Tag: gdq

GDQ Animations on GitHub

It turns out that the various animations that Games Done Quick uses are all in a repository on GitHub, where you can download them and run them yourself, and even make contributions if that is something you feel up for. The require Node.js, and a little command line use and tinkering to get started (it turns out you’re supposed to run npm install from within the repository folder, not from outside of it as implied by the instructions).

The repository can be obtained here. I got it working, and here are some of the displays running from my own machine. And don’t forget that SGDQ 2024 is still going!

GDQ Animation Repository (github.com)

Sundry Sunday: From AGDQ, A Dog Replaces R.O.B. in Gyromite

Sundry Sunday is our weekly feature of fun gaming culture finds and videos, from across the years and even decades.

This week’s fun video isn’t decades old, in fact it’s from just a few days ago, from AGDQ.

The NES title Gyromite, a.k.a. Robot Gyro, is a very interesting game from a design standpoint, possibly more interesting than it is to actually play (although I think its music is very catchy). It’s never been rereleased by Nintendo, for the probable reason that it relies on the accessory R.O.B. to play.

R.O.B: It’s not just that funky Smash Bros. character! (Image from Wikipedia, taken by Evan-Amos.)

R.O.B. was a motorized accessory that activated servos in its arms depending on light signals sent to it from the screen. No cords went from R.O.B. to the NES. It used photoreceptors in its “eyes” to detect the screen signals, which were ultimately caused by player input on the controller. A fairly roundabout means of control, honestly.

Only two official R.O.B. games were made, and Gyromite (Going by its Japanese name “Robot Gyro” according to the title screen) used the “gyro” accessory for play. A platform is placed in front of R.O.B., on which you place the controller for Player 2.

On the controller is a device that spins the “gyros,” colored weighted tops. By manipulating the arms with action on Player 1’s controller, making them swing around and opening and closing the claws at the right time, you can cause R.O.B. to lift the spinning gyros from their platform, then set them down on the NES controller’s buttons. In the game, this caused colored pillars to rise or fall according to the control signals.

R.O.B. with gyro setup. Image from the blog Nerdly Pleasures.

While manipulating all of this, you also have to watch out for the action of the game itself. Gyromite is a simple platformer, but one without a jump button. The difficulty comes from having to essentially play two games at once, the platforming on screen and manipulating R.O.B. to position pillars in the right places in space and time.

R.O.B.’s motions are not simple to command either. It takes time for the arms to pivot between their destinations, time that must be accounted for in the on-screen action, and while the tops spin for quite a while they will eventually have to be collected and set back on their pedestals so they can be spun back up to full speed, or else they’ll topple over on the button. This doesn’t produce a failure state in the game. It’s just left to you to pick the top up yourself and put it back on its stand to be spun again. R.O.B. isn’t capable of such feats of dexterity.

There’s a lot more to say about R.O.B., and how it was mostly distributed as part of the Nintendo Entertainment System’s “Deluxe Set” in the U.S., the more expensive version that didn’t come with Super Mario Bros. Instead of that, let’s talk about how, due to the fact that R.O.B. is just a fancy-shmancy way to press controller buttons, that you can replace it entirely with some other mechanism, or indeed, even animal.

That’s what happened Wednesday at AGDQ, where Peanut Butter the Dog, with coaching from JSR_, left R.O.B. gathering dust in the closet as they played through Gyromite Game B.

They didn’t make it all the way without running out of lives, but they picked back up and kept going. And that doesn’t detract at all from Peanut Butter’s skills, or amazing doggy focus. They are intent on reading those hand signals and getting those tasty treats. So while they didn’t earn a world record, for “Dog playing Gyromite Game B,” their accomplishment is of definite note.

There are around four minutes of introductions at the start of the video, so if you want to jump right in to the run, begin here.

Gyromite by Peanut Butter the Dog & JSR_ in 26:24 – Awesome Games Done Quick 2024 (Youtube, 33 minutes)

AGDQ Starts Tomorrow!

AGDQ, one of GDQ’s two yearly life speedrunning events, begins tomorrow and runs to the 24th! Here’s the schedule!

Here are some highlights, according to me. The times I give are US Eastern/Pacific, but the schedule page linked above can convert times to your own zone:

Sunday, January 14th

Noon/9 AM: Tunic – Everyone’s favorite fox-based Zelda-like.

12:40 PM/9:40 AM: Super Monkey Ball – Monkey Ball speedruns are always awesome to watch!

3:40 PM/12:40 AM: Tales’ Adventure – A glitchless run of a Game Gear game, and one of the less remarked-upon of the Sonic series.

