I just got done watching Cosmo play Ocarina of Time on Twitch.tv, where he, after many, many tries over the course of the past few months, managed to beat the current world record. You can watch the run, which is 18 minutes and 29 or 30 seconds long on his Twitch.tv channel.

For those new to the game or speed running in general, he uses various glitches and techniques to skip a huge amount of the game such as most dungeons except for the Deku Tree and even the sword. I'm not super knowledgeable about that stuff, so don't ask me how it works, but it's still super impressive since it involves two especially hard skips (getting past Mido in Kokiri and clipping through the castle at the end.) Also, the device he uses is the iQue, a Chinese gaming system/controller, one of the reasons he uses it is that Chinese text is faster.

I feel like there was already a record-breaking major OoT speed run recently. One of these days, a speed runner is going to find the right set of glitches and frame-specific inputs that allows him to jump straight to the end right from the name entry screen.

Very cool.

I watched a video of Cosmo explaining the massive impenetrable invisible wall in Wind Waker and that's what I really wanna see him (and other people) go after. The idea of this one insurmountable obstacle holding everybody back from a faster time, it's super fascinating to me. One of those things I love about speedruns. Most seem to agree that there's probably no legit way around it but speedrunners are a crazy kind and I have faith that they can find a way.

They always find a way.

I'd think the chinese version should be spun off into its own category if it inherently plays faster. Wonder if that kind of thing starts shit in the speedrunner community.

Anyway, it's cool that records keep getting broken. But even though I enjoy people using glitches, I think it's a lot less interesting when the glitch is literally, "you get warped to the end of the game from the beggining of the game." Especially since it means every OoT speedrun has to basically follow this path now.

Ah well. Naturally, it's still quite impressive.

Although I've never heard of anyone using a Chinese version, my understanding is that it's totally normal and expected for people to use a language that has less text. For that reason, you generally see a lot of speedruns for older games with unskippable text played in Japanese, which generally has less text than English counterparts. You'll even occasionally see a Japanese version used because it was the first to come out, and some glitch that is used was corrected by the time the English translation was finished and released. Unfortunately I can't immediately think of any examples of the latter situation, but I'm sure I've heard that said before in a speedrun I was watching...

I think Cosmo has beaten his own personal record 4 times in a row now, so yeah, that was also probably him.

Also worth noting that he completely flubbed the early parts of the game yet still managed to beat the world record, so expect it to happen again sometime soon! :P

Also, the world record attempts are broken down by platform/game version, which is fair because the iQue version of the game is obviously difficult to come by for most. However, you'll still probably only see the true lowest times in the headlines of video game websites, so there won't be the "glory" factor.

To your first point, it is incredibly common (and almost assumed) to use the version of the game that will produce the fastest run. This means that games with lots of text (such as Wind Waker) are often played in Japanese, because there are less characters. There are usually separate categories per version and per language, but most of the time people will only care about running the one that produces the fastest time.

To your second point, new glitches are found every year, and the path changes every time. People used to think OoT sub-30 was unbeatable. Before that, sub-60, etc. One of the most interesting parts of the speedrunning community is watching them plot out and practice new paths and strats (sometimes in secret) and then bust them out during WR attempts (or, in the case of those who don't stream, when watching their WR video submissions). It's fascinating, and I think that people (not you by the sound of things) who swear by no-glitch runs and the like are missing a lot of what makes speedrunning so interesting.

Ah yeah, I heard he improved his time while I was in another stream. He's aiming for 18:20 though, right? Another 9 seconds, tough but doable. Cosmo is a patient guy so I'm sure he'll keep at it until he gets his time.

As for version differences, they're considered different categories. For the more popular games with larger speedrunning communities, people tend to gravitate towards the fastest version. I suppose it's just nice to have the absolute lowest time. Also when most people are all doing the same category, there's a sense of competition that a lot of people enjoy. It certainly helps bring the time down as they push each other farther and farther.

Maybe there was some of it back in the day, but not a lot of strats or route changes are done in secret anymore. Speedrunners are always collaborating with each other to find strats everyone can use. It's actually somewhat of an honour to discover something like that. For something so inherently competitive there is a huge amount of cooperation that I've always admired about the speedrunning community. I think it's partly because at the end of the day when you sit down to speedrun it's you versus the game. Everyone kind of rallies against 'the game' as the enemy, not each other.

Besides, whatever you do won't be secret for long given the nature of the internet.. so why bother?

I enjoy watching Cosmo. Most speedrunners aren't that interesting to follow, even if you like the game. But Cosmo's great. Another one I'd recommend is the FF9 speedrun from the AGDQ a few years back. Pewexel and Spike Vegeta I think were the runners. They did a great job commentating and making it entertaining.

@mithical: I don't watch a whole lot of SpeedRunners on the level I tend to gravitate towards Cosmo, but you're right; he and others are good at calling out the people who discovered whatever glitch/shortcut is being used. Credit is given where credit is due. Besides, it's difficult to hide a strategy when it's being recorded and shown to the rest of the community as proof of the time anyway :P

(Also, just because I can do the Wind Waker super swim doesn't mean I can actually make effective use of it).

Need to watch this when I get home. His first ADGQ run of OoT was what got me into enjoying speedrunning.

Generally it's okay to play a different version if the text speed is faster - which is why a lot of the time you will see serious runs on Japanese versions of games.

But yes, it does start shit. People constantly argue something that is faster should be a different category - I spend a decent amount of time in the #gta speedrun community, and with GTA:V there have been a lot of arguments as to what the Classic% category should be. The guy who started running the game first (Dekap) believes it should pick a specific ending - an ending that happens to be slower. That caused an argument as to whether there should be a separate Classic% category with that slow ending, or one for the faster endings... It gets a bit tedious.

I tend to just stick to Any%. But a lot of games even mess that around, with Any%, Any% glitchless etc. Sometimes you introduce dumb categories for a fun race, but they aren't taken seriously.