New merch shop! teespring.com/sm64-blj Super Mario Sunshine poll results: twitter.com/SMSCommunity/status/1018903343228510208 *Half life 1 actually uses a console command to start the game. The code is map c1a0. Just wanted to clarify
Would be interested to see the same vote from the perspective of viewers, also to see roughly how long the voters have been running and their place on the leaderboards. Skipping the intro cutscene changes nothing about the run, but makes it infinitely more enjoyable to watch and incentivizes going for more risky strats, which might make the upper half of the leaderboards scared for their ranks.
I would tear my hair out having to watch unskippable cutscenes over and over. I vote that it should be picked by each community of each game but I would definitely skip them
yea.. seeing the beginning of the video made me excited that super mario sunshine would be fun to run without having to sit through cutscenes for every attempt, and then i saw the results. really discouraging as someone who wanted to start running the game
cbb88christian No but yes.......when they playing it should be skiped but the replay of world records it should be added to the video.... but the timer should only start after the opening cut scenes.....seem fine??
dude, you don't have to. you can do anything. it's your run. a vote is not needed at all. who cares what other "officials" think. there aren't any officials! there's a group of runners with opinions, and a leaderboard they control. you can go off and have your very own set of speedruns, if they don't like them for not following their rules, then duh, it's not trying to. it's trying to be something different. imagine a parallel universe where all the speedrunners hate glitches, and one guy decides, "screw it", and starts producing glitched runs online, trying to master his game, who the fuck gives a shit what the "speedrunning police" thinks!? he can make his own leaderboard, and gather his own fan base. you can skip cutscenes, you wouldn't be counted on a leaderboard with runs that do have cutscenes recorded. and not just physically, if say the community decided to mix them. i mean, literally. it doesn't matter what you think, the truth is the truth, about every run. you as an individual could take absolutely every run you watch and categorize them how you like by your own rules that you like.
A lot of runs dont end when player control ends though. Like he said in the video, a ton of games keep going past the final boss or the end screen and give you post-game content that is usually omitted from the any% categories for that game. And what if the game lets you gain control of your character just before they lock you into a 2 hour cutscene. There has to be some compromise in that situation. But I think that the SMS runs shouldn't skip the first fight, that is a skill based combat that does have an effect on your run time.
To the detriment of both viewer and runner enjoyment? With the only effect being the addition of over one hundred hours of sitting and doing nothing per every 900 resets (over 10 hours every 90 resets, more than 1 hour every 9 resets, etc.)? Consistency purely for the sake of consistency when it has zero benefits and extreme detriments doesn't make any sense.
Those beginning cutscenes in Sunshine are terrible enough to go through in casual playthroughs. The runners that want to skip it have my full sympathy and support.
Good video, just wanted to clear up a couple things that were mentioned about the Bethesda games, since I run many of them, and currently hold the WR for Fallout 4. In the games that were listed with unskippable scenes that are skipped by the community, New Vegas is listed. This is incorrect, since with New Vegas we actually do start from a fresh game every time. We do load a save for Fallout 3, as EZScape listed, but there is actually a very small amount of speedtech in the part that we skip, which is when we create our character. Of course, messing it up would lose you half a second at most, but it is still speedtech that is skipped. When EZScape talks about Fallout 4 and the No Intro category, he says that when the community was discussing whether or not to have it, that the majority was against it but decided to have it as a category but No Intro was added to accommodate the people who wanted the category. This is actually the exact opposite of what happened. Majority of the people in the community were for making No Intro the official any% run for Fallout 4, except there were two longstanding members of the community who were against it. These two members were very firm in their beliefs (with one going as far to say he would remove all of his runs from the leaderboard if No Intro became the official category), so to accommodate them, no official ruling was made on which category would be the official any% run of Fallout 4, it was just decided that No Intro would be added as a category and we would see where that takes us. EZScape also mentions that only 9 people have ran No Intro, as opposed to the 36 who have ran the Full Game category. Many of the 36 runs consist of runs that were done by people who stopped running the game before the No Intro category was implemented. If you go through and count people who have done runs after the category was introduced (and only count people who were active community members as opposed to doing one run and then never running again, the final count would be 12 for Full Game and 7 for No Intro, which is a much more fair representation of the category, especially considering there are people who only ran No Intro and didn't do Full Game runs.
Was just about to comment this. When all was said and done I personally removed my Any% time because I no longer wanted to be apart of a community that allowed 2 members' opinions to change the majority vote just because of their status in the community. It's also important to note when they were in the discord call, they locked it, only letting "important" people in the community in. Not what I wanted to associate myself with, personally.
nobody can tell anybody what category then can/can't run. if you want to skip cutscenes, and have world record in that category, go for it. you'll get viewers. and even if you didn't, it makes no difference. it's absolutely valid in its own right. and yes, you'll get competitors. and that's the whole point. they'll switch to which they like the most. and that doesn't mean the old category isn't still just as much worthy as the new. if some legend to be was playing the old category and smashed the record, but because of cutscenes, the record time is literally longer than that of another run which skips them, it doesn't matter, he truly does have the world record. whether you have common sense enough to see it or not. if the society turned into idiocracy, why would i care what they think? that's the incentive for the cheaters out there. attention.
Pokemon Colosseum has a minute long unskippable cutscene, but you reset at the soonest possible moment after getting control of your character and checking Espeons stats. Depending on your RNG, it can take up to an hour to even START a run.
oh true, this one is an Absol-ute pain. Honestly I didn't even mean to make the pun there but oh well it exists so I'll Rollout with it. Fine, THAT was unnecessary. Not to mention all the RNG during the run
Depends on how you define a good speedgame I guess. I doubt you're saying every game that is less than 2h 30m is a good speedgame so what other metrics do you use?
Adam Evening While I personally think we should skip cutscenes, that doesn't mean we use the same save state. I just think something skill cannot help go faster shouldnt be counted. The point of running is Skill=better times right?
It seems to me that because speedruns are done for fun, it's better to skip the tedious parts as much as is reasobable. If I ran Sunshine I would skip the intro even if it means I can't participate on the leaderboards.
Half-Life runs don't use a community save file, we use a console command to start from where we do (map c1a0). Something thats been agreed upon since the dawn of HL1 speedrunning around 2001. On another note, there is a way to skip the autoscroller tram ride, but was discovered way after this time.
Thanks for the clarification. I edited in a caption that mentions this. Sorry I haven't played 90% of the games in the video casually so there are usually bound to be mistakes like that sometimes:p
Honestly, I feel like in Sunshine's case, this skip ought to be allowed. While there is that small chunk of gameplay, I don't really think the gameplay in that intro adds much to the run, or has much in terms of "movement so critical it can change the pace of the entire run" particularly because of how brief it is.
Compromise: You should have to speedrun SMB1 during the cutscenes, and if you don't finish before you gain control in SMS, you have to restart both games. There. Now the cutscenes aren't boring and meaningless.
How salty are you, mate? Can I get some of that salt for my delicious cutscene tears? Unfortunately, I am all out of crying because I won, so to emulate tears I need some of your salt. Cheers.
What you said sounds extremely sarcastic and slightly bitter. If you're not salty, by all means, my fault in assuming. But it is an otherwise asinine suggestions--the cut scenes are neither boring nor meaningless; to describe them as such is patently absurd.
to be honest , theres some cutscenes i would prefer seeing in a run but not in a game like sunshine in ffx-2 i would honestly like it if i got to listen to real emotion and 1000 words in every run
There is another interesting case of skipping intros in Pokemon Trading Card Game (GBC). I used to race TCG a few years ago with neskamikaze and cyghfer and we always started from a save file that had completed the mandatory eight minute tutorial which has a professor tell you which moves to make in a preset duel. You can argue that gameplay was skipped, but the gameplay was always the same and the game itself allowed very little wiggle room. The leaderboard currently allows submitted runs to start from a save file immediately after this tutorial, but such runs cannot be considered for "world record." There are currently 51 runs on the Any% leaderboard, but only 13 actually play the full game. More people play the game in a way that automatically disqualifies them from world record than not, probably because the tutorial is so long.
Hooded Man The times are on the same leaderboard. The No Tutorial runs have the skipped tutorial time added to their RTAs. There must have been some intent to compare.
Certainly, intent, no doubt; the issue is the TCG gameboy game's tutorial is not free control of the character, but a tutorial where you are forced to make moves. If the issue was quicktime events, it would be comparable to Sunshine. However, Sunshine is free-roaming, free moving, gameplay. The notion that you can just skip the cutscenes and add a static time where there is gameplay is clearly--as evidenced by the result--against the ethics of running a game.
Yeah. That tutorial is pretty rough. If only the game could be brought back with an online play functionality and skipping the tutorial. I bet plenty of people would love some old school TCG play (i.e. it would make bank)
Coming from someone who doesn't speedrun: I can absolutely understand wanting to skip that section of Sunshine. From my perspective, there's basically *nothing* that can be optimized about that first Shine Sprite. The ONLY reason I could possibly see is that you're doing some sort of RNG manipulation through the opening level. But if there isn't any and you've essentially maxed out that intro section's time, why bother when it leads to a lot of boring downtime? It honestly should depend whether someone wants to sit through it or not, make it two categories with both having world records.
