The Gold Split - Week #14: Spreadsheets
Week #14 (October 3rd): Excel Speedruns; TASVideos Update; Wind Waker Skip; Games Done Hitless; Marathon News; New World Records: Super Mario Odyssey, Portal 2, Zelda II, Deltarune, Dark Souls
Happy Week #14!
When I started writing The Gold Split, I always wanted to provide a platform to some of the more unique and niche projects and people within the community. And this week we’ll feature one of them. I’m dubbing it The Legend of Excel: A Story of Spreadsheets.
I already have some more ideas and am reaching out to interesting people to hear about interesting things. But if you feel like there’s someone I really should be talking to, tell me! Use the content submission form, comment here, or find me on the Gold Split Discord! 📨
Contents
Up to Speed ⚡️
Finding new stories to cover can be challenging. I encourage you to think about what happened recently in the communities you are a part of. If there are any stories, articles, glitches, events, or other topics I should cover, go ahead and submit them here or in the Gold Split Discord! 📨
Spotlight: ExcelObstacleCourse
This week we’re taking a break from console differences, glitches, and even categories. It’s all about raw numbers, accuracy, and execution. If you frequent the r/speedrun subreddit, you will probably have come across a post by the person in the spotlight today: ExcelObstacleCourse
As the name might suggest, they’re all about spreadsheets in general, and Excel especially, and have found a unique niche in speedrunning puzzles and obstacles created in the spreadsheet software.
ExcelObstacleCourse is a data scientist, self-proclaimed Excel junkie, and old-school gamer, who started their gaming journey with the first Nintendo consoles, playing games like F-Zero, Mario Kart, Super Punch Out and Blast Corps, always trying to beat their previous records.
They combined their job with the hobby of going fast and pushing boundaries for the first time 15 years ago:
“The idea to speedrun Excel came from a training "Excel obstacle course" I came up with about 15 years ago to teach people Excel shortcuts at work. We had everyone practice and compete in a conference room at the end of 30 days with gift cards for 1st, 2nd and 3rd spot. Everyone got faster at Excel and had a great time at the competition.”
Quite different from older games, Excel is constantly evolving and has received many changes over the years. But any necessary adjustments were always a welcome challenge, and by now, ExcelObstacleCourse feels like they have mastered all the basic keyboard commands and practises them regularly to solve the challenges they create. And just like 15 years ago, their main motivation is for more people to pick up the craft and potentially even beat their records.
Currently, they keep track of basic leaderboards and a library of videos on their Discord, and anybody wanting to join can simply message them (there will be some links below). Despite all efforts, speedrun.com has so far rejected implementing leaderboards for Excel, with the reason being that it’s “not a game”. But in my opinion, this would only hold up if the site didn’t also host IRL activities like reading and baking. There’s an insane number of games without a single run on their leaderboards, and if there’s space for those there should also be space for an active yet small community around standardised Excel puzzles.
Some of you might be familiar with competitive Excel in the form of the Financial Modelling World Cup. I asked ExcelObstacleCourse how the necessary skillset differs from speedrunning the puzzles and whether or not they ever considered competing:
“This differs from the Financial Modeling competition because it involves no financial knowledge, no formula writing, just basic hotkeys and Alt-commands to 'clean' or 'transform' data. I would say it benefits data analysts of all types, as well as 'processors' who grind spreadsheets and small data daily. I have no plans to compete in the FMWC, but I haven't researched too much into it.”
By now, I’m certain that many of you can’t wait to launch Excel and improve your skills or even pick up the obstacle course speedruns. You’re in luck, because ExcelObstacleCourse has a few great videos on their YouTube channel to help with just that. If you do give it a shot, tag them, and it’s likely that you’ll get a shoutout back!
Thank you again to ExcelObstacleCourse for readily answering my questions! You can find them on TikTok, where most of their livestreams take place, as well as on YouTube and other platforms.
Up to Speed
🍄 The Misunderstood Genius of Super Mario Bros. (28 minute video)
Super Mario Bros. speedrunning legend Kosmic teamed up with developer Dan Salvato to showcase some of the lesser-known mechanics behind SMB. Many of these mechanics also explain the glitches used in speedruns of the game today.
📰 TASVideos posts a huge progress report & future plans (20 minute read)
The post spans a wide variety of different topics, including recent quality-of-life improvements to the website, acceptance of Windows 95 games, a potential major overhaul of the site’s submission process, a call for new reviewers and judges, and immediately upcoming changes.
