Watch highlights from Summer Games Done Quick
Castlevania: SotN (blindfolded)! Super Mario Maker! Pepsiman?
Speedrunning festival for charity, Games Done Quick, has wrapped up its summer event on Saturday after raising $1,296,061 for Doctors Without Borders.
The six-day event saw dozens of games sped through by the industry's top players at a lightning pace. Here are some highlights:
Castlevania Symphony of the Night played (blindfolded)
That's right. Speerunner romscout couldn't even see the game in questions. And it's not a simple game, either. Its sprawling level design, multitude of enemies and complex menus make for a game that's reasonably challenging even with all your senses in peak form.
Given the arduous task at hand, romscout uses a few very helpful glitches, such as a skip early on that allows you to keep all of your over-powered starting gear for the rest of the game. Romscout also inputs a code to play in "Luck Mode" in which you begin with a 99 Luck stat at the expense of only starting with a quarter of the usual HP. Still, even with these cheats venturing through Dracula's castle blindfolded is simply insane. But then again, we live in a world where someone conquered Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! under similar conditions, so who's to say what's possible?
Pepsiman
Never released outside of Japan, Pepsiman was a PSone auto-runner about a man dressed as a Pepsi can who must deliver the refreshing soft drink to a vending machine to save the parched city of San Francisco (who are seemingly oblivious to the throngs of Pepsi cans littering the city). He must also deliver Pespi to dehydrated firemen and miners in New York and Texas as well solve the Pepsi production problem that has caused violent riots in Pepsi City once its denizens were deprived of their favourite soda.
Along the way, there are peculiar FMV clips of a man saying such amazing catch phrases as "Pepsi for TV game", "Pepsi for Pizza", and "Everybody Pepsi". Having read Donlan's piece on Senet, the ancient Egyptian board game craze, I'm vaguely concerned about what future societies will think of us upon discovering Pepsiman.
Super Mario Bros 3 completed in two seconds
This tool-assisted run of Super Mario Bros 3 uses a glitch that's valid, but only accessible to robots. Why? Because it consists of mashing a button 6000 times per second. Over on Reddit the man behind the Tool-Assisted Speedrun, ais523, offered a fairly detailed explanation of what's going on here. A choice excerpt of this technical witchcraft:
"I'm not that clear on the details of how it works in the exact case of SMB3, except that the game somehow naturally starts running the controller ports, so you can hold a combination of inputs that (when interpreted as code) jump to the credits."
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time glitch exhibition
Tech guru Piticarus offers insight into various peculiar glitches discovered in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time in the 18 years since its release. We get to see Link disappear through walls, floors, and shoot up into outer space before crashing down into an out of bounds area outside the Water Temple.
Jak and Daxter (100 per cent)
Speedrunner Bonesaw577 manages to snag every precursor egg in a mere two hours, 11 minutes and 18 seconds. He plays the Japanese version, for some reason.
Silent Hill 3
Speedrunner Bawkbasoup blazes through Heather Mason's worst trip to the mall ever in a mere 50 minutes and 12 seconds. They're playing on Easy mode for both puzzles and combat difficulty, but it's still mighty impressive (especially given the awkward tank controls and oldschool third-person fixed camera).
Resident Evil 2
Bawkbasoup returns to take on Leon Kennedy's first day as part of the Raccoon City Police Department via the "Leon B" path in 53 minutes and 41 seconds. And if you think Raccoon City is a ridiculous name, I'll have you know that I went to high school in a suburb called Beaverton. True story.
Super Mario Maker
Team Streambig.net vs. Team Hot Pockets race in this two-hour challenge. Amusingly, both teams are forced to race through a gauntlet of 11 chosen stages with only one stage, secretly chosen by the judges, actually mattering. As such, neither team can let its guard down, no matter how much of a lead it's had from prior stages.
Each team is comprised of four players and they all must pass the controller to a teammate once they've been defeated. Hijinks ensue.
Those who dig these clips and want to donate to the cause can still offer a few quid to Doctors Without Borders via the Games Done Quick official site.