Hi there,
I'm searching for Speedruns, which make heavy use of audio cues. Currently I'm working on a scientific paper about Sound in Speedruns, for which i need a lot of examples how sound is used in Speedruns. I've found a few games on my own, but maybe you guys can help me out on this. I appreciate every hint and thank you very much in advance.
Thanks for your hint, Already thought about blindfolded runs, but there should be runs out there, which also make heavy use of audio cues outside of bilndfolded runs. Isn't there a audio cue based Skip in Majoras Mask? I'd still need some exmaples outside of blindfolded runs.
I know Portal 2 has a lot of audio queues at the end of each level, if you step into the end elevator at the right audio queue it will end the level slightly faster and fade out sooner than if you did it earlier/later. Worth looking into I suppose, but I wouldn't say the game is dependent on audio queues, just one part of it.
Geometry dash for me. This is a rhythmic game of course, but the most important audio queue are when switching level. If you switch level too fast, you can just softlock the game and have to restart your run. So basicly, i spam b, and when i heard the sounds i instantly switch level, wait for about .4 sec and start the next level
The ACE run of Zelda 1 is audio cue based. After spawning enough enemies you overflow the game’s sprite counter by spawning a staircase. The trick is to cause the overflow on a very specific part of the overworld music. The resulting overflow causes you to write your file names as code and it warps you to Zelda.
Miss the audio cue and you either warp back to the start of the map or you soft lock the game. The desired audio cue appears only twice in the overworld music cycle and one lasts a few frames longer than the other. But both are a small window.
Speaking of LoZ, Ocarina of Time has owl skips that require a bunch of frame perfect inputs in a row every fourth frame. I've heard that people set metronomes at 300 bpm to get the timing right. It's not exactly audio cues, but it may be worth looking into.
I know there are a lot of distinctive sound effects for collecting certain items- like the rings in Sonic or coins in Mario games- in collection runs, when you're collecting a bunch of stuff in rapid succession, it's usually easier to count by listening to the audio cues rather than count by watching the screen. When you've played it over and over, you almost get this expectation of what you are going to hear and the duration of the sound, and if you missed one, the sound feels almost feels like it is cut off early. It's a lot easier (at least for me) to count stuff by listening for expected audio cues (of, say, 8 successive coin grabs) than to count by watching the screen.
In general, I think you'll be better off looking into the more popular, extremely efficient runs. Those will be the ones where people will have found every little possible advantage, and unless they are fairly obvious, audio cues are usually one of the later stages of finding time-saving strategies for runs.
For instance, check out the Any% tactics for taking on Botwoon (a minor boss in Super Metroid): http://deanyd.net/sm/index.php?title=Botwoon
=EDIT= "Shades of Doom" is a 2001 FPS with no visuals. I think it was made for the visually impaired or as an experimental design? Something like that. Anyway, you have to use sounds like footsteps and echoes to play. Also maybe possibly useful?
Thank you all very much, those are very good hints for my research. Do you maybe even know about games, in which a glitch/glitches cause the sound to shut off or glitch?
Well in skyrim if you quick save and then quick load in the middle of a dialogue, the dialogue gets skipped. So people generally try to press those button just as the dialogue starts. Audio as well as subtitle que. They may also bump into the person to skip the dialogue. It happens way too often.
[Edit] Reference video: You can start at the 34 minutes mark
I thought of a couple more:
The final boss in Drakengard 3 basically requires sound. If you don't have a sense of rhythm, you cannot beat this boss.
And in Mother 3, you can get fighting combos by hitting the attack button in rhythm with the theme song played when fighting the enemy. There are even items in the game that make the rhythm more obvious, allowing you to hear the enemy's "heartbeat" when an enemy falls asleep.