A Speedrunner Just Beat Ocarina of Time in 18 Minutes

It probably took me more than 20 hours to finish The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time when I was a kid. This weekend, it took speedrunner Cosmo Wright exactly 18 minutes and 10 seconds to see the credits.

In this case, Wright's beaten his own time. Wright's last few records for Ocarina of Time have continued to drop: 18:56, 18:40, 18:29. In speedrunning, every second counts!

As someone who moves from one game to the next rather quickly, speedrunning fascinates me. What drives a player to jump back into the same game over and over, trying to perfect every dash, slash, and exploit? My assumption is a sense of power derived from breaking a game in ways never intended, and the respect that comes with being "the best" at a game not traditionally viewed as competitive.

Rather than just speculating, though, I'll have to report back with more information later.

Cosmo is a good dude, glad to see him hold this record!

kk = klip klop?

Blip Bloop.

Patrick will probably fix the link in the article but here is the link to the recording with THE RUN. It is truly amazing. http://www.twitch.tv/cosmowright/c/4703125

Indeed. Cosmo is a guy you'd want as "the face of gaming". So sincere and humble.

Remember the tears !

his previous record was 18:29, got it just a few days before this one. anyway this was an incredible run, it's been awesome watching him get oot any% to this god level over the past few years, the emotions were beautiful, thank you based iQue

Hey, good on him. I love seeing the competition for stuff like this. All those glitches back in the day were something.

It's not embedding properly with our site, despite using the right link....you have to click on the video within the embed. Not great, but all I can do at the moment.

It took me six months to finish Ocarina of Time.

I just imagine the glee on their faces when they discover a glitch for the first time. And then trying to reapply that gained knowledge elsewhere just to see if it'll shave a second off.

Cosmo <3

I am not a big fan of these runs, if he beat the whoooooole thing in 18 minutes (impossible I know) I'm interested but glitch runs just don't do it for me. I love skill based or running through games normally as fast as they can. Like during this past event I caught myself watching an hour of a Quake 100% speed run and was fascinated, or like the Funkdoc run of the original castlevania and just beat the shit out of it.

Using glitches to your advantage against AI I'm cool with, but a glitch to skip to the end doesn't really interest me.

What drives a player to jump back into the same game over and over, trying to perfect every dash, slash, and exploit?

My answer would be 機能美. (This actually makes sense.)

After watching hundreds of Cosmo-hours, it was really fantastic to see him finally break that elusive 18:20, and by 10 seconds!!!
It's been so many nights having he's stream on (since I'm in Stockholm), watching the Zelda and Castlevania 64 runs, and the reason I have Cosmo on, is because he's channel has a really nice vibe, he's a nice guy, he's commentary is fantastic, and the community around the channel is mostly so positive and supportive. So lets hope Cosmo can come to a decision on what to do/play/run next ^_^

I've heard a couple speedrunners explain why they do what they do. Basically they said that speedrunning just gives extra life to their favorite games. They played them casually till they got boring, then they dissect it and run it until they know everything there is to know about the game. I've also heard some runners say that running a game so much made them sort of hate the game, so maybe there is a fine line to how far their dedication to a game should go.

That was pretty great.

You've hit the big leagues now Patrick. Have Cosmo sign your chest. :D

Speedrunning is about extending the life of the gameplay, competition with other speedrunners, and pursuit of perfection, obtaining the mythical URN where all goes as planned and all random elements are perfect. It is the Super Mario Bros. 4:57 any% (Andrew will get that run one of these days).

@shindig So, many years ago the speedrunning community decided there was no way to officiate what constitutes a glitch and what does not. For this reason, it was agreed on to split speedruns based on category. Any% being reaching the end credits by any method possible outside of automated outside assistance (tool assisted), then depending on the game you would have 100% or all bosses, or whatever made sense for the game. Cosmo's record is the OOT Any% category. There is also a OOT 100% but is it about 3 hours long. The Any% absolutely requires a great deal of skill. Those skips are not easy. Many of them are frame perfect.

How does the split timer thing on the side work? Is he hitting a button with his foot? It seemed to go to the next stage perfectly almost like it was built into the game.

@masterrain: It's a keyboard press the runner does manually on their computer. It's not automated.

18:10? I checked out his Youtube a day or so ago and he had 18:29, he beat that already?!?! Go Cosmo!!

@masterrain: He presses space bar. Cosmo has done this run more than 1250 times, he knows when to trigger the split counter.

@slowhanded: @mikaelboogart: Surely for the 'official' video/time he should do the splits post video? Like go through and do it on the hundredth of a second that the event happens? At least for the final time when Ganon gets shanked.

I don't find glitch runs that interesting but it's still neat.

Kinda agree with this sentiment. Still, hopefully Patrick finds some fun in this

I like both 100% and Any% for different reasons. Both require insane amounts of skill, though.