Reminds me of another video I've seen about speedrunnings with skips. What counts as a speedrun? - Well, you have to beat the game Well, if we play through the game and beat the boss, does that count as beating the game? - Yes, of course. If you find a glitch that allows you to skip to the boss, and then beat the boss, does that count as beating the game? - Yeah, sure, in it's own sub-category of speedrunning. What if you play through the game, but skip the boss, but then, you know, finnish the game, does that count as beating the game? - Well, that's alittle wierd, but sure, it can have it's own sub-speedrunning category. What if you skip most of the game and the boss, and just play the credits, does that count as beating the game? - Alright, fine, I'm kinda with you still. It can have it's own sub-speedrunning category. Well, what if you play just one frame of the credits? (Quoted from Sethbling's Super mario world speedrun attempt: "Credits warp...Kind of?")
As long as the gameplay parts are very minimal and the record holders have already long since fully optimized it, I think long unskippable openings should be skipped.
Golden Sun is a jrpg where the community decided to permit skipping the 'intro' sequence of the game. Its about 38 minutes long, with minor gameplay and RNG elements. Players opting in to no intro runs take a minor time penalty compared to a good 'intro' section. Has helped a bit with activity since all the cutscenes need to be mashed through.
"This isn't really comparable to Sunshine" He says about one of the only games mentioned where meaningful gameplay is skipped. If Sunshine were like most of the games you mentioned, there wouldn't be an argument because of course we'd be skipping a pointless cutscene that doesn't affect time. You only really focus on the cutscene skipping part of the discussion, but the problem is that there is gameplay between the cutscenes in Sunshine where a runner could lose time, no matter how unlikely. Even if we skipped the first cutscene to preserve the gameplay, there's still the second, longer cutscene right after. I think the ideal compromise would be to allow runs on an ISO that skips, or let's you skip cutscenes. Runs could be timed "with /without cutscenes", similar to PC games' "with /without loads". I don't know how hard that would be, but it means you can skip any cutscene in the game beyond just the opening two if you're impatient, yet people can run on an official disc all the same. If not, then Fallout 4's solution is easily the most applicable Maybe what we need isn't a rule change, but a new mindset. I'm reminded of GDQ runners that take selfies with the crowd, or how Ennopp would play the Song of Healing during the cutscene where you got the Zora Mask. Runners might be more friendly to cutscenes if they view them as time to spend wisely instead of waiting for the game to start again. Maybe you just need to take a step back and analyse Mario's downfall by the work of his imposter and the corrupt legal system of Isle Delfino.
In mass effect 2, we skip the long intro because you can load a save from right after character creation. Also because the intro sucks and there's no actual skill involved and if you start from it you dont get to customise your Shepherd.
I can't imagine why speedrunners would want to sit through intro cutscenes over and over. Makes me think that the people arguing against skipping it are mostly twitch viewers and purists that can't fathom skipping any gameplay for a big quality of life improvement.
agreed , i want to play both final fantasy 10 and 13 again , i will probably make a 10 file thats just before tidus bursts into the besaid cloister of trials and a 13 file in chapter 6 that way i could skip the boring parts of both games for the future , like , nothing before getting yuna can really be considered gameplay , swiming a short distance with wakka , no , the stuff with rikku ? nope once you get yuna and lulu the actual game starts , i would love if i could just start from there in a speedrun and just add an estimate thats set by the community to my run from the start
For any of these discussions, I always wonder "why isn't that just a sub-section?" Like, just mark down the rules of a speedrun before it begins so you can be fairly compared to other runs with similar rules. If you want to skip cutscenes, then mark it as a no-cutscene run just as you'd mark a normal run as a glitchless run.
assassins creed has a movies worth of cut scenes ... not even joking, there are people who take the cut scenes (and small portions of game play) and make the movies they were really written to be.
@@tryplot honestly a movies worth of cutscenses isnt that bad compared to some games. Most games you are lucky to get less than 4 hours of cutscenes and some games have close to 14 hours of cutscenes
when I said a movies worth of cutscenes I really meant the first couple of games ... this is the movie of origins (note the length of the video)/watch?v=wZqp5Jt8Ntc
It's embarrassing that people would choose to waste dozens (or hundreds, maybe thousands) of hours watching a cutscene over and over. There is just no excuse for it. Speedrunning is already a fringe and extreme hobby, and while cool, can leads to a pretty severe imbalance in your use of free time. Look at the big picture of your lives folks.
I would vote for their removal ONLY on 2 conditions. 1.) They split it into categories of intro/no-intro, 2.) The save file used is distributed and/or moderated by the judges and openly available.
Fuck no to the first one; don't split the community like that, especially when the majority would inevitably gravitate towards one of the two, especially when it just doesn't fucking matter. The second one is even less practical, especially when creating such saves to be equivalent would be trivial anyway.
I know these are impractical suggestions, but my issue with loading from a save as opposed to starting fresh makes the whole race aspect fishy. The starting line isn't equal and there lies an opportunity for tampering with the system before the game "starts." Its just good form to just check if it is all clean and allow others to have the same start as you and see if they could do better. They already do this with fallout 4 so I don't see why not.
yeah, like with majoras mask. you can play through that save pre-hand to get information. (which is just for shorter time records, and is a cool trick for its own skipping category) and of course things like that would be evident in the run itself. but of course there's always a chance more elaborate things could be done with a save file. to the buffoons crying about splitting the community, are you mental? heck, the 2nd one contradicted himself with "the majority would inevitably gravitate towards one of the two" xD huh? you call that being split? ultimately, it does not matter if there's some simply counting the intro or not. just because one category would be longer, doesn't mean it doesn't compete. obviously the one which has ~x time added from cutscenes, will still be the same game, and all it is, is simply for those wanting to play a little bit more legit. if the majority goes off to skipping cutscenes, so what? like with the sunshine intro, who cares if there's runners who aren't racing for that extra damn millisecond at the start??? since that play time has been cut, they'd ultimately have their own category. and who cares what categories people are playing!??! it's not splitting the community up. if 1000 people out of nowhere became speedrunners on a particular game, and ran a no-intro category, omg, you're splitting the community. no they're not. they're adding to it. and anybody with common sense will be able to distinguish the true WR. ones which have no intro could clearly have estimate record with intro next to it.
Anything that can cause more people to speedrun is a good thing in my opinion. Sure they could just do the intro sequence a few time, then load from save & add their intro time to every run to sort of get an idea, but if they want to submit an actual run they would still have to sit through the intro every single time. So you'd be stuck with the decision of either not being able to submit your run if you PB or having to sit through the intro
Based on the results of a poll clearly biased toward people that have already accepted sitting through the intro cutscenes, the only reasonable choice is to have separate categories for each.
Option 4: Patch the game so that the video player (since most of that cutscene is outside the game engine) immediately jumps to the end, and include the nominal length of the videos skipped in this fashion in the run time. This preserves having RNG and doesn't skip gameplay, at the expense of requiring a scriptable emulator, modded ROM, or Phantasy Star Online, and not skipping *all* cutscene content.
In Banjo-Kazooie Nuts and Bolts speedruns, there is a 9 minute intro cutscene that does feature around 15 seconds of gameplay overall. It's that long that one of the runners even do a Smash 64 speedrun during the intro itself while he has nothing else to do! What the community agreed is that if someone wanted to copy a save file past the intro cutscene, they could do it. The game uses in-game time to track who's got the best time, so there would be no need to add some time to the splits, since copying the file means that the IGT that you have past the intro is always the same. The major drawback with skipping the intro in BK Nuts and Bolts is that copying a save file takes a lot of time to do, as there is no way to copy a file in the game itself. So you pretty much need to load a file from a USB key, copy it onto the hard drive of the Xbox, and then you are able to start your run with the intro already watched. It saves so little time that the runners choose to watch the intro cutscene as opposed to going through copying their file over and over. But the option is still there to whoever wants to do it.
I think about this all the time. I'm so glad to see a video on it. I definitely believe in cutting them out if they are at the beginning. They should start the timer as soon as you have actual control. (Looking at you SM64)
Many cutscenes can even drag out a game normally. a lot of my favorite games, and most games are popular to speed run, are repayable. So having a chance to skip unnecessary cutscenes would also make the games more fun to watch.
Most runs of Pokemon Trading Card Game for GBC start timing at 8:03, allowing all runs to skip the long, tedious, unskippable tutorial and short intro cutscene. I'm definitely a fan of that timing method
I dunno how viable it would be, but it reminds me of when I was a young boy and when we were completely broke my dad would pirate us some PS1 and eventually Dreamcast games to keep us from going mad with boredom and doing THE DRUGS™. The piracy part isn't important, but what is is that a lot of those old games were too big for standard discs and had things like intro cutscenes removed. Not skipped, literally just not on the disc. Or ripped, as they called it. The game would load and play normally, just without those normally-critical elements. I doubt it would ever be allowed in the speedrunning community, even on systems that don't require some hardware mods or whatever, but some "official" rips of these games without the cutscenes would probably make speedrunning them a heckuva lot more tolerable.
i've got an idea, how about for sunshine you play the first part, then save after killing the plant, while making a record of your time and not overwriting the save after that, like removing the memory card in jak, then any resets afterwards starts the time after killing the plant and on reload rather than at the beginning? though if it were entirely up to me, i'd totally have it the reload fashion all the way, unskippable cutscenes suck 0:51 also FMA2? nice i beat that game a couple years back...a bit too frustating at times but usually fun
I can't even take being forced to watch an unskippable cutscene for the second play-through of a game I liked mechanically or want to explore at a certain story junction a bit more. I really don't like the concept of unskippable cutscenes in the first place tbh. Every player picks up a game for different reasons. I pick up games either to experience the story once and usually I'm done after that unless I really liked it (also one of the reasons why I don't like games like Skyrim which boast around a total of 2 hours of story in a 100 hour playthrough, and let's face it, mechanically the elder scrolls games were never that interesting). Or I pick them up because I enjoy their design philosophy/mechanics. Either way, I want to choose which cutscenes to watch in full, which ones to skip and which dialogues to speed up. There's nothing wrong with creating a narrative focused game. But don't force me to sit through the story more than the one time I actually want to experience it. So I can't really imagine how mindnumbing it must be to be forced to watch a cutscene a few hundred or thousand times. *Edit* oh and the save file rng issue could be solved by just having community safe files like the ones you mentioned being mandatory to use, no? Though that'd create issues if the run ever gets picked up again after being dropped for a while in case no one has the original file left.
