Wednesday, September 29, 2004 by Radix
When viruses attack
Shinobi III - Return of the Ninja Master is the first Sega Genesis game to get a speed run here at SDA. Wesley 'Molotov' Corron has done a run in 0:41:58.
Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II is the second Star Wars and Jedi Knight game to be listed. This time the run is by David Rickard of Half-Life fame. He does each of the 21 levels in its own segment and then appended them all together to have one avi file. The final time was 0:34:03.
Bionic Commando is a 1988 NES game that I know I've at least seen a picture of the map, but the game itself doesn't seem like one I played. Scott Kessler did a run of it back in April and only now got it captured after a few people pestered him about it. The time is 0:18:20.
Next we have a speed run on Metroid Prime 2: Echoes by veteran Mr. Metroid Nathan Jahnke. Well, not quite... the game doesn't come out until November 15th. The run is on the small demo version that is available from Nintendo if you register games or subscribe to NP. Although I didn't really see the point, a lot of people were trying to speed run it so I figured I can put it up here temporarily until the full game comes out. The time is 0:05:12, available in three qualities.
Finally, some updated Mario Kart 64 vids by the Gutierrez brothers:
Friday, September 24, 2004 by Radix
Hands off the Ocarina
A few new Mario Kart 64 vids. All of the vids by Myles Bukrim have been reuploaded in much better quality! Also a new vid from him, Rainbow Road shortcut fast lap in 0:01:05.34, 0.17 seconds faster than the previous one. Also an old video by Mike Simmons has surfaced, Banshee Boardwalk in 0:01:44.96, 0.11 seconds faster than the previous one... but it has no sound.
I'll be away this weekend, I've agreed to be bored at my parent's place in exchange for free food & laundry.
Sunday, September 19, 2004 by Radix
Mega Man: Aria of Hazard Course
Mike Uyama has improved both records on Mega Man X4, which continues to be the most popular to run Mega Man game! He achieved a time of 0:51:31 with X, over 13.5 minutes faster than the previous, and 0:49:18 as Zero, nearly 10 minutes faster than the previous demo, which wasn't even 100%! That's right, Mike crushed the previous times AND got 100% collection!
Veteran Metroid runner Damien 'Dragondarch' Moody has done a run on Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, the 3rd GBA Castlevania game. I had the pleasure of playing this game on a pirate copy that I bought off ebay earlier this summer... eventually I had to send it to paypal as proof that I was frauded. Don't buy from people in Hong Kong folks, even if they have 100+ feedback. :-\ Anyway, DD's run was on hard mode and he achieves a time of 1:03:03 in 14 segments, and that's getting the Chaos ending, not the 'fake' ending.
In Half-Life you wouldn't think a speed run of the training level Hazard course would be that exciting, but suprisingly the 3 minute 16 second run that's the result of David Rickard's work is quite entertaining. Sure, there's a little idle time here and there while you listen to somebody talk, but during the rest it's just as exciting as his main HL run!
All runs in this update are available in three versions. I've added an x/y/z MB size to show the size of all three runs right on the game pages for these runs, since I think on the runs that have low and high versions, people don't know about them and only see the normal quality size and maybe don't download because it's too big, or too small (!?). But if you think it's dumb and I should just leave the mention of low/high only on the demo.pl mirror list, let me know. Oh and just a note, when you contact me on aim or icq, don't just say "hi" or "yo" and expect an answer. Try asking a freaking question!
Friday, September 17, 2004 by Radix
Caught up?!
Ben Fichter has done the same for Max Payne that Tim Doherty previously did for Max Payne 2. He has recorded runs on all 25 levels. The game doesn't show a time so we just used the entire time of the level, including cutscenes, out of laziness and that they aren't cutscenes with load time. Since I'm still playing Pikmin 2 like crazy I haven't done the extra work to add this to archive.org yet, so you'll have to deal with fileplanet or wait until tomorrow evening.
Can I really be caught up? I've actually got everything out of the incoming directory... and I finally got those old mk64 and BC vids posted. So now I can relax!.... ah shit there's 3 more runs that have been uploaded by Nate, arrrrgh!
