I'm sure there's many people like us/me who have tried many games before. This topic will give us a better idea of who you are and why you like speed running. I have a few questions but might have more later.

1. What is the game you've spent playing the longest and why?
2. What is your favorite game no matter how long you've spent on it and why?
3. If you miss a world record by seconds or minutes or gain one do you think it makes you the most competent?

I'll answer after other people do.

1. Castlevania (NES) it's a great game
2. Castlevania (NES) it's a great game
3. No. Perfect example is the best Castlevania (NES) runner isn't even top 20

1. Mercs (Genesis) Original Mode has been my major project since October 2018, doing nearly the entire routing, trick/exploit finding, and grind myself. It's now getting near the point where WR runs aren't possible if the RNG (which we can't yet control) in Mission 4 goes against you.

2. Favourite game: Mercs, though Super Hang-On runs that close. Mercs has a number of elements which to me make it a really underrated all around speedrun: -High level of reaction/pattern recognition required for enemy patterns - enemy patterns will literally change completely if you exit a transition one frame different, while the structure of the patterns is always comprehensible and allows for a necessary mix of knowledge and skill to succeed. -More technique/technical skill required: we don't allow autofire so mashing is REALLY critical on bosses, and learning to flick-fire into angles to maintain faster vertical movement takes a lot of mastery. -Routing is reasonably open even at the top level, so it's common to have to work out what you will do on the fly as a run progresses, and be able/willing to make command decisions about those things based on the range of outcomes. It's not so dry as many other games in that regard.

Here ends the advert, I would love to get some new runners especially for Original Mode. There really is nothing like it.

3. Competence is not always an indicator of WR levels. Early when I began work on Super Hang-On, I got an outstanding PB wr time, but I was far from the best player at that point. It took another year of work to be able to match/surpass that one run and truly feel like I was the most able player thus far. What matters is your journey, your growth, your effort. If you measure your skill by an outside yardstick such as an arbitary WR, you aren't truly speedrunning as much as trying to one-up people. True speedrunning (and forgive the Miyagi-do shtick this sounds like) comes from improving yourself, challenging yourself, and letting the outside results reflect that progress.

HOCH HECH! ENDUT!

1. Monaco: What's Yours is Mine … for speedruns at least; It's longevity for me is mostly due to the multiplayer community. I really like speedrunning in a group more than solo (solo with active discussion with other runners is also more fun than solo w/ no other runners).

2.My favorite game... Roller Coaster Tycoon or Majesty:Fantasy Kingdom Sim... with other RTS games and City Managers as runners-up... I would say that my favorite 2 are kind of outliers in their genre. RCT I like because it very naturally encourages you to make your own fun … if you just wanted to beat the game it wouldn't be too amazing, but almost every level has some pre-built setpieces, which makes it into a kind of competition between you and Chris Sawyer (the developer) … you haven't REALLY beaten a level until you've built something more creative than him. It's the reason I go against the normal popular consensus and like RCT1 > RCT2 … too many flat sandbox levels takes away that "compete with developer" feeling. Majesty is a very fun kind of godsim with high charather independence (think dwarf fortress or rimworld when you don't give commands and let large communities do their own thing) … As a speedrun it is kind of like playing an entirely new game since you try as hard as possible to play it as an RTS even though the game limits "unit commands" only to the indirect bounty system that heroes have a choice to follow or not follow.

3 No. Someone crunched the numbers for Monaco:What's Yours is Mine, and it turns out that my cumulative ILs were the 4th highest in the community. But I feel like in terms of skill I am more like 8-11 - I feel like my strength there is patience and being able to repeat the same line on a restart (my reactability and creative on the fly decisions are quite low though)

Komrade, I'm thinking you can be more versatile and maybe elaborate more on Castlevania. Don't be Castlevanilla about it.

Ok, here's my answers.