We had the same issue with metal Gear solid 5 with the 9 minutes of auto scrolling intro. After little bit of discussion we decided to use the auto save that happens when you first get control of snake after the prologue.
morrowind doesn't actually have that kind of intro cutscene it has an unskippable tutorial, but it affects how the rest of the run works in most categories because you build your character during it and can get items to sell or use; you also can't save until the entire thing is complete
I feel like there should be 'no intro cutscenes' separate categories, or only the first of the two unskippable cutscenes should be untimed and the timer should start the moment the very first bit of gameplay starts. that would be the only way to limit further disagreement and controversy.
Yeah, I know it's a year ago, but: I don't think they want to "minimize the timer", I think their goal is to skip directly to the gameplay, without any cutscene in the beginning. The timer wouldn't matter, get it?
I know this is a decently old video, but I'll never understand why people sacrifice enjoyment of their hobby in the face of "legitimacy". The Melee community also has been struggling with these types of arguments for a long time, often stifling blatant general game improvements in hopes Nintendo will recognize and sponsor us, which is ridiculous. I get that it's hard to draw lines when it comes to modification, but I really can't comprehend the lack of faith certain communities have in themselves to police and evolve properly to keep their hobbies an enriching part of their lives that can grow with them, instead of a chore they cling on to for tradition and a sense of validity that means next to nothing to even the most dedicated members of them. I really liked someone's idea I read in a comment below, that RPG speedruns that rely on RNG (Pokemon Colosseum was in question, but other games in the franchise as well) could have community save files so that everyone starts with the same acceptable RNG and the run evolves from there, because even starting runs of RNG dependent games can take upwards of an hour in some cases (which is of course ridiculous). The obvious problem with this is that this makes running those games almost entirely reliant on emulation (to my knowledge at least, Everdrives could alleviate some of the headache), but anything is probably better than how things are going now for them if what I've heard is true (and having watched a few Colosseum/XD speedruns I think it is).
@EZScape: What I remember from Super mario world speed run the reason why the intro of the game start the timer was because your able to control mario for just a tiny bit, before the intro start. So in Super Mario Sunshine since they have not updated the rules for that game, the timer start as soon as you can control mario, so the timer start at the file select, since you can control mario, for that particular game you should not start the timer just because you can move mario arround in the file select screen, so that way they could start the timer after the intro cut scene, as soon as you can start to move mario, and any cut scene when the timer already started the timer will continued counting untill you beat Bowser so time stop before Credit, depending on the category your doing.
This really is a case by case basis, but I'd like it if leaving them out would be where people lean until they find a really good reason not to skip them. I would like if Super Mario Sunshine left out the intro cutscenes. The 10 seconds of gameplay within it is low level. Race-file seems better for both runners and the audience. As someone who watches, I would like to see runs start faster.
Just like how categories are made, rules like this need to be decided by the community. Whatever makes the game more enjoyable to run should be the solution. At the end of the day, speedrunning is full of all kinds of arbitrary rules that are decided on a case by case basis. I don't see how this one is any different. That said, in my honest opinion, I think the run should start from a save made after Mario gets out of jail. I absolutely LOVE this game and for a while I seriously considered running it, but I was turned off by the cutscenes. So not that anyone cares, but the community lost a potential runner because of the current state of things. (And any runner lost is potential innovation lost.)
Peach timing is already more or less considered, the main issue is that it doesn’t skip the court and jail cutscenes, which are the longest ones, and it’s still not starting from an empty file so some file select advocates aren’t really okay with it either. Also, 12:14 you know what to do, jcool
Halo 2's Armory is pretty much a tutorial level, which takes about 2:36. And if you mess up one of the first major skips in the next level you may as well reset and go through it all over again.
I don't agree with the Banjo Kazooie guys. Skipping cutscenes is one thing, because they aren't entertaining, but glitching the game to get abilities you shouldn't have from another save file is a completely different thing. You're skipping gameplay at that point. The save file should be used as a tool to skip unnecessary parts of a run that stop the run from being entertaining. I know it could be argued that if you can skip parts of a game with glitches, then they could be considered unnecessary, but if you are going to go that far, then why not just load the original file and run to the final boss? Same thing. You didn't play to the point of getting the moves yourself, so why bother running it? If people were going to kick up such a fuss about it, why not just do what a lot of other games do and make multiple categories? [No cutscene, no move glitch] and [no cutscene, move glitch] runs could be separated. I guess in the world of the internet, because I don't run the game, my opinion doesn't matter, but that's my 2 cents at least. (Though, more specifically, I guess my stance on the whole issue is that if you can glitch the game into skipping parts of the game where you don't actually control the character, that's fine, but using that same method to give you any actual advantage in the new game that you wouldn't have otherwise in a new game isn't right.) As for games like Skyrim and Fallout 4, someone should make a mod that skips the opening cutscenes, lets you create a character and save the file and it starts you off at a certain point, like starting you off in the cryo chambers in Fallout 4, for instance. (And if current record holders want to keep their current times, they could just subtract the time that it took them to get to that point from their time, at least until they match or beat it using that method.)
when you mentioned using save files, i immediately thought of Majora's Mask. certain things in game, such as the password to get the bombers notebook, are set on file creation. the speedrunners of MM have a file in their third file slot that has not started the game yet, but they know what the password on that file is because they have made a copy of it and played that copied file. they then make a copy of that unplayed file onto the first slot to use for the run. whats interesting is that some passwords(for the spider house) can be faster to do than others, meaning having a good file to copy can be an advantage.
I believe that if its at the beggining of the game, its fine as long as it shows up in the title: jax and dexter 100% (first cutscene skip) 45:06 + 6 minutes or something. even if it is the MAIN and fastest category. no problem. the sly cooper one, using new game plus should say as well. and its fine too since it requires knowledge and skill. it sort of is a trick by itself. if its for the sake of making the game easier to speedrun, it can be done in original hardware, requires no save states and it gets the cutscene time added at the end, its just perfect.
Hooded Man yeah, i meant it for a different category. There is a reason for it not being comparable to a regular run, at least in SMS. Even if it becomes the fastest and most popular category, it should be different.
Regarding Banjo-Kazooie, I'm not sure how FFM being disallowed but skipping the intro cutscene being allowed makes a slippery slope You said to skip the intro cutscene, all you do is hover over the completed file on the menu, then select your new game. It may require a completed file, but you don't actually need to *access* it. Meanwhile, FFM requires a file at a very specific point in the game, and you have to perform very specific actions to get it to trigger. I don't see how they're in any way equal, personally. To me, FFM just feels...forced. Like the community found a glitch and decided "man this is cool, we need to make it viable for speedruns, in any way possible". :/ I like watching Banjo-Kazooie speedruns, but I kinda lose my enjoyment a bit when I see people using FFM, since they don't start the timer when setting it up... My thinking is... to set it up, you have to play through the game normally. ....Why would you not just BEAT THE GAME when you're at that point!? What is the POINT of almost beating a game, just to start it all over so you can claim a faster time!? I just personally cannot see how FFM is in any way valid, or equal to skipping the intro cutscene. besides that, I had heard that skipping the intro cutscene was permanently unlocked on a cart by beating the game, and erasing your completed file couldn't change that- if that is true, then it means that the supposed slippery slope issue no longer exists. But I have no idea what the truth is, sooooo
In other words: FFM is basically an inofficial NG+ with actual gameplace effects and should be treated as such. Man, I mean, some people really want to justify every kind of glitch despite how nonsensical the argument is.
I think they should start past the unskipple cutscene for sure. I mean if I were to speedrun something like watchdogs which has like 8 minutes of boring cutscenes I would explode if I needed to watch it
An addendum I'd like to make regarding Fallout 4 is that both Portal 2 have a similar intro style. The first 5 minutes and 20 seconds are purely for story and it is impossible to gain or loose any time in this segment. The only reason we still count this time is because there is still gameplay and we use an autosplitter.
13:21 after having watched a video that mentioned there are leaderboards that convert speedrun times from PAL to NTSC and the other way around depending on what version youre playing on makes me wonder why this isnt being done more. Surely its possible to calculate exactly how much time is saved playing on the fastest version of a game and subtract that amount from other versions of the game? Like if its known that a JP version of a game is 10 seconds faster than the NA version because JPs text speed is quicker, why cant you just subtract these 10 seconds off every NA versions speedrun? That way people have the option to still compete on the leaderboards with their preferred game version.