Thursday, September 16, 2004 by Radix
Dante should die
One new MK64 vid, Banshee Boardwalk in 0:01:45.07 by Jeffrey Gutierrez. That's a big 0.05 seconds faster than the old one!
Tuesday, September 14, 2004 by Radix
More Mario Kart 64
Monday, September 13, 2004 by Radix
You don't have to 'run' in a speed run
In the Nintendo 64 game Blast Corps there's some thin excuse for a plot as the reason you're driving around crashing through buildings... although there's a bunch of levels that are just racing style 4-lap courses, and even two strange pac-man parody levels. Matthew Piper sent me his collection of recordings on all 57 levels, with each time below the required for a platinum rank.
Mario Kart 64 is the classic N64 game featuring Mario and friends with 16 courses. I received a large amount of vids on these a few months ago, but was reluctant to sort through them when I watched a few and noticed the horrible quality. Many videos are only 200x130, some have no sound, others are webcams with discipable picture quality.... so finally I'm posting only those that have been deemed worthy. There's still a couple posted with no sound or webcams that actually look good, and lots of small vids. For the vids that were too terrible to post I left the time in the table as just a goal to shoot for, even though there are other record sites of course. I'll take any good looking vid that is "pretty close" to those listed times. There are even a couple of entries for which I received no vid, not even a crappy one. One example is the Rainbow Road full course... so I whipped up a 0:05:47.94 on my third attempt. It's total crap though... I can't do that sliding thing, so... yeah, it's crap. Someone please improve it, and fill in the rest!
Saturday, September 11, 2004 by Radix
No medichlorians in sight
There's a new Break the Targets vid for the Super Smash Bros. Melee page. I received Marth in 0:00:08.92 vid, but it was done in PAL mode. Due to the continued inability of game programmers to make games that play the same in 60fps ntsc and 50fps pal, the flippers in a few btt stages behave slightly differently on the two, resulting in a faster time on pal than possible in ntsc... so I've added a new line to the table just for Marth - PAL with the 0:00:08.92 as the record of course. For those who don't have the records memorized, that's 0.03s faster than Senju's vid. Also the vid plays slower than real time... I'm not sure if that's the PAL game at work again, or if the 'Smashbros' guy who did it has some strange capture equipment that can lag and not drop frames or what.
Friday, September 10, 2004 by Radix
Game addictions don't help your website schedule
Many more games to follow this weekend...
Thursday, September 2, 2004 by Radix
Some blue spikey-haired kid
Wouter Jansen did a 100% run of Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon in a time of 3:46. That's my first exposure to this Goemon fellow folks!
The Metroid Zero Mission record was broken 2 months ago... but you're only now seeing the video of this 0:29:54 run, 28 seconds faster than the previous. The reason is that the author, Jason 'GameCube04' Baum, didn't put as much effort into the run as he wanted, so it has it's rough spots. He thought of redoing it completely, and then redoing just the last segment, and then redoing it completely again... but a lack of time and interest led him to eventually just send off the tape as it was. Still, it's the first run under 30 minutes, a time that seemed inconceivable when the game came out just 6 months ago!
An even older run, from April, is finally posted on the Metroid page. Scott Kessler performed the early Tourian trick to skip Norfair and Ridley's lair completely, and finish the game in 22 minutes and 11 seconds. This is a new category for the game... the only one left would be a 0 boss run for low%, who's going to do that!
Monday, August 30, 2004 by Radix
The fastest RPG?
An update on the SSBM page, 'raserucort' informed me of his 0:00:07.55 with Captain Falcon, 0.03 seconds faster than the previous vid from 'Senju'.
If you dont read the main SDA news, you haven't seen that I moved the forum due to GameSpy's further incompetance, and also changed all demo.pl links.
