Speedruns - 2022 Review & 2023 Preview

Speedruns - 2022 Review & 2023 Preview

Ultimately streamed less in 2022 than in 2021 due to various life circumstances, which led to less speedrunning in general. This review will be quite a bit shorter as I only PB'd in 3 games over the course of the year.

1.1 Super Mario Sunshine - Any% (3DAS) | 1:20:47 on Jan. 9th

Was just something to do and to fill the leaderboards. Playing on 3DAS version is more annoying in general due to forced memory card menuing and some weird button prompt changes within the game. The run itself was actually not bad for a no-reset, but had a not great Pinna, Noki 4, or Corona. Probably will never actively attempt to beat this time.

1.2 Super Mario Sunshine - 120 Shines (GCN) | 3:30:35 on Mar. 1st, 3:28:57 on Mar. 6th, 3:24:36 on Mar. 8th

During my usual Sunshine activity this year, I was coerced into joining 120 Tuesdays, which led to the first PB of 3:30:35 (prior PB of 3:34:57 set on Mar. 9th, 2021). This in general was just from playing better at the Any% portion of the run and updating some strats to save easy time, though there were a number of deaths throughout the run. Following that with a sense of "120 is a good category and I should play it" motivation, I got the 3:28 a little bit later with MORE deaths than the previous PB, but still saved time on route memorization and other large timesaves. Lastly, I put the memory and consistency together to achieve the 3:24 time, only dying once in the run. This run was a good improvement over the last two, and under 10 minutes from where I was a week prior. 120 takes a lot of energy and time to learn & be consistent at, so someday I will get a time I'm content with.

2. Tokyo Xanadu eX+ - NG True Ending (Easy, PC) | 3:44:33 on Sep. 10th [WR]

This was my first run of TX eX+, after having spent the prior three weeks playing the game casually and learning the route (for Normal). Normal has some obnoxious boss fights that can wall you pretty hard, so I opted to get more acquainted with the route on Easy. This led to overages on items that you could opt to skip since Easy is surprisingly significantly more player friendly than Normal. Lots of menu optimization and routing could be done for Easy. This run is only "WR" because there weren't any runs for this difficulty prior (Normal WR is 3:42:42 for reference, with NG After Story having an even better time than that due to how the category works). I don't know if I'll ever return to this game just due to how long it is and how tough it can be (also my game crashed 2.5 hours in on my 2nd run LMAO), but it was very fun to properly learn and run an ARPG, which is outside my usual realm of platformers (though this game does have it's sections of platforming lol).

3. Luigi's Mansion - 100% | 1:42:09 on Oct. 31st

Annual Halloween run of LM, opted to play 100% for the 3rd year in a row to redeem myself from last year's run. Still mostly just playing the game with what knowledge I have and not using a route (which money routing is extremely important to 100%). Somehow got a 1-cycle Bogmire (hard) and 1-cycle Boolossus (not that hard but Boos can troll occasionally) which was pretty impressive, but had possibly one of the worst Bowser fights you can have without actually dying lol. Fun category, fun game, but will probably stay an annual thing for now.

Other Achievements/Notes

Super Mario Sunshine Bingo League Season 4 - Tied 7th place in Division 1 (2-5 season record, 2-3 main season, 5th seed in D1, 0-2 during playoffs) | I do want to acknowledge this for a few reasons. First, after evaluating my season, I have come to the conclusion that I am a decent bingo player, but I let mentality ruin my gameplay and mood too often. I definitely underperformed and could have not only gone 4-1 in the main season, but outplaced my seed in Division 1. Unfortunately towards the middle and end of the season there was a lot of struggling with mentality, depression, impostor syndrome and a bunch of other boring stuff that made me act poorly. I regret this a lot, but I'm going to use it to move forward in life.

And that's it. 6 PBs over 4 categories in 3 games. There were a few PokéPark Wii: Pikachu's Adventure IL PBs spread in there in January and October, but not the content I'm aiming to cover on the yearly review. As time goes on, it gets harder for me to sit down, start stream, and do speedruns, even when I do have motivation to want to be speedrunning something. I hope to find a balance with this and other life responsibilities this coming year now that I don't have to move twice in the span of 3 months.

---2023 Preview---

As I just mentioned, I'd like to find a balance with mood, speedruns, and life this year, so that I can somewhat actively stream more often. There's a number of games I'd like to learn, just forcing myself to do it and play it is the part I'm stuck at for now.

There is one plan that I will solidly confirm as of now, though. Last year, I made a pastebin after my run ended in the SMS Bingo League season about how Sunshine has been burning me out quicker and quicker every year, to the point where I'm not sure if I'll actually be able to mentally handle it again soon. But the stubbornness in me doesn't want to just "give up" like I did, so I reasoned with myself and this is what I came up with.

At some point later this year (at a time that doesn't coincide with bingo because playing Bingo and RTA was a poor choice), I will give it another solid go at getting a time I'm actually proud of and/or content with in every main category (Any%, 79 Shines, 96 Shines, 120 Shines, All Blue Coins) and maybe some category extensions as well. If I truly do burn out this time like I expected last year, then I want to end on something I can look back on and be proud of for once with this game, instead of feeling remorse and bitterness for with either how I interact with the game, or how things end up in various communities. I want to feel that same rush that I did when I started speedrunning with Sunshine in 2014.

The goals may change, but just as a starting line, this is what I want to aim for in each category:

Any%: 1:17:xx or better
79 Shines: Sub 2:30:00, bare minimum (hard category to gauge, haven't ran it since 2016)
96 Shines: Sub 2:45:00, bare minimum (hard category to gauge, haven't ran it since 2016)
120 Shines: Sub 3:15:00 to start
All Blue Coins: Sub 2:00:00 to start.

Some of these are more competitive, some of them are a bit softer. I still plan on being an NTSC-U warrior for this game till I stop playing, lol. I might meet all of them, I might meet only one, but regardless I want to be happy with learning to improve again.