This is a proper, literal, speedrun from Zero Master. He runs, it is speedy. The 23m03s time is also relatively legit — no glitches or tricks past the use of glides. Those involve coaxing the player’s 32×32 unit hitbox through 32 unit gaps as a shortcut, or to skip collecting a few keys.
The previous record was a 23m25s run by Looper, in 2010, says Zero Master (though the linked video was posted in 2012). He also says his run is the second improvement in 10 years, pointing at an even earlier 2003 record (26m09s) set by Radek Pecka. By Zero Master’s estimation, “I don’t think we will have to wait that long before we see the 23 minute mark broken.”
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11 responses to “New Doom 2 Speedrun Record Beats Old One By 22 Seconds”
Am I the only one who thinks these speed runs are a crock of old poo? Using glitches and skipping past bits is not a speed run of a game, it’s who can complete the game the quickest by cheating. Let”s see how quick it can be finished by doing it PROPERLY!!
That would be a supremely uninteresting thing to watch. It’d basically be a ‘Let’s Play’ then.
Glitches and exploits are part of the landscape, particularly when talking about older titles that don’t get constant patches and updates like modern games. Those glitches and exploits are part of the game’s charm. This is the game, as is, warts and all. Speedrunners need to know the game inside out, exploits and legitimate tactics both.
There’s an admirable level of dedication required, and usage of glitches doesn’t really diminish the skill level – you still have to integrate them and utilise them to their full effect – that’s not taking the easy way out.
Your first argument isn’t valid. If a speed run without cheating is “basically a Let’s Play”, so is a speed run with cheating. Neither of them are Let’s Plays.
Glitches and exploits may well be part of the landscape, but so are cheat codes. Many would argue IDDQD/IDKFA are “part of the game’s charm” for the Doom series as well. Those cheat codes are the game, as is, warts and all. But this particular class of speedrunner draws an arbitrary line that obvious exploits are okay but cheats aren’t. It’s a meaningless separation.
Using glitches and cheats does diminish the skill involved in playing the actual game mechanics, by bypassing a lot of them in favour of skill at exploiting flaws in the game’s coding. Some might argue exploit skill is valuable in its own right and I don’t judge that, but it’s not game skill.
There’s a large class of speedrunners who play games honestly, not using exploits or cheats. They’re far more interesting to watch, to me, because the focus is much more on calculating the best strategy and not simply finding the biggest exploit.
I agree with @lord_itchybum, exploit-based speed runs aren’t interesting to me in the slightest. People are welcome to compete on that if they like, of course, but the boundaries of what’s allowed and what isn’t are nebulous and that renders the final results meaningless to me. There’s no question that skill is involved, but skill at exploiting bugs isn’t one I have any interest in watching.
The distinction between an exploit and ‘playing honestly’ is no less nebulous in many games.
There’s always going to be grey areas, but I don’t agree that the distinction is no less nebulous. Especially in an era of games where communication with developers is easier than it’s ever been, figuring out what the ‘as intended’ mode of a game is is generally fairly easy to find out. Figuring out what constitutes a legal vs illegal exploit for the purposes of speed play is far more subjective.
Ask Nintendo if wavedashing in Smash Bros was intended to be part of SSBM, or ask id Software if bunny hopping or rocket jumping was intended to be part of the Quake engine.
I think we both know the answers, but no speed runner of any sort would intentionally avoid such effective techniques.
This sort of stuff is the blur.
Both companies have acknowledged they were bugs but are intentionally left in. Like I said, it’s easy to communicate with a game company these days and find what’s intended and what isn’t.
So the answer you give is that they weren’t intended. Does this mean that these abilities shouldn’t be used in speedruns?
In the case of wavedashing specifically, the technique wasn’t discovered until it was far too late for Nintendo to do anything about it in that game, short of ordering a global recall and replacement. That doesn’t fit under “intentionally left in”.
@piman
He later goes on to say that it was only removed from subsequent versions of SSB because it turned out to be unbalanced, not because it was unintentional.
I’m with Lord Itchy butt and Zeke Jesus here. I mean, it’s a nice glitch run, but it’s not a proper speed run. I just doesn’t count to use glitches, bugs or cheats. I mean what’s the difference between exploiting bugs and using idspispopd and gunning it straight for the exit? Either both are forms of cheating or neither are. Earlier in the year there was a post about a Morrowind ‘speed run’ which was just a guy exploiting the shit out of game breaking glitches which is a perfect example of what is wrong about calling these kind of things ‘speed runs’.
I think it’s a totally legit speed-run; albeit one that uses exploits. The game is vanilla. Whether you think using glitches invalidates your time or not doesn’t change that fact.
That’s why they have two categories – fastest time with glitches, and fastest time without.