Joined: 8/1/2004
Posts: 2687
Location: Seattle, WA
First off, a movie is interesting when it does things that show off skill, composure, and efficiency. Once a player is in tune with his/her game, they can play a game that knows exactly where and when each action should take place, almost to the point of perfection. Some play with the mantra of making viewers ask "how?" and not "why?" Bisqwit's example relates to a scene in SMB3 where M.Freid's character simply walks on the edge of the moving screen with the sole intent of reaching the next stage as quickly as possible. However, morimoto's version of this scene features many tricky maneuvers, namely the extremely skillful bullet hopping sequences. People would rather see someone make a movie where the character can pull off risky and skillfull moves without wasting any time on the run.
As for talent and commitment: any speed run, be it "legit" or on emulator, requires basic skills with the game. This includes knowing how to manipulate the character and the environment, along with having the ability to make such manipulations happen as quickly as possible. Any run also requires planning: no movies are made on the fly. Console runs require commitment in the form of redoing whole segments in order to get events to occur when they are supposed to. Emulator runs show commitment in the determination to make sure every motion uses the minimum amount of frames. Also, abusing 'randomness' with the use of savestates requires tremendous amounts of determination.
Movies made using emulation are sometimes called "cheated" due to the intrinsic ability to edit anything digitized with computer software. However, the majority of all recording functions in emulators do not record any sort of video or image files: emulators record input sequences to unique file types. In order to have an emulated run accepted as a movie, these sequence files (which can not be edited) are submitted to these sites. These files, when loaded in an emulator, block out all input capabilities and play the ROM file with the same exact sequences that the original author had input into his/her run. If the movie is accepted as a unique and entertaining run, or if it is an improved run of a different movie, one of the few publishers on the site will record the ROM while it is under the influence of the input sequences. The only editing ever done to these movies is in the form of a disclaimer at the beginning (which states that this movie was made using an emulator and where the viewer can learn more about the movie) or at any point in the movie where the judges think external clarification is necessary (see WalkerBoh's Wizards and Warriors movie). This all boils down to the fact that any movies on sites such as Biskqwit's are not edited, and are therefore real movies.
As a stranger, in order to appreciate what we do with these movies, you would need to have some experience with gaming in general. Anyone who has ever played a game and became frustrated because they couldn't get one sequence to work correctly, just to find our movies doing these moves not only fluently, but flawlessly. Also, anyone who can appreciate obvious skill in an area can understand how much talent is shown in these movies. If push comes to shove, try to compete with these movies :) You'll quickly learn how hard it is to come even close to some of the records out there.
Eric Stratmann. 16. I have completed Kid Icarus, Deadly Towers, Umihara Kawase(as few levels as possible, and as many levels as possible(waiting to be reviewed)). I am working on Super Mario Bros. warpless and Legend of Zelda swordless.
URElephant wrote:
What makes a movie interesting?
Beating a game in fastest time is not always interesting. There are many platform games, that while beaten in record time, are just not fun to watch. There are of course many things that make a run interesting, but some of them are: Exploiting clever or hard to pull of glitches, doing nearly impossible stunts(SMB3 bullet jumping for example), doing things totally unexpected, taking crazy shortcuts, and pulling off crazy manuveurs.
URElephant wrote:
Can you explain a little more about talent and commitment?
As it has been put, making these runs takes not so much talent, but cleverness and knowlege. While it may seem incredibly easy to make these movies, it is very hard to find the fastest route in some places. While it may seem that it is quite easy to figure out, this is far from the truth. One example is the zelda games. There are 8 dungeons, which you can visit in pretty much any order(there are a few exceptions). It took pages and pages and pages of planning to figure out what was the fastest route to take. They had to some clever things to figure it out(did you know that its faster to beat that game with out getting the master sword(or whatever its called)?). It also takes cleverness to do things that most people would never think about. Like in Castlevania, if you hit a boss at the same time that its hits you, you do mega damage.
Edit: Stupid typos
I had no idea this post was going to be as popular as this... or as quick. I think - between the posts here and the faq/guidelines I might have enough to work with (after all, I've only got 300-500 words worth of space).
For the time being, feel free to chime in if you've got something to say that hasn't already been said. Or if I come up with some more questions...
But to keep from losing my gourd trying to process all of it, let's chill out for a little bit... or at least until I have it mostly done and need to iron out the details.
By the way, thank you all immensely.
And yeah... that bullet thing was amazing.
In other words, what do I, as a stranger, need to know in order to appreciate what you're doing?
This depends on the game. Anyone who sees the SMB3 movie will say that it is amazing. However, some movies are not appreciated fully until you've played the game. Sometimes, its just so that you know how incredibly hard some parts are. Then, when you see them being played making them look so easy, it makes the movie that much more awesome. The other part has to with route exploitation. A great example of this is the metroid games. If you have never played a metorid game, and saw one of the runs, for it, you might say that it is pretty cool. Though when you this, you have no idea what so ever how much of the game they are skipping by taking crazy routes. One of my favorite movies (using an emulator or not) is the Metroid Prime movie. If you have ever played the game, it is amzing to watch, even though it is not played perfectly. When I saw the movie, and I saw the player get the space jump boots one minute after landing on the planet, I knew that the movie was going to be amazing, and it was.
