What speedrunners do you watch?

[charxsetsuna]

I suspect theres a lot of overlap between the speedrunning community and the trophy hunting community so if you watch speedruns, what or who do you watch? Do you speedrun yourself if so share what game you run.?

[communistwookiee]

I watch Karl Jobst's breakdowns of speedruns, but I don't really watch any full runs or any games. I find the concept to be interesting, but can't bring myself to fully watch anything.

[charxsetsuna]

Just now, communistwookiee said:

I watch Karl Jobst's breakdowns of speedruns, but I don't really watch any full runs or any games. I find the concept to be interesting, but can't bring myself to fully watch anything.

Summoning salt does great documentaries on speedrun games, highly reccomend his youtube channel.

[Eremoto]

Tomatoanus because he's the most entertaining runner I've found and his commentated runs are a feat and a half, Pete Dorr whenever he does one of those shitty games for GDQ with his always enjoyable comentary on the pure garbage he speedruns (things like Urban Yeti on GBA) and Glackum just because he runs my favourite game ever. Other than that, speedrunning isn't usually something fun to watch unless you really know the game being played or the commentary can make it fun. I find it more entertaining the Summoning Salt style of World Record documentaries and the odd Karl Jobst video commenting on certain speedrunning discoveries. And don't forget the GladJonas compilations of speedrunners suffering endlessly.

 

And that's my relation with speedrunning. If I had to seriously try and speedrun any game it'd be Rayman 2, Black Tiger, Rastan and the first two Marvel Ultimate Alliance games. 

[charxsetsuna]

3 minutes ago, Eremoto said:

Tomatoanus because he's the most entertaining runner I've found and his commentated runs are a feat and a half, Pete Dorr whenever he does one of those shitty games for GDQ with his always enjoyable comentary on the pure garbage he speedruns (things like Urban Yeti on GBA) and Glackum just because he runs my favourite game ever. Other than that, speedrunning isn't usually something fun to watch unless you really know the game being played or the commentary can make it fun. I find it more entertaining the Summoning Salt style of World Record documentaries and the odd Karl Jobst video commenting on certain speedrunning discoveries. And don't forget the GladJonas compilations of speedrunners suffering endlessly.

 

And that's my relation with speedrunning. If I had to seriously try and speedrun any game it'd be Rayman 2, Black Tiger, Rastan and the first two Marvel Ultimate Alliance games. 

The games I want to speedrun are either short but far too competitive or jrpgs which aren't short games even when speedrunning.

 

[Eremoto]

1 minute ago, charxsetsuna said:

The games I want to speedrun are either short but far too competitive or jrpgs which aren't short games even when speedrunning.

 

Yeah, I definetly dislike the idea of a speedrun taking more than an hour. I mean yeah, beating a really long JRPG meant to last more than a hundred hours in just ten is impressive but we only have so much time to live, mate

 

So I'm on the same boat, and I would limit myself to any game that can be beaten in under an hour to keep the run fast, quick and enjoyable to watch without planning bathroom breaks but that brings old school hard-as-anils games into the mix. But Rastan and Black Tiger being games I enjoyed in my childhood I feel like I would want to overcome the massive challange and skill level required.

[Jounochi]

I like to watch GrandPooBear.  He posts quality reuploads to YouTube from his Twitch stream and cuts them down into enjoyable videos.  Really love to watch his Super Mario Maker videos, but he has a lot of other games that he plays as well.

[KingGuy420]

I actually watch speedruns quite a bit. Couldn't name one speedrunner to save my life though lol 

[charxsetsuna]

Just now, KingGuy420 said:

I actually watch speedruns quite a bit. Couldn't name one speedrunner to save my life though lol 

Haha that's why I said what or who, so if you couldn't remember the speedrunner then you could just say the game ? 

I cant remember the names of half the speedrunners I watch either only the ones I watch really regularly or the famous ones like darbian 

[KingGuy420]

3 minutes ago, charxsetsuna said:

Haha that's why I said what or who, so if you couldn't remember the speedrunner then you could just say the game  

I cant remember the names of half the speedrunners I watch either only the ones I watch really regularly or the famous ones like darbian 

 

Pretty much anytime I see an interesting one I watch it. Or at the very least parts of it.

 

100% Mario 64 and 100% Mario World 2 are the ones I go back to the most though. I find them the most impressive and fun to watch.

