Competitions are always more fun when they’re equally matched. The back and forth between speedrunners TGH and Fladervy over who can claim the top time in Celeste is as close an arm wrestle as they come and it doesn’t look like either one will give up soon.
It’s fascinating to watch speedrunners push themselves – and each other – to earn the fastest completion times. New tricks are found that everyone works to incorporate into their runs but sometimes the best motivation is a rival.
Even when speedrunners are competing against each other it’s important to remember that they are working together to improve their skills and knowledge of the game. It’s often a friendly rivalry and while only one may get the joy of seeing their name at the top of the leaderboards, everyone’s successes are celebrated.
For months, TGH dominated the Celeste leaderboards on speedrun.com. He held the world record in multiple categories and was constantly beating his own best times to keep everyone else at bay.
Celeste speedruns are beautiful in their simplicity. They take advantage of a few simple tricks and constant, high level execution to navigate through difficult platforming. Deaths are both a momentary setback and a huge hindrance, as delicate timings are disrupted.
In October last year, Fladervy finally managed to overtake TGH in the race up the summit in the most unexpected of fashions. The two were facing off in a race for the Speedgaming Twitch channel and in the second game of their best of three match, Fladervy took 23 seconds off of his personal best and claimed the world record.
This was a battle of Celeste’s titans. On one side we had TGH, the American runner that constantly streamed Celeste and was renown for his consistency at the game. On the other side, Fladervy, the brilliant Brazilian that was less consistent but nigh unbeatable when he managed to string everything together.
[referenced url=”https://www.kotaku.com.au/2019/01/agdq-why-speedrunner-halfcoordinated-has-gotta-go-fast/” thumb=”https://www.kotaku.com.au/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2019/01/AGDQ-halfcoordinated-410×231.jpg” title=”Why Speedrunner Halfcoordinated Has Gotta Go Fast” excerpt=”In the build up to Awesome Games Done Quick 2019 and in a lot of the general discussion around speedrunning, there is a fair amount of focus on world records. There’s so much more to speedrunning than just the top times and I was fortunate enough to sit down with halfcoordinated during Awesome Games Done Quick to talk about what he loved about speedrunning.”]
TGH would soon reclaim the Any% world record and hold on to it for several months. During that time, the rest of the Celeste speedrunning community improved as well. Not only was Fladervy doing well but Msushi and nero_x2 were also catching up.
Then two weeks ago, while TGH was at Awesome Games Done Quick 2019, Fladervy managed to reclaim the title with a time of 28:37.901.
???? pic.twitter.com/2nFSUmZ3pH
— Fladervy (@Fladervy) January 7, 2019
Two weeks is a long time in speedrunning. Fladervy managed to shave another 18 seconds off of the world record in that time only for TGH to break the record twice in one day. That day was yesterday.
2 runs into the 50 No-Reset challenge and this happens.
….What??? pic.twitter.com/QUYs2CKuy9
— TGH | [Noble] (@TGH_srl) January 21, 2019
5 runs later.
Blessed by the @TSM_Leffen raid 😀 pic.twitter.com/uNkzBfp33J
— TGH | [Noble] (@TGH_srl) January 21, 2019
As of the time of writing, TGH is the current world record holder with a time of 28:07.453. You can watch the video below.
Update: Clarified the non-adversarial nature of the rivalry.
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