I was doing some research, and came across scores on Sunny Beach which were published in N64 Magazine UK throughout 1998.
The "WR" here is listed as a "confirmed" 1:02.694 by "Chris Murphy", which we can assume is fake, due to this being ahead of the WR today by half a second.
That being said, the second place time was listed as 1:03.755 by a William Lam. Now, while this was way ahead of its time, given what we know about the Misuken story, it's at least plausible.
Has anyone ever had any communication with this William Lam? Could his 1:03.755 have been legit? What are your thoughts?
Here's one of the magazine entries; https://archive.org/details/n64magazineukcollection/N64%20Magazine%2019%20-%20september%201998%20%28UK%29%20%28Max-Rez%20version%29/page/n103/mode/2up
Extremely difficult to determine from currently available evidence. It's certainly possible, but given how riddled those old mags were with cheated scores and times, I have quite a bit of doubt.
One possible way of (gently) corroborating short of actually getting in touch with William Lam somehow would be to check other submitted times for "impossible" or unrealistic times from the era. If there are multiple entries with seemingly legitimate times, it gives a bit of extra credence to the possibility that this SB time is authentic. Unfortunately, I didn't see any other of his submissions on that page - maybe he submitted some for another issue, haven't checked. Might be worth perusing some other issues of N64 UK for clues on that front.
Other things I briefly checked:
No mention of a William Lam on n64hs.speedrunwiki.com
No William Lam in the player database for mariokart64.com or fzerocentral.org or the-elite.net or dkr64.com
Hey Goose and meaux,
I apologize for the lengthy posts in advance but I find this quite interesting so I thought I'd share some thoughts but yeah TL;DR I get it
I knew I recognized the style of magazine, have you seen this edition of the mag?
https://nintendo.fandom.com/wiki/N64_Magazine_V6#Madden_NFL_64 *printed list version
https://www.outofprintarchive.com/catalogue/n64magazine/N64Magazine6.html *full hi-res download
I stumbled across this edition (specifially #6) and these records probably 6 or 7 years ago on a completely different website when I started running the game and we were trying to dig up info about the games history and internal code, others on the discord were looking for records. I never made much of them but these were briefly spoken about in the discord way back when, iirc
You can see that "William LAM" has records in three games in this issue of N64 Magazine V6; records in MK64, Turok and WR64. It shows said 1'03"755. This is edition #6 of the magazine, your pic is from edition #20
Ok so let's get down to brass tacks. Big Willy L's 1'03 is an impressive feat for the time period no doubt but also nothing unbelievable (in and of itself). The 1'03 is a reasonable and plausible time to achieve even back then, with some heavy practice. Notice how Will's 1'03"755 is marked as 1st place here in edition 6 in 1997, so you would assume that the 1'02"694 was submitted between article 6 and 20? But sheesh... lets just back it all up here a minute folks...
Is this really a british magazine with a sizable list of BRITISH players playing NTSC SETUPS IN UK?? IN 97' and 98'?? ...I think that's what strikes me as the most wild thing about these record lists, check out how long the list is in edition #6, they have 10 guys playing and submitting on NTSC hardware? That's pretty BUCK wild to me, even back then getting your hands on NTSC hardware (plus a compatible 60hz CRT TV or display that runs on UK 50hz AC grid power) and running it isn't the easiest thing to do by any means. How often do we even have ten UK players simultaneously submitting NTSC WR64 times in todays era? Hats off to those lads if they at least did run NTSC stuff back then..
But to be fair, if you scan through this magazine they make a TON of reference to US/Jap version releases and differences, and also talk about the different hardware being used and imported. They even go as far as to specifically have rules for submitting scores and times that state which version hardware must be used and why. Perhaps running the NTSC setup back then in UK to grind IL's wasn't that strange?? Just doesn't sound right when I say that out loud. Either way, the magazine seems to "normalize" the concept of readers using and dealing with US and JP hardware. But that was not my first guess as to how it went down on her majesty's great islands back in 97'. I'll tell you that much.
-2-
A few other things I noticed.. I think Shibby and perhaps some PAL players should chime in on this to get a really solid perspective, as I've barely ever touched the PAL version
To speak on "Chris Murphy's" 1'02"694 - that time is absurdly fast and I think Shibby would agree, even so much to the point where I automatically said to myself when I saw it: "no shot". I'm not sure if that time has been debunked or not, but it's a very unlikely time for anyone to achieve even (legitimately) today. It's been 6 or 7 years since I put any effort into the level but I've seen Shibby push it over the years and I do have my share of hours dumped into Sunny Beach. Enough to understand that time gap is colossal to put it lightly. Like I say, if it's been proven a lie, then a lie it is. But it IS arguably a plausible time to achieve.