4:49 PM/1:49 PM: Donkey Kong 64 – An infamous 3D platformer experienced the best possible way: watching someone else play it.

8:55 PM/5:55 PM: Ultimate Doom – One of several billion speedruns of Doom, I’d expect this to be heavily optimized.

9:43 PM/6:43 PM: Jet Set Radio Future – The underrated Xbox sequel to the Dreamcast original.

Monday, January 15th

3:13 AM/12:13 AM: The Typing of the Dead – Worth checking in for the funny word list!

5:13 AM/2:13 AM: Marble Madness II race – At last, over 30 years after the prototype sequel to Marble Madness was scrapped, it finally comes to GDQ. Mere days after the game was leaked to the public there were already extremely proficient runs of MM2 on Youtube, so don’t blink or it’ll be over before you open your eyes.

10:01 AM/7:01 AM: Manifold Garden, reverse tree order – This game is amazing.

11:38 AM/8:38 AM: 30XX – sequel to 20XX, a procedurally-generated platformer.

2:37 PM/11:37 AM: Metroid Prime 2: Echoes – A competent sequel to the original Metroid Prime that tends to be overshadowed by the original. This is a 100% run, scheduled for 2 1/2 hours.

7:30 PM/4:30 PM: Sonic Adventure 2 Battle – Another underrated game, this run seeks to get all A ranks.

10:55 PM/7:55 PM: Pikmin 4 – The Pikmin games seem to alternate, with the odd-numbered games having strong time limits, and the even-numbered ones being a lot more laid back. They’re all terrific though, and provide a kind of gameplay that few other games attempt.

Tuesday, January 16th

8:46 AM/5:46 AM: Arkanoid – I presume this is the NES version. Coming from the lineage of Breakout, this game is extremely hard. I hope they’re playing it on NES hardware, with the official paddle controller made for this game.

9:23 AM/6:23 AM: Gimmick! – The new schedule page doesn’t specify which platform the game is being played on, unfortunately. This could either be the NES prototype original or the official (and ludicrously expensive) exA-Arcadia remake.

11:34 AM/8 34 AM: The Legend of Zelda – This run is glitchless, which is an important consideration for Zelda 1 these days.

2:03 PM/11:03 AM: Gyromite (Game B, Dog Assistance) – 🐕🐕🐕？？？

8:00 PM/5:00 PM: Octopath Traveller II – Might be a good opportunity to see what this game is about, if you haven’t jumped at it yet?

10:52 PM/7:52 PM: Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night – IGA’s post-Konami Metroidvania, with an emphasis on the Vania.

Wednesday, January 17th

2:59 AM/11:59 PM[Tue]: Diablo (1996) – The original game, but played through as a Sorcerer at Level 1?

3:46 AM/12:46 AM: Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door – News of the Switch remake has put this classic back in the spotlight. It’s still the best Paper Mario game, and one of the best damn JRPGs period, overloaded with humor but with a great story too. It demonstrated that the Mario universe has the power to tell actually interesting stories-but it may also have been the game that causes Nintendo to rein in Intelligent Systems’ use of the Mario property, as (I believe) it’s the last game with individualized Toads.

7:15 AM/4:15 AM: Ducktales Remastered – The final voice appearance of Alan Young, Wilbur from the long-ago talking horse sitcom Mr. Ed, as Scrooge McDuck before he passed away. It’s one of Wayforward’s technically excellent 2D platformers, so it’ll be interesting to see how they break it.

8:26 AM/5:26 AM: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (arcade) – A 1 credit clear no less. I love seeing arcade games at GDQ, especially if they aren’t rhythm games, or as I like to think of them, Super Simon.

10:24 AM/7:24 AM: Super Mario Bros. 2 USA – I find it sad that NES games tend to be underrepresented at GDQ in this era, although I can certainly see why, as this run is scheduled to be just 12 minutes long.

11:06 AM/8:06 AM: Monkey Island 1 vs Monkey Island 2 – I don’t know what this means. Are they playing them both?

12:25 PM/9:25 AM: Metroid Dread – 100% NMG (“No Major Glitches”)

2:40 PM/11:40 AM: Pokemon Crystal Item Randomizer – Additionally, this is played co-op, meaning (I think) two players are playing, but when one finds an item the other immediately gets it too.

7:05 PM/4:05 PM: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time – This run is marked “MST.” To explain, that stands for Medallians/Stones/Trials. For an explanation of the explanation, you’ll have to look elsewhere.

9:35 PM/6:35 PM: Super Mario 64 – “16 Star Drum%” Oh those abbreviations. Whatever that means, they expect it to take 24 minutes.

