#PastebinMonday 12/04/2023 What is Speedrunning? Edition

'Sup, doods!

Can we talk about speedrunning for a second?

When I discovered this pastime ten years ago, I was attracted to the prospect of challenging yourself in a video game armed only with yourself and your controller. I also wanted to renew my interest in competing with others in Pokémon Puzzle League, the game I had obsessed with more than any other in my entire life, because I had no one to compete with. Anywell, the appeal of speedrunning to my sensibilities was to be able to show the world how good I was at the games that I had been playing so often. All I needed was a TV, a game, a console, a controller, and a way to send my video to my computer. I already had four of them things so the extra investment into a capture card was minimal. This way, I could show everyone what I've been up to with my life and reduce as much doubt about my ability as I could.

As time passes, emulators have gotten a lot better at playing the games that I grew up with—and at enabling the programming of inputs to be better than human play while passing off the gameplay as human. In addition, time has made the authentic games and consoles harder to find and acquire. Officially licensed emulators like Nintendo's Virtual Console have made attempts to make authentic experiences more accessible, but unofficial fanmade emulators are the future of consuming these retro games. To ensure that competition between unofficial emulators and official emulators and authentic hardware is fair, game communities need to set rules on what emulators can be used and how they can be used. It is during a rules discussion affecting emulators that one of my colleagues confronted me with this notion:

“Unofficial or official, who gives a shit?”

Not gonna lie, doods. This triggered me and my sensibilities.

I will avoid naming names for the sake of not brigading on decent people—the people in the know 100% know what this is about—but there is a rule in a game I have played being considered to allow a battery save to skip a four minute unskippable intro sequence at the start of the run (with the necessary time adjustment to the run for comparison's sake). Since battery saves can't be imported into the aforementioned Virtual Console games without custom homebrew, an option was also suggested to allow those runs to start from a particular Restore Point. It's the same principle as using an unofficial emulator's save state, but within an officially licensed product so a degree of developer intended authenticity is still retained.

Not that this person cared. It's all the same to them. Also, plot twist: this person doesn't run the Virtual Console version of the game. This person runs the original version of the game in an emulator installed on the console that the Virtual Console is native to, via homebrew. They were needing help setting up a save state within this emulator and not the Virtual Console restore point. They had no idea that they were not one and the same.

Did I mention that this person is a moderator of the speedrun leaderboard?

They were trying to set up this save state, never realizing that it had nothing to do with the considered rule, only to declare once it was explained the hoops they would have to jump through to replace the battery save on their emulator that it's too complicated and they hate it, despite universal support of the rule from the rest of the active community.

I'd rather not go into the specific circumstances any further, but all I will say is that this “if I can't have it, no one can” attitude rubbed me the wrong way and gave me big “That'll be a yikes from me, dawg” vibes. I wasn't mad. I was disappointed. It's causing me to think more about what we're doing in this speedrunning thing. There's a delicate line to tread between authenticity and accessibility and recent speedrunning developments have me wondering where the line should be nowadays. See: Mario Sunshine.

It's funny, doods. Looking back, I realized that I interacted with this line ten years ago. In the heyday of SpeedRunsLive, cyghfer of Mega Man 2 fame led a group of runners that did regular races of Pokemon Trading Card Game for the Game Boy. I remember those regular races because I was IN many of those regular races. Those VODs are long lost to time. I should revisit that game.

...

As I was saying, even back then, Pokemon Trading Card Game was addressing this line. If you haven't played the game, all you need to know is that the game starts with an interactive tutorial that you cannot skip. It's not straight button mashing, but it's not particularly interesting gameplay, either. This tutorial lasts EIGHT MINUTES. Imagine starting every speedrun of this game mashing buttons and going through minimal motions for eight minutes straight. Imagine starting every speedrun race of this game with this sequence. Doesn't sound interesting to do, does it? Spoiler alert: it's not. For the races, we would agree to put a particular battery save made right after the tutorial in our emulator and start each race by loading that save. Did it give a real advantage over playing on console? Not really. You start playing the interesting parts of the game sooner, but it doesn't make for a faster speedrun time.

I had no problem with starting the run from a little ways in because it was something you could even set up on console. With how the TCG run operates, you don't need to make a new save during the run and have to make a new one to start another run.

How much further are speedrunners willing to go nowadays? Emulator save states? You can't do that on the original consoles. Save states are, by default, banned on all speedrun.com leaderboards unless otherwise stated. Any of you know any exceptions? I can't think of any right now. Then again, it's 11:30 PM as I write this part of the update and I have work in the morning. I better wrap this up.

