NES games speedrunning demos/videos

You may or may not have seen this..

http://bisqwit.iki.fi/jutut/nesvideos/

This is an archive (there are several others, some of which are linked to by this guy, but this page is updated frequently and has many good videos) with videos of speedruns through old NES games. Note that there are two categories:

1) Speedruns, which are just like regular Doom speedruns.
2) Time attacks, which are made much in the same way as TAS speedruns, by using savegames and slow motion to achieve a "theoretical" best possible run through hard games.

The demos can be downloaded as MPEG videos through BitTorrent or as small movie files for use with the emulator that was used to record the demos, Famtasia.

Several really cool demos to check out here. My favourites are Legend of Zelda in 31 minutes 29 seconds, and Rockman (Megaman) in 21:53 played reality style (not taking a single hit).

For those of you who saw that famous SMB3 video that circulated the net recently, you know what to expect.

Excellent!

Also, don't miss Super Metroid in 38 minutes

.. Or, for that matter, Metroid Prime played on Hard skill getting 100% in 1 hour 37 minutes. But I think almost everyone knew about this, right?

I had a friend who could beat Super Metroid in 40 minutes or so while getting 100% item collection. It still impresses me to this day.

Job said:

I had a friend who could beat Super Metroid in 40 minutes or so while getting 100% item collection.

A good liar of a friend, since beating it in 40 minutes with 100% item collection is impossible.

Heh, I saw him do it. It was somewhere between 42 and 54 minutes if recall correctly.

Are you sure it was a 100% run and not "just" a speedrun? Because even 54 minutes is "impossibly" fast, and would almost certainly require optimization through slow motion playing and/or the use of savegames. Perhaps you're thinking of another Metroid game?

Hm, no, it was SNES Super Metroid. However, on second thought it might not have been fully 100% collection. Perhaps 92% or 94%.

seen the stuff at http://www.planetquake.com/sda/other ? :)

I looked for a good nes speedrun site one day but couln't find any, so thanks.

That Snes metroid run in 38 minutes was amazing, but unfortunately it desynced in around 30 minutes when I watched it and didn't feel like watching it again for half an hour :( I'll watch it again someday though.

I've known about this site for a while. It does update rather frequently, as old runs are improved and new games are explored. I really like all of the runs (for the games I'm familiar with, that is) but my favorite is still the rockman 2 run. It's a shame the sound desyncs on some of the videos, but even stranger in this case since the sound goes out of sync... then goes back IN sync later in the video. :o

Anyway, I don't see Ninja Gaiden 1 or 2 on their List of ideas, which strikes me as odd since these would make fantastic videos.

EDIT: I finally went to one of the linked sites, speedruns.org, and they have a run for Ninja Gaiden 1, along with the runs that the previous site has (the better known games, that is). You'll have to register there to download the videos, though.

EDIT2: And, uh, noticed something else that can be of interest. This was a post on the forums regarding morimoto's megaman 2 movie:

"Morimoto and his friends are working on an improved version of the Rockman 2 timeattack movie. It will be out within a month or so."

I don't know where the improvements would come from, but it sounds like a beast of a run already.

OMFG, that megaman 2 demo is the greatest thing ever.

Heh, you should see my World Cup soccer recording for NNNesterJ in which I beat (literally) the hell out of Argentina 27-3 using Japan, even playing on a special field they have an advantage on. Of course it's not speed run because the game has a set time, but it gets pretty fast paced. I whipped out unlimited turbo shots like was no tomarrow and even knocked out some of their players.

Anybody got an Super Mario Bros. speed runs?

ANY game is fine - Mario 64, Super Mario World, it doesn't matter. That would be cool to check out.

Or hey - Contra...

OMG

mje said:
Anybody got an Super Mario Bros. speed runs? [...] Or hey - Contra...

Huh? That's why I started the thread! The site I linked to in my first post has videos of speedruns for all the SMB games, as well as Contra (finished in 10:15 without taking any hits).

I love speedrun videos. Ooh.. Contra video.

Tech support question -

I've downloaded several of the videos, and some of them work fine with Windows Media Player.

Others seem to make WMP think that they are audio files. Specifically, the Castlevania movie, the Rockman (part 1), and Ghosts and Goblins.

I open them up in Media Player, and it locks up for second, and then just stops. The picture is one of those sound interpretation designs, and no sound comes out. Media Player says that it's an audio file, but the file itself says video.

One interesting thing to note - when playing the non-working videos, the time length WMP says for them is over an hour, when they are really like, 10-15 minute videos.

It's weird.. I have divx installed, and WMP doesn't automatically try to download a codec...

I don't know what else to do. Does anyone know how to fix this?

I am still using version 6.3.09 and it never has problems loading any movie.

The one bundled with XP is pure evil. I am assuming its trying to hog all of the media types, even if you installed the codec and the player to run them.

the only way to do this is simply right click the file and select open with...

Uh, these videos aren't speedruns. Speedruns are usually run continuously from beginning to end. These videos are the equivalent of a doom speedrun where you quicksave and quickload often, then cut out all the parts where you made a mistake.

http://bisqwit.iki.fi/jutut/nesvideos/whyhow.html#why

So, yeah, these movies aren't a testament to the players' skill, they just show a run-through of the game.

True. Still very entertaining though.

By the way, I just tried those videos with DivX player and it worked fine. Problem solved.

Hyena said:

Uh, these videos aren't speedruns.

Of course these are cheated runs, but people have been using "speedrun" and "timeattack" (the term more related to tool-assisted runs, in this case) interchangeably, which does create some confusion.

This is why I like to refer to them as TAS, the same as the built doom runs. :)

Weird I don't see castlevania 3 on that site or any of the other sites. I guess I should try to do a time-attack. I got the tools. :P