10:06 PM/7:06 PM: TASbot presents Super Metroid – Past TASbot performances have reprogrammed games to present full motion video on a Gameboy and a completely alternate ending to Ocarina of Time, so whatever they’re doing this year is anyone’s guess.

Thursday, January 18th

2:11 AM/11:11 PM[Wed] – 7:25 AM/4:25 AM: Short games – I don’t know if this counts as “Awful Block” since Ninja Gaiden is in there, but they are running a number of lesser-seen games, including NES Beetlejuice, the Xbox 360 promotion Burger King tie-in Sneak King and Virtual Hydlide.

11:42 AM/8:42 AM: Kirby and the Amazing Mirror – That odd Kirby game that was functionally a Metroidvania and gave him Smash Bros. powers as one of his copy abilities. Also, Kirby has three other Kirbies wandering around as helpers, and you can call them in a cell phone. Kind of a failed experiment, but it’s still interesting!

12:19 PM/9:19 AM: Castlevania III – A solid NES game, and one that hasn’t been broken to pieces as it still takes 40 minutes to finish.

2:35 PM/11:35 PM: Super Mario Sunshine – 120 Shines. That means getting all 240 Blue Coins too. AGDQ had a cursed run of Sunshine where the runner suffered a Game Over, but because the play eschewed saving to save time, all progress was completely lost, and they had to start from scratch! Hopefully this one will go better.

8:37 PM/5:37 PM: Super Mario Maker 2 Glitch Showcase – Nintendo seems to be neglecting this game-it didn’t get a bookmark website like the first one did, and now Wonder’s out with nary a remark about SMM2. It feels like they’ll bin this one before long, so please enjoy these glitches while you can.

9:22 PM/6:22 PM: Halo: Combat Evolved – Co-op on Easy. I understand that this extremely niche game was nevertheless popular in some circles. The 3? 4? of you who know of this game will enjoy it I’m sure.

Friday, January 19th

9:17 AM/6:17 AM: Undertale, True Pacifist Race – It’s hard to believe this game’s already eight years old! When will we start seeing Deltarune chapters at GDQ?

3:22 PM/12:22 PM: Risk of Rain Returns – This game is very new but already has speedruns!

4:40PM/1:40 PM: Super Mario Bros. Wonder

10:34 PM/7:34 PM: The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask – 100% No Major Glitches Relay

Saturday, January 20th

5:38 AM/2:38 AM: Star Fox 64 – 2k%, which means, in the style of speedrunners, a speedrun with a special requirement, here that the player finish a score of 2,000 or more. Back when I played Star Fox 64 a lot, my highest score ever I think was a bit over 1,700, and I worked hard for that score, so this requires some “skillz,” as they say.

8:46 AM/5:46 AM: Sonic Origins Plus – “Anniversary Mode” Relay

6:33 PM/3:33 PM: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom – Any%, so, expect an unwise confrontation with Ganon with only four hearts.

7:51 PM/4:51 PM: Baldur’s Gate 3 – Last year’s other megahit, this goes through all acts but is only scheduled for 35 minutes. A friend of mine has, over a week, started this game completely over from scratch three times without finishing, so it’s safe to assume he’s falling way behind the curve.

9:04 PM/6:04 PM: Final Fantasy V Pixel Remaster – The last game of the show, with “Cutscene Remover.” Even without them, scheduled for 2 1/2 hours.

SGDQ 2023 Upcoming (and Past) Highlights

As noted yesterday, I forgot about SGDQ this year and we’re already underway. But there’s still five-and-a-half days of it left, so here’s some projected highlights and notes. Nearly every day of the weeklong charity speedrunning marathon this year has a Legend of Zelda game. I’ve boldfaced them below to point them out! All times US Eastern. For the full rundown, check the schedule page. And you can watch the marathon in progress here!

I’m pushing the next @Play to tomorrow since this one’s pretty time sensitive. See you with that tomorrow!

Past, Sunday

These should be on Youtube soon, if they aren’t already by the time this is published.

Sonic Frontiers, Any%

Bugsnax, All Bosses Co-Op

Mega Man Maker, Any% – hey, we recently linked to that! I have no idea what “Any %” means for a level construction program.

F-Zero X Expansion Kit, All Tracks (should be interesting, this didn’t get a release outside of Japan!)

