Speedrun games that deserve more attention
4 years ago
Norfolk, England

Hello thar!

Don't think this kinda thread exists atm, so I thought it might be useful for the smaller speedrunning communities.

What games out there do you think deserve more speedrunning attention than they currently have and why?

Is there lots of glitch hunting potential? Is the run not very optimised and could use new fresh insight? Are you the only runner currently and feeling very lonely? All of the above??

Tell people about your game here and see who might be interested! :D

RaggedDan, JUNØ117 and 2 others like this
New Jersey, USA

Kirby: The Unofficial Game

It’s the best Kirby game ever created.

SuperAL1, RetroPacman and 4 others like this
European Union

Got 2 games l'm really passionate about that l'd love to have a new pair of eyes look at:

  1. Operation Thunderstorm (https://www.speedrun.com/mortyr4), crappy old FPS, made on the FEAR engine, making it really broken right off the bat. l still have 2 levels that aren't horribly broken that l'd love to have someone break, as l'm out of ideas personally lol. The game is ~$5 on steam iirc, or you can get the 1.0 version (faster, but only in polish, so have fun in menus) for free from the game's resources page

  2. Yo! Noid 2 (https://www.speedrun.com/yn2goay), free 3D platformer that actually has a lot of depth to it, despite often being disregarded as a meme game. It's fairly short, only consisting of an intro, 3 stages in a main hub and the final level with a boss, but what's there is honestly very satisfying to play. The movement is good, tricks are plentiful, and there's plenty of characters/categories to choose from, so you're really not starving for choice. l'm currently the only active runner in what once was a fairly active community and l'd love to have someone else running the game

Belgium

Half-life 2: Lost coast

https://www.speedrun.com/hl2lc it used to be pretty active but now it' really dead except for me and Frupee77. reckon some time could be saved to new strats. wouldn't recommend any% and old engine tho since they are really boring.

Edited by the author 4 years ago
Germany

NyxQuest: Kindred Spirits

https://www.speedrun.com/NyxQuest_Kindred_Spirits A 2.5D Puzzle Platformer originally released for WiiWare. There currently is only me as active Runner. I recently found a bunch of new Skips that cut out a few of the more boring parts. Haven't been able to get them with an otherwise optimised Time. With you beeing able to use the PC Mouse (or other Pointer for the given Platform) to Manipulate Objects and Jump of them multiple times, there's probably a lot more to be found.

Edited by the author 4 years ago
Cumbria, England

Mercs Genesis, Original Mode https://www.speedrun.com/Mercs_Genesis#Original

Top-down run and gun game from the golden age of Sega and Capcom. Original takes the stages from Arcade (which is the simpler mode to get into for newcomers, for sure) and remixes them/lengthens the game, incorporating strategy elements with pickups and routing which has been fully optimised by me and Fletchr. Boss fights after each mission have technical difficulty in their execution, and the game's RNG places a premium on movement skill/reaction. This mode gives you 5 mercs to use but we stick with Rifle as the fastest, breaking out Laser for a couple of bosses. I created a Discord group for the game and I'm currently compiling a tutorial including safe strats/routes for beginners, so it's reasonably accessible.

ShadowFlare7799 and IcKY like this
Canada

OMORI, https://www.speedrun.com/omori

An Earthbound-like RPG. Has RNG a lot in the run but is a pretty fun speedgame. Currently, only the Demo is released but the Full Game is supposed to come out by the end of this year. If you like running RPGs with RNG I would recommend taking a look into this game. I'm sort of the only active runner right now so having more people in the community would be cool. Expecting the full release of the game to be a fun speedrun!

starsmiley likes this
Norfolk, England

Realise I didn't add my own game to this yet lmao, Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker https://www.speedrun.com/dqmj/full_game

Dragon Quest game meets Pokemons, fun DS game to play casually, pretty brutal to speedrun, currently 3-4hrs long.

The run isn't too well optimised at the moment due to a lack of runs and community, there are currently 0 glitches known or used in the game (so if any glitch hunters wanna have fun, go nuts). I'm also currently the only runner so I'd like a friend :c I've made a guide to help new runners get started, so hopefully that makes things easier for anyone interested c:

Oklahoma, USA

Super Mario Bros Crossover https://www.speedrun.com/smbc

This is a game that lets you play through 3 Mario Games (SMB, Lost Levels, and SMB Special) as 1 of 10 characters (Mario, Luigi, Link, Samus Aran, Bill Rizer, Simon Belmont, Ryu Hayabusa, Mega man, Bass and Sophia III.)

Reasons to run -Short run, with longer categories taking about half an hour, with the more ran categories all being less than 10 minutes. -All the crossover characters feel extremely accurate to their source game. -Still quite a bit of room for optimization, especially for Warpless since it isn't as popular as Warps. -Welcoming community. -Free. -Easy to stream. -Good beginner speedgame. -Quite a bit of variety between the characters.

Downsides -Although the crossover characters control and feel perfect, Mario and Luigi feel quite bad to control oddly enough. -Although the community is welcoming, it's small size means competition isn't quite as fierce. -Whether or not short runs or long runs are better is a matter of personal preference. As previously mentioned this game is good for those who like smaller runs, but if you prefer larger games than this isn't for you..

I know it seems counter-intuitive to list the downsides in a thread like this, but I may as well be fair and list them anyways.

Rhode Island, USA

Literally any game I've speedrun (except for v6 which is extremely optimized) falls under what you're looking for. All of which are relatively inexpensive on Steam (under $20).