Edit: Whoops >_< Didn't see your last post. Well, I'm not going to delete it since its already written.
Blechy, 20. I've made an Umihara Kawase video which was obsoleted by 2 seconds by bobwhoops(see, even the smallest time change makes a difference), and a Mega Man X2 video.
I'm surprised what bobwhoops mentioned was brought up so late. The appeal of these movies is definitely familiarity. I'd say at least 75% of gamers have seen morimoto's mario 3 video at some point. This video is perhaps the perfect video for people to see; I don't think there's a person in our generation, including all the people who poo-poo video games today, considering them to be really uncool, who has not played mario 3. Excluding a few levels perhaps, it's not a particularly difficult game. Anybody can beat it, given enough time. But nobody can beat it in the time morimoto or genisto have in their videos, in the styles that they do.
Sure, at first the video was so popular because everybody believed it to be legitimate. In fact after seeing the video probably half of the viewers(including myself) tried the first few levels out for themselves until they nailed it. Even after seeing how hard it was, I didn't immediately suspect the author(had no idea who it was at the time- it was completely uncredited) of misleading his audience in some way or the other, but I did become curious. I looked it up online, and I have no idea where I found it, but I read that the author's name was morimoto, and that at some point he had sincerely apologized for misleading everybody who watched his movies; he had done it solely for personal reasons, to make a cool video he could watch and I suppose show off to a few others that visited his website who may be interested. Upon reading this, I don't know how to describe my feelings. But the word is certainly not something such as disappointment, which is what every single person I've told this information to has felt. While the skill I had first considered to be so high was now replaced by persistence, this author had opened up entirely new doors to making videos of old games. So what's the appeal? In the most simplified answer,
It looks cool.
I suppose there are four reactions to the movies: indifference, interest, disappointment, and anger. Those who are indifferent just don't care and who cares about them anyway. Those who are interested share the same feelings as mine described above, though the level of interest varies greatly. Those who are disappointed upon learning the methods to make the movies are not so different from those interested, they simply have a different way of viewing it(though there is not a very wide range of those who are disappointed; you either are or you aren't).
Those who become angry however, are very different. The vast majority of this category becomes angry because they are somehow involved in making "games done quick" videos without using emulator tools. ENORMOUS controversy occurred about a month ago when a video of Super Metroid(a 100% run) came out. While it was of the same quality of the videos shown on this website, the difference is that there was no disclaimer at the beginning stating that the video was made with an emulator. Nonetheless, everybody who was familiar with both speedruns and time attacks, and the differences between each, knew that this video was tool-assisted(and so was a time attack). On a separate message board, the author of the Super Metroid/100% run done off of an emulator became very angry, claiming that she'd never make a video again because she was fed up with the people who made these videos(directed at the author of that video, but certainly including us), to state it mildly.
I'd say this is a good example of that the speed runners view time attacks as threatening to themselves. In my opinion, had a tool-assisted run been done of any game other than her own, the author of the run would not have been angered to the point that she was. She would have been somewhat discontented, but she never would have claimed to never make a video again(she's considered to be an amazing author, and her Super Metroid/100% run makes it clear why).
There's more to say about that last paragraph but I have to go.
By the way, who edited morimoto's video, putting the contra/mortal kombat soundtrack in for example? Himself?
Legitimate speed runs are often done on emulator as well, so simply separating them based on the "console/emulator" criteria is a bit misleading. Not all emulated runs use the 'advantages' provided by savestates/slowdown/etc.
Joined: 5/1/2004
Posts: 4096
Location: Rio, Brazil
FODA
real name: Mario, 23 years old
Brazil, Rio de Janeiro
I just love the old games.
I saw the mario 3 movie by morimoto first, and i realized it couldn't have been made by humans. I dug up a bit and found out how it was made. At first i thought it would be complicated to try it myself, so i bookmarked bisqwit's site, and lived my life. few months later i came back to bisqwit's site and it was full of movies, so i decided to try and see if i could do anything.
I did the battletoads warpless run, and it was actually fun to make it. When you make movies you deal with extreme situations and you get to know the game engine very well. That increased my skills in the game, i find it quite easy now.
Just to imagine someone watching the movie and getting surprised at how the levels are beaten is enough motivation to make these movies.
I'm working on pit fighter and ecco the dolphin for the sega genesis right now. they are completely different types of games for timeattacking. while pit fighter has easy character mobility, ecco moves very difficultly. But for that reason an ecco run would be hard to beat, because the timeattacker doesn't have much choice on what to do. The pit fighter run will always be improvable, the character is just too free to move and there's more "ramdomness" on the enemies movements.
this is all fantastic... but I won't be able to use most of it. So what I'll do is put a link in the piece to this message board so folks can see "the rest of the interview". Of course, I'll have to edit my name out of it... but yeah!