The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap, Any%

Luigi’s Mansion 100% Race, on Wii

Past, Monday

Banjo-Kazooie, 110% no FFM (FFM stands for “Furnace Fun Moves,” it’s a way to get the moves from a different save file unlocked on a current save, they’re saying they won’t do that, even though it’s possible)

Loom, Any% (always nice to see a Lucasarts classic here)

Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker, Any%, on the Sega Genesis (not the even-more-bizarre arcade game)

Metal Slug XX, Normal Difficulty, Any %

Present, Monday

Here begin the runs that you might still have a chance to catch-

9:58 AM: PHOGS!, Solo Any% (this is an indie release with a bizarre premise, the character is a stretchy dog with a head on both ends, huh)

12:55 PM: Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII – Reunion, Any% Race

2:24 PM: Peggle Deluxe, Any% (yes, Peggle)

5:18 PM: Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus, All Keys

6:42 PM: The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, Any% (given the success of BotW and TotK, probably the last “traditional” Zelda game we’ll see for awhile)

8:29 PM: Igavania sequence! Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon, its sequel, and as a possible bonus game Symphony of the Night

11:33 PM: StepMania DX, Game Showcase, Arcade

Tuesday

1:39 AM: Hearthstone: Knights of the Frozen Throne, Solo Adventures

5:50 AM: SNOLF, Any% No Coordinate Warp (it’s a hack of Sonic 2 where you play golf with Sonic)

6:40 AM: Marathon Infinity, All Main Levels on Kindergarten Difficulty (sadly it’s a PC port, not on a classic Macintosh)

8:00 AM: Maniac Mansion, Any%, NES (only eight minutes is blocked for this, so don’t blink!)

4:16 PM: The Elder Scrolls Anthology, Main Series

8:00 PM: Halo 3, Legendary Difficulty, as a bonus game

Wednesday

5:25 AM: Dead Rising 2, Time Skip NG

9:19 AM: Gauntlet, Any% Co-Op, NES (only 20 minutes for this)

11:55 AM: Touhou 14.3: Impossible Spell Card, All Scenes No Items (I’d make a joke about this being for the kids out there, but Touhou’s been around for quite a while now, I’m just old)

1:32 PM: Shatterhand, Any% on NES (24 minutes, it’d be nice to have another NES game in a GDQ that’s not over in half an hour or less)

3:06 PM: Trine Enchanted Edition, Any% NG+

3:41 PM: N++, Co-op Legacy X-row (remember when this was just a Flash game? remember when there were Flash games?)

5:08 PM: Shadow the Hedgehog, Glitchless Bidwar (oooh edgy)

5:58 PM: Sonic Adventure DX, All Stories Relay

8:00 PM: The Legend of Zelda: Majoras Mask, Blitz Randomizer (randomizer runs are always fun!)

10:42 PM: Super Mario Odyssey, Any% as a bonus game

Thursday

12:16 AM: Paper Mario, Any% no ACE (“ace” stands for Arbitrary Code Execution, it’s one of those sneaky ways to glitch a game out to get to the end immediately, they’re saying they aren’t doing that)

3:46 AM: Golf It!, Classic First 5 Maps 100% Race (Golf It, which according to nearly the entire first page of Google hits for it is “a multiplayer Minigolf game with focus on a dynamic, fun and creative multiplayer experience,” blergh, is one of those silly golf games along the lines of What The Golf)

4:26 PM: Hobo Cat Adventures, Any%

5:51 AM: Give Me Toilet Paper!, Hand% (maybe we’re in Awful Block, because the next game is….)

6:14 AM: Pepsiman, Any% (yep)

8:54 AM: Pocky & Rocky Reshrined, Any% with Uzumi

9:39 AM: The Curse of Monkey Island, Any% Mega-Monkey (increases the number of puzzles!)

10:13 AM: Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Any%

2:45 PM: Darkest Dungeon

4:45 PM: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Any% (nice to see a Zelda game that hasn’t been compressed into nothing, three hours is blocked off for this which is a lot longer than for Breath of the Wild)

7:57 PM: Pizza Tower, Any% (yay!)

Friday

12:13 AM: Crash Bandicoot: N. Sane Trilogy, Full Trilogy Any%

4:17 AM: Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse, All Dark Magic, Pirate Mode, No OOB

5:47 AM: Klonoa Phantasy Reverie Series, Klonoa 1 Any% Easy Support Mode

6:52 AM: VVVVVV, Any% Glitchless

7:24 AM: SaGa Frontier, Story Bidwar

8:39 AM: Final Fight 3, Co-Op Any% (Easy), on SNES

There’s a lot of short games around here….