🌊 New Puppet Ganon Skip in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (2 minute video)
The Wind Waker community found a way to use the Tingle Tuner inside Ganon’s tower. This, in turn, enables a much easier way to skip Puppet Ganon with less randomness involved: Video
❤️ New fundraising event by GDQ and Team Hitless (Tweet)
Games Done Hitless will run for three days, starting tomorrow, and support the American Heart Association. The event features different kinds of No Hit and No Damage showcases and relay races. The schedule can be found here.
💰 Speedrun.com’s $750 Titanfall 2 Challenge (3 minute read)
The competition starts tomorrow and will last for nine days. At the end, the top five players will receive a share of the $750 prize pool, and every participant will receive the “Pilot” title as well as one month of Supporter. The category remains a secret but will be revealed shortly before the launch.
Marathon News
Finished:
Speedrun Summit 2024 raised $38,790 for Urban Arts
Multithon Rivals 2024 raised $2,751 for BluePath Service Dogs
Upcoming:
Starts October 4th: Games Done Hitless (Schedule), raising money for the American Heart Association
Starts October 4th: Unity Speedruns (Schedule), raising money for the Palestine Children's Relief Fund
Starts October 4th: Pixels for People 2024 (Schedule), raising money for Child’s Play
This Week’s Top Times
🥇 First Place:
Super Mario Odyssey (Any%: 1P) in 00:56:03.000 by Tyron18 (He/Him)
Video • Twitch • YouTubePortal 2 (Single Player: No SLA) in 00:55:52.849 by Burger40
Video • Twitch • YouTubeZelda II: The Adventure of Link (100% All Keys, 1CC) in 01:12:56.250 by jay_cee
Video • TwitchDeltarune (Chapter 2: Main Route, Glitched) in 00:26:02.000 by CrystalSRL (She/Her, They/Them, It/Its)
VideoDark Souls (Any% No Wrong Warp) in 00:37:20.000 by xmonkeh (He/Him)
Video • TwitchI Wanna Be The Guy (Any% (JP Ruleset): Medium, Autofire) in 00:23:58.000 by Burubu
VideoThe Binding of Isaac: Rebirth (1 Character) in 00:03:11.719 by Gamekeeg (He/Him)
Video • YouTubeMetroid Dread (100%: No Major Glitches, Normal) in 01:42:46.000 by noyazaki
Video • Twitch • YouTubeDying Light (Main Game: Any%) in 01:27:31.000 by solist_
VideoOwlboy (Any%: PC) in 00:28:40.000 by Keiichi (He/Him, They/Them)
Video • Twitch • YouTube
🥈 Second Place:
Celeste (Any%) in 00:25:35.320 by P3RL (He/Him)
Video • TwitchSuper Mario Bros. 3 (Any%) in 00:03:02.150 by CaptainPsyduck1 (He/Him)
VideoSuper Mario Bros. Wonder (Any% No Major Glitches) in 02:06:04.000 by Shaaf
Video • Twitch • YouTubeULTRAKILL (Act Any%: Act 1) in 00:02:57.497 by RealGuy_ (Any/All)
Video • Twitch • YouTube
🥉 Third Place:
Sonic Adventure 2: Battle (Hero Story: New Game) in 00:21:23.630 by Flubbler (He/Him, They/Them)
Video • Twitch • YouTubeThe Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Any%: Normal Mode) in 00:23:44.166 by Koroks
Video • Twitch • YouTubeSonic the Hedgehog 2 (Sonic: Beat the Game) in 00:17:51.000 by Mr_Esketit
Video • Twitch • YouTubePikmin 4 (Rescue Olimar) in 01:13:33.000 by Sbudiver (He/Him)
Video • Twitch
Fun Stat of the Week
📊 Speedrun.com has a rather extensive statistics page for every game, and some are quite fun and will potentially make you go “Huh.”
Here are some for Super Mario 64:
A total of 7651 players submitted 46326 runs.
The total time of all runs on the leaderboards combined is 3 years, 11 month, 20 days, 10 hours, 03 minutes, and 20 seconds. Good luck with that binge watch!
Since the first recorded time in 2006, the 120 Star record has only been broken 59 times
Reddit Choice
🔝 The r/speedrun choice of the week is… this segmented speedrun by sneve, completing every level in the remake of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2 in a single combo.
👋🏻 And that’s it for this week! See you next Thursday, October 10th 2024. 👋🏻
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Knock Knock. Who’s there? Thanks for reading.