A Speedrunner Just Beat Ocarina of Time in 18 Minutes

The prospect of you interviewing Cosmo is very cool indeed. Hope you nail that one, I trust you will.

You should interview Trihex too, and remember to bring Jeff with you when you do.

Dude was literally about to choke up after he finished the run...

Why the hell do you break your own World Record? Ocarina of Time is the Rashard Lewis to his Otis Smith.

You wait for someone else to break it before you start cutting away at those precious seconds.

Now there's an interview to look forward to. Cosmo knows his shit, and seems like a cool guy on top of it all.

This is a good video where he explains all the exploits, including fooling with the N64 console itself. Definitely the best speed run video I have ever seen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0M7IINwTFVw

You go faster than you did before. ._.

Actually you are right about working at a speedrun after you already have the fastest recorded time. Some runners do stop and move on to different games. Depends on the person. Sometimes they also defend their records really hard for a couple years and then retire. And for others, for Cosmo definitely, having that record in that specific game means a hell of a lot and they will keep at it until they are sure they have done the absolute best they possibly can on it. Similarly, you should check out Sinisterwon on twitch. He has most (all?) of the Mike Tyson's Punch-Out records. Guy is incredible at that game. And he has been playing and working at those records for years.

Cosmo is a cool guy, him and sigmatic are the only speed runners i watch

The ferocity in Cosmo's eyes is... magnificent.

Having watched Cosmo trying to reach a sub 18:20 in OOT for so many months now, you really come to understand how difficult a run like this really is. Of course when you just play back this completed run now it looks simple, but the level of complexity and the amount of research that goes into this run is truly astounding.

Why would you wait for someone else to do it when you can already do it better? That seems like a real stupid thing to do.

All I can say is that's crazy. Wow.

@landon: Why would you bid against yourself?

Sweet that he keeps shaving time of this! Speedrunning has been something I keep watching more and more of, it's a lot of fun.

Enjoyed watching Cosmo when he was still running Wind Waker. Hope he gets back to that. The Ocarina record is impressive for sure but it's not as fun to watch a stream of since it has a reset every 10 minutes or so. Wind Waker had a lot more places to gain/lose time that made it more interesting to me.

How old is this guy? He must have been an infant when Ocarina of Time came out.

If you did an interview with Cosmo I would probably worship you forever Scoops.

<3 Cosmo <3

That doesn't make any sense. People already thought the last score would never be broken so, again, why would let someone do it before him?

cosmo has been op lately.

What with Reggie doing that video to EVO, would be really cool if Nintendo acknowledged this themselves in some way.

It was an impressive run to be sure but any% is almost always my least favorite category in games that are so massively broken where one can skip 95% of the game.

Another example is 16 star Super Mario 64. It's just not fun to watch.

Besides, i have no doubt how difficult it is to do and improve a time like this, the shorter the run the smaller the margin for improvement is but i still find the longer runs more challenging and impressive when successful.

Yesterday Puncayshun beat his own SM64 120 star world record with a time of 1:43:15. The game is still super broken but not nearly as much and i find these types of run much more entertaining.

Love Cosmo.excited for whatever you cook up Patrick. One of the most chill speed runners there is. And he's good at explaining how he does wha he does

Yeah, like, cool, you discovered a glitch? But I think the term speedrunning even for all of it is a pretty poor term. I always figured it was just masterful play of a certain game, instead it's just finding exploits. Great, congrats; but it's nothing I'm at all interested in.

It's still masterful play. These glitches aren't all easy to pull of. And without this extreme level of precision in his execution the time wouldn't be close to this. I could look up a guide on how to do this particular run and do it in an hour. Then practice for a few weeks and drop down to 30mins. He did it in 18:10.

That's the most ignorant thing I read all day, congratulations. If only you had the slightest idea how much practice and mastery goes into a run like this and to have every one of these incredibly hard tricks work in a single live run.

18:10?!

Holy shit!

I was expecting the next record to be around the 18:20 mark.