Friday, August 27, 2004 by Radix
For when GameSpy sucks more than usual
Thursday, August 26, 2004 by Radix
Websites don't help your sleep schedule
The other NES run from Richard Ureta is a 0:30:39 of Mega Man 2. It caused me greate frustration to capture because of the very blue Bubble Man stage, and the result is pieced together from 4 different captured files and it's still not perfect at all... but this is the best I can do. The playing is of far better quality than my capture of that stage :-\
Metroid Zero Mission hasn't seen much action lately, most players have moved on to other games, but Damien 'Dragondarch' Moody has been working hard on improving his Single-segment 100% on normal skill, and after getting a 0:57:06, 2 minutes and 29 seconds faster, he's taking a break from the game too! The run is very solid for something so long, except IMHO the worse mistake is in the first minute... not sure why he didn't just restart!
The ultimate speed run challenge has come to pass for Pikmin thanks to 'Sesshoumaru' from metroid2002. Last month I told him about the 50 pikmin in 10 day completion, but the fact that The Distant Spring took 3 days just didn't sit right with him. A few days later he had figured out a plan that he was sure would work, and soon enough he did it. Since he couldn't record, I had to try to do it myself, but I couldn't manage to do the earlier day 3 at The Forest Navel... so I bypassed it by partially doing it, in order to reach DS. I recorded a day 5 and 7 as proof of Sess's strat and awaited a full video from whoever would do it. Well I pretty much knew it would be Dragorn, who had done the 10/50 vid, and he pulled it all off very quickly. What better way to prepare for Pikmin 2 than to watch this supreme ownage of the original in 9 days with only 50 pikmin?
The run that started SDA on the path away from Quake-exclusivness has finally been beaten. My own 1:37 100% of Metroid Prime has been improved by 'kip' who holds the any% record at 1:04. With such an amazing show in the 1:04, you'd expect him to get 1:25 for the 100% right? Nope, the bum beat me by one lousy minute! He wasn't even really trying, just doing a psuedo run to try out all the new things that have been discovered since my run, such as some tweaks to the route that I suggested.
Tuesday, August 24, 2004 by Radix
Holy crap do I need a new computer!
At least Scott Kessler can capture runs himself, or his Zelda II run wouldn't be here today... although I still had to help him out by taking the 900+mb mpeg file and compressing it for him since he was having sound problems. He got a time of 1:12:10 for the run, slightly more than eleven minutes faster than TSA's run from last week!
I received the comments from Richard U, so I can post his Super Mario Bros. 3 run. He got a time of 0:11:11 using the standard double warp whistles to reach world 8 after only four boards.
Richard's other run on the tape is the one above that makes my capture card shit a brick. Hopefully I can figure something out and have it online soon. Meanwhile, if anyone is feeling generous and wants to send me some $$$ for a new compuer.... :-p
Sunday, August 22, 2004 by Radix
Will I ever be caught up?
First, William Tansley has improved his record for the fastest PAL time on Metroid Prime, getting a 1:11, four minutes faster. This run features a new method to get space jump first for PAL-ers, the once-thought NTSC-only helpful Thardus trick, and accidentally forgetting the ice spreader!
The Resident Evil run has been beaten by 'smilingjack13', who once held the 23% record on Metroid Prime. His run is about 25½ minutes faster than the previous one from Sascha, brining the time under an hour and a half! Now when will someone do a run with poor forgotten Chris?
David Gibbons continues to expand the games list by doing a 2 hour 22 minute run on the Nintendo 64 game Body Harvest. This odd looking game is about going back in time to stop alien invasions in various decades.
I received a tape from Richard Ureta with two NES runs on it, but I can't post them yet because he didn't leave me any comments nor a way to contact him. So, let's hope he reads this and gets back in touch!
Sunday, August 15, 2004 by Radix
Heading for the big sky.
Metroid Prime sees another improvement to the low% 23% time, dropping ten minutes in a new run by 'Bartendorsparky' to 1:15. This is another classic example of a prime run where the player gets better as he goes, so the earlier segments aren't as good as the later ones. That's also true in terms of video quality, somehow sparky purchashed some kind of magic vcr with increcible quality. He commented that the high quality versions of the vids look better than they did on his TV when he played.