It isn't fair to say its out of the realm of possibilities, especially if this CHRIS fellow knew of something we don't today such as some boundary clip or jump, who knows. It does happen relatively frequently in other games, some glitch or tech gets overlooked for the entire lifespan of the game. But it's EXTREMELY unlikely to say the least. It's more likely the guy turned on the super speed gameshark code and hid it well and submitted it to these guys' mag and was assumed to be legit.
Just looking over these other records from the two articles 6 and 20, I think the most interesting thing for me maybe more so than anything else is these PAL records on Sunny Beach, as they're quite sus.
Interestingly enough the Glacier Coast records don't seem very off or odd from todays achievable times on PAL GC IL but
And this is where maybe some PAL vets can step in - and correct me if I'm wrong here for sure, but in Goose's posted article #20 those PAL Sunny Beach times are so insane... are they not? We're talking 6 seconds on the current PAL "world record" or top PAL time...
On SB forward 3 lap today:
Mahrla has a 1'16"850 on the boards currently (if I'm not mistaken with these times)
Against an alleged 1'10"103 by Stuart Richards in article 20
Against an alleged 1'15"830 by Andrew Mills in article 6
-3-
The times in article #6 are pretty believable and reasonable for the most part other than "Mr. Mills" blowing the current WR away by a full second with that 1'15
But the article 20 Sunny Beach PAL list is pretty insane, those times are on another level...
So what's going on here?
Gameshark codes turned on such as "always max power" that let you take shortcuts? Maybe super speed GC code or numerous other ones. What are the chances they all used codes and submitted these times with the fact going unnoticed in mere pictures that were mailed in to the magazines' office? Maybe they started using the codes along the way, no one posted times cheating in article 6 but by article 20 maybe they had realized the magazine was none the wiser to gameshark codes?
I feel like after spending an hour or two combing through this magazine for the first time today, these people at this magazine cared enough to at least look through mail that was sent in to them and discern certain "acceptable" entries from ones that were considered not to be. Now how thorough or meticulous their screening process and their ability to catch cheaters was back then at that time, is and was really anyone's guess. But that being said; what's the deal here with these PAL Sunny Beach times and of course the one NTSC SB outlier from ol' Christopher?
Regardless it's all pretty interesting stuff
I noticed multiple times in the mag, it states: "Entries must be accompanied by photographic OR videotaped evidence. So there you go, these runs probably could have been submitted by picture ONLY and cheated with codes or other methods. They claim that unconfirmed means no picture/video. Me own mum could post it in mate.
Here's the scores page for edition #21 one editions scores after the picture goose posted
Heres the same as above but article #22 (here we see a 1'04"941 PAL Sunny Beach???)
**Side note: check out these beta version screenshots of OoT on page 30 of edition #6 I found while browsing
Needless to say; after spending more time reading the scans of this mag there's a ton of interesting records for various N64 games. I'm curious to know how combed-over it is for other games, even WR64 has 11 or so articles of these same level categories documented from article 6 to 22 of this magazine, though 22 being the newest would be assumed to have the last ever posted and fastest most recent times sent in to them.
I'm sure there's some other interesting info to be found in here, maybe not only about Waverace 64 but perhaps other titles. Anywho, everyone that has read through, do post your thoughts on all of this and I'll be sure to check back. Hope some PAL runners can put their two cents in, I'm quite curious myself. Again I apologize for the full novel sized posts.
Cheers
The 102.6 is indeed impossible unless something new's discovered or play significantly improves. If you look at top times and best laps from the top 15 or so best members of the leaderboard seen in a record, they were 22.338 by shibbypod in a lap 1 pb, and the 20.412, and 20.177 in Shibby's record. They sum to 01:02.927.
That lap 1 time is borderline optimal. A 20.3 is roughly the current optimal lap 2, and lap 3's record is a 20.096 on a different difficulty setting. On that 1:02.927 there's therefore MAYBE another theoretical 200ms to save - but saving this without new tricks would first not only require one of the fattest WRs this community had ever seen to shave 186ms on our most competitive time, but also a theoretically perfect race where the player achieved the best lap ever done in this community, on literally all 3 laps of the same race, despite the map typically only letting 2 out of 3 laps be fast - and then you STILL would need to find another impossible to account for 30-40ms to get to their time.
