Hello all. Im brand new to the website but have been playing video games since my childhood back in the early 80’s. I recently picked up the Switch and Mario Odyssey and am enjoying it with my 7 year old son. A few YouTube videos later have lead me here. Speed running is a very interesting idea with roots all the way back to the the original Super Mario Bros on the NES.
I was watching the latest 100% leader’s (Hazeruin) YouTube video and noticed in his first video at 1:15:12 he was in Snow Kingdom and groundpounded himself through a wall thereby allowing him to bypass the 4 individual moons at each end of the 4 hallways and let him directly enter the bouncing race. Who knows how much time that cut off.
Taking advantage of cheats/bugs/exploits which allow one to bypass legitimate content should be against the rules. But the rules say nothing about it, and the community appears to me, after browsing these forums for a day, to be encouraging this type of dishonest gameplay. Please tell me I’m wrong.
I love the concept of speedruns but cannot condone or support a cheaters club.
The technique you're talking about is called a Roll Cancel Clip. It is explained how it works at 12:01 in this video.
This is not cheating because it is possible to be performed by anyone playing the game and therefore does not give any runner an unfair advantage.
Some explanatory attempts: A GLITCH is usually considered a game mechanic that is in the game but not intended to be in the game, and that can lead to unintended results (e.g. backwards long jumps or roll cancel clipping). It is allowed in most speedrunning categories, however there are some exceptions that ban either some or most glitches. SMO, for example, has an "All Story Moons" category that is actually World Peace without clips. An EXPLOIT is when you get an unintended result from a game mechanic that is intended to be in the game, for example skipping the cave on the moon by executing a specific jump combo. Speedrunning usually doesn't ban exploits, unless maybe if they change the game experience by too much like in Stronghold Crusader. A FEATURE is a game mechanic that is intended to be in the game and will yield an intended result. Usually features are allowed outside of challenge categories like "low captures", but there are some rare exceptions like Dark and Darker Side banning duplicate moons because some runners might have found it a bit dull to replace 10-40 normal moons with just shop items. A CHEAT (CODE) is a game mechanic that is intended to exist, but meant by the developers as a cheat. Those are usually banned in speedrunning (note: Amiibos are not in this category). A HACK or MOD (or sometimes "cheat") is a change to the game from outside and is usually banned as it is usually not competitive. Correct me where I'm wrong and I will edit this.
It seems that you don't yet understand that high-level speedrunning isn't an attempt to replay a video game with a challenge, but rather an optimization problem where the runners will use anything and everything they have to solve it, including unintended mechanics and glitches. It reduces the game from a video game for entertainment to an problem to solve as optimally as possible, which is something many people understandably don't get at first. If you don't want to run the game that way, that's always fine, but know that these things are completely legal in the speedrun because these exploits and glitches exist within the game and aren't accessed using some outside, unintended cheating device, and therefore should not be banned.
This is exactly the reason for categories such as Glitchless, which this game doesn't have a leaderboard for, but many other games do. This game probably just doesn't have enough people who would want to run a glitchless category competitively. But do realize that even in such a category, runners will use and abuse everything within the ruleset to go as fast as possible, whether their actions are considered intended play or not.
Super Mario Odyssey barely scratches the surface with how much speedrunners will break games to go faster. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is an example of a game with a huge variety of glitches at the disposal of runners. Speedruns of that game are so broken to the point where the original game isn't even recognizable anymore in a speedrun with so many things being done out of order and in unintended ways in many of its categories (Any% wrong warps from the first dungeon to the end of the game, the category that bans wrong warps manipulates the inventory to have the items required for the end of the game to start, and the category that bans both of those glitches skips all but two (and a half) dungeons)
What I don’t understand is that if you don’t condone “cheating”, why you support Super Mario Bros. speedrunning, since the Any% run of the game has quite a few glitches.
In the end Any% is generally referred to as "Beating the game as fast as possible" so if it helps you beat the game as fast as possible and isn't banned in the rules then you should be able to use that maneuver.
I can see why people think glitches are bad for speedruns at first and they can absolutely destroy a speedgame but that's why a lot of games have glitchless categories. Glitches are accepted because whether they are intentional or not, they are in the code of the game and are possible within normal play.
Some glitches can be banned from any% but there is almost always a reason that makes it unfair or hard to access. In this game first moon skip is banned because in order to do that a player would need to factory reset their console in order to get to the 1.0.0 version the glitch is exclusive too.
As a side note it seems most people consider the clips to be glitches but at least from my point of view I would consider it an exploit. Clips were never intended but you get them with intended game mechanics (somewhat since roll cancelling is an exploit used). Glitches take advantage of the game's code for unintended results while exploits use intended game mechanics for unintended results.
Thank you everybody for the detailed feedback. You’ve given me quite a bit to think about as I learn more and become more familiar with speed gaming as a thing.