Super Lumi Live - only 26 people have beaten this game/5 have done full game speedruns. There is tons of potential for optimization and strat finding, particularly for longer categories where the WR's have more mistakes. It is a challenging 2d platformer with simple controls (arrows and jump), but is difficult to master. Length is perfect, with a mix of both short and longer categories (any% about 20 minutes, 100% just under 2 hours, many medium length categories that are close to 1 hour. If IL running is more your thing, it's a perfect game for that too - 60 levels with both any%/ace (deathless 100%) categories and a variety of mechanics in each.

N++ - This game isn't super obscure, but gets nowhere near the attention it deserves. Amount of content in the game is MASSIVE (800+ hours to 100% it), with tons of variety in its levels. Because of this, categories are level sets of sane lengths (ranging from about 13 minutes to about 6 1/2 hours). Most categories have less than 5 runners.

Octahedron - another really obscure game, would suit people who enjoy movement tech heavy runs that are challenging but not super hard. Most categories are in the 1-2 hour range.

WoofMasterArf likes this
North Carolina, USA

2 games for me, Buffy The Vampire Slayer on Original XBOX and The Ant Bully(PS2,GC,PC,Wii). I'm the only runner for both games and i'm honestly very lonely and I wish I could see more people speedrun them. Especially Buffy The Vampire Slayer. I've been trying to find more people to speedrun it but had no luck :'( I really want to see what kind of strats others can come up with and I also want to see if anyone can find any glitches or skips.

Estonia

I would say Rollcage and Rollcage Stage 2, as I seem to be the only person who really plays them. The 2 racing games are pretty difficult to get a handle on but very rewarding once you do.

Rollcage Stage 2 especially has many different modes from hunting to getting the best lap times to playing through the campaign to super monkey ball-ish levels where you want to get through an obstacle course into finish as fast as you can.

Bulgaria

I mean, everybody is gonna post their main game, since being involved will always make you see the value in a speedgame. Doesn't make it untrue, but at the same time maybe defeats the point of asking such a question.

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night https://www.speedrun.com/sotn has had tons of exposure at marathons, and yet has never been very active as a speedgame. Very movement focused with intense and flashy segments, including a couple of cool and execution-heavy, though consistent, skips. The public likely has a few misconceptions about the game that I can clear up. SOTN is not a mashing game, shield dashing speed really doesn't matter. In fact doing it with a low frequency is more consistent and almost always faster. We have many resources for new and experienced players and a helpful community.

https://www.speedrun.com/Legacy_of_Kain_Defiance developed into a very cool and quick speedgame. More peoople should give it a shot.

https://www.speedrun.com/Castlevania_Lords_Of_Shadow I would love to see experienced action game runners dig their hands into this. Lots if precise tricks and skips.

Edited by the author 4 years ago
WoofMasterArf likes this
Moray, Scotland
Treya
She/Her, They/Them
4 years ago

Jazz Jackrabbit 2 -cough-. I know Epic has a dubious reputation these days, but the game is way back from 1998. It's got fun movement and a lot of tech that players like in popular platforming speedgames, yet it's not the hardest thing to pick up and learn. I'd love to have more competition in other categories.

To a lesser extent, Freedom Planet. It's a more popular speedgame but I still feel like it's underappreciated, especially Carol and Milla. But I can't blame a lot of runners for dropping the game, it's one of the hardest to master and can be very punishing. But when everything goes well, it's really stylish.

Then there's games I'm considering picking up that are even less appreciated. Like they could do with a lot of routing/glitch-hunting.

United States

Could always start at the games that have one runner, and see if you like the game. Can you believe there are over 600 games with a page that don't have any runs? If you see something that can be improved, and you like the game, improve it.

https://www.speedrun.com/games#sorting=playerCount&page=34&direction_sort=off

Victoria, Australia
discranola
He/Him, It/Its
4 years ago

The Spark The Electric Jester series for sure, especially the second game. https://www.speedrun.com/spark1 https://www.speedrun.com/spark2 A well-known speed bug was made official and consistent through a patch and the developer supports speedruns.

Speedrunning aside the games are very high-quality for being made by one guy (apart from the music which is also fantastic) and I would highly recommend them, especially since the two of them bundled together on Steam is really cheap! They're also very fun to play casually and I'm sure I'll continue playing them for months to come.

Edited by the author 3 years ago
Poland

Mad tracks: https://www.speedrun.com/Mad_Tracks

Its a speed racing game it has skips some glitches i found also autosplitter (on website ) for live split. Almost no one is speedrunning it and it is bad beacuse i have no competition

Austria

Reviving this thread, bc I think it's an awesome idea to dig out some gems.

The Golden Sun games for GBA ( https://www.speedrun.com/gsun & https://www.speedrun.com/gsuntla ) I guess are not too unknown, but not many ppl run it. It's a long run and deep mechanics. I'm too lazy to learn that stuff, but I enjoy watching it.

One of my fav games ever - Star Control 2 - is actually speedrunable ( https://www.speedrun.com/star_control_ii_the_ur-quan_masters ). Back in the days of no internet it was a pain to complete the game for the first time. With the power of knowledge and a bit of melee skill it is beatable in under an hour. One of my to-do-speedrun-games.

And last but not least Zeliard! https://www.speedrun.com/zeliard Zeliard is an old action-RPG platforming game. I saw some runs on youtube, but some are segmented, others perry unconsistent with rules. I checked here, found that there was no page for the game and created it with my first speed run. :-)

Edited by the author 4 years ago
Kentucky, USA

I kind of always thought the Future Tactics speedrun is a cool idea- someone did it on twitch, but it's not here or anywhere else. I think it could pique interest for people who like things like Valkyria chronicles (gameplay, not visuals) https://www.twitch.tv/makar4eva/video/47099704

Russia

Car Simulator 2 Car parking These games are suitable for speedrun because these games are not so difficult to pass and do not require a very powerful device.