1. Chess is the longest game I've played when my parents showed me the game. I started in 1989. It requires more than cookie cutting and/or memorization to win. It doesn't fall into speedrunning so for this forum's sake that's Goldeneye 64 would be the next longest. Both games have their fun and challenging value.

2. Super Smash Brothers Melee is my favorite game though I'm no God at it. I feel it's not as complex as Chess yet harder to master in multiplayer than Goldeneye 64. From my experience SSBM requires more imputs and knowledge than GE.

3. I'm very competent at games yet have only set two extremely hard World Records in Goldeneye 64. Since I haven't made many public appearance my legacy risks turning into an odyssey. I have a reputation locally of being a strong gamer. I play here in Washington at GE, SSBM, and Chess mostly. Since I spend more time with people they like my practical playstyle. They feel more comfortable to play me when I'm not trying to win all the time. ;)

Thanks for the comments. It helps me keep up with what's going on these days. I'm a 90's kid obviously.

1. I've spent the most time on FFT, being heavily involved in its romhacking community (both in playing people's mods and making one large project myself); though I have no desire to speedrun it. Having an excellent AI for its time period and good base mechanics makes it a good base game for romhacking, but I personally couldn't get into speedrunning a game that has as much downtime and rng as any jrpg/srpg. For speedgames, I've spent the most time on Super Lumi Live. Being able to build a game's community from the ground up has been a very rewarding experience. And its physics, level design, and variety of categories makes it a solid choice for speedrunning.

2. Hard to pick an all time favorite, but going to mention another game I didn't list above - N++. Physics and mechanics are by far the best in any game like it, and the amount of content is absolutely absurd.

3. There are a lot more factors involved in determining who is the best than who has a better pb in one category. For example, I hold WR for Super Lumi Live 100%, but there's a few people in the community who are WAY better than me at IL's. I'm not going to call myself the better player when Butcherberries is FAR better than me at IL's (and he'd probably say I'm more consistent, which is more of an advantage for longer categories). Not to mention, in a game that's more hotly contested than anything I had ever run, anyone can pb at any point and the current WR for those games is essentially arbitrary.

1: Probably age of empires 2, but I have no interest in speedrunning it.

2: for speedruns, I'm only really interested personally in games where you do still kind of experience something like intended gameplay quickly, only thing I've run so far is killing floor 2.

3: definitely not, especially in killing floor 2. It's got RNG, different perks with wildly different playstyle, and different settings that affect viability of different styles.

I'm certainly the most prolific current runner, and I'm trying to be the best at my favorite settings, but functionally that's just the same as just wanting to improve since there's not a "perfect" time for anything yet and there's no real way to establish a practical "floor" time due to RNG.

1. It is tough knowing which game I have spent playing the longest. Outside of TASing, it is probably Sonic Adventure 2, but I have also spent a long time playing Mario & Luigi: Dream Team. If we include TASing, it would definitely be SA2, but I have also TASed Donkey Kong Country 2 GBA version a lot. I'll have to place SA2 as the longest. It is a challenging game with an extremely high skill ceiling.

2. Mario & Luigi: Dream Team is my favourite game to speedrun. I think SA2 is a better speedgame, but I enjoy MLDT the most. A lack of free time and motivation to speedrun the game however makes me avoid the run, however had I had both I would definitely run it more. I enjoy the glitches and the glitchless parts and, even in Easy Mode, some of the bosses are very challenging thanks to the glitches.

3. Taking Mario & Luigi: Dream Team as an example: I currently have the world record, about 30 minutes faster than Snoion's time, who is second place. However I consider Snoion to be better at the game than I am. Two skips were discovered since his run, which is largely why I got world record. I am very confident I can beat Snoion's WR without using more skips than he did, however in my attempts at doing so I took more attempts than he did to get kind of close-ish. Then I (accidentally!) discovered a major skip saving about 35 minutes (the other skip saves 5 minutes), so I ended up getting an easy world record thanks to the skip. He could definitely get world record back relatively quickly if he so wished. Getting world record does not make you the best.