[ResoluteRock]

I don't have any speedrunners specifically that I watch. Like @KingGuy420, I couldn't even name one ?

 

Whenever I do watch speedruns, it's usually of a game that I'm currently playing or that I'm interested in. AGDQ is usually where I go to see various speedruns because I like how some of the speedrunners break down their strategies and explain what's going on to someone who doesn't know the game that well. Plus, I don't think I've ever seen them rage.

[Amerati]

My favorite speed runner is Keizaron. His pokemon Crystal speedrun was pretty fun to watch on AGDQ with a good casting couch. Makes some good jokes. Love his speedruns

 

Another runner I tend to watch SimpleFlips. He usually plays Mario 64 rom hacks now, Has some good YT videos of highlights

 

 

I can say TomatoAngus is pretty fun to watch too. Except he likes to say its pronounced "TomatoAngus without the G"

Edited May 29, 2020 by Amerati

[scemopagliaccioh]

You are correct regarding the connection between trophy hunting and speedrunning, at least for me,  these days starting a new game feels more like a chore to me  rathen than having fun, so having "data" on quickly  completing games is useful.

I don't watch a specific streamer, I prefer having a song or audiobook/movie in the background, but I use speedrun.com as it has lots of useful data on various games you can check anytime.

There is also speeddemosarchive, but it's a bit dead nowadays.

[hittheroadbucky]

HugoOne because San Andreas is love San Andreas is life ❤️ He plays most GTA titles though, San Andreas is just my favourite that he does 

[Neocarleen]

I don’t really watch many speedruns. However, one of my favourite videos of the type is “0.5x A Presses”. The guy uses glitches to beat Super Mario 64 in as little button presses as possible and uses this video to explain he does so, but it’s just so crazy! Like I’m using misaligned hitboxes to go to an alternate universe and then accelerates Mario's speed over the course of 12 hours in order to be able to reach the star.

 

Do yourself a favour and just even watch the first five minutes of this amazing insanity!

 

[JEDI_BROTHERS]

Arcus and summoning salt

[TrueMrBubbles]

Anthony Caliber. Tlou speed runs with commentary are great. And he sounds great too

[Slava]

I used to watch ThaRixer a lot. Back then he ran games like Jak 2, Jak 3 (he held WR in any% for it for some time), Spyro 2, Crash Team Racing and Mirror's Edge. Sometimes I would also tune in Joshimuz's San Andreas streams. They were cool too.

 

After that I just watched AGDQ and SGDQ (sometimes ESA as well) every year and made a list of games I'm interested in with times they start at to keep up. Lately I stopped watching those too.

 

The last speedrun I've watched was Super Meat Boy 106% by Breakdown. Here's the link to the video.

 

As for trying my hand at speedrunning, I only did it once with Spyro 2. It's one of my favourite games that I know very well. The double jump glitch was inconsistent for me, and it was pretty much the most important part of the speedrun for that game. So I just said "Nah" and never tried again ?.

 

edit: I forgot that ThaRixer was also a Kingdom Hearts II runner. Watched a lot of those streams as well. I guess one thing you should know about him is that he picks up a lot of games.

Edited May 29, 2020 by Alderriz

[Bizzy_Montana_]

Hey there! 

 

Just as others have stated here, I don't watch speedrun streams or full videos of runs either. 

 

I wholeheartedly appreciate Summoning Salt's & Karl Jobst's work as well and there are other interesting channels such as Speed Docs, Bird goes Beep and my personal favorite, Rwhitegoose. 

 

If you have got 20-ish minutes to spare, I highly recommend checking out his video on Darklight93, the "self - delusional madman". It's awesome

 

 

Stay true! 

 

Greetings from Germany

 

 

 

Edited May 29, 2020 by Bizzy_Montana_

[Arcesius]

I don't spend time on twitch anymore, but I used to. I felt like I was starting to spend too much of my free time with 'gaming stuff', so I decided to quit and, when I want to do anything gaming-related, I play videogames instead (or, you know... browse PSNP). 

 

However, I used to watch Distortion2 a lot as well as Nemz38 or Elajjaz. They all play a variety of games, but their main speedrun-category are the Souls games. They all have WRs in multiple categories across all FromSoftware games.

 

Nothing like having a dude casually beat all of Bloodborne's bosses in less than 1:10h while reading chat ?

 

I still love watching AGDQ / SGDQ or ESA though ?

