
Discoveries Ten Years Later in Zelda Speedrun - jal278
http://blog.joellehman.com/index.php/2013/10/incredible-discoveries-ten-years-later-in-zelda-speedrun/
======
coldpie
Fun to see Cosmo on Hacker News. He's been getting a fair amount of attention
recently, including an article on Yahoo!. If you're interested in seeing him
exploit more video game glitches in the name of speedrunning, you can watch
him on Twitch.tv at
<[http://twitch.tv/cosmowright>](http://twitch.tv/cosmowright>). He is one of
the (and occasionally the single) best Wind Waker runners in the world. Right
now he's concentrating on The Wind Waker HD.

If you liked the video in the article, you might also enjoy his commentary on
a full Wind Waker run (nearly 5 hours):
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0u3djy6Ednc](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0u3djy6Ednc)

~~~
jrajav
He'll also be at the Awesome Games Done Quick marathon coming around again
this January:
[http://marathon.speeddemosarchive.com/upcoming](http://marathon.speeddemosarchive.com/upcoming)

~~~
jmcgough
love watching these - the Final Fantasy 4 and Secret of Evermore runs blew my
mind last time

------
oskarth
For those who haven't seen it, I highly recommend one of the "original"
speedruns - Quake Done Quick (on Nightmare, naturally). It's less about
glitches and more about playing extremely well. If you have ever played a
fast-paced FPS, you'll appreciate it.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpiNDxssUL0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpiNDxssUL0)

~~~
b0rsuk
I like "Quake done 100 quickest" much more.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhzXKMqZBBc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhzXKMqZBBc)

In most speedruns, player runs away like a sissy little girl. In this
speedrun, players aim for 100% kills and 100% secrets. Secrets actually make
it more interesting to watch, as they often store the Quad Damage powerup.

~~~
bnmvcx
"sissy little girl"? You sure you don't mean "scared little boy"? Why use such
antagonistic gender language?

~~~
eruditely
It obviously wasn't intentional. Why do you speak with much violence?

~~~
derleth
Because it's important for us to root out sexism where we find it, for the
same reasons we pull up any obnoxious weed. The fact it _wasn 't_ intentional
makes it all the more obnoxious.

~~~
Cthulhu_
Sexism... by replacing "girl" with "boy"? Equally sexist.

By replacing "boy/girl" with "child"? Ageism.

By replacing boy/girl/child with "person"? Humanism.

Yes I can go on.

~~~
derleth
> By replacing boy/girl/child with "person"? Humanism.

Obviously idiotic.

------
jal278
In case my server gets too sluggish, here's the important youtube link:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0M7IINwTFVw&t=16m2s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0M7IINwTFVw&t=16m2s)

Basically there's a speedrunner who is technically adept at the game, is a
good communicator, and explains as he plays a complex exploit that facilitates
skipping a large part of the game

~~~
JonSkeptic
I was watching that video and expecting an explanation along the lines of "If
I tap the c-pad, then b really fast at just the right time" and being met with
an explanation that shows an intricate working knowledge of the game....it was
impressive to say the least.

Wow. That guy is a hacker. Maybe he is only a hacker of this one game, I don't
know. But, this is a video that deserves to be linked by HackerNews.

~~~
droopybuns
I agree that this guy is a hacker, however I just want to share what a hacker
on steroids playing a game looks like.

Have you seen bortreb's pokemon hack?

[http://hackaday.com/2012/11/24/programming-a-game-boy-
while-...](http://hackaday.com/2012/11/24/programming-a-game-boy-while-
playing-pokemon/)

"Realizing this ROM hack is able to control the CPU with only the player’s
inventory, [bortreb] wanted to see how far he could push this hack. He ended
up writing a bootstrapping program by depositing and discarding items from the
in-game PC, and was then able to reprogram the Game Boy with a number of
button presses on the D-pad, select, start, A and B buttons."

~~~
Lapbunny
I prefer the Pi Day celebration hack.
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNPisyK43Lc](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNPisyK43Lc)

------
vinkelhake
I love speedruns. There's a vibrant community of speedrunners and fans out
there. With fast Internet connections, they can now stream their attempts
live.

Some resources:

[http://speedrunslive.com](http://speedrunslive.com) \- who's playing right
now?

[http://twitch.tv](http://twitch.tv) \- service for live streaming of games.

[http://twitch.tv/cosmowright](http://twitch.tv/cosmowright) \- Cosmo, the
speedrunner in the article.

~~~
ihsw
Just a heads-up to anybody interested -- there are generally two types of
speedruns, tool-assisted speedrun (TAS) and unassisted. Searching for "$GAME
TAS" (eg: Super Mario World TAS) usually results in very impressive videos so
they're usually easier to find.