As someone who enjoys thinking critically and has enjoyed this pastime for the past ten years, I can't help but wonder how long it will take before I see something in the community that has me thinking:

What is speedrunning?

Today's (permanent) extra streaming goals (actual priority is in constant flux):

Goal #5: script and record footage for my Puzzle League tutorial series. I have some scripts left to touch up before feeling comfortable with moving on to recording gameplay. Then I will need to record my talking points and edit it all together. This is the big thing I hope to get done before the next tournament.
Goal #6: clean up my own stream layout. I am brainstorming how I want the final theming to be. I probably want to give people multiple options, maybe allow spending bits to change the look. I don't have anything written down yet. I don't expect to get to this anytime soon.
Goal #7: maybe make a universal LPS broadcast layout. I have a base, but perhaps I should stylize one for the LPS brand. Let's just say I have plans. Hopefully I wouldn't over-homogenize it like SpeedGaming did. I think I actually need to focus on this ahead of
Goal #8: release the Puzzle League tutorial series YouTube shorts once a day until they're all done. I really do think I need to time the release of the series with a ramping up of my streaming schedule so that I can take advantage of whatever there is to gain from releasing the shorts.

Streams are on hold until I accomplish these goals. Anything I decide to do will be of the guerilla variety and have very little notice. There would probably have to be community races of some sort in order to get this to happen.

In case you missed the video schedule I posted before:

(all releases at 7pm EST unless otherwise indicated)
12/4 (TODAY) - You Need Luck to Beat This (Or: Welcome to the Sub-5 Lottery) [Yu-Gi-Oh! The Falsebound Kingdom]
12/7 - I'm Not Allowed to Chain - Normal Edition (Or: PPL Normal With Combos Only) [Pokémon Puzzle League]
12/11 - Puzzle League Runner Improves in Puyo (Or: Speedrunning is Better With Friends) [Kirby's Avalanche]
12/14 - I'm Not Allowed to Chain - Hard Edition (Or: PPL Hard With Combos Only) [Pokémon Puzzle League]
12/18 - From One Lottery to Another (Or: From One Prison to Another) [Yu-Gi-Oh! The Falsebound Kingdom]
12/21 - I'm Not Allowed to Chain - V-Hard Edition (Or: PPL V-Hard With Combos Only) [Pokémon Puzzle League]
12/25 @ 1pm EST - I'm Not Allowed to Chain - S-Hard Edition (Or: PPL S-Hard With Combos Only) [Pokémon Puzzle League]
12/28 - Uncharted 3D Waters (Or: Cards Cleanup Crew Returns for Free World Records!) [Pokémon Puzzle League]
1/1 @ 1pm EST - An Easy Button (Or: I Expected This to Take Longer) [Yu-Gi-Oh! The Falsebound Kingdom]
1/4 - I Beat Easy Mode 5x Without Stopping (Or: I Played More and Only Got Worse) [Pokémon Puzzle League]
1/8 - That Was Easy (Or: That Was Normal?) [Yu-Gi-Oh! The Falsebound Kingdom]
1/11 - I Beat Normal Mode 5x Without Stopping (Or: A Normal 1P Stadium Experience) [Pokémon Puzzle League]
1/15 - Speedrunning Speed Golf is Really Hard (Or: Why I Can't Handle the Kong) [Mario Golf: Advance Tour]
1/18 - I Beat Hard Mode 5x Without Stopping (Or: A Good First and Last Impression) [Pokémon Puzzle League]
1/22 - A Peachy Improvement (Or: Why I Can't Handle This Game Anymore) [Mario Golf: Advance Tour]
1/25 - I Beat V-Hard Mode 5x Without Stopping (Or: Very Hard? More Like Very Mid) [Pokémon Puzzle League]
1/29 - Kaiba's Sub-5 Lottery (Or: Why This Side Might Be More Random) [Yu-Gi-Oh! The Falsebound Kingdom]
2/1 - A Proper 100% Speedrun of the Game I Love Most (Or: A Birthday Gift to Me) [Pokémon Puzzle League]
2/5 - The Marathon Sprint for 50K! (Or: You Can Finish This Speedrun with 2Chains) [Pokémon Puzzle League]
2/8 - A Time Barrier Defeated (Or: Why Speedrun Leaderboards Are NOT The End All) [Pokémon Puzzle League]


That’s my life story for the week. Later, doods!

--Cards