Welcome to my videogame page. Over the last decade, I've done a lot of crazy gaming-related stuff; I'll chronicle it all here, organized by game. I've also captured many gameplay movies, and describe them on this page; most of them can now be found online, and I'll link to them. In particular, I owe a lot to the Speed Demos Archive and to sdkess' site vortiginous.com for hosting movies.
Important: To watch most of the movies on this page, you should have the latest version of the DivX codec. You can download it at www.divx.com.
September 5, 2005
Though my updating of this page has slacked off, my videogame playing hasn't. :) I revisited everything on the page, updating links and background info. I also added all my accomplishments of the last few years, including: Amplitude, Ikaruga, Iridion 2, Katamari Damacy, Metal Gear Solid 2, Ninja
Gaiden, Prince of Persia, Prince of Persia 2, Timesplitters 2, WarioWare,
Inc., and Zelda: Four Swords. Plus, there's a list of all the games I've ever
won. Perhaps most importantly, almost all of my movies are now linked and
downloadable from various sites! Enjoy!
February 26, 2004
It's been a long time! I work for a living now, and my gaming time is significantly reduced, but I haven't been idle, and I've finally decided to bring this page up to date. Added Amplitude and Super Monkey Ball 2. Soon I'll add Metal Gear Solid 2, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, Warioware Inc., and the incredible Ikaruga. Also, updated many of the other entries to reflect the current state of world records. And note that there are now methods to download most of my movies!
July 15, 2002
I've been having a lot of fun with FreQuency, so I've put my scores online.
May 2, 2002
It's been a while since my last update, and unfortunately the movie server I used to use has long since gone down. At the moment I have nowhere to put my movies, so the links have been disabled for now. If you really want one, it may be possible for me to send it via FTP or AIM. E-mail me about it.
I have a few very nice new PPL records, including a 38:42 to 999,999 in PPL 2D Endless, and 84,457 in 2-player 2D Time Trial (captured). I've also added two new games: Pikmin (including some nice Challenge Mode scores) and Dance Dance Revolution.
November 23, 2001
I created a page for all my Super Monkey Ball scores, and have started some (non-serious) competition. What a great game!
Tetris Attack
Tetris Attack is the most incredible puzzle game ever invented! It's my favourite game on any system. I've probably played this game (and Pokemon Puzzle League) over a thousand hours. It's such a brilliant concept, and the strategic possibilites are endless - I still improve every time I play! For a number of years, I was perhaps the best at the world in this game, scorewise. However, I haven't played seriously for a while, and last I checked, Mike Tran ("Abused Rib") had that title. My movies are still great watches, especially if you've played the game.
The main record site for this game is www.tetrisattack.net. It features strategies, score rankings, and movies - including many of mine. It is seldom updated, though, and I disagree with many of the rules. Rankings are not divided based on difficulty mode, making the charts misleading. However, there's a decent community to be found on the forums. Also, KirbMaster runs his own ranking site with a lot of categories, divided in a more logical manner.
~~Movie~~ - 1-P Time Trial: 50,432 (7.4 MB at Vortiginous). Great quality. After trying for far too long, I finally broke the 50,000 barrier in Time Trial. This is very close to the maximum in 1-player Easy mode. I start out with a somewhat mediocre 22,000 after two chains, but make up the difference on the last two!
~~Movie~~ - 2-P Time Trial: 55,586 (7.9 MB at Vortiginous). Great quality. 2-player mode is easier to get high scores on because you can use the full screen. I never took this mode especially seriously, but this is still a really good score.
~~Movie~~ - 99,999 in Endless: 3:52 (15.0 MB at Vortiginous). Great quality. I thought my previous time of maxing out the game's score in 4:15 was insane, but then Kirb, impressively, beat it. But now I have a phenomenal run that actually breaks 4 minutes! This is one record I'm not sure I'll ever touch again. Note that chains higher than 13 don't count for points, so I stop there; however, if you get additional lines ("bonuses") before your 13 chain finishes, they're worth tons of points. You'll see me doing a lot of that.