There is another speedrun in which an intro skip rule would help a lot: Majora's Mask. Cycle 1 is the same across every single category of MM speedrunning, contains very little in the way of tech, and is so tedious and repetitive as to drive talented speedrunners away from trying to grind out MM world records. Now I don't know how you would go about enforcing no cheating in the prebaked save file needed for this particular speedrun, but it would be nice if it could be done.
GTA III and Vice City ended up having a problem with intro cutscenes that are actually skippable. The timing for these games use to be skipping the first cutscene/gaining control of character respectively (it was inconsistent between the two games). However a glitch was found that uses the rampages and replay system in the game. Rampages are 2 minute challenges you get given, the way it checks if the 2 minutes are up is by comparing the start time to a global timer that starts when you first load the game. This timer runs during the intro cutscenes. It was possible to load the game and not skip the cutscenes to add time to this global timer, without actually starting the speedrun timer because of the rules. Once you gain control of the character you can take a replay of the game, and then immediately start a new file. On the new file you can start a rampage and immediately ending it by playing the replay you saved from the previous file (when playing the replay the game considers it to be whatever the replay's global timer says and this immediately ends the rampages). This was important because being able to end a rampage freely makes certain glitch set ups a lot easier and faster. The timing had to be change to as soon as the game loads.
I speedrun Battalion Wars 1 and 2. We do runs on already complete save files. This is because the games have individual levels, and the only difference this makes is it means we can skip the cutscenes. Actual gameplay is the same. This saves a lot of time.
The biggest issue I have with starting from a premade file which isn't newgame+ is the potential for the file to be hacked. Possibly in ways that are hard to detect like having good RNG.
The EarthBound timing is strange because it does involve some skill to get to the credits quickly. You have to teleport into the door of Ness' house to skip both a photo spot and Paula's dialogue. It's not exactly difficult, but I've definitely screwed up and hit the wrong spot. But given that it's at the end of a four hour run, I'm glad the pressure is off and it doesn't stop timing at "the end" like Mother 2 does.
Speed run how you want. Run your boards how you want. Anyone who can't find a compatible board to submit runs too does have the power to make there own boards.
I feel like timing from first input is the best way to go about it. In the case of games like SM64 the added time you get from starting from console start up feels like extra padding to the end time that ends up confusing newer runners or spectators on the performance on the run. In a game like Jak 1 that has 29:37 of unskippable time (not including the intro) you have to remove that from the end timer reading to get a true sense of how fast you "played" the game and adding even more time to that feels like a terrible idea. Any way to trim non skill based game time off that end timer should be implemented as long as it doesn't result in gameplay being skipped.
3 years late. But I wouldn’t say that SM64 timing is confusing, if you watch a run, you can clearly see the time being started from power up. I think the reason it is this way is because of a Japanese tradition to start timing on power on, and it just stuck, it also allows for easy comparison to TAS runs without adjusting the time as they begin from power on too.
Wish I had the chance to play this game again. I think it was the first game I ever played. But I can barely remember anything. That cutscene gave me a little nostalgia though. I used to always be really scared as a kid because of it.
I agree it does not affect me so I don't have an opinion. My concern with starting from your own save as that one could use a GameShark to manipulate the save in ways that may not be visible to a viewer of the run.(I am talking in general not SMS)
Idea: have both as options. Players can train and try for the skip version, and since they've trained the significant parts I that if they want to achieve times on the "elite" board, they just do that with all their speed skills from the shorter version.
paper mario 64 has a really long credits and post-credits scene, yet it's timed when peach puts her hands in the air at the end. it's around 15 minutes or something
For Ys Origin we decided to not use a save, even though it only skips 5-10 seconds of proper gameplay. There's text mashing which can vary the time the intro takes by a couple of seconds for the shortest intro character and maybe 10 for the longest. I think it was mainly because it felt wrong to skip it. Intros range from 3 and a half to 7 minutes.
I know this reply is a year late, after sunshine has implemented race save loading, but there actually is a game that skips gameplay at the start of the run! Dying Light co-op timing starts when both players enter the first mission, but there is a tutorial and introduction before it. This is skipped because it is forced solo only, the same as the outro. As such, the community decided to start timing as previously said, and end timing when you get to the door to the outro.
simple answer, yes. what a waste of time. more skipped cutscenes still allows people to play the game themselves if they never have. its been a long time ive never played a megaman game or zelda really. so less cut scenes,more reason to play still. but i dont care overly for me its about not having my time wasted when playing or watching a run. bu many speed runners entice me to try games ive already played in an entirely new way, or new games that i didnt think could be played in a such a way. ( i mean new as in i never played. doesnt matter release date)
I'd say that it's case by case, but easily answered by one simple question: Can the player influence the game at any point during those cutscenes, either mashing through text boxes or actually having control and able to 'play the game'? If the answer to either of those two are 'Yes', then one shouldn't be able to skip the cutscenes when it comes to timing, simple enough. Now, if it's the type of intro cutscene where absolutely nothing someone can do matters at all, where you might as well just put the controller down and make sure you got a drink ready, then by all means, start the time soon as the player can put in an input that would be responsive. So, for Super Mario Sunshine for example, start the time soon as the player has control of Mario and do not stop the timer until Bowser is defeated. That long cutscene beforehand can be skipped, the cutscene where Mario's arrested cannot, as the game had properly begun at that point beforehand.
Psychonauts speedruns start after the intro cutscene right when the save file/profile is created when starting a new game. It also uses Alt+F4 to skip a tutorial section.
Would you be willing to cover RTA vs In Game Time? I feel there's definitely reason for using a both, and a discussion on it would only help the community For example it's possible in many older games to glitch the in game timer so it displayed a time of 0, so real time had to be used there. But for some games, mostly on PC, In Game time is preferred due to variable loading times, and on some games like Trackmania Turbo, the run can just be the sum of all the gameplay, as opposed to menuing and load times
I still say that timing should start either on file select or first input. Just because you don't feel like running the same 5 minutes of the first shine over and over doesn't mean you won't screw it up some time. That's like starting the run of mario 64 once you've entered peach's castle.
New merch shop! teespring.com/sm64-blj
Super Mario Sunshine poll results: twitter.com/SMSCommunity/status/1018903343228510208
*Half life 1 actually uses a console command to start the game. The code is map c1a0. Just wanted to clarify
Pour one out for Simpleflips
People voted against it. Saved you all from looking it up yourself wasting time like I did.
Would be interested to see the same vote from the perspective of viewers, also to see roughly how long the voters have been running and their place on the leaderboards. Skipping the intro cutscene changes nothing about the run, but makes it infinitely more enjoyable to watch and incentivizes going for more risky strats, which might make the upper half of the leaderboards scared for their ranks.
Check the card at the top right of the video, I put a poll up there.
Personally I the option of getting to skip part of the cutscene is better than nothing.
I would tear my hair out having to watch unskippable cutscenes over and over. I vote that it should be picked by each community of each game but I would definitely skip them
yea.. seeing the beginning of the video made me excited that super mario sunshine would be fun to run without having to sit through cutscenes for every attempt, and then i saw the results. really discouraging as someone who wanted to start running the game
8:47 "cuntscenes"*
cbb88christian No but yes.......when they playing it should be skiped but the replay of world records it should be added to the video.... but the timer should only start after the opening cut scenes.....seem fine??
dude, you don't have to. you can do anything. it's your run. a vote is not needed at all. who cares what other "officials" think. there aren't any officials! there's a group of runners with opinions, and a leaderboard they control. you can go off and have your very own set of speedruns, if they don't like them for not following their rules, then duh, it's not trying to. it's trying to be something different. imagine a parallel universe where all the speedrunners hate glitches, and one guy decides, "screw it", and starts producing glitched runs online, trying to master his game, who the fuck gives a shit what the "speedrunning police" thinks!? he can make his own leaderboard, and gather his own fan base.
you can skip cutscenes, you wouldn't be counted on a leaderboard with runs that do have cutscenes recorded. and not just physically, if say the community decided to mix them. i mean, literally. it doesn't matter what you think, the truth is the truth, about every run. you as an individual could take absolutely every run you watch and categorize them how you like by your own rules that you like.
Anything the developer intended you to do should be fair game and anyone that disagrees is taking speedrunning too seriously.
If the run ends when player control ends, then the run should start when player control starts
A lot of runs dont end when player control ends though. Like he said in the video, a ton of games keep going past the final boss or the end screen and give you post-game content that is usually omitted from the any% categories for that game. And what if the game lets you gain control of your character just before they lock you into a 2 hour cutscene. There has to be some compromise in that situation. But I think that the SMS runs shouldn't skip the first fight, that is a skill based combat that does have an effect on your run time.
that's SDA timing
Every game starts and ends at different times. It's a case by case basis.
The issue with Sunshine is that it has half the long cutscene, then like 15 seconds of gameplay, then the rest of the cutscene
To the detriment of both viewer and runner enjoyment? With the only effect being the addition of over one hundred hours of sitting and doing nothing per every 900 resets (over 10 hours every 90 resets, more than 1 hour every 9 resets, etc.)? Consistency purely for the sake of consistency when it has zero benefits and extreme detriments doesn't make any sense.
Those beginning cutscenes in Sunshine are terrible enough to go through in casual playthroughs. The runners that want to skip it have my full sympathy and support.
