Hey. I'm Mara and I wouldn't call myself a proper speedrunner, at least yet. I've played video games for a long time just like pretty much everyone on this site. For me, I've spent a lot of time playing several NES games as well as few classic PC FPS games such as Counter-Strike and Unreal Tournament. I also click circles in rhythm really fast with an extremely masochist playstyle.
I've done two speedruns so far. About a year ago, me and three others did L4D2 speedrun and back then it got a really solid time despite using the most recent version of the game with least tricks. To be fair, that time is still third if filtering the versions. It's an interesting game to speedrun since RNG is pretty high in that game and you have to make pretty heavy decisions on the way.
Another RNG heavy speedrun I just finished yesterday (still pending) is Counter-Strike: Condition Zero's Tour of Duty. It's bunch of levels against bots and you have to complete few objectives on the way. It seems pretty hard to get a good time on it since sometimes enemies likes to split up and it's up to your ally bots to hopefully find the remaining enemies while you are busy destroying everyone at the other side of the map. I still got really solid time with it, one minute off from world record. I'd still be super happy with just under 45 minutes in general. I really like that game despite all the flaws it has.
There are also some games that I might be speedrunning in the future. My ultimate goal is to speedrun Super C and get a decent time. I have beaten that game hundreds of times over the years and a lot of times they are deathless too. However, I need to get used to run nonstop to the right and shoot enemies downwards instead of stopping for few frames and taking down all enemies behind. It's a huge obstacle to me and I am not entirely sure how to get around it yet. I still have to do it at some point, as you may see from my avatar, this game is pretty much my soul at this point. I would also like to give Contra: Hard Corps a shot, but I have to learn Fang's weapon mechanics as I have always used Ryan (because you know, Ryan has classic Contra weapons) instead. Last time I played it, I was able to do 1 death run while taking Lab/Fight route - I still need to beat the game without deaths. I am not clearly as familiar with Hard Corps as I am with Super C, but that game is just badass and it's hard to just ignore it.
Other random games that I might give a shot later are DuckTales, SSX3 (don't have hardware for that) and one of my favorite games, MDK.
Oof, seems like I wrote a lot of things here. Uhhh... 25 years, coffee is good and I like to post in the forums. Yeah, that seems pretty solid introduction to me.
I play the US version, lifebars don't fit Contra too well in my opinion. Lifebars might be useful for speedrunning though.
The game is near unbeatable without a life bar (or infinite lives) for me. Good luck on the runs!
