The Gold Split - Week #1: SGDQ everywhere
Week #1 (July 4th): Chained Together; Hades 2; ANIMAL WELL; Quake E1M1 on Nightmare; SGDQ's best showcases so far; New World Records: Hotline Miami, Super Mario World, Banjo-Kazooie, Jak II.
Welcome! It’s the first non-zero week and another soft launch of this newsletter. SGDQ obviously takes the spotlight, a few other things happened, and we’ll take a look at how recently released popular titles are doing on speedrun.com.
Substack keeps telling me that the “post is too long for email” and that it might end up being truncated. No better time than now to defy all reason and do science. If your email does appear truncated, let me know and mention which provider you use!
Many great stories stay confined to the communities for a specific game or series and rarely get out. If you spot something that might be interesting for people outside of your community, no matter how specific or niche, I’m encouraging you to post them on Reddit, somewhere else I can find them or to submit them through my form or the Gold Split Discord.
Contents
Up to Speed ⚡️
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Story of the Week
This week, let’s have a shallow deep-dive into some popular new games with a lot of activity on speedrun.com:
Chained Together is a high stakes mix of Fall Guys and Trackmania’s Deep Dip with a sprinkle of Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy on top. It looks like a “3D Mario at home” for PC gamers in the best way possible.
The game is primarily designed as a cooperative experience. Up to four players are chained to each other and try to climb ever higher through ever more difficult trials in the sky. The solo mode ignores that added gimmick, but still, 00:47:55 is the current fastest time set by Lockness06 and there are plenty of opportunities to mess up by yourself.
I’m very happy to see that cooperative runs are also on the leaderboard and are getting some love. As expected: the more players, the longer it takes, and the more the chaotic sort of fun gets embraced.
281 people have already submitted 430 runs since the leaderboard launched just two weeks ago. There’s a lot of possible optimisation as well as chances for things to go slightly wrong, causing separation between players’ times. If the board stays active, this has a lot of potential.
One moment of hesitation or a loss of focus may cause you to fall and could well be the end of your run. There aren’t many other games out there with those stakes and that length.
One of the most anticipated games of the year launched in Early Access on May 6th 2024, immediately garnering attention from runners of the original Hades, but not just them. At the time of writing, 614 runs by 262 players have been submitted to the leaderboards across various categories.
The fastest time in what could be considered the current main category is 00:07:07.620 by Ameliability. However, every major patch resets these leaderboards, and the community plays catch-up. Expect many of these while the game remains in Early Access.
This leads to an effect not dissimilar to seasons in other games or sports. The rules currently state that “new runs must be played on the most recent live version of Hades II”, effectively freezing the older leaderboards.
I’m personally very excited to play the game but will wait until the full release at some point next year.
This metroidvania game by solo developer Billy Basso received raving reviews the moment it was released on May 9th 2024.
The community has settled on Any% (No Major Glitches) as its main category, with more categories featuring varying progress goals (True Ending, All Eggs, All Bunnies, and more) available as well.
P25_ is currently the person with the fastest time of 00:13:10.250. Interestingly, he’s playing on the Nintendo Switch while almost everybody else opts for the PC version. It’s good to see platform parity at least in terms of competitiveness, especially considering that PC is the superior platform more often than not.
So far, 268 runs by 75 players have been submitted to the main leaderboards, and the community has already created category extension leaderboards with important categories like *checks notes* Nut% or Walk the Dog. 🐶
Up to Speed
⏱️ The first level of Quake played on the hardest difficulty improved by more than one second (17 minute video)
YouTube channel Quake Speedruns Explained focuses on Kisimov’s recent improvement of E1M1 on Nightmare difficulty and why this achievement cannot be understated. This individual level category is considered to be one of the hardest to grind due to the sheer amount of randomness. The previous world record stood for over four years. If you only have 22 seconds, at least watch that run.
📰 Kotaku reports on their favourite showcases and moments from SGDQ 2024 so far (3 minute read, but also a rabbit hole)
There are plenty of great moments to catch up on if you missed them, but the event will still run for more than two days! Go watch stuff happen live and support a good cause!