11:24 AM: X-Men Arcade, 2-player 1CC attempt (there should be more arcade games at GDQ)

12:45 PM: The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords, Any% Co-op, on GBA (one of the least Zelda-like Zeldas)

1:25 PM: Metroid Prime Remastered, Any%

3:42 PM: Pokémon Colosseum, Any% Race (four hours for this one, it’s the traditional very long Pokemon playthrough, although this time it’s for one of the side-series battlers, a sequel to Pokemon Stadium)

8:09 PM: Kaizo Monkey Ball, Story Mode (this is a hack of a Super Monkey Ball game to make it even harder)

Saturday

12:16 AM: Celeste, TAS True Ending

1:02 AM: Super Mario 64, Randomizer- 70 Star Non-Stop

1:59 AM: Kingdom Hearts Final Mix, Any% Proud Race

6:09 AM: Neopets: The Darkest Faerie, Any% (Neopets!)

7:14 AM: Tony Hawk’s Underground, Beginner Any%

8:04 AM: Spelunky 2, Spelunker Trials Any%

9:19 AM: Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg, Any% (while it has its flaws, this is an underrated game)

10:41 AM: Final Fantasy IV Pixel Remaster, Any%

2:56 PM: Super Mario Bros., Any% Warpless (20 minutes blocked for this, which is surprising to me)

5:01 PM: Pokemon Violet/Scarlet, Victory Road (a relatively traditional style of Pokemon play in this open world game)

7:46 PM: Elden Ring, Any% Glitchless

11:26 PM: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Any% Blindfolded as a bonus game

Sunday

3:14 AM: Super Metroid, Co-Op Any% (Super Metroid is a traditional GDQ marathon ender. save the animals!)

Super Punch-Out!! Blindfolded Race at GDQx 2019

Watching a lot of speedruns, as I’ve said before, can give you a distorted view of what video game difficulty is actually like. Speedrunning has been a going hobby for well over a decade now. New strategies are worked out and evolve. If they’re good ones, they become a part of everyone’s runs and are further refined. If they’re not good ones they’re discarded. What I’m saying is, the state-of-the-art advances. It doesn’t recede. People keep getting better. TASes are even more optimized than that, and are at this point really a completely different process, more scripting and exploring program function than playing a game in the traditional manner.

There may come a time, eventually, where, confident that runs have been perfected, speedrun becomes less focused-upon. Then after a period, people may come back and try to match the records of old. Or, maybe people will just stop speedrunning games, at least from the NES and SNES era. Many of these games are deep, but they aren’t an inexhaustible resource.

When you watch a speedrun, even one that’s three or four years old, you aren’t watching the effort of one person, but of a chain of people stretching back. Runners watch each other’s attempts and try to improve upon them. There aren’t many secrets.

Watching speedrunners who have played these games hundreds of times may cause you to think that the games are somehow easy. One way some challenge can still be preserved is in attempting challenge runs, like completing a game blindfolded. Like Punch-Out. Finishing Punch-Out blindfolded. That’s something that people do, but it’s still pretty challenging.

And it’s generally considered that Super Punch-Out!! for the SNES is the hardest Punch-Out game to do blindfolded. I’d think that that would be NES Punch-Out, since Tyson at the end is very random and can knock Little Mac down in a single punch throughout the first half of the first round, but the commentators on this video say it’s SNES Punch-Out, and I believe them. In this race, both players take a defeat at one point! That’s not something you often see at GDQ.

If you know what you’re doing Super Punch-Out is a fairly short game. This whole run (a race between two people) takes about 22 minutes from start to end. One nice thing about this race is that it doesn’t become a case, common in speedrun races, where one player jumps into the lead and stays there the entire rest of the race. The lead changes a couple of times, and is up in the air until the last fight.

If you’ve never encountered Super Punch-Out!! before, you might be surprised by how much it differs from the much better-known NES game. NES is very much a game of pattern recognition and exploitation. The SNES version brings back the two arcade games’ power meter, adds a dizzy mechanic that can affect every opponent, and just has a lot more randomness. Not blindfolded it may be a little easier than the NES game, it doesn’t have any opponents like Mike Tyson. But it still has its challenges, as much personality as the 8-bit game, and further, doesn’t lean nearly as hard on ethnic stereotypes, and those are all good things!

AGDQ 2023 Selections #2: Tuesday & Wednesday

Some more selections possibly of interest from AGDQ 2023. Note that times given in the text are not the length of the run, but as according to our usual policy the run length of the video itself.

Ape Escape 2 (1:04):

Goat Simulator (34m):

Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow Any% No 0HP race (42m) – at 19:40 in begins an extra Julius Any% run:

Super Mario Galaxy 2 four-player Any% race (3:27):

Jak II Any% (1:19):

Outer Wilds (53m):

Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal (1:35):

FEZ (35m):

Stardew Valley (58m):

Pokemon Yellow (2:24):

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D (48m):

Stray (1:16):

AGDQ 2023 Approaches!