I'll be out of town for a week, going on a trip with my brother. Sorry for all the runs that will have to wait until I get back.
Friday, August 13, 2004 by Radix
In space, no one can hear you scream.
Tuesday, August 10, 2004 by Radix
2X4
Wednesday, August 4, 2004 by Radix
Jet Force Gemini
Friday, July 30, 2004 by Radix
Not ready for Doom 3? Watch some classic Doom speed runs!
If Doom isn't your cup of tea, or if your computer isn't even good enough to play those high quality DivX avis (...) then how about some Super Mario Sunshine? 'Dragorn' from previous speed runs like Majora's Mask and Pikmin decided to add this game to the list, and the result is a time of 1:59:49 in 9 segments. Just barely under the two hour mark!
As of this much delayed update posting, the links for all of these files at archive.org don't work yet work because their system that moves files around is going unbelieveable slow. It's been apparently copying the mario sunshine run for 3.5 hours, which is calculates out to less than 35 k/s. So I think their internal network is a bit jammed! I'll be away this weekend though so I'm just putting the links to them now and hopefully they'll be active soon.
Wednesday, July 28, 2004 by Radix
A minute of Payne
SnapDragon continues to fly through the levels of 4 Swords Adventure. He's improved another 5 levels: 4-1 by 0:02:40 to 0:06:53, 4-2 also by 0:02:40 to 0:07:02, 4-3 not quite by 0:02:40, but 0:02:39 to 0:05:09, 5-1 by 0:01:36 to 0:05:27, and 5-2 by 0:02:07 to 0:07:26. 8-2 looms closer! Some of these files are not yet on FilePlanet but you can get the from the metroid2002 mirror.
Some more improvements in 10 Man Melee from the Super Smash Bros. Melee page. Luigi has a large improvement of 0.21 seconds to 0:00:07.41, Ganondorf has a simliar improvement of 0.22 seconds to 0:00:07.36, Ness was improved by an itty-bitty 0.02s to 0:00:07.53, Link was improved by twice as much, 0.03 seconds, to 0:00:06.92, Mewtwo was improved by the same 0.03s to 0:00:07.43, and Marth was improved by a pretty significant 0.15 seconds to 0:00:07.33. All vids are by 'Ravenyte' as usual, except for Mewtwo which is by 'phy189' and thus is much much better quality!
Sunday, July 25, 2004 by Radix
Linkalicious
Derek 'SnapDragon' Kisman has gotten busy doing level improvements on 4 Swords Adventure after I poked him a bit. In the last few days he's improved 5 levels: 2-2 by 0:01:33 to 0:07:04, 2-3 by 0:03:04 to 0:08:36, 3-1 by 0:02:43 to 0:05:08, 3-2 by 0:02:54 to 0:05:24, and just before I was ready to post this update, 3-3 by 0:02:19 to 0:05:18. Hopefully he'll continue his swift pace and go all the way through 8-2... at which point he'll stop because 8-3 is already perfect .... right?
Thursday, July 22, 2004 by Radix
How many download servers have you lost?
Jonathan Fields has done another inaugural speed run on a game, the original Phantasy Star Online for Dreamcast. He used a glitch simliar to the Mario 64 glitch of going through a closed door. My acceptance of that glitch caused some confusion over my glitch rules, but I'll state again that that is the very edge of what will be allowed. Pushing through a solid object is OK in my eyes, but randomly teleporting around never will be. Oh yeah, The time of the run was 3 hours and 17 minutes in 4 segments.
Well, that cuts my unprocessed queue by 64 files... only 122 more to go!
Tuesday, July 20, 2004 by Radix
The Dawgs are loose
Saturday, July 17, 2004 by Radix
After a day off...
Since I wasn't doing any website work, I actually had a chance for once to work on my own speed run. Nothing too big, just an improvement of my 8-3 record on Zelda: 4 Swords. Not sure it was worth the two hours it took, but I think it's much better than the previous one, as it clocks in at 0:17:50, a minute & 58 seconds faster than the previous one. Thanks to TSA for a few hints. Now when will somebody else try worlds 3 through 8?