AGDQ and SGDQ are two events I've really begun to look forward to every half-year. It's the closest thing to Videogame Olympics we have in quite a lot of ways.

I am glad I dont understand any of the abbreviations in this post.

It was pretty funny to see young Link during the final battle beating Ganon. Especially in cut scenes where it's cropped for a taller Link and the 3D model for young Link floats up a bit to match Zelda's height!

Speedrunning is the best thing. It reminds me of the wonder of games and the joy of engaging with and examining everything about them.

Speedruns are all BS. I want someone to run the game like a man. I care less about this.

I just love the "glitches make this thing bullshit" people. If ya'll even attempted to successfully pull off a single glitch in a game like OOT you would quickly change your minds. Cosmo built his route for the game around pulling off a single near impossible glitch that allows you to skip getting the sword as a child. Only one other OOT runner uses this route because pulling off the glitch is so damn hard and pretty much decides if your run has failed or not.

Hey if you don't enjoy watching any% runs that's okay, but don't go around criticizing the entire category just because.

It's the exact same mentality where people go "I don't want to lift weights cause I don't want to end up looking like Arnold". Ha yeah that doesn't just happen. Even if you tried you would probably never ever come close to that. Just pure ignorance...

It's cool that you might interview Cosmo. I'm sure it will be good Patrick.

Please update us if anyone kills a classic game's run so completely. Some of you don't seem to understand the weight of what he's done. Runners decades down the road will chase the sought after sub-18:10 run. And they will die fruitless in their pursuit with their last whisper being "But he paused early. 18:06 possible."

A speedrunning article on a gaming site?

Cue three dozen uninformed whiners who have never actually watched a speedrun moan about "cheating".

Hell, even Brad got in on the game once and insinuated that OoT cheats "aren't a demonstration of skill". We're talking about shaving down 18:29 minutes into 18:10 here, in excruciating increments, using absurdly precise and RNG-dependent strategies just to have a chance at approaching the record.

These routes took years of work to discover, and for any one person to even consider approaching this record would literally require months upon months of nonstop, daily practice. And that's if you want to beat it shy of 30 minutes, if you can even pull off any of these tricks at all.

It's called a speedrun. It's about going fast. If it somehow offends your puritan sensibilities that people care more about the faster categories in a speedrunning context, go watch five-hour 100% runs and shut your traps.

Fun fact: Cosmo is also known for being the only dude capable of using Zelda (not Shiek) at a competitive level in Smash Bros.

@nightriff:

yeah, I'm kind of with you on that. A greater feat would be to a non-stop run of game without glitching.. because man that's a lot of play time and keeping yourself from wearing out before the end would be tough. Still, speed runs using any means possible can also be interesting.

I don't mean to sound like an asshole here, but shouldn't interview requests be handled privately? Having a request out in the public like that might create unnecessary pressure for the person to accept (I am basing this on how I would feel if asked for an interview, so my point is probably moot).

Anyway, speedrunning is great, something about watching someone completely manipulate the coding of a game to their own advantage is enthralling. During AGDQ 2013, Cosmo did a similar run, where he also explained most of the glitches/exploits/whatever you want to call it seen in his WR run now. The explanation of the glitch that suddenly teleported him close to the end of game after defeating Gohma starts at around 14:00, though he uses a different method of getting past the stone wall (dying to Gohma as he kills it).

I don't understand these kinds of complaints.

That's just a different speedrun. There are people that do it - heck, Cosmo does sometimes.

It's like criticizing a sprint race for not being a marathon. They're just different races.

Seconded. Also <3 Cosmo!

Cosmo is a real passionate speedrunner, and this run in particular is something in the making for years. The fact that he knew his time was beatable and exactly what mistakes were made would provide more incentive. Now he has a run he's pretty confident that even he himself can't beat (in his own words, literally the only thing he did wrong was pause the game two times more than he needed to, but the fact that the random aspects to the run lined up almost perfectly means reproducing that run would be neigh impossible).