Everyone’s favorite, or at least the most famous, charity speedrunning marathon is back! It’s January 8 through 14. This is the one with Awful Block, BTW! This year AGDQ is being run to support the Prevent Cancer Foundation.12

This year I have a schedule conflict and so I won’t be able to watch it as carefully to report on day to day here. But I can try to say something where I can when I happen to catch a stolen moment!

Of note, AGDQ 2023 this year is completely online again. SGDQ this year went back to being in person, but particular issues resulted in AGDQ going back to online-only. Specifically, back in 2020 before the pandemic happened, they had locked in a venue in Florida. Since then not only did the pandemic hit, but Florida went absolutely anti-vaccine crazy, not to mention anti-trans!

Both of these factors resulted in their decision to not hold the event in Florida, even though it requires paying substantial cancellation fees. That sucks, but I support them in this decision, and I say this as someone who lives in a state close to Florida.

Even though I won’t be able to follow it as closely as last time, they will still be posting archives of all their runs to Youtube so they can be watched after the fact! And I can still take a moment to have a look at their schedule right now and find some things that might be of interest out our audience of three, maybe even four people. All times here are US Eastern:

SUNDAY, January 8th

Noon: Splatoon 3, still a really new game so you’ll probably to be able to see a lot of new tech!

1:30 PM: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. The past six years this game has been absolutely blown apart in strange and entertaining ways! This may be its last year in the spotlight though, since its sequel is coming out this year!

4:29 PM: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. An old favorite!

11:19 PM: Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky. This is a randomizer run, so unusual events may be in the offing!

MONDAY, January 9th

4:30 AM: Ax Battler, A Legend of Golden Axe. A fairly obscure Game Gear game, focusing on the least charismatic character of the original Golden Axe trio.

7:35 AM: Bomberman 64: The Second Attack.

11:39 AM: Shovel Knight Dig. A race!

2:54 PM: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge. This is that recent game made as an homage to the classic Konami arcade titles! This is described as a “chill race,” and is being played in co-op mode.

6:59 PM: Portal. A “bonus game,” which will be done if a donation incentive is met. Portal is another game that’s been annihilated by speedrunners.

10:59 PM: Fable Anniversary.

TUESDAY, January 10th

12:29 AM: Ape Escape 2.

3:39 AM: Goat Simulator. “Here comes that goat again….”

10:29 AM: Castlevania: Harmony of Despair.

11:39 AM: Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow.

2:30 PM: Super Mario Galaxy 2.

7:05 PM: Outer Wilds.

WEDNESDAY, January 11th

4:02 AM: FEZ.

6:28 AM: Final Fantasy VII. Over seven hours!

2:03 PM: Stardew Valley. A glitchless race.

2:53 PM: A Sonic the Hedgehog block, with Sonic Unleashed, Sonic Colors: Ultimate and Sonic Advance 2, which is the subject of a character bidwar. #teamamy

5:21 PM: Pokemon Red “or Yellow,” I don’t know what that means. Glitchless, but only two hours long. How?

7:36 PM: Ocarina of Time 3D.

8:21 PM: Last year’s hit Stray as a bonus game.

11:54 PM: Kirby Star Allies, with a “Guest Star?”

THURSDAY, January 12th

12:44 AM: Pac-Man: The New Adventures. This is that funky 16-bit game where you don’t directly control Pac-Man but instead try to influence an AI-controlled Pac to do what needs doing. This may be intended to kick off Awful Block, but I don’t think it’s really awful, just, not really much of a Pac-Man game.

1:23 AM: AWFUL BLOCK! Yo! Noid 2: Game of a Year Edition, Yolanda, Lizard Lady vs. The Cats, Office Race, Salamander County Public Television, Battle of the Eras, Morodashi Sumo, Dokkaebi-ga Ganda, I’m going to die if I don’t eat sushi!, Sonic Blast, Bad Guys At School, and Steven Seagal is the Final Option, at 7:05 AM.

8:59 AM: The World Ends With You: Final Remix.

12:54 PM: Metal Slug. Oh I’m sorry, that should be Metal Slug!, with an exclamation point.

2:00 PM: BS The Legend of Zelda. Not only is this a terrifically obscure game, only released on the Satellaview in Japan (and only coming down to us in any form due to the hard work of preservationists and hackers), but it’s a 100% race!

6:17 PM: Puyo Puyo Fever 2.

6:57 PM: Mario Kart 8 Deluxe DLC tracks as a bonus game.

8:27 PM: The Simpsons Hit & Run.

11:43 PM: Power Wash Simulator.