This brings up an interesting point. Somebody such as Zurreco feels that:
I really only make these movies to either test/show my skill/determination for certain games, or to bring in competition for other games. I could care less if I ever get a movie published; I'm not here to make a name for myself.
FODA on the other hand, and I imagine most on this site(myself included) feel that:
Just to imagine someone watching the movie and getting surprised at how the levels are beaten is enough motivation to make these movies.
Neither is right or wrong of course, but they are two completely different reasons for making movies. Zurreco has not had a movie published, but that is mostly because everybody other than him(or even himself in some cases) has problem watching a movie without desyncing(that is, it gets up to a certain part and no longer works properly- it's no longer what he told the game to do). While this has certainly hurt his morale, he doesn't stop working on them, simply because whether it actually gets onto the website is not the point; he just enjoys making them.
(I will speak for myself here, as I'm not sure if FODA feels exactly the same though it seems so) I on the other hand, actually use what Zurreco doesn't care about as motivation. When I get to a part that's difficult to do, I think about how cool it will look to myself and the other viewers once it is published. Alternatively, often these hard-to-do parts will not look at all difficult upon viewing them, but you must remain optimistic nonetheless, thinking about how cool everything else in the movie will look.
>I'll upload the latest Super Mario 3 run to my personal web space so you can get hold of it. The run is made by one of our guys called "Genisto", who will probably see this thread later and make some comments.
>http://www.bktv.se/~a3087a/supermariobros3j-timeattack-genisto.avi
When I opened this in MRP or RealPlayer all I got was the sound. That's probably because these programs, or at least my versions of them, suck. Problem is, my readers might have the same sucky programs. Anyway we can fix this?
Joined: 3/13/2004
Posts: 1118
Location: Kansai, JAPAN
My name is Dan and I'm 27. I'm not working on anything right now because I've just returned to college. My only contribution to this site was a Bionic Commando movie that was totally decimated by Genisto. Given that I'm at school now, I don't know if I'll have time to make another movie, but I love watching them and I try to give constructive criticism to other players.
If you enjoyed the SMB3 movie, you should also check out the Rockman (Mega Man) movies. They're a lot of fun, especially 1, 2, and X.
I don't want to tell you how to write your article but I hope that whatever you write makes it clear that we view these movies as totally separate from the competive gaming and speedrunning communities. There's a lot of venom spit on this issue, all of it from people who think that slowdown and savestates have somehow "ruined" their interests. I used to try to spit back but I no longer care to do so. I try to explain why what we do isn't "wrong" but it's not an easy point to make. It's like trying to convince a Pro-Life protestor that abortion isn't murder. People tend to make up their own mind on the matter and don't particularly care to hear a contrasting argument.
I'm not sure if you are still accepting contributions, but I have some you might like.
Name: Chuck, 16 years old, Ohio, USA.
I being one of the newer workers to this art, I must say that it is not easy. Not only can it be tedious at times, but even if you finish what you are doing, someone might stomp your record, making you have to either beat them again (from scratch perhaps), or do another game.
An example of my experience with this is best known by one timeattack run I did on Super C, that beat the original current time by about 14 seconds (a significant improvement), but not very long afterwords, the guy I originally beat took out my record by several more seconds. Normally I would've challenged the record again with another speed-run, but his final product was indeed perfect, unfortunately for me.
I was working on a Contra run when I basically stopped doing this, but never had the chance to finish it. So I guess that's my current project.
I have been doing this for about a month of real, notable time. And I do it because...I just find a great feeling in knowing I did the best, and that I cannot be topped. What makes that even better, is the possibility that I am wrong. It forces me to do the best, by understanding the game, and putting my knowledge to the test. I may not be the best in anything yet, but it is a goal I will work toward.
I'm Kilu from Finland, just a random fan :)
As a viewer, the qualities that I appreciate the most in these runs are entertainment and precision, and I might also add that I personally would be willing to sacrifice second or two to make the run more entertaining. And of course the nostalgy is a big factor as well. I rarely download run if I haven't beated/played the game myself. It's so much more fun to watch a run that you are familiar with.
Thanks for all your help. I'm sending off the piece now; I'm pretty sure I've done a fair job explaining what it is you do (and don't do), that is, the difference between time-attacking and speed-running.
I've used as many quotes as possible, but please don't be offended if you didn't make it in. Already, it's a few hundred words longer than it should've been. But oh well, what's my editor going to do about it?
Once he's accepted it, i'll post the text here. And then I'll try to come back again once it's made it into print.
I'm attaching a link to this topic in the story --- if they want to read more.
Thanks again!
Hi y'all. The piece is online. You'll have to download a big 10mb file to read it, but check it out. You'll notice I had to edit the comments a little for space. Let me know what you think.
www.ecollegetimes.com
