Hey all. Thought it'd be fun idea if we all shared the first runs we ever submitted to the site. Feel free to link your run and even talk about what you did in it or how you improved. I'll start. Hopefully more people join.

https://www.speedrun.com/skylanders_swap_force/run/m35rj56y
This is an IL run of the first level in Skylanders: Swap Force, my beloved childhood game that I've been frequently speedrunning since December 2019. At the time, the Wii categories were empty, save for two runs of the same IL. I was able to beat both by using the fastest character in the game.
In August 2020, Kory Skip was discovered, skipping one enemy fight sequence in the level. Since then, I've improved the IL by 41 seconds with the use of this skip, more optimized movement, and faster enemy fights.

I really like the idea.
i pretty long only lurked on the site, until i found the game i was mostly playing normally.

Hearts of Iron 4.
the run was pretty unoptimised at that time and used manual justification directly at the start.
I had pretty good game knowledge and did the first rerouting: Rushing Focus to be at war with a major to be able to declare wars faster.
that was a timesave of good 60 days IGT (which are equivalent to around 3-4 minutes RTA)
https://www.speedrun.com/hoi4/run/zn89ek7z 15 min RTA

Since then we have a split beetween IGT and RTA because we have lagproblems with RTA and pausing isnt a cost with IGT.
https://www.speedrun.com/hoi4/run/y4wro5qm this is my best RTA run (doesnt have a slow set game speed or pausing)
which has the ideal IGT of the RTA strategy but isnt record despite of it. ~4min RTA
https://www.speedrun.com/hoi4/run/zgxj100m this is my perfected IGT run. With setup strategies which allow for earlier war it can beat the old strategy IGT but not RTA

Love the idea, so I'll contribute for sure.

https://www.speedrun.com/rf/run/yvjkjjey
Any% run of Rune Factory 1 over two years ago, hour and ten minutes long. 4th place at the time, just a month before any of the new strats were found, and it originally had been even taken out by a server rollback. My original speedgame*, though I've since drifted from it a bit in favor of running various games.

Before what is effectively credits warping was found a few months back, I had the WR at 19:48, so I definitely improved a lot. We used to play through the first dungeon as normal, half of the second, and then clip into the end of the game, whereas now we simply get infinite money, gear up and then head to the end of the game.

It's the shortest run in the series for a reason.

(*Sword Master on the NES was my true original speedgame, but I've never recorded a run for it.)

First run we submitted to the site, or the oldest run we've submitted to the site? Because they're not the same for me. Guess I'll just post both?

I joined the site when I noticed that Foxbot had been added—I'd been grinding my times on the NG leaderboards since it was released there a year earlier. So on my first day, I submitted 5 IL runs, starting with this run of 1-3 in 38.20 seconds. Over the succeeding months, I improved by 0.55 seconds through better timing on the wall jumps, and just yesterday @MageismMageism unveiled a new trick for entering the cave that shaves an additional .3-.4 seconds, so now my time's down to 37.31. So right now, my first submitted category is also my most recent!

There's another, harder trick that hasn't been used successfully in any recorded run that might make a sub 37 second run possible.

My oldest run on the site is in Shelled Shinobi, which I was unable to get added to the site back in August. That was the game that got me to actually start recording my runs, as it didn't have a leaderboard on NG. @CrayonateeCrayonatee and some others have come up with some crazy improvements over what I did, so I'll go back to that some time... Though I kind of like how old my run is compared to the rest of the leaderboard!

Don't get to experience that elsewhere, yet.

my first run 5 Aug 2017 ran this because of the alpharad video of the demo of this game

https://www.speedrun.com/waveland/run/mek9le0m

(note that i didnt even use the main mechanic of the game)

https://www.speedrun.com/robloxsr4/run/zp0qovgm
i haven';t changed in 3 years

My first speedrun to the site has been lost to time (and a deleted alt)
My first speedrun ever has no video
My first speedrun with video is this:

https://www.speedrun.com/xvs/run/yjl9g8nz

I like Xevious.

@11 You've just reminded me why my earliest vods are missing, cause of camera pointed at screen lol

My oldest run is on the hardest challenge in Spider-Man 2000, the Peter Parker Challenge, which involves running the game on the hardest difficulty while using a suit that actually restricts the amount of web cartridges you can carry to just 2 (which is really low):

• My first ever submitted run: https://www.speedrun.com/sm2000/run/me8egr8m
• My latest run on the same category: https://www.speedrun.com/sm2000/run/zq3j80ry

Since that first run, I managed to improve my movement quite a bit, while also learning how to do some glitches more consistently. Given that my newest run in that category is already 2 years old, I could probably beat it again now, since I now know a lot more about the game and found more consistent setups.

Originally posted by Komrade
@11 You've just reminded me why my earliest vods are missing, cause of camera pointed at screen lol

Points camera at TV playing a TAS I made
I agree!

Try playing a console game TAS on the original hardware I dare you

I was a sonic runner back then.

@11 not a fan of showing too much personal info, which is why I've spent so much on capture cards and other software.

Also my first recorded speedrun is https://www.speedrun.com/smo/run/zp01klrm . I did use a camera for my first few runs prior to getting a capture card.
Also, unless you count MKWii time trials as a small child, my first ever speedrun was a 2:20.50 or something around that time which I timed with my phone timer at a sleepover with some friends. Followed this tutorial while playing:

@11 You could record a TAS and just play the video on your TV.

The 1st speedrun i've ever submitted to the site was a speedrun of Ada's Story Mode on Resident Evil 4! Pretty bad it was lol! https://www.speedrun.com/re4console/run/wzpvrxxz

The game that got me interested in speedrunning in the first place:

This is one of the oldest recording of me speedrunning a game, i think i was 3rd or 4th on it too, pretty amazed lol

Originally posted by Pear
@11 You could record a TAS and just play the video on your TV.