FRIDAY, January 13th

3:06 AM: Kirby Air Ride. A hugely underrated game! Although sadly this is normal racing and not its stand-out mode, City Trial.

3:39 AM: A short NES block, with Jackal, Mickey Mousecapade and Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers.

5:33 AM: Beautiful Katamari.

7:03 AM: Gunstar Heroes.

8:28 AM: Kirby’s Adventure.

10:35 AM: Metroid Prime 1+2. Multiworld Randomizer Co-op. How will this even work?

1:45 PM: Cult of the Lamb.

6:00 PM: Elephants and Snakes and Crocodiles. On the SNES? I’ve never even heard of this one!

6:55 PM: Final Fantasy XIV. The description of this one is a jumbled alphabet of abbreviations and initialisms, I have no idea what any of that means.

8:05 PM: Arcade Stepmania, as a bonus game. This is a demonstration, not an actual speedrun, but these tend to be insane anyway!

9:35 PM: Super Mario All-Stars Shuffler.

SATURDAY, January 14th

2:38 AM: Blinx the Time Sweeper.

5:29 AM: Mega Man 64 and Mega Man Rock N Roll. The first of these two is the N64 version of Mega Man Legends, the second is a fan game.

9:08 AM: Donald (Duck) in Maui Mallard.

11:27 AM: Metroid Dread. All boss glitchless. To think we went from this game being a vaguely rumored cancelled title to an official release being speedrun at AGDQ in a little over a year.

1:17 PM: Terraria.

6:02 PM: The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past as a bonus game.

10:53: Super Mario 3. Warpless, but any%.

That should be it, although of course they like to put in unannounced bonus games toward the end, so keep your eyes open!

SGDQ 2022: Silly Block Review

A highlight of the Games Done Quick speedrunning marathons at roughly six months apart each year is AGDQ’s “Awful Block,” of memorably bad games, and SGDQ’s “Silly Block,” of extremely weird, mostly-indie games. SGDQ has just wrapped up, so let’s take a look back at Silly Block this year.

DEEEER Simulator (video is 42 minutes long):

Of the Goat Simulator school of weirdness, “DEEEER Simulator: Your Average Everyday Deer Game” is mostly a delivery mechanism for ludicrous visuals.

Mi Scusi (29 minutes):

The plot hangs together slightly better than DEEEER Simulator, but it’s largely the same kind of thing, bizarre settings and happenings within a physics engine, only this time you’re a drunken Italian man instead of a “deer.”

Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion (52 minutes):

A bit more of an actual game than the previous two polygonbombs, Turnip Boy has a somewhat drier sense of humor.

Jimmie Johnson’s Anything With An Engine (28 minutes):

This one is actually a race between two players, in a cart racing game made with silly carts, in a mode where half the racers are driving one way around the track, and the rest drive the other way. (The race isn’t directly between them on the same tracks; they’re both playing their own systems. They’re racing in more of a speedrun fashion.)

Gourmet Warriors (39 minutes):

A side-scrolling brawler where you beat up weird thugs and robots that drop food, which you then make meals with. The ingredients you choose determines which stat boosts you receive! It’s less zany than the previous games, if that’s the way your tastes (heh) lead.

Thunder in Paradise (55 minutes but starts about 5m in):

“Imagine a game in the Baywatch extended universe where there’s a talking boat and Hulk Hogan is deus ex machina.” Actually the last episode of the 1994 TV show Thunder in Paradise converted, kind of, into a game for the Phillips CD-i. Most of the run is just video footage, but it was a really goofy TV show.

Incredible Crisis (1 hour 10 minutes):

Ah, this one is, somehow, not an indie title! Published by Titus for the original PlayStation, and with music from the Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra, Incredible Crisis is a minigame collection where success at the games helps to avert ridiculous dangers to one of four members of a family.

SGDQ 2022: Zelda Beta Cartridge “Triforce% run,” explained

Friday night at SGDQ 2022 the TAS Block show demonstrated something special. After a recording of a Portal 2 run that predictably demolished that game, they moved on to a rather more esoteric show.

In past shows, TAS Bot has some off some pretty ridiculous sights, using something called Arbitrary Code Execution (ACE). Essentially, using certain well-understood exploits, the runner (usually, but not always, a set of scripted inputs) writes a sequence of instructions into the machine’s RAM, and then transfers the code execution to that sequence, allowing for “arbitrary behavior,” meaning, almost anything that can be written into that RAM. TAS Bot at AGDQ 2014 wrote Pong into memory during a run of Super Mario World and ran it (6 minutes):

This technique has also been used to run a variant of Flappy Bird, and even a bona fide hex editor into the save RAM of Super Mario World, without even needing scripts, entirely by a human player. But this is beside the point.