But then you skip the first fight, where you CAN actually gain/lose time. I don't disagree with you per se, that's just why it is how it is.
@@stitchfinger7678 then start a file , do the fight , reset your console and start from a 2nd save where you are just past the intro cutscene
@ Are you trolling, or just angry for absolutely no reason?
@ mano, tua raiva n tem sentido nenhum
Good video, just wanted to clear up a couple things that were mentioned about the Bethesda games, since I run many of them, and currently hold the WR for Fallout 4.
In the games that were listed with unskippable scenes that are skipped by the community, New Vegas is listed. This is incorrect, since with New Vegas we actually do start from a fresh game every time. We do load a save for Fallout 3, as EZScape listed, but there is actually a very small amount of speedtech in the part that we skip, which is when we create our character. Of course, messing it up would lose you half a second at most, but it is still speedtech that is skipped.
When EZScape talks about Fallout 4 and the No Intro category, he says that when the community was discussing whether or not to have it, that the majority was against it but decided to have it as a category but No Intro was added to accommodate the people who wanted the category. This is actually the exact opposite of what happened. Majority of the people in the community were for making No Intro the official any% run for Fallout 4, except there were two longstanding members of the community who were against it. These two members were very firm in their beliefs (with one going as far to say he would remove all of his runs from the leaderboard if No Intro became the official category), so to accommodate them, no official ruling was made on which category would be the official any% run of Fallout 4, it was just decided that No Intro would be added as a category and we would see where that takes us.
EZScape also mentions that only 9 people have ran No Intro, as opposed to the 36 who have ran the Full Game category. Many of the 36 runs consist of runs that were done by people who stopped running the game before the No Intro category was implemented. If you go through and count people who have done runs after the category was introduced (and only count people who were active community members as opposed to doing one run and then never running again, the final count would be 12 for Full Game and 7 for No Intro, which is a much more fair representation of the category, especially considering there are people who only ran No Intro and didn't do Full Game runs.
tomatoanus great summary man, love your runs
Was just about to comment this. When all was said and done I personally removed my Any% time because I no longer wanted to be apart of a community that allowed 2 members' opinions to change the majority vote just because of their status in the community. It's also important to note when they were in the discord call, they locked it, only letting "important" people in the community in. Not what I wanted to associate myself with, personally.
tomatoanus Was it bubbles threatening to remove everything? Because it sounds like something bubbles would do.
The community is *very* different now, and we would love to have you back.
nobody can tell anybody what category then can/can't run. if you want to skip cutscenes, and have world record in that category, go for it. you'll get viewers. and even if you didn't, it makes no difference. it's absolutely valid in its own right. and yes, you'll get competitors. and that's the whole point. they'll switch to which they like the most. and that doesn't mean the old category isn't still just as much worthy as the new. if some legend to be was playing the old category and smashed the record, but because of cutscenes, the record time is literally longer than that of another run which skips them, it doesn't matter, he truly does have the world record. whether you have common sense enough to see it or not. if the society turned into idiocracy, why would i care what they think? that's the incentive for the cheaters out there. attention.
Pokemon Colosseum has a minute long unskippable cutscene, but you reset at the soonest possible moment after getting control of your character and checking Espeons stats. Depending on your RNG, it can take up to an hour to even START a run.
oh true, this one is an Absol-ute pain. Honestly I didn't even mean to make the pun there but oh well it exists so I'll Rollout with it. Fine, THAT was unnecessary. Not to mention all the RNG during the run
Jesiah Southard I dont think stats matter that much during speedruns, everything is workable with and you won’t struggle.
Really? I'm pretty sure you need a relatively good Espeon hidden power to have a shot
DJdeMaster Colosseum isn’t a good speedgame anyway. A good speedgame is one that can be completed in less than 2 hours and 30 minutes
Depends on how you define a good speedgame I guess. I doubt you're saying every game that is less than 2h 30m is a good speedgame so what other metrics do you use?
We only have a finite time to live. Skip the cutscenes.
Funny how the top ranked players vote no, and low ranked players vote yes. Some people have more time on their hands than others.
People who care about spending their time wisely don't play the same game over and over again.
Skip speedrunning altogether if you feel that way. The cutscenes are part of the game.
terrible argument
Adam Evening While I personally think we should skip cutscenes, that doesn't mean we use the same save state. I just think something skill cannot help go faster shouldnt be counted. The point of running is Skill=better times
right?
It seems to me that because speedruns are done for fun, it's better to skip the tedious parts as much as is reasobable. If I ran Sunshine I would skip the intro even if it means I can't participate on the leaderboards.
Make your own leaderboard and participate all you want. It's not like these people own speedrunning video games.
Noe fame and first place is the goat
Half-Life runs don't use a community save file, we use a console command to start from where we do (map c1a0). Something thats been agreed upon since the dawn of HL1 speedrunning around 2001. On another note, there is a way to skip the autoscroller tram ride, but was discovered way after this time.
Thanks for the clarification. I edited in a caption that mentions this. Sorry I haven't played 90% of the games in the video casually so there are usually bound to be mistakes like that sometimes:p
Its ok, its a good video anyway.
Thanks!:)
Honestly, I feel like in Sunshine's case, this skip ought to be allowed.
While there is that small chunk of gameplay, I don't really think the gameplay in that intro adds much to the run, or has much in terms of "movement so critical it can change the pace of the entire run" particularly because of how brief it is.
Compromise: You should have to speedrun SMB1 during the cutscenes, and if you don't finish before you gain control in SMS, you have to restart both games. There. Now the cutscenes aren't boring and meaningless.
DoctorPhrog
200 IQ answer right here.
Is this a new category? Super Mario Sunshine SMB1% glitchless
How salty are you, mate? Can I get some of that salt for my delicious cutscene tears? Unfortunately, I am all out of crying because I won, so to emulate tears I need some of your salt. Cheers.
What...?
What you said sounds extremely sarcastic and slightly bitter. If you're not salty, by all means, my fault in assuming. But it is an otherwise asinine suggestions--the cut scenes are neither boring nor meaningless; to describe them as such is patently absurd.
Q: Should all cutscenes be skippable in all games ever?
A: Of course.
to be honest , theres some cutscenes i would prefer seeing in a run but not in a game like sunshine
in ffx-2 i would honestly like it if i got to listen to real emotion and 1000 words in every run
yes
There is another interesting case of skipping intros in Pokemon Trading Card Game (GBC). I used to race TCG a few years ago with neskamikaze and cyghfer and we always started from a save file that had completed the mandatory eight minute tutorial which has a professor tell you which moves to make in a preset duel. You can argue that gameplay was skipped, but the gameplay was always the same and the game itself allowed very little wiggle room.
The leaderboard currently allows submitted runs to start from a save file immediately after this tutorial, but such runs cannot be considered for "world record." There are currently 51 runs on the Any% leaderboard, but only 13 actually play the full game. More people play the game in a way that automatically disqualifies them from world record than not, probably because the tutorial is so long.
Races tend to be different though...
Preset tutorial actions are not comparable.
Hooded Man The times are on the same leaderboard. The No Tutorial runs have the skipped tutorial time added to their RTAs. There must have been some intent to compare.
Certainly, intent, no doubt; the issue is the TCG gameboy game's tutorial is not free control of the character, but a tutorial where you are forced to make moves. If the issue was quicktime events, it would be comparable to Sunshine. However, Sunshine is free-roaming, free moving, gameplay. The notion that you can just skip the cutscenes and add a static time where there is gameplay is clearly--as evidenced by the result--against the ethics of running a game.
Yeah. That tutorial is pretty rough. If only the game could be brought back with an online play functionality and skipping the tutorial. I bet plenty of people would love some old school TCG play (i.e. it would make bank)
UPDATE : 2 new timing methods (Peach File and Hacked File) are now allowed on the leaderboards !
I heard the thumbnail.
Noopa this is why it needs a skip
Noopa i define the defendant guilty as charged. ? Something like that.
Coming from someone who doesn't speedrun: I can absolutely understand wanting to skip that section of Sunshine. From my perspective, there's basically *nothing* that can be optimized about that first Shine Sprite. The ONLY reason I could possibly see is that you're doing some sort of RNG manipulation through the opening level. But if there isn't any and you've essentially maxed out that intro section's time, why bother when it leads to a lot of boring downtime?
It honestly should depend whether someone wants to sit through it or not, make it two categories with both having world records.
Reminds me of another video I've seen about speedrunnings with skips.
What counts as a speedrun?
- Well, you have to beat the game
Well, if we play through the game and beat the boss, does that count as beating the game?
- Yes, of course.
If you find a glitch that allows you to skip to the boss, and then beat the boss, does that count as beating the game?
- Yeah, sure, in it's own sub-category of speedrunning.
What if you play through the game, but skip the boss, but then, you know, finnish the game, does that count as beating the game?
- Well, that's alittle wierd, but sure, it can have it's own sub-speedrunning category.
What if you skip most of the game and the boss, and just play the credits, does that count as beating the game?
- Alright, fine, I'm kinda with you still. It can have it's own sub-speedrunning category.
Well, what if you play just one frame of the credits?
(Quoted from Sethbling's Super mario world speedrun attempt: "Credits warp...Kind of?")
@Rando credit warps start going out of bounds for 'finishing the game'.
As long as the gameplay parts are very minimal and the record holders have already long since fully optimized it, I think long unskippable openings should be skipped.