Not related to that comment, but to the comments in general, it's really bizarre how negative the Giant Bomb community can be towards literally anything... It's not an accomplishment because he used glitches? What are you even talking about?

Ya, that was kind of weird.

Motherfucker, I still haven't finished Wind Waker. :D

The reason speedrunners improve their own records is because for most of them, it's less about being the best and more about being their best. It's part of the reason why, despite being an inherently competitive thing, speedrunners are so cooperative with each other. They share and discuss strategies and encourage each other. I think it ties into the nature of speedrunning. Even if you're competing against someone else's best time, when you sit down to speedrun, it's you versus the game. Even when someone's time is beaten, while part of them is a little sad, part of them is definitely happy just to see the game be beaten even faster.

Cosmo is a great spokesperson for the whole speedrunning community. He's been doing it a long time, he's a big part of the community, he's smart and perceptive, and most importantly he communicates well. I've seen him do other interviews before so I'm expecting something good, Patrick!

I hope Patrick asks him about the cooperative nature of the speedrunning community, how people build on each other's work to refine the route over the years, and how speedrunning has changed and grown over the years with the rise of easily captured video and live streaming.

I don't mind any of the absurd glitches, but I draw the line at rebooting the game and/or reloading a savegame. Technically that should not count as a continuous single segment run, but hat's just my private opinion.

I am pretty sure there are different records for glitched runs and 100% runs

I only watch speedruns during AGDQ/SGDQ and always have a great time. Looking forward for the interview!

I like all kinds of speedruns. You can't say glitched runs take no skill, so many of them, including in this run are frame perfect and so hard to get on the first try, a lot of times missing them costs you a lot of time. Cosmo only screwed up about 4 seconds of an otherwise perfect run, until somebody finds a way to take off another chunk of time this'll probably stand for awhile.

Looking forward to a possible interview, hopefully at least recorded and maybe a video interview. Can't believe Patrick didn't know they were both in Chicago until now though haha.

Glitch runs often involve glitches that are incredibly hard to execute or discover. There's a glitch in Final Fantasy IV which involves going up and down the same set of stairs a set number of times to warp you to the end. Its bizarre and makes you wonder just how something like that was discovered.

There are plenty of execution-only runs that I enjoy watching too. Adam_AK's currently working on a GTA III All Missions run which involves getting the route right, hoping the random elements are in your favour and completing mission ASAP.

Segmented runs are just nuts by the dedication to retry constantly til you get the right result. There's a Borderlands run on youtube where the commentary just casually involves, "Oh, this took 96 tries to get this." I mean, give me a single-segment or marathon run any day but, if you want a perfect game, those are the ones to watch.

It's nice Patrick is gonna talk to Cosmo about it, because I'm getting sick and tired of reading so many articles about X game being beaten by Y speedrunner. I really don't care to be updated every time some game's time gets beaten, its ridiculous how many times I've seen an "Ocarina of Time speedrun beaten" article in the last year. Yes speedrunning is interesting but sheeple writing regurgitated articles about some pointless fact is so counter productive.

It's nice that Patrick's going to write an article about it that has some thought. Would have rather just seen the article instead of having this filler one though. :(

You have to use this opportunity to mend the hilarious beef between Jeff and the speedrun community!

Edit: Also the longer VOD that includes him watching his replay ends with some proper emotion about it all after the adrenaline subsided. The dumbass comments about "big deal it is glitch he's noob" obviously don't get it, maybe Cosmo's reaction at the end of this clip better underscores the impact of an achievement this great:

http://www.twitch.tv/cosmowright/b/549331891

I think the games Cosmo plays are awful, yet I love watching him play them, which might also help make clear the difference between a brilliantly executed speedrun and a let's play.

Awesome! I love the speedrun coverage Patrick. :-)

When he got the glitch where the rock falls and pushes him really fast on the first try, I was like holy fucking shit!! That thing is so random.

@chumm:

Holy hell, that clip with Trihex hating on Jeff is hilarious