Tag: sgdq

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!)

News 7/9/22: Shop Channel Live-A-Live Playdate

“We scour the Earth web for indie, retro, and niche gaming news so you don’t have to, drebnar!” – your faithful reporter

Found on Nintendo Everything and reported by Brian, the Wii shop channel is back online after an absence of months. It had been down for “maintenance.” Mind you, it’s still impossible to buy software that hadn’t been purchased before 2019. It’s still just a way to reacquire things you had already bought. Sigh.

Ed Smith at PCGamesN notes a speedrunner at this year’s SGDQ has admitted to faking parts of his run, passing off a played-back video instead of performing it in real time, and has been banned from future events. While SGDQ was held in person this year, a few of their runs were still done remotely, and the faked run was one of those. The player in question is Mekarazium, and the run was for Metal Gear Rising (focusing eyes on paper) “Revengeance.”

At NintendoLife, Alana Hauges reviews Square Enix’s remake of the classic Japan-only JRPG anthology Live-A-Live, which I’m given to understand is pronounced like “Lighve Alive,” with long-I sounds. It’s been given the Octopath Traveler treatment, with pixel art akin to the original game placed in a 3D environment. It’s structured like a collection of short stories, all greatly different from the others. I have experience with the original game, and it contains several extremely interesting sections, including a space mystery, a Wild West puzzle segment, and a hugely complex and interesting ninja infiltration scenario where the player has to make many choices that each affect the outcome. While in the end all of the stories are linked together, on their own each is a small complete game in its own right. It’s long been a shame that the game as been unknown outside of Japan, and I’m excited to see it getting a chance elsewhere.

CBR’s Zachary Pilon rhetorically asks, why are roguelikes so popular? WHY INDEED IT IS AN MYSTERY. (Note: rodneylives spent like four years writing about them back at GameSetWatch.)

At The Verge, Andrew Webster states that the Playdate’s launch was a unique opportunity for small dev. People who bought the device have access to a number of games released periodically in a “season,” but software can also be loaded onto the system separately, and itch.io has an active community of these developers.

SGDQ 2022: The Mario Sunshine Run That Went Wrong

Fanbyte posted a short piece about a run of Super Mario Sunshine at SGDQ 2022 that went wrong. The world-record holder, about 45 minutes in, made three consecutive mistakes on one of it’s “secret” levels, which are unforgiving tests of 3D platforming skill, all done without FLUDD, making them substantially more difficult.

Speedrunners playing Super Mario Sunshine, seeking to avoid the incessant prompts to save progress, in total adding about about 336 times 3 seconds to the time, usually play without a memory card inserted. But this removes an important safety net: without saving, if the player runs out of lives, the whole game could be lost, and that’s what happened to SB_Runs. Super Mario Sunshine is not a game that gives you a lot of extra lives if you aren’t going away for them, and the coin-star portion of the game, which can earn some extra lives, is usually saved until later.

I watched this live as it happened, and let me tell you, the pathos was thick in the air. Here is the run, cued up to just before the fatal moment:

SB_Runs rallied well, gamely starting over. There wasn’t enough time scheduled to finish, but he did manage to build back up to nearly 100 of the game’s 120 Shines before time ran out, and the crowd, both in the room at at home, cheered him on, offering to match every Shine he could earn with a donation to Doctors Without Borders.

But it’s an important reminder. It’s easy to watch speedruns, especially in a marathon setting, and assume that they’re all as casual as the runners make them look. Every so often though, the mask falls off, and the immense difficulty of what they’re doing shows through.

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