gave it a shot. I learned the game and did my first few runs and met some people in the speedrunning community that I still consider to be my best speedrunning friends in the #FSA IRC (Z, Dan, Yadra, Hope, Mage, Toad). 2015 was really the year I played FSA a lot. FSA was my main game for all of 2015, I did dabble in Knytt Stories and Iji, two really cool indie runs. Knytt Stories I grinded out later in the year for 16:44, one of my greatest speedrunning accomplishments that I'm extremely proud of. Iji I didn't take as far but it's still a good game.

Really late in 2015 I started to run Aria of Sorrow. This would be my main speedgame for the rest of 2016. I mostly ran Soma All Bosses in the beginning but I eventually branched out to other categories as well. On a whim I decided to submit Four Swords Adventures and Aria of Sorrow to NASA (North American Speedrunner Assembly) 2016. Both of these runs got in so i went to that and it was a very interesting experience to go to a small marathon like that. I hung out with people I consider to be good friends like ace, trog, woofer, and chris (zulice). My runs there were very good and I'm proud of the work I did there. After NASA I decided to hang up FSA for a while. I had my time down to a 2:15 which is extremely good considering the game's difficulty and I was willing to mostly call it quits there.

While all this was happening, I submitted games to GDQs. I'd submitted Knytt Stories, Aria of Sorrow, FSA, and Iji all to GDQs at some point and had never been accepted. However I submitted Aria of Sorrow Soma All Bosses to SGDQ 2016 and it got accepted. In the months of May and June I did a no reset run every day even though I had to deal with working a job and finishing up high school on top of that. Finally in July I went to Minnesota to do the run.

Minor side note here, the trip to SGDQ 2016 was the first time travelling on my own, I went with my parents to SGDQs 2014/5 and to NASA so that was also a very exciting experience for me. I also earned all the money for the trip myself instead of having it gifted to me by parents/friends which made the whole trip very gratifying.

At SGDQ I finally got to meet two of my really good friends, Ham and Z, for the first time in real life. I also got to room with Danray (who I consider my best speedfriend [yes I realize how dumb that sounds w/e]) again which was great as always. My run at SGDQ was also extremely satisfying. I got a good time for the category and showed off all the major tricks first try. The donation incentive for glitch demo was also met and that got met with a very positive response. I'm eternally grateful that I was given that amazing opportunity and it's something I'll remember forever. I also did couch commentary for FSA by zmaster which was great. That GDQ was also the GDQ of R U N N Y E G G and unholy anime. Overall, the months of May/June/July 2016 were the greatest ever. I turned 18, finished High School, and finally got my redemption for my frankly awful SGDQ 2014 run.

After SGDQ I decided that I wanted to take Aria of Sorrow further. I aimed (and am still aiming) for complete mastery of the game. I took the Any% No 0HP Glitch record and brought the time below 14 minutes, eventually under 13:30 even. I brought glitchless down from 43 minutes to 36 minutes, I became the 5th person to finish a run with the 0HP glitch route, and I gained an immense level of knowledge about the game's mechanics that led me to become even further skilled at the game. Most importantly, I routed a ton of meme categories B). I guess this part sounds like I'm bragging and yeah I guess I am but I also feel as if I've earned it in a way.

I didn't get anything into AGDQ 2017 unfortunately which really stung because I got a taste of what running in a modern GDQ is like. I am hopeful for SGDQ 2017 though. I'm not gonna end this pastebin with a speed promise or anything I just wanted to say that I'm excited about the future of speedrunning, both for me and speedrunning at large.