Key Points:
- Suigi has secured all five major speedrunning categories in Super Mario 64, effectively declaring the game’s speedrunning community ‘dead’.
- Suigi’s dominance is so profound that his records in all 5 main categories remain largely unchallenged.
The Five Star Categories:
- 120 star: Completes every single star in the game.
- 70 star: Completes all normal requirements to reach the final level.
- 16 star: Uses glitches and techniques to significantly reduce required stars.
- 1 star: Further optimizes the 16 star run for a single star collection.
- 0 star: Eliminates stars entirely, focusing on time.
Background Details:
- Some of Suigi’s records were set over a year ago; his 16-star record alone still leads by 6 seconds.
- Suigi estimates it could take up to a couple of years before someone else beats his current world records.
How do you feel about the dedication and skill demonstrated in these ultra-optimized speedruns? Do such efforts bring value to gaming or are they more of an academic exercise?
Meh, debatable. QA finds the bugs, what to do with them is more a development/production call.
But I can compromise: Speedrunning is competitive QA testing. How about that?
If a bug makes the run take longer they don’t investigate it.
Actual counterexample, plenty of optimization came from random guys popping up in the community explaining something they found about the code, that was overlooked for years.
More? A huge emphasis is put on mechanically pulling the run off, which is pointless from a QA point of view, now we can maybe make an argument for TAS in that regard.
Nah, I’d say you’re mostly making my point. Optimizing getting through the game fast is absolutely part of the skillset, and random people noticing something obvious everybody had been ignoring is bread-and-butter for testers.
I mean, for testers that care and are going hard, which is where the “competitive” part comes in.
I’m glad you’ve never done QA in a bank, but in jest, sure, there’s a surprising amount of overlapping.