Pretty much unless they found a glitch that gains speed or a shortcut, that time's fake.
Found some more of Chris Murphy's scores in the September 1997 issue of "Computer and Video Games", here: https://archive.org/details/Computer_and_Video_Games_Issue_190_1997-09_EMAP_Images_GB/page/n103/mode/2up?view=theater&q=murphy You'd normally assume PAL times, as it's a UK magazine and nothing says otherwise, but the other magazine does say he apparently had access to NTSC. More surprising, he has a 3'22''61 3lap on Wario Stadium, and a 52"47 flap. In 1997.
EDIT: wouldn't let me update the pic to better match what I'm looking for, see below comment, remade post.
Also, spread the word: putting out a $500 bounty on Chris Murphy to prove his time. Discussion in the discord includes more details, including below:
Well, I've spent some time the other day combing over more of this series of the N64 UK magazine Goose first posted. It's a bit confusing, as the magazine seem to undergo multiple name changes, but they also edit their format frequently in regards to the high scores/best times sections. Not only that but Wave Race 64 is added and dropped in that section numerous times in all mags.
Cut to the chase, my prior post about the timeline of the mag is correct to that point, but the magazine continues later after a name change. You can read about that here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGC_Magazine
I have not checked past release #22 in my last posts/where the name changes to NGC to see if any WR64 records pop up later on, but IIRC they drop it from the high score section.
So I did some googling with keywords on the name "Adam Tucker" from WR64 leaderboards on the earlier Editions of the magazine. This name sounds familiar to me, I've seen it somewhere before I just can't put my finger on where. That led me to this:
"64 Magazine" which appears to be a different magazine, also from the UK and it also ran during the same era 1996-2001 and collected high scores. It seems Adam Tucker posted times in multiple games in both of these magazines. Cheated or not though - is still to be seen.
Let me go through and just link things I found interesting in relation to everything discussed in this thread, keep in mind I spent a few hours scanning.. but I'm sure a missed a lot and I'm sure there's lots more to be found in both Gooses UK mag and this UK one. Perhaps even the later NGC has N64 scores posted at some point, I'm not sure.
First off this is issue #9 of 64 Magazine and the page where they talk about adding "ScoreZone" the high score section. Check out the blurb. They talk about mugshots of the top players. This becomes interesting based of the scores they've posted in the later issues as you'll see. Heres the interesting part quoted: "Remember, the person whose videogaming prowess has most impressed us each month will win themselves the award of Ultimate Player and a Trident Pad and memory card from Logic 3 - and if you include a passport photo of yourself, you may even get to see your gurning mug in the pages of the world’s best N64 magazine! Yes, that is us, smart-arse..." I didn't come across any mugshots yet but it's interesting https://archive.org/details/64_Magazine_Issue_09_1998_Paragon_Publishing_GB/page/13/mode/2up
Issue #10 has scores for WR64 but its the same as 11 with less scores on the list, so you could say this is sort of the first/second time you see WR64 scores in this mag https://archive.org/details/64-magazine-11/page/n61/mode/2up
Issue #11 I noticed Mark B posted this first time of any relevance to todays benchmark times, he also submits Sunset Bay and Drake Lake
1:05.765 Mark Bonnes, East Kilbride Sunny Beach https://archive.org/details/64-magazine-12/page/n63/mode/2up
This is issue #20 (I don't have time to comb every issue so I skipped through volumes) Here we can see the first example of someone who is most likely cheating; Alan Dundas https://archive.org/details/64-magazine-20/page/n73/mode/2up
1:00:782 Alan Dundas, Arbroath Sunny B. -impossible
1:03:925 Alan Dundas, Arbroath Sunset B. -impossible
1:09:305 Alan Dundas. Arbroath Drake L. -impossible
1:29:522 Alan Dundas, Arbroath Glacier C. -not impossible
1:25:361 Alan Dundas, Arbroath Southern I. -not impossible and not even first place?
This definitely raises some questions without doubt. Not in regards to whether or not the times are cheated as I definitely believe the first three levels are without doubt fake. I'll write a bit more about why later. I just wonder what the motive was to cheat three levels but then submit two clearly subpar times. They are quite poor times even without cheats. Notice to the left of the scores they clearly mention yet again the use of picture OR video as allowable proof for submission, same as N64 Magazine.