There are a variety of other terms as well, for example sequence breaking, no-
glitch, 100% completion, and so forth. Understandably there are numerous
videos on Youtube for pretty much every console game that can be played on an
emulator.

~~~
mistercow
By far my favorite kind of speedrun to watch is a non-TAS with commentary.
Often, these runs are done by teams. There's typically one player who is good
at executing, and then you might have someone responsible for planning the
route through the game, and another person responsible for researching
glitches and how they can be used most efficiently, etc.

Hearing these people discuss their craft, and hearing the dynamics between
their interactions (personal and practical) is fascinating. The best example I
know of this is the ingx24 speedrun of Majora's Mask:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85k0fo1qnyo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85k0fo1qnyo)

Humans are amazing animals. The fact that this level and coordination is
possible even when the stakes are, ultimately, pretty pointless, is a
testament to that.

------
minimaxir
There's also a cool, recent exploit in Super Mario World speed runs that uses
similar RAM corruption techniques to "beat" the game in less than 3 minutes.
(more details here: [http://minimaxir.com/2013/03/127-yoshis-in-
slot-6/](http://minimaxir.com/2013/03/127-yoshis-in-slot-6/) )

~~~
mcphilip
The technical details of how this series of exploits were identified, much
less applied, is staggeringly complex. I love speed and/or glitch runs and I
can't imagine this one being dethroned anytime soon.

~~~
GlitchMr
Actually, it already was. The fastest Super Mario World speedrun is now 1
minute and 40 seconds. For more details see
[http://tasvideos.org/2380M.html](http://tasvideos.org/2380M.html). It's even
more complex.

~~~
minimaxir
_" Suffice to say that 8 controllers are required to get this to work."_

You weren't kidding.

------
mpyne
A speedrun thread on HN? What a beautiful, beautiful day!

There's also a good subreddit that discusses the latest speedruns,
[http://www.reddit.com/r/speedrun/](http://www.reddit.com/r/speedrun/)

------
hayksaakian
"It probably helps that I’m guessing this game had to be rushed out the door
and perhaps had some inexperienced programmers working on it, which led to a
more fascinating and strange world for speed-runners to explore."

Every piece of software has bugs. But, the kinds of things they exploit in OOT
you wouldn't find in %99.999 of normal playthroughs.

~~~
thatswrong0
Yep, there are a ton of huge / game-breaking bugs. But it did take quite a
while (10+ years) and a lot of people to find many of them. The fact that
people really love to speed run the game certainly was a huge factor in
finding these subtle bugs, not to mention technology like emulators really
accelerated the process, especially when it came to finding, for example, the
correct frame to leave Gohma's room for the wrong-warp to Ganon's castle (it's
a frame perfect trick). I would imagine that most games made at the time, if
subjected to the same level of scrutiny, would display near or the same level
of brokenness. Donkey Kong 64 certainly comes to mind. I don't think this is
indicative of inexperienced programmers.

And then we have to think of the system limitations at the time and the fact
that the N64 was a pretty new system with a new way of displaying graphics. It
was a pretty big paradigm shift and yes, for the first 3D Zelda game it, like
all games, could have benefitted from more time.

A lot of the bugs with the game have to do with messing with memory and
exploiting pointer arithmetic. Using pointer manipulation to handle cutscene /
area changes as well as items on the C-buttons obviously isn't ideal but sure
as hell saved space compared to alternative solutions. There is very little
error checking (for buffer overflows and 'impossible' situations such as
having a deku stick on 'B') for what I would imagine to be performance
concerns as well as simply good time management.

To your point, absolutely. Very few people for the first few years encountered
any such bugs. The first real speed run of the game came in 2003, 5 years
after its release. Even that run featured very few bugs; it was mostly route
optimization and practice. The latest wrong warp glitch which enables you to
jump from Deku Tree to Ganon's Castle was found in 2012. That's a full 14
years after the game's release.

If anything, this speaks more to the dedication of speed runners and glitch
finders that the incompetency of OoT programmers.

------
theboss
These kinds of things always remind me of everyone's favorite game exploit.
Good ol MissingNo from pokemon and the rare candy trick.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MissingNo.#Characteristics](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MissingNo.#Characteristics)

[http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Item_duplication_glit...](http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Item_duplication_glitch)

~~~
dpedu
On the topic of Pokemon:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5T81yHkHtI](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5T81yHkHtI)

------
dcolgan
If you are interested in seeing more of the best speedrunners, Awesome Games
Done Quick is happening in January. It is a week-long 24/7 marathon of
speedrunning to raise money for charity:
[http://marathon.speeddemosarchive.com/upcoming](http://marathon.speeddemosarchive.com/upcoming)

------
ColinDabritz
The speed demos archive has a lot of excellent speedruns:
[http://speeddemosarchive.com/](http://speeddemosarchive.com/)