Golden Sun is a jrpg where the community decided to permit skipping the 'intro' sequence of the game. Its about 38 minutes long, with minor gameplay and RNG elements. Players opting in to no intro runs take a minor time penalty compared to a good 'intro' section. Has helped a bit with activity since all the cutscenes need to be mashed through.
so, if they have a fixed time like 6:44, start from a save file that has already watched it, and just ad 6:44 to the timer, done
"This isn't really comparable to Sunshine"
He says about one of the only games mentioned where meaningful gameplay is skipped. If Sunshine were like most of the games you mentioned, there wouldn't be an argument because of course we'd be skipping a pointless cutscene that doesn't affect time.
You only really focus on the cutscene skipping part of the discussion, but the problem is that there is gameplay between the cutscenes in Sunshine where a runner could lose time, no matter how unlikely. Even if we skipped the first cutscene to preserve the gameplay, there's still the second, longer cutscene right after.
I think the ideal compromise would be to allow runs on an ISO that skips, or let's you skip cutscenes. Runs could be timed "with /without cutscenes", similar to PC games' "with /without loads". I don't know how hard that would be, but it means you can skip any cutscene in the game beyond just the opening two if you're impatient, yet people can run on an official disc all the same. If not, then Fallout 4's solution is easily the most applicable
Maybe what we need isn't a rule change, but a new mindset. I'm reminded of GDQ runners that take selfies with the crowd, or how Ennopp would play the Song of Healing during the cutscene where you got the Zora Mask. Runners might be more friendly to cutscenes if they view them as time to spend wisely instead of waiting for the game to start again. Maybe you just need to take a step back and analyse Mario's downfall by the work of his imposter and the corrupt legal system of Isle Delfino.
this
In mass effect 2, we skip the long intro because you can load a save from right after character creation. Also because the intro sucks and there's no actual skill involved and if you start from it you dont get to customise your Shepherd.
I can't imagine why speedrunners would want to sit through intro cutscenes over and over. Makes me think that the people arguing against skipping it are mostly twitch viewers and purists that can't fathom skipping any gameplay for a big quality of life improvement.
agreed , i want to play both final fantasy 10 and 13 again , i will probably make a 10 file thats just before tidus bursts into the besaid cloister of trials and a 13 file in chapter 6
that way i could skip the boring parts of both games for the future , like , nothing before getting yuna can really be considered gameplay , swiming a short distance with wakka , no , the stuff with rikku ? nope once you get yuna and lulu the actual game starts , i would love if i could just start from there in a speedrun and just add an estimate thats set by the community to my run from the start
For any of these discussions, I always wonder "why isn't that just a sub-section?"
Like, just mark down the rules of a speedrun before it begins so you can be fairly compared to other runs with similar rules.
If you want to skip cutscenes, then mark it as a no-cutscene run just as you'd mark a normal run as a glitchless run.
remove cutscenes and we can run assassin's creed without having time to cook a meal
assassins creed has a movies worth of cut scenes ... not even joking, there are people who take the cut scenes (and small portions of game play) and make the movies they were really written to be.
So, basically just skip to the end?
one culprit of that is Deadpool, around 2 hours of cutscenes for 6 hours of game (without speedruning).
@@tryplot honestly a movies worth of cutscenses isnt that bad compared to some games. Most games you are lucky to get less than 4 hours of cutscenes and some games have close to 14 hours of cutscenes
when I said a movies worth of cutscenes I really meant the first couple of games ... this is the movie of origins (note the length of the video)/watch?v=wZqp5Jt8Ntc
It's embarrassing that people would choose to waste dozens (or hundreds, maybe thousands) of hours watching a cutscene over and over. There is just no excuse for it. Speedrunning is already a fringe and extreme hobby, and while cool, can leads to a pretty severe imbalance in your use of free time. Look at the big picture of your lives folks.
A photix Underrated comment. I wholeheartedly agree. Our time in invaluable.
If it's fun to them, or satisfying in any way, it's not a waste of time.
darklordster everything is a waste of time if that’s the case. Stop being a judgmental douche.
Jason Skywalker Do you really think rewatching a cutscene over and over for hours is fun or satisfying to them?
Look people can do what they want
I would vote for their removal ONLY on 2 conditions.
1.) They split it into categories of intro/no-intro,
2.) The save file used is distributed and/or moderated by the judges and openly available.
Condition 1 would split the community too much, and condition 2 requires a homebrewed Wii.
Fuck no to the first one; don't split the community like that, especially when the majority would inevitably gravitate towards one of the two, especially when it just doesn't fucking matter. The second one is even less practical, especially when creating such saves to be equivalent would be trivial anyway.
if it doesnt matter then why are people bitching and crying over it so much?
I know these are impractical suggestions, but my issue with loading from a save as opposed to starting fresh makes the whole race aspect fishy. The starting line isn't equal and there lies an opportunity for tampering with the system before the game "starts." Its just good form to just check if it is all clean and allow others to have the same start as you and see if they could do better. They already do this with fallout 4 so I don't see why not.
yeah, like with majoras mask. you can play through that save pre-hand to get information. (which is just for shorter time records, and is a cool trick for its own skipping category) and of course things like that would be evident in the run itself. but of course there's always a chance more elaborate things could be done with a save file. to the buffoons crying about splitting the community, are you mental? heck, the 2nd one contradicted himself with "the majority would inevitably gravitate towards one of the two" xD huh? you call that being split? ultimately, it does not matter if there's some simply counting the intro or not.
just because one category would be longer, doesn't mean it doesn't compete. obviously the one which has ~x time added from cutscenes, will still be the same game, and all it is, is simply for those wanting to play a little bit more legit. if the majority goes off to skipping cutscenes, so what? like with the sunshine intro, who cares if there's runners who aren't racing for that extra damn millisecond at the start??? since that play time has been cut, they'd ultimately have their own category. and who cares what categories people are playing!??! it's not splitting the community up. if 1000 people out of nowhere became speedrunners on a particular game, and ran a no-intro category, omg, you're splitting the community. no they're not. they're adding to it. and anybody with common sense will be able to distinguish the true WR. ones which have no intro could clearly have estimate record with intro next to it.
If I ever make a game, I will add a "speedrun" mode that removes all cut scenes and dialogue JUST for speedruners to do
I think A Hat in Time did something like that.
vvvvvv has that
That was a pretty amazing video, and those shirts have such a cool and creative design.
Anything that can cause more people to speedrun is a good thing in my opinion. Sure they could just do the intro sequence a few time, then load from save & add their intro time to every run to sort of get an idea, but if they want to submit an actual run they would still have to sit through the intro every single time. So you'd be stuck with the decision of either not being able to submit your run if you PB or having to sit through the intro
getting over it now allows a mod to skip the 6 second intro cutscene XD
Based on the results of a poll clearly biased toward people that have already accepted sitting through the intro cutscenes, the only reasonable choice is to have separate categories for each.
Option 4: Patch the game so that the video player (since most of that cutscene is outside the game engine) immediately jumps to the end, and include the nominal length of the videos skipped in this fashion in the run time. This preserves having RNG and doesn't skip gameplay, at the expense of requiring a scriptable emulator, modded ROM, or Phantasy Star Online, and not skipping *all* cutscene content.
Interesting, but powerless against game engine cutscenes.
I would allow patching that too, but it's a can of worms bound to raise unsuspected issues.
In Banjo-Kazooie Nuts and Bolts speedruns, there is a 9 minute intro cutscene that does feature around 15 seconds of gameplay overall. It's that long that one of the runners even do a Smash 64 speedrun during the intro itself while he has nothing else to do!
What the community agreed is that if someone wanted to copy a save file past the intro cutscene, they could do it. The game uses in-game time to track who's got the best time, so there would be no need to add some time to the splits, since copying the file means that the IGT that you have past the intro is always the same.
The major drawback with skipping the intro in BK Nuts and Bolts is that copying a save file takes a lot of time to do, as there is no way to copy a file in the game itself. So you pretty much need to load a file from a USB key, copy it onto the hard drive of the Xbox, and then you are able to start your run with the intro already watched. It saves so little time that the runners choose to watch the intro cutscene as opposed to going through copying their file over and over. But the option is still there to whoever wants to do it.
I think about this all the time. I'm so glad to see a video on it. I definitely believe in cutting them out if they are at the beginning. They should start the timer as soon as you have actual control. (Looking at you SM64)
Many cutscenes can even drag out a game normally.
a lot of my favorite games, and most games are popular to speed run, are repayable.
So having a chance to skip unnecessary cutscenes would also make the games more fun to watch.
Most runs of Pokemon Trading Card Game for GBC start timing at 8:03, allowing all runs to skip the long, tedious, unskippable tutorial and short intro cutscene. I'm definitely a fan of that timing method
I saw you on Shift stream a few days ago. And I'm glad that you enjoy his content.
I dunno how viable it would be, but it reminds me of when I was a young boy and when we were completely broke my dad would pirate us some PS1 and eventually Dreamcast games to keep us from going mad with boredom and doing THE DRUGS™. The piracy part isn't important, but what is is that a lot of those old games were too big for standard discs and had things like intro cutscenes removed. Not skipped, literally just not on the disc. Or ripped, as they called it. The game would load and play normally, just without those normally-critical elements.
I doubt it would ever be allowed in the speedrunning community, even on systems that don't require some hardware mods or whatever, but some "official" rips of these games without the cutscenes would probably make speedrunning them a heckuva lot more tolerable.