Edited May 29, 2020 by Arcesius

[closertim]

4 hours ago, TrueMrBubbles said:

Anthony Caliber. Tlou speed runs with commentary are great. And he sounds great too

I second that

[LucasDiasC]

Super Mario 64 is probably my favorite game ever and the one that introduced me to what speedrunning was, this game is pretty much the precursor of it. The community effort to optimize stuff here has been insane and the recent world records are a product of 20+ years of shared discoveries along those, every minute barrier broken is a community achievement, this is by far my favorite part about it: even though there are rankings to list the 'best' runners of each game, no person would ever come up with all the knowledge by himself, you need each other to make progress and test stuff.

 

The main category and my favorite one is the one where you collect all 120 stars in the game, the World Record as of today is 1:38:43 by Liam (it was broken last month). Cheese, Simply, Liam, Dowsky and Akki are probably my favorite ones to watch, not all of them run 120 star tho, since there are other shorter categories, I recently started learning 16 star myself, in which Akki, a Japanese player, recently broke the last (we guess??) minute barrier, achieving the first ever sub-15 minute run. In shorter categories, runners can take more risk since you're not almost 2 hours into the run, this makes some stars much, much harder because you want to cut off as many frames as possible when going for WR nowadays, it's really a piece of art.

 

As mentioned, I also speedrun some of my favorite (mostly indie) games and had my own personal journey to achieve a sub-20 minute run in Super Meat Boy as a personal goal, which I got at the start of this year, and lowered it to a 19:41 since I switched from PS4 to PC, just because it has some minor advantages that make it some seconds faster overall, like automatically skipping the replays. I still want to lower this one quite a bit when I go back to grind it again, probably going for a sub-19. The WR for this one is insane as well, standing at a 17:26 by Matte  that couldn't be beaten even by it's own holder yet, it's a very solid one gameplay-wise, with the game's  RNG in his favour to finish up an almost unbeatable run.

 

To finish it up, I also speedrun Titan Souls, and got into this one because of the 20 minute speedrun trophy. While searching for strats I found the game pretty fun to run, and after the platinum I started playing a little bit with the tricks and setups, back in 2016. But it was only about  ~7 months ago that I started learning the crazier stuff because there were two upcoming marathons in which I wanted to run my games on, so I really started putting more time and effort into Titan Souls, in which my best run still had plenty of mistakes at that time. My personal best in this one today stands at 12:17, while the WR is an 11:34 by 99centbread. The interesting part of this one is a frame-perfect trick (named riskyskip lul) that let's you skip boss kill animations (closing the game is not allowed), and was discovered 3 years ago by Goliath, one of the most active guys in the community and former WR holder, he uncovered quite a lot of stuff and helped a lot of people understanding some strats, including me. This trick in particular is the "make or break" of the any% category (just beat the game as fast as possible), because if you fail it, the run is pretty much over, but it's required to get a really low time, and the WR does it four times ?. For instance, in my PB I did it 'only' two times. Every boss have a slightly different time for you to push the button and make it work, it can get really frustrating, which makes me quit for months sometimes, but I always come back at some point.

 

Just to mention, these speedrunning marathons are pretty much always beneficent, there are quite a few different ones with multiple editions per year and there's actually one going on right now, raising money for Save The Children's Corona Relief (It's being done in online format for obvious reasons, but they're usually presential). Also If you like speedrunning, look into communities, there are lots of discord servers dedicated to speedrunning specific games, where people usually help each other, theorize stuff or simply chat, it's a really nice environment from my experience, even if you just watch it. For those not very familiar with it, you can easily find runs of pretty much any game that someone ever minded to play fast here, as well as ways to get in touch with the countless communitites. And as already mentioned, there are people creating full 'documentaries' about the progression of various speedrunning world records, Summoning Salt does a really great job at it.

Edited May 30, 2020 by LucasDiasC

[Arkhamryder]

No streamers, no speedrunner, no yputube, no instagram...i play by myself!

[Shin-Alu]

I mainly watch races and mostly of the randomized type.  Stuff like the Link to the Past Super Metroid is already brilliant by only existing

[Kooky_Spooky_]

I'm watching different guys:

 

cheese (Super Mario 64)

Distortion2 (For Soul series and more)

Bizkit047 (Kingdom Hearts Saga)

Nemz38 (Dark Souls 3)