Last week I wrote about some showcases I’m looking forward to. None of them have disappointed so far and others are still coming up! Check the schedule.
📶 UK network operator EE recruits speedrunners to break world records for their recent campaign (2 minute read)
Sharing this story plays directly into the PR campaign’s goals, but I couldn’t stop myself. Not after this irrefutable evidence that a faster broadband connection will help you reach the world records that were always out of reach. Joshimuz talked about the experience of filming the ad on The Choking Hazard Podcast. There’s just one question unanswered:
What is a bedroom gamer? Post your suggestions in the comments.
Marathon News
Running:
Until 06.07.2024: Summer Games Done Quick 2024 (Schedule)
Until 07.07.2024: FINNRUNS 10V (Schedule)
Upcoming:
Starts 10.07.2024: Fangame Marathon 2024 (Schedule)
This Week’s Top Times
🥇 First Place:
Grand Theft Auto V (Segments: Trevor%) in 00:53:31.000 by UnNameD (He/Him)
Video • Twitch • YouTubeHotline Miami (NG+ All Levels) in 00:21:42.000 by Agamem (He/Him)
Video • YouTubeSuper Mario World (96 Exit) in 01:21:04.233 by oosui
Video • Twitch • YouTubeBanjo-Kazooie (Nintendo 64: 100% FFM) in 01:56:29.000 by Funderful
Video • Twitch • YouTubeQuiplash (Bad Ending) in 00:02:01.233 by SlashedPort (Any/All)
Video • Twitch • YouTubeThe Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (Any%) in 00:03:48.682 by CountLG
Video • Twitch • YouTubeJak II (Any%: Original) in 00:53:00.000 by BlordBlordan (He/Him)
Video • Twitch • YouTubeRain World (Pebbles: Survivor) in 00:25:27.109 by shrubfromtomorrow (Any/All, He/Him)
Video • Twitch • YouTubeTransistor (Any%) in 00:33:24.000 by Jenkar (Any/All)
Video • Twitch
🥈 Second Place:
A Difficult Game About Climbing (Glitchless) in 00:03:45.860 by Meuhy (He/Him)
VideoKirby and the Forgotten Land (Any%) in 01:35:45.000 by kikurage
VideoDishonored 2 (Any%: Emily) in 00:20:54.000 by LaBoulangerie (He/Him)
Video • Twitch • YouTubeStar Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy (Any% no Stablaunch) in 00:22:05.000 by DrMeowington
Video • Twitch • YouTube
🥉 Third Place:
A Difficult Game About Climbing (Glitchless) in 00:03:52.340 by Lxxury (He/Him)
VideoMetroid: Zero Mission (Any%: Normal) in 00:37:28.000 by benchjuice
VideoI Wanna Be The Boshy (Any% (No WW, DBO): Average) in 00:31:05.000 by AnsoWizard (He/Him)
Video • Twitch • YouTubeOpenGOAL: Jak 1 (No LTS: Cutscene skips) in 00:48:07.000 by Bintendo (She/Her)
Video • Twitch • YouTube
Fun Stat of the Week
📊 Most of the leaderboards on speedrun.com don’t have a single run on them. As of May 9th 2024, this concerned 93,524 out of 164,304 leaderboards1, or almost 57%.
Get on that, collectors of world records!
Reddit Choice
🔝 The r/speedrun choice of the week is… u/ScopionSniper’s daily quick reviews of SGDQ showcases inside the event’s VOD Thread. Not only do they watch as much of the event as a person with human needs can, they also post a single-paragraph review of everything they watched. Every day ends with a list of top runs of that particular day. Kudos!
👋🏻 And that’s it for this week! See you next Thursday, July 11th 2024. 👋🏻
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Special shoutout to my incredible wife and co-conspirator Niamh for all the visuals. Let her know how awesome those dividers are!
Special shoutout to Sarim for supporting with some copywriting. Find the words he writes over at gameluster.com!
Only full-game, non-miscellaneous, and non-archived leaderboards of games that had at least 20 runs in total were counted.