The Gold Split - Week #9: Wukong Speedrun Preview
Week #9 (August 29th): Black Myth: Wukong Preview; Metal Gear Solid Time Save; Blindfolded SM 64; Peggle Competition; Marathon News; New World Records: Resident Evil 2, Spyro, Final Fantasy II
Hullo!
This week’s story was fun to work on. I mentioned Black Myth: Wukong last week and noticed the insane amount of traction the game received just from this newsletter alone. It smashed Steam’s previous record for most concurrent players for a singleplayer game, and so, this week, let’s explore what speedruns for the game might look like once the leaderboards open in a few days.
Contents
Up to Speed ⚡️
I’d like to cover much more, but many great stories stay confined to the communities for a specific game or series. 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! 📨
Story of the Week
This week we’re looking at Black Myth: Wukong and specifically what the speedruns might look like once the leaderboards open in a few days after this post gets published. Be warned, this section will include spoilers for the game’s ending and possibly more.
Let’s start with a quick overview:
Black Myth: Wukong is an action-RPG and was developed by the Chinese studio Game Science. After its release on August 20th, it quickly became one of the fastest-selling games of all time and absolutely crushed Steam’s previous record for most concurrent players for a singleplayer game.
The leaderboards are currently set to open on August 31st and the community is currently discussing the rules and categories on a Discord server.
Rules
The community is currently voting on the ruleset, and the moderators are expected to consider these opinions when creating it. The vote ends on August 31st, 24 hours before the leaderboards are set to open. These decisions will be determined by the vote:
When to start and end the timer
Whether or not items from the Deluxe Edition should be allowed
Whether real-time attack (RTA) or in-game time (IGT) should be used as primary timing method
What the categories will be named
The potential use of modifications
How to handle game updates that significantly change the run
Which (currently known) glitches should be allowed in a “Restricted” category
Whether maximum FPS should be limited and if yes, at which value
There is a substantial number of factors to consider, and 24 hours might not be enough time to come up with a comprehensive ruleset before the leaderboards are set to open, but I’d love to be proven wrong. Whether or not this time will be pushed back or the floodgates will simply open regardless remains to be seen.
RTA vs. IGT
Runners might be instructed to submit both RTA and IGT times initially, but RTA will ultimately become the superior timing method. The in-game timer adds time for all skipped cutscenes, and when load removers and auto-splitters become available, RTA will not only be more accurate, but also more precise.
Categories
It’s expected that the following distinctions between categories will be made:
Unrestricted vs. Restricted vs. Glitchless
“Unrestricted” will be the Any% as we know it. All glitches are fair game in order to finish the game. “Restricted” might allow some of them, and a “Glitchless” category will probably also follow later down the road. In the beginning, which glitches are available will vary as new ones get discovered and the game gets updated, removing others.
Ending 1 vs. Ending 2
“Ending 2” might be called “True Ending” eventually. It requires clearing an additional quest line, finishing the game with “Ending 1”, going back to a previous chapter, defeating two secret bosses there and then beating the final boss a second time.
New Game vs. New Game+
“New Game+” becomes available after defeating the final boss for the first time and is a second playthrough against tougher enemies with abilities and equipment carried over from your previous run.
I expect “New Game (Restricted, Ending 1)” to become the main category at the beginning. “Unrestricted” will always be the fastest category, but it might allow glitches that make the speedrun less interesting for players and viewers alike. Similarly, the community expects “New Game+” to also not be very interesting, as certain equipment can make boss fights completely trivial.
Furthermore, we can also expect “All Bosses”, "100%” and more categories to be established. These require more research to establish a comprehensive ruleset, so I don’t expect them to be available initially.
Glitches
Just as I was about to start writing this section, a new patch hit the Steam and PlayStation 5 versions of the game. As far as I’m aware, all the glitches I’m about to talk about have been patched. The good news: that should make the “Unrestricted” category much more interesting! It’s fun to showcase them anyway, so let’s do it.
Shoutouts to TheDementedSalad, who put in a lot of effort into not only showcasing the glitches, but also providing tutorials and proper explanations.
Flying
There used to be two different ways, both of them very useful in essentially skipping large parts of a chapter. TheDementedSalad does a much better job of explaining them than I ever could, so here they are:
Infinite Stamina / 0 Mana Cost
This was useful to stunlock enemies, among other things.
Apart from those, there were also various places to get out of bounds and as well as a few glitches with less impact. Whether the leaderboard will allow or even encourage down-patching in order to revive these glitches remains to be seen. Despite the game being well over 100 GB in size, PC players would have an easier time and switching between two versions will be much more straightforward. There is no physical version of the game, so players on PlayStation 5 would need to re-download the game and find ways to disable updates.
Conclusion
It’s hard to say how long the speedruns will take, especially after the most recent update. Using all the (now patched) glitches, Any% runs ended up around the 60 minute mark. And only one person posted their time without the use of any glitches so far; completing the game took them just over 4 hours and 37 minutes.
