The Gold Split: A Speedrunning Newsletter
Week #0 (Jun 28th): SGDQ soon; new Quake segmented run; game updates breaking things in unexpected ways; Marathon News; New World Records: Super Mario Odyssey, A Link to the Past, Half-Life
Hello! 👋🏻
It’s neither Thursday nor 15:00 UTC, but this is another soft launch, so being a bit off is OK (says me). We’re still working on the visuals and will have a logo, custom dividers, fridge magnets, and more, coming with the full launch next week! (I added these a week later through the magic of editing!)
I’m trying out a table of contents. Let me know what you think!
Table of Contents
Marathon News 🏃♂️
I’m still just starting out. Any and all feedback is greatly appreciated. You can reach me (Fatzke) on Discord, respond directly wherever I end up posting this, or try these options I don’t know much about yet:
If you’re reading this and can think of something you would like me to cover whether that’s stories/articles, your favourite glitches, events, specific spotlight suggestions, or anything else, don’t hesitate to submit them here 📨
Story of the Week
Summer Games Done Quick (SGDQ 2024) is getting closer FAST. The event likely needs no introduction for readers of this particular publication, so we’ll focus on the facts:
Where: Minneapolis, but for most of you probably on Twitch
When: Sunday, June 30th, 16:30 UTC until Sunday, July 7th, 06:30 UTC-ish
What: Check out the schedule HERE
Why: Celebrating speedrunning, abusing glitches and raising money for Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders)
Here are some personal picks of what to look out for aside from the obvious highlights and headliners:
Old School Runescape (Chambers of Xeric CM Solo) by AColdOne
Old School Runescape, as one of the most popular incremental games, is already a prime target for overoptimisation. You might be able to imagine what happens when people add the speedrunning formula on top. Chambers of Xeric was the first raid added to OSRS, and CM (Challenge Mode) massively increases its difficulty.
Celeste Custom Maps: Monika's D-Sides (Dny%) by carrarium (She/Her, They/Them)
Celeste sits in that sweet spot of being an accessible precision platformer with a smooth learning curve and notoriously difficult parts to it. The D-Sides mod by Monika523 adds another level of difficulty, significantly revamping the base game levels.
Outer Wilds (100% Base Game Shipless) by ptminsker (He/Him)
This showcase has one of the best games of the last decade, an interesting category, removing the main mode of transportation in a game all about travelling places, with developer commentary. Must watch.
Mario Kart DS (32 Tracks) by Abel
Abel is one of the absolute veterans of Mario Kart DS, playing the game competitively before some younger members of the community were even born. Staying at that level for such a long time and setting new world records on speedrun.com as recently as a few days ago demands a lot of respect.
Tetris The Grand Master (Master Mode) by AraneaCharlotte
When played on the highest level, Tetris is always worth a watch.
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice (Hitless Any%) by Mitchriz
This might be as much of a high score attempt as it is as speedrun. Playing through a FromSoftware game without getting hit means not only showcasing exceptional skill but also that the entire 40 minutes should have you at the edge of your seat.
Baldur's Gate 3 (Honour Mode Glitchless) by Chronos
Honour Mode is by far the toughest difficulty in Baldur’s Gate 3. Everything is harder, bosses receive new actions, you can’t reload and when your party dies… you start from the beginning. Finishing the game in this mode alone is a feat by itself, but doing it glitchless, in under one hour and live in front of one of the internet’s largest audiences? Madness.
Up to Speed (Short Stories / Articles)
Special shoutouts to Sarim for coming up with the headline for this section. Find the words he writes over at gameluster.com!
The Quake community premiered a new segmented coop-run (13 minute video)
Quake done double Quickest lite is the catchy title of the latest segmented run the Quake community has produced. This time they focused on the cooperative mode and improved their previous time by 72 seconds. Playing with two players makes this game even more fast paced than it already is and provides damage boost opportunities as well as new routing options.
Developers of the game Ingression explain how recruiting speedrunners has meaningfully improved their product (5 minute read)
Ingression, a precision platformer inspired by Portal and Celeste, turned to speedrunners for feedback, uncovering soft locks and enhancing game mechanics. This led to significant (objective) improvements and the developers encourage others to do the same.
