The Gold Split - Week #17: HEKathon
Week #17 (October 25th): HEKathon; Wind Waker & Final Fantasy VII Skips; Tournaments; History Videos; Marathon News; New World Records: Odyssey, Dishonored, Pizza Tower, BioShock
Welcome to the world of Week #17, live from HEKathon - the greatest English-speaking speedrunning event in Cologne, at least. I had the honour to conduct the opening run of the event, am currently drowning in vibes and will tell you all about it in this week’s main story.
Another thing we’re drowning in this week is news! It’s a very fortunate thing, so I won’t complain. But as a result I did have to reduce a few single-paragraph summaries to one-liners. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Contents
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: HEKathon
HEKathon is the best speedrunning collective you’ve probably never heard of. Their third on-site event is happening this weekend in Cologne and I’m there to hang out with friends bring you an exclusive and completely unbiased report from within the action.
The Venue
The event is set up inside the publically accessible XPERION gaming centre. It’s the kind of space that I would have loved to have nearby as a teenager: a huge, 3000 m² gaming-focused internet café with modern equipment and free entry.
This completely eliminates an issue that smaller events often struggle with: technical equipment. Here, a stage set-up complete with cameras, sound system and lighting as well as PCs to play on and to stream the action for the crowd of online viewers is already available. And a huge dedicated gaming area with dozens of PCs allows attendees to practise speedruns or simply play casually.
The Collective
It’s difficult to describe what HEK is all about. But at the same time there’s one word that sums it up perfectly: HEK is a family. Their bonds go beyond the ones inside a community. I’ve been going to speedrunning events for more than ten years, and I’m very used to seeing attendees clustered into different friend groups with little intermingling, but this isn’t the case here.
The entire group is cohesive and everybody knows each other and hangs out together. Only for lunch, dinner or in the evenings after the event shuts down, the group is forced to split up in order to have enough space in restaurants or bars. Never have I experienced a similar community spirit at an event.
The Event
Additionally, I’m unaware of any other community that’s as creative and that stretches the term “speedrun” as far, all for the sake of entertainment. The schedule features a wide variety of different showcases, and while you will find some more common speedruns, there’s plenty of exciting twists and then others where it’s not obvious what to expect at all. What’s “Minecraft x Garry's Mod: A Build Off Love Story”?
But even the more serious runs are very casual showcases. Everybody on stage is very good at what they’re doing, but entertainment value is always placed above saving time. And all the while, the event is collecting charitable donations for a good cause: The Swedish Alzheimer’s Foundation.
HEKathon Offline 2024 is the group’s third and largest on-site event after a successful history of several online events. One of the reasons you might have never heard of them is that they go against the grain when it comes to putting everything together: they collect submissions and volunteers only from within the group, not publicly. To get in, you need at least one person to vouch for you. But I believe that’s exactly where the magic comes from. This way it can still remain just an undertaking by a group of friends who trust that your promise to pay for your event T-shirt via PayPal is enough to order one for you.
At this point, we’re halfway through the event. These are a few personal highlights worth pointing out:
Dragon Age: Origins (Any%): I had the honour and privilege of doing the opening run of the event. It went okay!
Yahtzee (Low%): Who wouldn’t like to see 16 minutes of a very German person attempting to roll five 1s?
My Summer Car (Drive to the first intersection): The game embodies the urge of every single Finnish person to build a car during a summer in the ‘90s.
Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy (Relay Race w/ Commentary Bias): Through donating, viewers are able to direct the commentators towards being based against or for one of the two teams.
Unfortunately, no videos of the runs that already happened are available at this time. Once they are uploaded, I’ll supply you with some links in the intro section. But for now, you can still watch the rest of today and all of tomorrow LIVE HERE.
Take a look at the schedule. A lot of bangers are being saved for the final day, including but not necessarily limited to:
Elden Ring (2 Players / 1 Controller, DLC, Randomizer)
Slay the Spire: The Boardgame (Dungeon Rush for one hour)
Dustforce DX (Random Map App Competition)
Minecraft & Garry's Mod (Minecraft x Garry's Mod: A Build Off Love Story)
Up to Speed
🗡️ New Barrier Skip setup forgoes bombs completely (Tweet & Video)
One of the most iconic skips undergoes another evolution, potentially eliminating bombs entirely for the Any% route.