@masterrain: The only splits that matter are the first and last. Time splits throughout the run are just for the runner's own reference to gauge if they are ahead or behind their personal best times. If Cosmo screwed up the timing during the run, he absolutely will go back to the recording and time it exactly to the frame. This is actually common practice for highly competitive runs of shorter games where the number of frames matters to the timing. For something just under 20 minutes long it's generally not necessary to be 100th (60th of a second would be the common smallest metric for 60 fps games) of a second precise unless another runner got the same time and they need to compare to see whose was faster.

As a more recent member of that community, both sides certainly exist. A good way to prevent burn out on one game is to just pick up and run another. It also depends on the game's development - I run Dark Souls II which is just getting it's first DLC tomorrow and the past few months have been absolutely crazy with new strategies and glitches being uncovered (hell, the theoretical fastest time is around 15 and half minutes with the world record at 17:11). So for that game there is an ongoing sense of learning and having a strong community makes it a lot of fun to run and try new ideas. If you were the only person running a game that came out ten years ago, it would be a lot more difficult to keep going - I would think.

Also, I liked Dark Souls II but felt zero need to continue playing it past NG+. I started watching speed runs for it and felt I could get some more benefit out of the game that way and now I've probably spent WAY too much time competing for world records or testing routes or whatever. Sometimes it's soul crushing, sometimes it's elating - as long as I'm having fun though, I'm gonna keep at it.

Anyone looking to get into speed running that may read this, try BioShock. Quick to learn and hard to master but is very very forgiving with quick saves/loads that work pretty well.

@patrickklepek:

You really should ask him about wind waker as well. he was on an IGN podcast not too long ago, and the amount of knowledge he has on both these games is staggering. Its almost like speedrunners can see into the matrix. At least to me on the outside, thats what it seems like.

It's just an "any%" run. There are also 100% categories that they will do from time to time which is still undeniably fast. "Any% glitched" is just one category in a whole slough of categories for any particular game and the times stay unique to those categories. SMB3 has Any% Warp, Any% Warpless, 100%, etc.

@mikaelboogart: Couldn't have said it better — think of it as how a swimmer or runner has their splits recorded in races — though only the final times matter, split times are nonetheless great analytical tools in understanding points of improvement and consistency.

That's why there are multiple different kinds of runs. This run is just the fastest.

You turn on the system, start the game and the fastest way you can beat the game (that we know of) is this run.

Keep in mind that all of the glitches he does in this video take extreme skill and practice. Getting them all done successfully in one run is very hard and as a result ends up being a world record.

But yes, there are All-Dungeon and 100% categories for people who are more into the planning/routing aspects of it.

This video working for anyone? I cant seem to find the speedrun online

I watch speedruns all the time. New personal bests, and world records are great to watch - especially live, but I don't understand their prevalence in news stories. The speedrunning scene seems a bit niche for individual runs to show up on general games sites. A new world record is likely pretty indistinguishable from one set a year ago to a casual observer, with some exceptions.

I suppose everyone who watches speedruns has to be introduced somewhere, and it's cool for people like Cosmo to get some more recognition.

It's a cool concept, but not one that translates well outside Japanese. (Mathematical beauty comes kinda close.) I've got an explanation here.

@zaxex: Cosmo is by far the most famous speedrunner, and the Any% OoT is probably the most famous speedrun along with 120 stars Mario 64. So if any speedrun should hit the news, this is it.

I've always been of the opinion that large-skip glitches in speedruns aren't as interesting as a lot of other categories, but this is still incredibly impressive.

I've been watching Cosmo's stream for probably a good year now and been able to witness at least four personal bests live, including the two last week. His 18:10 especially was a thing of absolute beauty and the honesty in his reactions, from the humble "I take this as a sign of consistency" to the nerve-wrecking tension after he got the God-Hess was incredible. I'm not even a big Ocarina of Time guy, or deep into speedrunning, but seeing him reach this nigh-perfection of a run after months of practice was awe-inspiring. Congratulations again, Cosmo, you deserve it.

Here's the archived video on Cosmo's Profile.

Color me excited to see an interview with Cosmo!

Also excited to see another world record broken.

Ah I think twitch was the problem. Got it working. Thanks :)

What a boring beat.

Cosmo is great! I'm happy for him. Thanks for the coverage Patrick!

The fastest person in the world continues to be the fastest person in the world? Crazy! I can't wait for more wr updates from Patrick in the future.

Grats to Cosmo for the accomplishment! Took me roughly a year back in the day to beat the damn game.

♪ EPONAAAAAA!!! ♪Still got that hot jam stuck in my head. Thank's Patrick!

Awesome, Patrick. Your stories about game communities and the people in them are always my favorite.

I love this game. I hate/love Lost Woods. The music in that area is great!