The SSBM page has been updated with some new 10 Man Melee vids by Ravenyte, which I received via r1k. Doctor Mario was improved to 0:00:06.63, 0.05 seconds faster. Ganondorf is now 0:00:07.58, 0.07 seconds faster. Ness was improved by a whopping 0.22 seconds (yes, that's whopping) to 0:00:07.55. Samus was improved by an even more impressive 0.34 seconds to 0:00:06.63. Link's time is now 0:00:06.95, 0.04 seconds faster. Pichu was improved by 0.08s to 0:00:06.75. And lastly, Mewtwo was improved by 0.07s to 0:00:07.46. This pack of improvements brought the total 10mm time below 3 minutes, something which seemed impossible just a few months ago... congrats to Ravenyte and his fellow players on this accomplishment!
The Metroid Zero Mission page recently got a faster any% and a hard any% by Andrew Bolton. They're still the records, but I wanted to mention that there's now high & low quality versions available. If you're hesitant to download runs because they're large, maybe you're still stuck on a modem, you should check out the low quality versions. Those of you with really fast connections and computers that aren't 5 years old like mine can check out the high quality versions. Especially of note is that the HQ versions are full 60fps vids, so instead of the typical "always on" or "invisible" effects you see in vids when the game has 60Hz rapid-blinking effects, you'll actually see the blinking like in the game! It was quite an adventure for Nate to figure out how to accomplish this, but the results are certainly worth it. The Metroid Prime page also has a HQ version of the new 1:15 PAL run, which runs at 50fps instead of 25.
Monday, July 12, 2004 by Radix
Quality control
Another new game is added - Resident Evil for GameCube. Sascha Zaman did a Single-segment run with Jill Valentine on normal skill and got a time of 1:55:16. The quality of this vid makes it look like an old movie from the 50s, the color seems to have just faded away, and in some places it looks overexposed from being too bright. The play quality is a lot better, though there was a small knife slipup that cost a few minutes.
The Super Mario World run has been improved by Scott Kessler after I reminded him about it a few times. He got a time of 0:10:56, 13 seconds faster than his previous run. He forgot to change his capture settings though, so in the final area on the way to bowser, you still can't see a darn thing!
Metroid Prime will keep track of different records for the US and EU versions of the game, because of the bastardization the developers did in a few areas that prevent a lot of the tricks used in the US version. Even a later US version has some of these, and a few different, changes that just plain suck. Although 1:04 remains the fastest time, the EU version was improved to 1:15 last month by William 'pirate109' Tansley and it's still worth checking out, even if you won't see crazy scan-dash jumps or bouncing off Thardus. The quality of this run is pretty good since it was captured by Mr. "My capture card kicks the shit of your capture card" Nate... but the best capture card in the world can't fix VHS flaws, which this run has many of, although most are only on the file select screen. This run also debuts the availabity of different qualities of runs, coming with a low quality version that's about 150MB smaller, much easier on the 56k'ers out there. High Quality versions of some select previous runs will be available in the coming weeks.
The Zelda: 4 Swords page has been updated with two more improvements to 1-1 and 1-2. That's the four runs on these levels ... I guess nobody is going to do worlds 3 through 8. :-\ 1-1 is now 0:04:26, two seconds better, and 1-2 is 0:04:08, eight seconds better. Because of the FilePlanet queue you might have to wait a while to get these two, until I find a temp place to mirror them.
Lastly I just wanted to apologize for the delay that a couple of these things took to get online, I spent all weekend again working to help restore metroid2002.com.
Thursday, July 8, 2004 by Radix
Wrong way through the one-way doors
Another small update to the Super Smash Bros. Melee page, I rceived the 0:00:03.57 Link vid from 'raserucort'. That's 0.03 seconds faster than the previous vid from Senju. I still don't have a clue how the bottom right target gets hit.
Tuesday, July 6, 2004 by Radix
Some more Four Swords improvements