Is anyone here into speedrunning?
For those who don't know, speedrunning is essentially beating a game as fast as possible. Many times this is accomplished by abusing in-game glitches. I find it so amazing to see a group of people push a game to its limits, like Ocarina of Time, where the any% category has been brought down from 5 hours to 21 minutes. Practising and grinding out frame perfect tricks just to save a few seconds... it's honestly amazing to me.
I got into speedrunning around June/July by watching Super Mario 64 runs. Now I run SM64 myself, as well as Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. About to pick up a new game to learn, and I love it.
There are people who run Pokemon. The only problem with it is that so much of it is luck based. Which means lots and lots of resets for that "perfect" run. A badly timed crit could destroy your run at any point. In Pokemon Yellow runs, there are 5 (I think) pokemon in the elite four that can destroy your run. That one crit and your possible world record becomes a garbage run. And you can't do anything about it since it's just luck.
I thought about running through NQ2, and I don't think it would be too hard. Memorizing routes is just practice, so after a few playthroughs you should be good to go. And it's not super fast paced, which is nice. But you do have to do it in one sitting, which can be draining.
Depends on the category. There are SS (single segment) runs and of course, segmented runs. Segmented runs usually take the game timer into account, but most people go by RTA (real time attack) now. Segmented runs are just silly, because you can use multiple attempts before the next save. It's more like "this is how well it CAN go" but RTA aims for "I will do everything perfectly in one attempt." And you reset if you lose too much time.
I watch it sometimes. I'm trying to get the rout down for FFTA. It's pretty laughable.
As for stuff I watch, AGDQ/SGDQ are a must, but then there's Cosmo who I've seen run Windwaker more times then I'd like to admit, Hotline Miami runs, and just other random stuff that catches my eye really.
I used to speedrun Tomb Raider, but I could never seem to find the glitches after TR1. Especially the first level of TR3 comes to my mind - (you need an account to see links). I've tried that glitch jump @ 43 sec numerous times, but I never got over the top.