It is 2 am and I have decided it’s a good idea to watch an 18 minute video on wether opening cutscenes should be skipped in Speedruns
i've got an idea, how about for sunshine you play the first part, then save after killing the plant, while making a record of your time and not overwriting the save after that, like removing the memory card in jak, then any resets afterwards starts the time after killing the plant and on reload rather than at the beginning? though if it were entirely up to me, i'd totally have it the reload fashion all the way, unskippable cutscenes suck
0:51 also FMA2? nice i beat that game a couple years back...a bit too frustating at times but usually fun
I can't even take being forced to watch an unskippable cutscene for the second play-through of a game I liked mechanically or want to explore at a certain story junction a bit more. I really don't like the concept of unskippable cutscenes in the first place tbh. Every player picks up a game for different reasons. I pick up games either to experience the story once and usually I'm done after that unless I really liked it (also one of the reasons why I don't like games like Skyrim which boast around a total of 2 hours of story in a 100 hour playthrough, and let's face it, mechanically the elder scrolls games were never that interesting).
Or I pick them up because I enjoy their design philosophy/mechanics.
Either way, I want to choose which cutscenes to watch in full, which ones to skip and which dialogues to speed up. There's nothing wrong with creating a narrative focused game. But don't force me to sit through the story more than the one time I actually want to experience it.
So I can't really imagine how mindnumbing it must be to be forced to watch a cutscene a few hundred or thousand times.
*Edit* oh and the save file rng issue could be solved by just having community safe files like the ones you mentioned being mandatory to use, no? Though that'd create issues if the run ever gets picked up again after being dropped for a while in case no one has the original file left.
The lesson in all this? Don't make your game stupid by including unskippable cutscenes.
We had the same issue with metal Gear solid 5 with the 9 minutes of auto scrolling intro. After little bit of discussion we decided to use the auto save that happens when you first get control of snake after the prologue.
morrowind doesn't actually have that kind of intro cutscene
it has an unskippable tutorial, but it affects how the rest of the run works in most categories because you build your character during it and can get items to sell or use; you also can't save until the entire thing is complete
I feel like there should be 'no intro cutscenes' separate categories, or only the first of the two unskippable cutscenes should be untimed and the timer should start the moment the very first bit of gameplay starts. that would be the only way to limit further disagreement and controversy.
Yeah, I know it's a year ago, but: I don't think they want to "minimize the timer", I think their goal is to skip directly to the gameplay, without any cutscene in the beginning. The timer wouldn't matter, get it?
I know this is a decently old video, but I'll never understand why people sacrifice enjoyment of their hobby in the face of "legitimacy". The Melee community also has been struggling with these types of arguments for a long time, often stifling blatant general game improvements in hopes Nintendo will recognize and sponsor us, which is ridiculous. I get that it's hard to draw lines when it comes to modification, but I really can't comprehend the lack of faith certain communities have in themselves to police and evolve properly to keep their hobbies an enriching part of their lives that can grow with them, instead of a chore they cling on to for tradition and a sense of validity that means next to nothing to even the most dedicated members of them.
I really liked someone's idea I read in a comment below, that RPG speedruns that rely on RNG (Pokemon Colosseum was in question, but other games in the franchise as well) could have community save files so that everyone starts with the same acceptable RNG and the run evolves from there, because even starting runs of RNG dependent games can take upwards of an hour in some cases (which is of course ridiculous). The obvious problem with this is that this makes running those games almost entirely reliant on emulation (to my knowledge at least, Everdrives could alleviate some of the headache), but anything is probably better than how things are going now for them if what I've heard is true (and having watched a few Colosseum/XD speedruns I think it is).
I believe in speedrunning with HONOR and INTEGRITY PeoplesChamp
Kosmicd12 hello my beautiful princess
ONE HAND
did he just walk up slowly and skip the intro PeoplesChamp
Your Princess is in another castle!
@EZScape: What I remember from Super mario world speed run the reason why the intro of the game start the timer was because your able to control mario for just a tiny bit, before the intro start. So in Super Mario Sunshine since they have not updated the rules for that game, the timer start as soon as you can control mario, so the timer start at the file select, since you can control mario, for that particular game you should not start the timer just because you can move mario arround in the file select screen, so that way they could start the timer after the intro cut scene, as soon as you can start to move mario, and any cut scene when the timer already started the timer will continued counting untill you beat Bowser so time stop before Credit, depending on the category your doing.
This really is a case by case basis, but I'd like it if leaving them out would be where people lean until they find a really good reason not to skip them. I would like if Super Mario Sunshine left out the intro cutscenes. The 10 seconds of gameplay within it is low level. Race-file seems better for both runners and the audience. As someone who watches, I would like to see runs start faster.
Just like how categories are made, rules like this need to be decided by the community. Whatever makes the game more enjoyable to run should be the solution. At the end of the day, speedrunning is full of all kinds of arbitrary rules that are decided on a case by case basis. I don't see how this one is any different.
That said, in my honest opinion, I think the run should start from a save made after Mario gets out of jail. I absolutely LOVE this game and for a while I seriously considered running it, but I was turned off by the cutscenes. So not that anyone cares, but the community lost a potential runner because of the current state of things. (And any runner lost is potential innovation lost.)
Now we need the second part to this series - IGT and why it's so inconsistent across games.
What you said at 13:00 about RNG does have an example - Banjo Tooie uses a premade save for Jinjo RNG to keep it consistent.
Sly speed running community is one of my favorites. I’ve been thinking of running one of them
Peach timing is already more or less considered, the main issue is that it doesn’t skip the court and jail cutscenes, which are the longest ones, and it’s still not starting from an empty file so some file select advocates aren’t really okay with it either.
Also, 12:14 you know what to do, jcool
Halo 2's Armory is pretty much a tutorial level, which takes about 2:36. And if you mess up one of the first major skips in the next level you may as well reset and go through it all over again.
I don't agree with the Banjo Kazooie guys. Skipping cutscenes is one thing, because they aren't entertaining, but glitching the game to get abilities you shouldn't have from another save file is a completely different thing. You're skipping gameplay at that point. The save file should be used as a tool to skip unnecessary parts of a run that stop the run from being entertaining. I know it could be argued that if you can skip parts of a game with glitches, then they could be considered unnecessary, but if you are going to go that far, then why not just load the original file and run to the final boss? Same thing. You didn't play to the point of getting the moves yourself, so why bother running it? If people were going to kick up such a fuss about it, why not just do what a lot of other games do and make multiple categories? [No cutscene, no move glitch] and [no cutscene, move glitch] runs could be separated. I guess in the world of the internet, because I don't run the game, my opinion doesn't matter, but that's my 2 cents at least. (Though, more specifically, I guess my stance on the whole issue is that if you can glitch the game into skipping parts of the game where you don't actually control the character, that's fine, but using that same method to give you any actual advantage in the new game that you wouldn't have otherwise in a new game isn't right.) As for games like Skyrim and Fallout 4, someone should make a mod that skips the opening cutscenes, lets you create a character and save the file and it starts you off at a certain point, like starting you off in the cryo chambers in Fallout 4, for instance. (And if current record holders want to keep their current times, they could just subtract the time that it took them to get to that point from their time, at least until they match or beat it using that method.)
What games really need is a speedrunning mode where all dialogue and cutscenes are skipped
when you mentioned using save files, i immediately thought of Majora's Mask. certain things in game, such as the password to get the bombers notebook, are set on file creation. the speedrunners of MM have a file in their third file slot that has not started the game yet, but they know what the password on that file is because they have made a copy of it and played that copied file. they then make a copy of that unplayed file onto the first slot to use for the run.
whats interesting is that some passwords(for the spider house) can be faster to do than others, meaning having a good file to copy can be an advantage.
I believe that if its at the beggining of the game, its fine as long as it shows up in the title: jax and dexter 100% (first cutscene skip) 45:06 + 6 minutes or something. even if it is the MAIN and fastest category. no problem.
the sly cooper one, using new game plus should say as well. and its fine too since it requires knowledge and skill. it sort of is a trick by itself. if its for the sake of making the game easier to speedrun, it can be done in original hardware, requires no save states and it gets the cutscene time added at the end, its just perfect.
Putting the timing restrictions in the title is dumb unless you want it to be a completely separate category, and that's even dumber.
Hooded Man yeah, i meant it for a different category. There is a reason for it not being comparable to a regular run, at least in SMS.
Even if it becomes the fastest and most popular category, it should be different.
Regarding Banjo-Kazooie, I'm not sure how FFM being disallowed but skipping the intro cutscene being allowed makes a slippery slope
You said to skip the intro cutscene, all you do is hover over the completed file on the menu, then select your new game. It may require a completed file, but you don't actually need to *access* it. Meanwhile, FFM requires a file at a very specific point in the game, and you have to perform very specific actions to get it to trigger. I don't see how they're in any way equal, personally. To me, FFM just feels...forced. Like the community found a glitch and decided "man this is cool, we need to make it viable for speedruns, in any way possible". :/ I like watching Banjo-Kazooie speedruns, but I kinda lose my enjoyment a bit when I see people using FFM, since they don't start the timer when setting it up... My thinking is... to set it up, you have to play through the game normally. ....Why would you not just BEAT THE GAME when you're at that point!? What is the POINT of almost beating a game, just to start it all over so you can claim a faster time!? I just personally cannot see how FFM is in any way valid, or equal to skipping the intro cutscene.
besides that, I had heard that skipping the intro cutscene was permanently unlocked on a cart by beating the game, and erasing your completed file couldn't change that- if that is true, then it means that the supposed slippery slope issue no longer exists. But I have no idea what the truth is, sooooo
In other words: FFM is basically an inofficial NG+ with actual gameplace effects and should be treated as such. Man, I mean, some people really want to justify every kind of glitch despite how nonsensical the argument is.