That said, the Chinese community for this game is massive and completely hidden to me. Most of the leaderboard moderators are from there, and they’re doing a great job at keeping everything accessible in English, but there might be so much more going on on Chinese social media sites and forum boards.
I’m looking forward to seeing runs after a few weeks have passed and a consensus on route and ruleset has been established. That being said, if you have the time, love the game and are ready to immerse yourself in a new community, the path there should also be similarly exciting.
Up to Speed
🕵️♂️ Metal Gear Solid speedruns on PC save two minutes by using a different install option (12 minute video)
Metal Gear Solid community member Hau5test rediscovers that by choosing the “minimum install” option on the old-school disc-version of Metal Gear Solid, players are able to save two minutes on every category due to missing sound files. The community has agreed to make this option legal and has since provided a file pack to modify more modern versions of the game accordingly. More details and the history of the discovery are available in the video.
🎯 Bubzia finds the holy grail of blindfolded cannonless in Super Mario 64 (31 minute video)
The 🐐 of blindfolded speedruns showcases his new setup for one of the most infamous tricks in Super Mario 64. The approach is not only fast, but also completely consistent. In the same video, Bubzia also teaches the audience about the anatomy of the trick, as well as the full history of how the setups evolved over the past seven years.
🏆 Speedrun.com is hosting a Peggle challenge, including prize money (3 minute read)
The contest involves speedrunning a special challenge category in Peggle Nights and will run until 11:59PM UTC on September 1st. The top three will take home a share of the $500 prize pool and every participant receives one month of speedrun.com’s Supporter subscription as well as the title of “Peggler”. At the time of writing, the top time is 18 minutes 5 seconds. Full details are available in the news post.
Marathon News
Finished:
Flame Fatales 2024 raised $117,932 for the Malala Fund
UKSM Summer 2024 raised £230+ for Special Effect
SpeedDocsAThon 2024 Weekend One raised $2,465 for Save the Children
Upcoming:
Starts August 30th: SpeedDocsAThon 2024 Weekend Two, raising money for Save the Children (Schedule)
Starts August 31st: Harvest Moon Speedruns Summer 2024 (Schedule)
Starts September 4th: Josh Done Quick Six, raising money for Joshimuz (Schedule)
This Week’s Top Times
🥇 First Place:
ROBLOX: Speed Run 4 (No Skips: 5 Levels) in 00:01:55.599 by Nolyswag (He/Him)
Video • Twitch • YouTubeResident Evil 2 (PC: Leon A, Any%, Normal) in 00:48:32.000 by MattGael
Video • Twitch • YouTubeSpyro the Dragon (Any%) in 00:37:00.000 by Dayoman (He/Him)
Video • Twitch • YouTubeAmnesia: The Bunker (Any%) in 00:01:31.810 by Weegee (He/Him)
Video • Twitch • YouTubePeggle Nights (Any%) in 00:56:18.000 by WhaleEleven (He/Him)
Video • TwitchMetal Gear Solid (Any%: PC (2000), Easy) in 00:34:08.000 by Carigs
Video • Twitch • YouTubeFinal Fantasy II (Any% Pixel Remaster: Any%) in 02:05:41.000 by Deln
Video • Twitch • YouTubeFive Nights at Freddy's: Into the Pit (See Ya Dad Ending) in 00:03:06.500 by TheMistCollector (She/Her)
Video • Twitch • YouTube
🥈 Second Place:
Slime Rancher (Any% Glitchless: 1.0.1 - 1.4.4) in 00:12:02.769 by Wikboy
Video • Twitch • YouTubeAmnesia: The Bunker (Any%) in 00:01:32.090 by niwamatsuu (They/Them)
Video • Twitch • YouTubeMega Man X2 (Any%: Emu/VC) in 00:32:45.000 by Ch0c
Video • TwitchRed Ball 4 Vol.2 (Any%) in 00:04:18.399 by Na_Brawl27 (He/Him)
Video • Twitch
🥉 Third Place:
Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix (Any%: ENG, Console 60 FPS, Beginner) in 02:48:50.000 by CuragaByxis
VideoPokémon Ruby/Sapphire (Any% Glitchless: ENG, Console) in 01:56:57.000 by truely (He/Him)
Video • TwitchSly Cooper: Thieves in Time (Any%) in 04:28:52.000 by Mapiotho (He/Him)
Video • Twitch • YouTubeFEZ (Any%) in 00:25:14.000 by MorganMustDie (They/Them)
Video • Twitch • YouTube
Fun Stat of the Week
📊 I’m not entirely sure of this, but there was no way I was going to put in the time to verify it…
The largest difference between the first and second place on a leaderboard appears to be… 15 hours, 10 minutes and 8 seconds for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom 100% on the latest patch. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Reddit Choice
🔝 The r/speedrun choice of the week is… this thread about the coolest endings for speedruns. As a great example, the original poster mentions Half-Life 2, where G-Man says the word 'time' right after the timer stops.
👋🏻 And that’s it for this week! See you next Thursday, September 5th 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!