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Comment by pattle | Hacker News Reader

If anyone is interested in speed runs I really recommend this YouTube channel

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtUbO6rBht0daVIOGML3c8w

Thy're a series of videos on how world records have been lowered over time on various games. It's fascinating watching particularity the one on Super Mario 64

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7ePi38LnrA&t=16s

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Did you ever see this one?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpk2tdsPh0A

This guy literally has a PhD in SM64. It's insanely complicated, and surprisingly lucid.

This video is legendary. It's like sitting in on a university course on the technical details of the physics and programming in Mario 64.

I tend to skip around videos.

When it went from "exploit this glitch" to a graph of "registering p-q alignment", I knew I would have to slow down and watch the entire thing.

Boy am I glad I did.

Ditto! pannenkoek2012 is operating at a level that every hacker should aspire to. Piecing together that solution for that star in 0.5 A presses is a thing of beauty.

See also his four part series (course, really) on wall, ceiling, and floor interactions:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnU7DJXiMAQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9fUV7uA2_s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1kbABTyeo8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRCjVLqjST4

It's amazing how engrossing they are.

I wonder how often he has to deal with "Dr. Mario" jokes.

I just watched this entirely for the first time. It's incredible that someone would deconstruct a video game so completely just to avoid pressing the A button. Makes me wonder how many other things in the world are possible with the right information and determination.

I just wanna second this and say that I too love the Summoning Salt speedrun videos. They're like mini-documentaries.

If you actually play through any of these games you really start to appreciate just how insane some of these times are.

Since we’re talking about Super Mario Bros, his video on level 4-2 is really interesting: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i1AHCaokqhg

He also streams, usually MTPO runs. Had the good fortune to be present for a WR not too long ago which was pretty exciting.

Love the SummoningSalt vids and second the recommendation. I just wish there was more as they are so interesting!

There's a guy on YouTube & Twitch, who posts N64 Goldeneye speedrunning breakdowns at the start of each month. Very specific niche but oddly interesting! RWhiteGoose is his username.

I love RWhiteGoose and the GoldenEye speedrun community generally. There's a core group of 50 or so people who've spent literally man-decades optimizing that game. If you haven't seen his "speedlore" series on YouTube I recommend it, he goes through the history of optimizations of a particular level. There are many parallels with the experience of optimizing software systems and the cycle of breakthrough and consolidation we go through there.

I am not a speedrunner and I don't really follow any speedrunning community, but this takes me back to 1998 doing the Facility in time for the Invincibility cheat. If I still remember it 20 years later, I must have done it a few times.

Yes Goldeneye made amateur speedrunners of most people who played, as you had to get times to get cheats. You'd be amazed to see the fastest runs on Facility now. One particularly amazing thing is that the time for the invincibility cheat is now possible not only on 00 Agent mode (where in fact it's considered easy), but on so-called "Dark LTK" mode, where one injury kills Bond and all enemies have max stats.

Apollo Legend [0] and EZScape [1] are two good channels to consider after binging SummoningSalt. SethBling's [2] Mario hacks should appeal to the HN crowd, too.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5t8u4kpE0WvLxkPWIp8n-g/ [1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIyZiiHXIH7KkqfaDvBmG-Q [2] https://www.youtube.com/user/sethbling/

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