🌆 Final Fantasy VII skip saves over two hours and Aerith (Tweet & Video)
Clever movement patterns result in skipping a large portion of the game to the City of the Ancients. At this point, the party is severely underlevelled, and it will be exciting to see what the resulting route will look like.
📅 SoulsSpeedruns announce their next charity event (BlueSky Post)
The Souls Charity Marathon 2024 will run from Nov. 30th to Dec. 1st and raise money for Save the Children. The SoulsSpeedruns team is inviting submissions from all over, not just action role-playing games.
🏆 Run Arena: Edition 2 is a multi-speedrun competition with a prize pool (3 minute read)
The event is organised by French community Nitro and has players competing individually or as teams in five PC games over the course of five weeks. The full list of games will be announced later today.
🕸️ “Web the Record” event breaks 17 records in Spider-Man (2000) (Tweet Thread)
The Spider-Man (2000) speedrun community put on their second annual “Web the Record" event, a three-day event where the community comes together live on Twitch for six hours a day to set new world records in the game. The event was a great success, with 11 runners participating and 17 records being broken.
Thank you for sending that one in through the submission form!
Briefly
Glitch in Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin transforms one of the playable characters into the other (7 minute video)
Silent Hill 2 Remake tournament in November offers a $1,000 prize pool (2 minute read)
Peggle’s speedrunning history (52 minute video)
Speedrunning history of Turok: Dinosaur Hunter (26 minute video)
Astro Bot gets a new free speedrun level every week for five weeks (5 minute read)
Update to version 1.0.2 of The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom fixes the important Menu Storage glitch.
Marathon News
⏱️ Running:
Until October 26th: HEKathon Offline 2024 (Schedule)
Until October 28th: Prevent-A-Thon 4 (Schedule), raising money for Little Warriors
🔜 Upcoming:
Starts October 25th: ScareAthon 2024 (Schedule), raising money for Make-A-Wish
Starts October 26th: Breaking the Habit 2024 (Schedule), raising money for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention
Starts October 26th: SoaringSpeedfest 2024 (Schedule)
This Week’s Top Times
🥇 First Place:
Super Mario Odyssey (Any%: 1P) in 00:56:01.000 by Tyron18 (He/Him)
Video • Twitch • YouTubeDishonored (Dishonored: Any%) in 00:30:37.309 by VyLonz
Video • Twitch • YouTubePizza Tower (Any%: Noise, No Major Glitches) in 00:57:18.000 by Cawis (He/Him)
Video • Twitch • YouTubeSuper Mario 64 (0 Star: EMU) in 00:06:26.000 by DuckTapeDuck
Video • TwitchBioShock (Any%: PC) in 00:23:30.000 by KPCzombie
Video • Twitch • YouTubeLEGO Star Wars: The Video Game (Any%: Console, Solo) in 00:57:48.000 by coolestto
Video • Twitch • YouTubeThe Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom (Any%) in 00:34:22.000 by Nitroz
Video • Twitch • YouTubeWe are Eva (Any%) in 00:09:48.871 by PurpleNinjaGrrl (She/Her)
Video
🥈 Second Place:
Donkey Kong Country (All Stages: SNES) in 00:30:17.976 by Calco2
Video • TwitchCrash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back (100%) in 01:07:55.000 by Stuart0000
Video • TwitchPac-Man (10,000 Points: NES) in 00:00:38.116 by starcrytas
Video • Twitch • YouTubeDribbling Challenge #2 (100%) in 00:05:33.300 by TwiF (Any/All)
Video
🥉 Third Place:
Portal 2 (Single Player: No SLA) in 00:56:15.983 by leough
VideoLuigi's Mansion (100%) in 01:06:54.000 by jovin
Video • Twitch • YouTubeSpyro: Year of the Dragon (100 Egg) in 00:51:55.000 by Dactyly
Video • Twitch • YouTubeCrash Bandicoot (100%) in 01:02:52.000 by joeykastelic
Video • Twitch • YouTube
Reddit Choice
🔝 The r/speedrun choice of the week is… this thread about speedruns that are particularly interesting because they demonstrate computer science principles in a unique way. It became a broader list of just interesting techniques in general, but beyond the obvious examples like efforts to minimise A-presses in Super Mario 64 or Arbitrary Code Execution (ACE) in other games, there’s a lot there that I was previously unaware of.
👋🏻 And that’s it for this week! See you next Thursday, October 31st 2024. 👋🏻
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