Needless to say, not everyone is fit to be a speedrunner.įirst, the speedrunner must be familiar with the game they're about to solve.

It's simply there to provide the speedrunner with a problem to optimize. It's all about shaving precious seconds here and there in the hopes that they'll add up to a new record. The mindset of the speedrunner is one of optimization.

In reality, however, the program works in stepped increments and only checks whether you are providing inputs at the beginning of each step. A single step is referred to as a 'frame' in both the technical and speedrunning sense.Īt the core, this is what a speedrun is: an attempt to optimize the path through a game by completing it in the fewest frames possible. We perceive this as a continuous interaction where our inputs from a controller instantly affect game operation. When a human plays a game, they are feeding instructions to the program to act on. Video games, at their core, are just computer programs. Let's peel back what it means to play a game for a bit. Many non-speedrunners look at the prevalence of glitch abuse and tool assistance and wonder, 'What's the point of playing the game if you aren't going to play it properly?' While that kind of thinking holds a lot of weight in a non-speedrun context, it turns out that speedrunners think about games in a completely different way than most people. For example, one tool might reduce the game to slow motion, allowing the player to exploit glitches that might otherwise be extremely difficult to pull off. This kind of speedrun uses a third-party tool to alter certain aspects of gameplay in order to compensate for limitations in player ability. Which brings us to our final nuance: the tool-assisted speedrun (TAS). It's rare, but if a particular glitch is so completely game-breaking that it makes the speed run more-or-less pointless, that game's speed running community might largely choose to ignore runs using that glitch, or at least focus on separating runs using it and not using it into separately considered categories. That being said, there are of course exceptions to every rule. If using glitches yields the fastest time, then so be it. The fact of the matter is that anything that's doable within the game without external interference is fair play, because even if it wasn't intended by the developers, it's still part of that package. Your goal is to reach the end of that self-contained game as quickly as possible by any means necessary. It really comes down to a few simple things that easily explain why glitches are perfectly acceptable in almost every case. This argument about glitches is one that speed runners like myself have had to have countless times over the years. In most games, nearly all but the most game-breaking glitches are allowed. For the most part, however, glitch exploitation has come to be a normal - even expected - aspect of speedrunning. Any% Completion: This kind of speedrun puts no requirements or limitations on the player other than to beat the game as quickly as possible.Īs far as glitches are concerned, there are purists in the community who believe that they invalidate a speedrun.This is usually the most difficult kind of speedrun. Low% Completion: This kind of speedrun is the opposite of the 100% Completion in that the goal is to beat the game in record time while foregoing as many items, upgrades, and other gameplay elements as possible.The actual requirements depend on the game itself, but the general idea is that player must beat every aspect of the game as quickly as possible.

100% Completion: This kind of speedrun requires the player to unlock all major gameplay items and upgrades, find all secret treasures and collectibles, defeat all bosses and stages, etc.One such nuance can be posed as a question: 'Does it count if glitches are involved?' Another nuance: 'How much of the game needs to be completed?' These questions, and others like them, caused schisms within the community.Īs a result, there are now several types of speedruns: Over the years, the activity evolved and developed several nuances.

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