In 2017, TASbot demolished the NES Classic, NES games and pulled off other very weird shenanigans (59 minutes).

There’s several of these videos, which I leave it to you to search out. They’re pretty easy to find on YouTube with the search terms “games done quick” and “tasbot”.

The point of this post is to bring you news of how players finally “obtained” the Triforce in Ocarina of Time after 23 years. The video of the show has yet to be uploaded to YouTube (it has been since I wrote this! scroll to the end), but until it shows up, Retro Game Mechanics EX has a video explaining how it was done (34 minutes):

SwankyBox has his own explainer video that’s 22 minutes. Of course, it’s all an elaborate show, but it runs on the Ocarina of Time beta cartridge found back in January of last year.

EDIT: Here it is, the whole 1-hour 13-minute epic!

Summer Games Done Quick 2022

It’s almost time! Tomorrow, June 26, begins SGDQ for 2022, the popular speedrunning marathon, this year benefiting Doctors Without Borders. Their other yearly marathon AGDQ back in January earned 3.4 million dollars, can they top it this time? After two years of remote speedruns, this year it will once again be held in person, with a live audience.

Here is their schedule, and from it, here are some highlights of particular interest to our topic categories of indie, retro, and niche games. Times are given in US Eastern/Pacific, dates by midnight Eastern time.

What to look for? Any games you particularly like, or want to see obliterated, of course. Anything that sounds like it might be a romhack will usually be a good time. Races are fun. Randomizers provide an entirely different kind of challenge to a speedrunning mindset. RPGs and Pokemon games often require some non-intuitive decision-making. Very weird games, of course. New games provide a chance to see people deal with something that’s not been exhaustively demolished, and it’s also cool to see what has been discovered in the short time since its release. And any obscure or rare games you happen to know of.

There are far too many interesting things in the list to call them all out, so, here are three arbitrarily-chosen items to watch for each day:

Sunday, June 26

12:30 PM/9:30 AM: Pre-Show

1:00 PM/10:00 AM: Shadow of the Colossus, PS4, NTA Boss Rush RANDOM

6:58 PM/3:58 PM: Kirby and the Forgotten Land, Switch, Any%

10:10 PM/7:10 PM: Spyro the Dragon, PS, 120%

Monday, June 27

6:41 AM/3:41 AM: Blaster Master, NES, Glitchless (US) Race

9:09 AM/6:09 AM: NiGHTS Into Dreams, Saturn, All Levels Any%

4:03 PM/1:03 PM: The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening (2019), Switch, Any% Glitchless Race

Tuesday, June 28

Midnight/9:00 PM[27th]: Silent Hill 4: The Room, PC, Any%

9:14 AM/6:14 AM: Earnest Evans, Genesis, Any% (in 12 minutes)

12:02 PM/9:02 AM – 3:26 PM/12:26 PM: Mega Man Games! Powered Up, Xtreme, Wily Wars and 5

Wednesday, June 29

3:33 AM/12:33 AM: Final Fantasy IV Worlds Collide Randomizer

11:13 AM/8:13 AM: Knuckles Chaotix, 32X, Beat the Game

3:42 PM/12:42 PM: Pokemon Emerald Randomizer, GBA, Evolution Chaos Co-Op

Thursday, June 30

1:17 AM/10:17 PM[29th]: Banjo-Tooie, N64, Any%

3:43 AM/12:43 AM-8:44 AM/5:44 AM: Silly games! DEEEER Simulator, Mi Scusi, Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion, Jimmie Johnson’s Anything With an Engine, Gourmet Warriors, Thunder In Paradise, and Incredible Crisis!

9:08 PM/6:08 PM: Bonus Game, SOUND VOLTEX EXCEED GEAR, 1 player, PC

Friday, July 1

9:01 AM/6:01 AM: Shovel Knight Pocket Dungeon, PC, Normal Ending

4:38 PM/1:38 PM: F-Zero GX, Gamecube, Story Mode, Max Speed, Very Hard (yow!)

9:28 PM/6:28 PM: Bonus Game, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Beta Showcase

Saturday, July 2

11:22 AM/8:22 AM: Bloodstainted: Curse of the Moon, PC, Any% Ultimate

5:36 PM/2:36 PM: Kaizo Super Metroid, SNES, Any%

8:31 PM/8:31 PM: Super Mario Maker 2 Relay Race!

Sunday, July 3

12:21 AM/9:21 PM[3rd]: Elden Ring, PC, All Remembrances + possibly as a bonus game, an Any% run