The latest update to Outer Wilds made a former TAS-only cycle possible (1 minute read, 8 minute video)
A small change that resulted in diagonal movement being now faster made it possible to reach a cycle dubbed TAS Geyser, saving speedrunners about 25 seconds at the beginning of every category.
Due to a bug in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe's v2.4.0 update, three 200cc time trial world records have become unbeatable (2 minute read)
MKWRS.com will now track these Acceleration Bug World Records. The bug causes speed drops when releasing boosts, affecting three of the courses in the pool.
Marathon News
Upcoming:
Starts Sunday, 30.06.2024: Summer Games Done Quick 2024, raising money for Médecins Sans Frontières (Schedule)
Starts Wednesday, 03.07.2024: FINNRUNS 10V, raising money for WWF Finland (Schedule)
This Week’s Top Times
🥇 First Place:
Super Mario Odyssey (Any%: 1P) in 00:56:06.000 by Tyron18 (He/Him)
Video • Twitch • YouTubePortal (Inbounds: PC) in 00:08:01.274 by SiDiouS (He/Him)
Video • Twitch • YouTubeThe Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (Major Glitches: Any%) in 00:01:31.000 by yiosen (He/Him)
VideoHalf-Life (WON: Scriptless) in 00:25:57.280 by KaNanga
Video • TwitchThe Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Any%: GameCube) in 02:48:07.000 by Nimzo (He/Him)
Video • Twitch • YouTubeMetal Gear Rising: Revengeance (Any% (NG+): Hard) in 00:50:04.000 by Kirizaki_Akira (Any/All, He/Him)
Video • Twitch • YouTubeHypixel Dropper (All Runs: 1.9+) in 00:00:27.385 by Torinikuwu (She/Her, They/Them)
VideoPokémon Legends: Arceus (Any%: ENG) in 03:38:23.000 by halqery (He/Him)
Video • Twitch • YouTube
🥈 Second Place:
Pokémon Red/Blue (Any% Glitchless: ENG) in 01:44:53.000 by Yujito (He/Him)
Video • Twitch • YouTubeBanjo-Kazooie (Nintendo 64: 100% FFM) in 01:56:44.000 by Funderful
Video • Twitch • YouTubePrey (2017) (Any%) in 00:05:39.000 by addison5150 (He/Him)
Video • Twitch • YouTubeDiddy Kong Racing (100%) in 01:43:38.000 by MrPonytale
Video • Twitch • YouTube
🥉 Third Place:
Super Mario Odyssey (Any%: 1P) in 00:56:48.000 by Lucidityy (He/Him)
Video • Twitch • YouTubeA Hat in Time (Any%: Lagless, PC) in 00:35:11.679 by Elliee (They/Them)
Video • TwitchMultiple Mario Games (3D Mario 246) in 07:48:30.000 by Jhay (He/Him)
Video • Twitch • YouTube
Fun Stat / Fact of the Week
📊 The total number of runs across all non-miscellaneous, non-archived full game category leaderboards on speedrun.com as of May 9th might be 788,724-ish.
I don’t consider my multi-day API scrape particularly precise, but it still gives a good idea. Factoring in miscellaneous and archived categories as well as leaderboards for individual levels would definitely push that number over 1,000,000.
Can you tell I’m waiting to drop all the actual cool stats after the launch?
Reddit Choice
🔝 Reddit choice of the week is this thread about weird/funny optimisations and strategies in order to save time. There’s some truly amazing ones in the replies and people have added context and history where applicable.
My favourite:
In Gothic 2 there's a quest that checks for your faction. If you're a mage or part of the militia you have to do it. Unfortunately you're part of the militia because it's the fastest to join and you have to pick one faction to progress.
You can turn yourself into a sheep however before talking to the quest giver. Then the game can't find your militia or mage status and assumes you're a mercenary, so you don't have to do the quest.
👋🏻 And that’s it for this week! See you next Thursday, July 11th 2024. 👋🏻
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