I think they should start past the unskipple cutscene for sure. I mean if I were to speedrun something like watchdogs which has like 8 minutes of boring cutscenes I would explode if I needed to watch it
I think the best compromise for a community in disagreement is the introduction of a new category. Both parties get what they want in the end.
RuhPhorte Low Eco (Ruh’s Route)
RuhPhorte A subcategory could very well solve this too.
Short answer: Yes
Long answer: Yeeeeessssssss
An addendum I'd like to make regarding Fallout 4 is that both Portal 2 have a similar intro style. The first 5 minutes and 20 seconds are purely for story and it is impossible to gain or loose any time in this segment.
The only reason we still count this time is because there is still gameplay and we use an autosplitter.
13:21 after having watched a video that mentioned there are leaderboards that convert speedrun times from PAL to NTSC and the other way around depending on what version youre playing on makes me wonder why this isnt being done more. Surely its possible to calculate exactly how much time is saved playing on the fastest version of a game and subtract that amount from other versions of the game? Like if its known that a JP version of a game is 10 seconds faster than the NA version because JPs text speed is quicker, why cant you just subtract these 10 seconds off every NA versions speedrun? That way people have the option to still compete on the leaderboards with their preferred game version.
There is another speedrun in which an intro skip rule would help a lot: Majora's Mask. Cycle 1 is the same across every single category of MM speedrunning, contains very little in the way of tech, and is so tedious and repetitive as to drive talented speedrunners away from trying to grind out MM world records. Now I don't know how you would go about enforcing no cheating in the prebaked save file needed for this particular speedrun, but it would be nice if it could be done.
GTA III and Vice City ended up having a problem with intro cutscenes that are actually skippable. The timing for these games use to be skipping the first cutscene/gaining control of character respectively (it was inconsistent between the two games).
However a glitch was found that uses the rampages and replay system in the game. Rampages are 2 minute challenges you get given, the way it checks if the 2 minutes are up is by comparing the start time to a global timer that starts when you first load the game. This timer runs during the intro cutscenes.
It was possible to load the game and not skip the cutscenes to add time to this global timer, without actually starting the speedrun timer because of the rules. Once you gain control of the character you can take a replay of the game, and then immediately start a new file. On the new file you can start a rampage and immediately ending it by playing the replay you saved from the previous file (when playing the replay the game considers it to be whatever the replay's global timer says and this immediately ends the rampages). This was important because being able to end a rampage freely makes certain glitch set ups a lot easier and faster.
The timing had to be change to as soon as the game loads.
I speedrun Battalion Wars 1 and 2. We do runs on already complete save files. This is because the games have individual levels, and the only difference this makes is it means we can skip the cutscenes. Actual gameplay is the same. This saves a lot of time.
The biggest issue I have with starting from a premade file which isn't newgame+ is the potential for the file to be hacked. Possibly in ways that are hard to detect like having good RNG.
I had a hard time making sense of what he said the third option was (at around 16:15), could someone help me out?
The EarthBound timing is strange because it does involve some skill to get to the credits quickly. You have to teleport into the door of Ness' house to skip both a photo spot and Paula's dialogue. It's not exactly difficult, but I've definitely screwed up and hit the wrong spot. But given that it's at the end of a four hour run, I'm glad the pressure is off and it doesn't stop timing at "the end" like Mother 2 does.
Speed run how you want.
Run your boards how you want.
Anyone who can't find a compatible board to submit runs too does have the power to make there own boards.
for a correction on the half life 1 issue. it isnt a community save file. it is simply loading the first map of the chapter after the train ride.
Each game and each community is different
I’m gonna join the super small speed running communities with just timing a normal play through just so I can take part in the small polls
I feel like timing from first input is the best way to go about it. In the case of games like SM64 the added time you get from starting from console start up feels like extra padding to the end time that ends up confusing newer runners or spectators on the performance on the run. In a game like Jak 1 that has 29:37 of unskippable time (not including the intro) you have to remove that from the end timer reading to get a true sense of how fast you "played" the game and adding even more time to that feels like a terrible idea. Any way to trim non skill based game time off that end timer should be implemented as long as it doesn't result in gameplay being skipped.
3 years late. But I wouldn’t say that SM64 timing is confusing, if you watch a run, you can clearly see the time being started from power up. I think the reason it is this way is because of a Japanese tradition to start timing on power on, and it just stuck, it also allows for easy comparison to TAS runs without adjusting the time as they begin from power on too.
Finally someone made this. Good job brother
16:15 - "which would be to start timing from a save file made a peach"... Am I missing something?
Wish I had the chance to play this game again. I think it was the first game I ever played. But I can barely remember anything. That cutscene gave me a little nostalgia though. I used to always be really scared as a kid because of it.
shoutouts to pokemon trading card game with an unskipable and essential autoscroller tutorial for 6 1/2ish minutes
I believe that the best way that could be used nearly universally is to create multiple ways to play such as a section with and a section without.
In Morrowind, timing begins after you gain control of your then unnamed character
Which FMA game is that?
EDIT: Didn't watch enough, it's FMA 2
Fullmetal Alchemist 2: Curse of the Crimson Elixir for the PS2. I've been doing a lot of work on routing and speedrunning
I agree it does not affect me so I don't have an opinion. My concern with starting from your own save as that one could use a GameShark to manipulate the save in ways that may not be visible to a viewer of the run.(I am talking in general not SMS)
Just have to remember the 3 tenants of any speedrun: Speed, Skill and Entertainment
Idea: have both as options. Players can train and try for the skip version, and since they've trained the significant parts I that if they want to achieve times on the "elite" board, they just do that with all their speed skills from the shorter version.
paper mario 64 has a really long credits and post-credits scene, yet it's timed when peach puts her hands in the air at the end. it's around 15 minutes or something
but the thing with peach its easy to time and theres still textboxes up to this point , imo ending time when the credits start is the best idea
Doesn't the end screen go on forever until you turn off your N64?
I think that it only makes sense to start the timer as a console is switched on if the console has no main menu.
Yes bro !!
Keep up the good work :D
For Ys Origin we decided to not use a save, even though it only skips 5-10 seconds of proper gameplay. There's text mashing which can vary the time the intro takes by a couple of seconds for the shortest intro character and maybe 10 for the longest. I think it was mainly because it felt wrong to skip it. Intros range from 3 and a half to 7 minutes.
I know this reply is a year late, after sunshine has implemented race save loading, but there actually is a game that skips gameplay at the start of the run! Dying Light co-op timing starts when both players enter the first mission, but there is a tutorial and introduction before it. This is skipped because it is forced solo only, the same as the outro. As such, the community decided to start timing as previously said, and end timing when you get to the door to the outro.
13:38 simpleb just make it so if your playing the japn version and you skip the cutscenes have rhe fastest time be the main timr
As always, great video to watch! Those pink transitions tho....
simple answer, yes. what a waste of time. more skipped cutscenes still allows people to play the game themselves if they never have. its been a long time ive never played a megaman game or zelda really. so less cut scenes,more reason to play still. but i dont care overly for me its about not having my time wasted when playing or watching a run. bu many speed runners entice me to try games ive already played in an entirely new way, or new games that i didnt think could be played in a such a way. ( i mean new as in i never played. doesnt matter release date)
why speedrun a game you dont enjoy? i would speedrun every game if i could skip to the last 1 second.
GearsofDutyHalo4Dead what?
I'd say that it's case by case, but easily answered by one simple question: Can the player influence the game at any point during those cutscenes, either mashing through text boxes or actually having control and able to 'play the game'? If the answer to either of those two are 'Yes', then one shouldn't be able to skip the cutscenes when it comes to timing, simple enough. Now, if it's the type of intro cutscene where absolutely nothing someone can do matters at all, where you might as well just put the controller down and make sure you got a drink ready, then by all means, start the time soon as the player can put in an input that would be responsive.
So, for Super Mario Sunshine for example, start the time soon as the player has control of Mario and do not stop the timer until Bowser is defeated. That long cutscene beforehand can be skipped, the cutscene where Mario's arrested cannot, as the game had properly begun at that point beforehand.
Psychonauts speedruns start after the intro cutscene right when the save file/profile is created when starting a new game. It also uses Alt+F4 to skip a tutorial section.
For time starting, the time should start when a new file is chosen and started.
Would you be willing to cover RTA vs In Game Time?
I feel there's definitely reason for using a both, and a discussion on it would only help the community
For example it's possible in many older games to glitch the in game timer so it displayed a time of 0, so real time had to be used there. But for some games, mostly on PC, In Game time is preferred due to variable loading times, and on some games like Trackmania Turbo, the run can just be the sum of all the gameplay, as opposed to menuing and load times
I still say that timing should start either on file select or first input. Just because you don't feel like running the same 5 minutes of the first shine over and over doesn't mean you won't screw it up some time. That's like starting the run of mario 64 once you've entered peach's castle.