------
decadentcactus
One of my favourite speedruns, Portal Done Pro:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1U5RUVENNE](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1U5RUVENNE)

Gets interesting at 3 mins. There's also an explanatory series.

~~~
M4v3R
This is just badass. He also did Portal 2 IIRC.

------
Argorak
This is an interesting subculture of gaming: people trying to dissect a game
by all means possible. For Shadow of the Colossus, there is a community
dedicated to finding every bit of the game world, even the unfinished parts
that made it into the final versions:

[http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-05-02-the-quest-
for-s...](http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-05-02-the-quest-for-shadow-
of-the-colossuss-last-big-secret)

------
ben-yu
I just recently got into the speedrunning scene, and it's interesting how the
community categorizes speedruns based on version differences and platform.
Cosmo wrote a great blog post specifically about OOT:
[http://blog.cosmowright.com/?p=33](http://blog.cosmowright.com/?p=33)

------
prezjordan
It's incredible that he's able to do these by hand. Most glitches of that
nature are tool-assisted. Tool-assisted game-play[0] is a true artform.

[0]:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXCLNnj8OBY](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXCLNnj8OBY)

------
barbs
If anyone's interested, I think the forum thread Cosmo mentions in the video
is this one:

[https://forum.speeddemosarchive.com/post/ocarina_of_time__al...](https://forum.speeddemosarchive.com/post/ocarina_of_time__all_categoriesn64.html)

------
Ayjay
Predictably, this speed run is now quite outdated, even though it's less than
a year later. There have been several major discoveries that have now lowered
the world record to just over 19 minutes.

------
tarice
Another glitch that was found relatively recently (not shown in linked run):

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mp0uHr2X6U&t=19m20s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mp0uHr2X6U&t=19m20s)

A more complete explanation of the glitch occurs earlier in the video, but he
explains the basics of it after he performs the glitch (unfortunately dying in
the process). Apparently three different exploiters found three exploits that,
when combined, enabled this glitch. Quite fascinating.

------
mistercow
Speedruns are amazingly interesting. When I tell people about watching them,
their reaction is usually something along the lines of "why do people waste
their lives on that?"

But there's so much interesting going on there. The parallels to optimization
in programming are striking.

~~~
PavlovsCat
Sorry to be that guy, but isn't one of the cornerstones of optimization in
programming that you should only do it when it actually gives a meaningful
benefit? E.g. don't spend days or weeks to make a part of the program that
gets called very rarely run 0.1% faster, when you could instead spend that
time on solving a new problem, or making an actually useful optimization, or
doing something else entirely.

Of course, it's silly to bicker about what is "useful" when it comes to things
people do to relax or entertain themselves; and usually fruitless when it
comes to things they do as escapism or getting a feeling of achievement to
compensate for areas where they are stuck or blocked off. I do think the
psychology of it is interesting though, and my personal guess is that most if
not all people have the innate desire to progress and achieve things, but we
often can't for some reason or other. Why does a caged animal endlessly walk
in circles? Because it's better than doing nothing. And before you think I'm
just being snarky, think again, please; I did and do my fair share of such
things myself, I just also can't help but notice that the smaller and more
powerless people become, the more we celebrate rather pointless things - TV
and the interwebs are full of that. And even if I'm wrong about the
motivations of everybody else on the planet, I do know myself well enough, and
although I might be projecting, it's at worst a honest mistake.

~~~
mistercow
I'm trying to understand what your point is with relationship to my comment,
but I don't see it.

~~~
PavlovsCat
1.) "premature optimization", the fact that optimization for the sake of
optimization isn't optimization, but rather counterproductive, if not
obsession or procrastination.

2.) my attempt to answer the question "why do people do this?", which is
something I ponder a lot, in relation to gaming and other things as well.
Imagine someone cooking the same meal over and over again, to optimize the
amount of time they take for it, and the amount of ingredients they use, but
never actually eating what they cooked.

~~~
mistercow
As for number 2, if they get satisfaction out of it, I think that's a
perfectly fine (if unusual) hobby.

------
ieatdots
Check out Masterjun's similar Super Mario World exploits here:

[http://tasvideos.org/3957S.html](http://tasvideos.org/3957S.html)

[http://tasvideos.org/3413S.html](http://tasvideos.org/3413S.html)

------
Camillo
Those four paragraphs don't really add anything. Why not link directly to the
video?

------
Aardwolf
Shouldn't a true speedrun be about going as fast as possible through the
_intended_ game, without exploiting obvious bugs? Finding those bugs is really
cool, but I wouldn't call the result a speedrun.

~~~
Pretzels
You should look for videos or streamers who specify glitchless in the
category. Otherwise glitching is implied in a speedrun.

------
AsymetricCom
Now only if I could find suck hacks in physics.

------
harrysboileau
test