The only thing I can think that's happening here is Alan chose to cheat on PAL, and managed to cheat some times much further than others? There's no info in this magazine as to what version was used so its anybody's guess
So lets get to this article; volume #42, as it's really the meat and potatoes here. Once again I didn't fully comb these mags, but as far as I could tell from quickly checking past this one, its one of the last editions that has WR64 scores posted. They also drop WR64 before this article somewhere along the way, and it returns again in the 30's or 40's # volumes
https://archive.org/details/64-magazine-42/page/n67/mode/2up
This one is interesting for many reasons, so lets break it down. By this point, the year 2000, we see all five of the Sunny Beach times are times deemed "impossible" by benchmarks we have set today.
I think it's quite safe to say these are cheated times. Not only have Sunny Beach and Drake Lake been really pushed quite hard to their limits by today's current players and have little to NO time for improvement today (we're talking singular frames on Drake Lake). But take David Ryans 0'57"965 Drake Lake for instance; its claiming a 10+ second advantage on the current DL WR. It's just completely out of reach without some kind of new tech we don't know about, or cheats. Unfortunately, cheats being the much much more likely case due to the clear case of both these magazines openly accepting picture evidence which clearly was not enough.
If we live in the world where these times ARE cheated, it's still quite an interesting phenomenon we have going on here. Not only was this then turned into some kind of weird "cheating contest", but not a very logical one at that, for multiple reasons. The first being that.. with cheats you can achieve much much faster times (on NTSC anyway). Shibby has showed me some example footage of him getting 20'xxx sec times and 30'xxx second times on Sunny B. and to my understanding is isnt that challenging. So they could have in theory submitted even faster cheated runs, especially for Sunny Beach's case.
That's an odd concept in and of itself, but then you notice we still have levels where none of the times really seem farfetched at all, or even very impressive by todays standards. Clearly this David Ryan and Adam Tucker (sound like made up names to me no?) were having a little "cheat-off" and David took things a little too far, but apparently not far enough to get caught. So did they only cheat enough to get what they thought would achieve the top time? Were some of these runs legit? Will we ever truly know? Does it even really matter?
It just strikes me as odd, that he has a plausible time on Twlight C. with 1:28:483, but he submits a 55 sec sunny beach? Not to mention the TC time is probably cheated as it gaps all the other times posted by quite a bit, even the other cheaters. If the run was done on PAL sure, its cheated a few seconds ahead of current WR, but does that then mean all the runs were cheated on PAL? Was the 55 SB the limits of cheating PAL Sunny Beach? Maybe these guys are really having some type of "cheat-off" here and what we're seeing are these guys best PAL times with codes turned on.
The last volume I could find WR64 in is #46, then its dropped never to return to "ScoreZone". The wave race times do not change from volume 42 to 46 whatsoever. After the game is removed the magazine continues to run until 2001 and volume/issue #54 (I can only find up to 52)
https://archive.org/details/64-magazine-46/page/n69/mode/2up
.I don't know when all of the 4 other cheaters show up that post those sub 1 minute Sunny Beach times, but they appear at some point between here in volume #27 and volume #42 which is the first link in the post
https://archive.org/details/64-magazine-27/page/n73/mode/2up
Once again if someone wants to fully scan through all of these magazines scores, I'm sure you'll find more interesting information.
Again I should state I have next to no knowledge of PAL benchmark times and almost no experience playing PAL so I'm mainly speaking on the NTSC times we see in these magazines. It doesn't specify in the "64 Mag" what region the runs are even from, if they're PAL runs they would have even more reason to believe to be cheated or faked. Nevertheless I think it goes without saying that at this point we can assume all of the times past and even some near WR are almost guaranteed to be unfortunately cheated/faked/gameshark times.
Something else quickly worth mentioning; while I was scanning I quickly caught this in volume 8 of this mag
https://archive.org/details/64_Magazine_Issue_08_1997_Paragon_Publishing_GB/page/76/mode/2up
Notice the AR codes red bubble, at the bottom you can find the WR64 "super speed" code and its correct hex speed variable range from 00 to FF. Along with another useful code for cheating; "Misses don't count"
Keep in mind this was released for the PAL version, but still in 1997 nonetheless this code was seemingly common knowledge. You would have to assume likewise for the NTSC version of the game and code.
