Lots of people with poor taste, that's how!

It completely depends on the game too. You could spend years on Super Metroid and still have room to improve. I've spent hours trying one trick that saves less than 5 seconds. Even for someone who loves games, speed running takes a TON of dedication.

I'm content with participating in the weekly contests on here. There are enough gaming related YouTube channels as it is, so I'm good with just playing NES games as a hobby.

Very true. Makes you wonder if a lot of these people spend every once of free time playing these games. 

I'm not sure I'd want to speed run games as I think trying to do that may make me like the games less as I would put a lot of pressure on myself to be the best because I'm very competitive and want to win and that in turn would probably not make it a fun thing to do.

That's kind of what happened to me when I was playing the NA weekly nes contests. I'd spend hours playing a game that I may or may not like trying to get the top score. I'd get really frustrated many times trying to be at the top of the leaderboard each week and I thought,what the hell am I doing?! This is supposed to be fun,not frustrating.

Same thing goes for perfect running. I think for me no deathing a game is good enough mastery of it.

Yeah, I probably put 10-12 hours a week into the weekly contests depending on how familiar I was with the game going in, so there's definitely a lot of work involved to compete at the top level.

I remember trying to speed run Contra and playing the first level upwards of a few hundred times and that's only the first level. So tedious and discouraging. It's even worse for games that you can't practice with an emulator. when speed running Duck Tales remastered there is a rock despawn glitch where you need unload the rock by taking it one frame off screen (the game despawns it to save memory) and then scroll the screen back over so the game doesn't have time to load it back into place. You have to do this three times in a row and it's about 10 minutes, if not more, into the run. Mess it up a couple times and you might as well reset. Then there is also the RNG stuff that can completely ruin a particular run.

Might not be the worst example, but the technodrome in TMNT comes to mind. It would drive me insane having to reset the entire game because it didn't spawn right away.
 

Speedrunners actually wait for a certain musical cue in the intro to start the game in order to control the randomness of the technodrome.

"Title Screen – the location of the Technodrome boss in stage 5 is randomly determined at the beginning of the game and can be manipulated by when you press start on the title screen. Normally, it shows up 25% of the time in the fastest sewer, but if you press start on the right musical note then it will appear in the fastest sewer. I am able to get the Technodrome about 50% of the time and I don't even really know the exact frame to press start, so this is a huge help when speedrunning the game."


http://speeddemosarchive.com/TMNT...



 

I dont like to speed run 'patterns' because personally, I like the game to be kinda fresh, so i have to use my skill and some knowledge to beat it. It would suck the fun out of it for me. But i see how people would enjoy the idea of perfectly executing a sequence of buttons and such. I do love watching them and perhaps getting some tips on certain tricky parts. Plus the races are great!

If anyone hasnt seen it, i think this years AGDQ they did Ninja gaiden 1 2 and 3 relay race and it came down within a couple of seconds. really great.

I also really love and admire how co-operative, encouraging and friendly their community is. Dont see that too often.

It's neat how they figure that stuff out, whether by accident or by examining the code itself.


The races are my favorite, too. I've watched the Metroid and Castlevania ones many times over. I haven't seen much of this year's AGDQ yet, though. I heard the Mario Maker segment was entertaining.

Is there such a thing as "no glitch" speed runs? I'd actually be interested in watching how fast people can't beat games when played "straight". It's cool to see the tricks that people find out, but I personally try to see how quick I can finish a game by playing normally.

Yeah, there are definitely ones that disallow glitches, tricks, or anything else like that... somewhat of a pure runthrough. There are even runs with getting no weapons in Contra for example. Ocarina of Time and Super Metroid are both great examples of how there are different rules for runs. Like beating all bosses, a few as possible, differnt item or percentage requirments etc.. It's really is crazy because the smallest factors can change the run significantly. Some of the stuff they have figured out or done in Ocarina of Time is absolutely insane, even with having access to the code.

Speed running can make you a master at a particular game and I think it also helps translate skills to other games as well. I love playing through Super Metroid now because I can pretty much beat the game however I want and have really good control with wall jumping and bomb boosting etc.