There is still some confusion going on in this thread regarding speedrunning categories. I can elaborate just a bit more with some examples from popular games. Please understand that speedruns are classified this way because it is consensus among speedrunning community that it is impossible to officiate what does and does not constitute a glitch or exploit; and that strictly adhering to 'pure' non-exploit gameplay has proven to be quite boring to watch. Glitches are often what makes a run special and what gives it staying power over many years as new things are discovered to speed up the run. Common categories are:
Any% - beat the game as fast as possible with no other restrictions save that you must use an official copy of the game (emulators sometimes allowed) and standard input control (no programmable controllers, no macros, no turbo, etc.). This is Cosmo's OOT run category. OOT also has a 100% category. OOT 100% is about 3 hours long.
Any% + specific modifier - If a game's any% is extremely short or unsatisfying, some games have this type of category. Sticking with Zelda theme, A Link To The Past has Any% - No save and quit. For that one, the save and quit exploit makes the run really tedious to do and run is much better without it. Thus the modifier. Also, there is Amnesia Any% - No out of bounds. Amnesia any% is basically a 3D platformer where you're out of bounds most of the time. However, the no out of bounds run is also boring boring boring to play and watch. Portal is another with an Any% - No OoB category. You'll also see things like Any% - Best Ending, Any% - Expert Mode, etc.
100% - do all the things, get all the stuff. There might be extra criteria involved in this kind of category if the game requires it. Super Meat Boy 100%, for example, is actually called 106% because of the 6 glitch girl stages.
All bosses - Dark Souls is a notable for this one. It includes all the DLC bosses. Santzo84 has WR for Dark Souls - All bosses with a time of 1:20:46 (in game time). He also holds the Any% WR for it with 51:01. Castlevania: Symphony Of The Night also has this category.
Low% - usually a challenge run of some sort. Usually means beat the game with starting items only or only specific required items to beat the game. Super Metroid has this category. Spelunky does as well. Spelunky low% is beat the game with starting equipment only + non-inventory pick up and throw items (rocks, mines, damsels, bodies etc.)
Game specific criteria - such as Mario 64; 70 star or 120 star or 16 star or i dunno I think there are more too. This is because that game can be completed with zero stars collected in a very short amount of time. Extra categories added in the interest of competition and fun. Super Mario Bros. has Any% and Warpless.
Tool-Assisted Speedrun (TAS) - programmable controllers and all of that allowed. break the game, cut it apart, put it back together to go fast.
Hope that helps.
@pr1mus said:
@ibushido said:
Awesome accomplishment. I'm not a speedrunner at all, so this might be common knowledge, but I noticed that he named himself "C" on his file and I was wondering if it's actually a speedrunning technique to give yourself a one-character name so that the text bubbles finish faster. If so, it's pretty sick that they are so thorough with their time-shaving efforts that they even thought of something like that. Speedrunning is crazy. I'd probably never get into something like that, but I think it's cool that people do it and I find it interesting when whole communities get together to figure out a way to break a game and play it in ways unintended by the developers.
I don't know if it's the case with this game specifically but it does save time to have a shorter name in some games. Final Fantasy 6 for example people will rename every character to only the first letter of the name except the last 2 or 3 characters they recruit. For those character the amount of time it takes to rename them (we're talking maybe 1-2 seconds here) is greater than the potential time save being so close to the end of the run.
Yep. Also, if entering a name is required part of the game that you perform while the timer is running (Dark Souls 2 is like that), runners will just put in whatever they can to get through the menu as fast as possible. Like Pokemon runner Werster, who traditionally always names his player character 'I'.
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