Another little interesting bit of information. In the first link in this last post (volume 42), check out the scores for the N64 game "WWF Warzone". Interesting that they made a printing error here and double printed the game... but if you take a look at the two players who submitted scores, you may see a familiar name. It's none other than speedgame legend/Billy Mitchell slayer: Karl Jobst.
(Here) https://archive.org/details/64-magazine-42/page/n67/mode/2up
Now maybe someone that knows him can shine some light on this, direct him here for comment, or maybe this is already known information. But I'm assuming its the same "Karl Jobst" GE runner from the Elite community/youtuber? Has to be, yeah? Even says Aussie. If it is, that's really quite amazing, cool stuff to find so many years later. I notice his name pops up in multiple volumes for WWF Warzone.
After reviewing all of this, thinking on it a while, having a short chat with Shibbypod on the topic and having these even more hard-to-believe times come to light now.. I have to go ahead and say my opinion on the matter is simply that the majority of times we see in these magazines that overtake current WR's are not legitimate runs and were probably cheated using a device such as the Gameshark or Action replay. Major reasons that lead me personally to believe this:
- Gamesharks/AR's + codes were readily available at the time
- Both magazines/offices accepted only a mere photo as proof plus seemingly didn't have any "qualified" or knowledgeable enough bodies reviewing submissions
- Inconsistency in unobtainable level times by todays benchmarks vs. obtainable ones by the same players
- The scale of the gap of some of these proposed times vs. todays benchmarks
- Combined suspicions' of today's top players that have pushed the game to its known limits
I still find this whole documented history of times extremely interesting and I'd love to have more information surface on these times, I just have an extremely hard time playing devil's advocate here and trying to picture the world where these times were obtained through a legitimate means.
Something very sad about these 5-6 players blatantly cheating is that it (to me) quickly takes away any credibility from the times that may have actually been legitimate. If you look through the times you notice a patern of the same people submitting quite absurd times vs the same people that submit very plausible ones. I think it's important to keep in mind that many of the slower runs from said legit looking players were more likely to also be legit. We see a few decent Sunny Beach times and a 1'12"xxx Drake Lake that has a good chance of being legit if its NTSC, but really who knows. I think I've seen enough crazy times posted to say that there's little to no chance any of these runs have any backing to them as they weren't proof-checked well enough and sadly probably never had the opportunity to be.
It would be interesting to see if any of these names can be cross-referenced to other media, other games, other times or scores elsewhere. Also my knowledge and interests don't extend much out of WR64, but I've already seen some "impossible" MK64 and DKR times and laps such as @Showsni mentioned above. I'm sure there are a ton of interesting fake and maybe real times buried in these magazines.
Last post here, but going back to the topic of "Chris Murphy" and his alleged 01:02.927
Sure, crazier things have happened. It's not impossible like I said. But after more information has now come up, again seeing how these magazines clearly didn't check these submissions well enough and obviously not only the amount of cheating but the consistency of the cheating ranges wildly between players and between time periods and also even between these two magazines. I'm pretty keen to believe that's unfortunately a cheated time.
I'm not against placing a "bounty" or reward to try and find proof of that time - per se. I do however feel its a bit of a witch-hunt when witches aren't real, if you catch what I'm saying. You may sooner find a sasquatch with a 500$ bounty.
I think short of someone coming forward with full video evidence of this time anyways, it's a dead end. I'd love to see something turn up of course. But it's already not looking good. The time seems cheated. Its unlikely there was video proof even taken as pictures were allowed. Hell, how do you know its a real person or name? For all we know "Chris Murphy" is a group of multiple people cheating. For all we know the editor of the magazine is "Chris Murphy". My point is, chances are slim to none, but, best of luck nonetheless. Though I wouldn't accept anything in this case short of a full video of the run with the exact time 01:02.927 or something better. But if its not exact, even if its a better time and its legit, really at that point its just someone un-hording an ancient WR, which I'm not sure warrants or deserves anyone's money. But hey, to each their own.
Plus, if you're going to hunt "his" SB 1:02 there's a few other runs in these mags that scrape todays WR or at least benchmark times pretty close that I also would be keen on seeing video proof of. Even some a ways off WR that don't actually seem like cheated times and could very well deserve a spot on todays leaderboards.
On the other hand, the 1:02 is one of the most questionable but not too questionable records we find in all of this. For that reason it may be the best choice if one run IS to be hunted down, at least.
When I have some time one day I'll do some more digging as I really find these old magazines interesting regardless, but that's my update for now. Happy reading.
Cheers