~~Movie~~ - 99,999 in Endless Normal: 4:11 (16.3 MB at Vortiginous). Great quality. I think it's my best achievement in either this game or PPL. Absolutely everything on this run went right... I literally sat in shock staring at the screen for several minutes after finishing. This is a near-impossible time to get even on EASY! You must see this movie. :)
~~Movie~~ - 99,999 in Endless Hard: 8:43 (30.1 MB at Vortiginous). Great quality. A very good time, I think... but it's the only one of my TA Endless times I believe I could ever improve. At this difficulty level, it's worthwhile to go slowly and plan your chains out before they start.
~~Movie~~ - 99,999 in Level 99 Hard BALL: 31:02 (108 MB at Vortiginous). Great quality. At level 99, Hard difficulty, and with the BALL code active (which means chains/combos don't stop the screen from scrolling), this is the hardest possible difficulty that TA offers... but with great difficulty, I still managed to max out the score! Getting this score required over half an hour of intense concentration; getting distracted for even 5 seconds spells doom. Truly an action-packed movie. Abused Rib has actually accomplished this in much less time - but that's arguably LESS fun. :P
~~Achievement~~ - Very Hard Story Mode: 0 Continues. Ok, this is actually pretty damn easy. So-called "Very Hard" mode is a cakewalk. :)
~~Movie~~ - 22 Chain (3.9 MB at Vortiginous). Ok quality (not DivX). In TA (not PPL), getting a 22 chain in single-player mode is quite difficult, because you need to start from the bottom.
~~Movie~~ - Normal 18 Chain (1.9 MB at Vortiginous). Ok quality (not DivX). A record 18 chain in the faster Normal difficulty mode.
~~Movie~~ - Hard 18 Chain (1.7 MB at Vortiginous). Great quality. An 18 chain on Hard - and very nearly a 19 chain!
Pokemon Puzzle League
This game is basically Tetris Attack for N64, and is also ranked on both of the above sites. However, there are a few differences, the most important of which is that chains over 13 now count for points (and how)! This makes the two very different when playing at a master level.
~~Achievement~~ - 99,999 in 2D Marathon: 3:26. Even though the score no longer stops at 99,999, I taped this to compare with the harder equivalent in TA. 3:26 is pretty good, but I wasn't trying especially hard.
~~Achievement~~ - 999,999 in 2D Marathon: 38'42. Unlike TA, it takes a while to max out the score in PPL! A large part of the challenge is just not dying stupidly before you finish. I did extremely well on this run; my old record was over 50 minutes! To get this score I averaged 3:50 every 100,000, which is extremely fast. Put another way, this required an average of 51k in 19 consecutive Time Trials. Damn. :)
~~Achievement~~ - 999,999 in 3D Marathon: 33'49. Taped, but I doubt I'll capture it. A good time, but my 2D time makes this look pretty bad! :) You can increase your score much faster in 3D mode because of the insane chainage potential.
~~Movie~~ - 1-P 2D Time Trial: 66,196 (7.4 MB at Vortiginous). Good quality (not DivX). An incredible score! For years, this was FAR better than any other 1-player Easy Time Trial score I'd seen. Note how, if your timing is perfect, you can actually use 12 rows of the screen for your chains instead of 11. In 2-player mode, you don't need timing to do this. That is the vital difference between the modes.
~~Movie~~ - 2-P 2D Time Trial: 84,457 (11.6 MB at Vortiginous). Great quality. Faced with some heavy competition at tetrisattack.net, I finally churned out this difficult (former) world record! This was done at speed level 6, which (just barely) gave me the time for 4 full-length, 12-row chains. I'm very happy with this score.
~~Movie~~ - 3D Time Trial: 101,094 (missing?). Great quality. One of my PPL goals was to break 100,000 here, and I finally managed it! This is a "perfect" run - that is, every possible moment is spent on the two chains. Since you tend to get lots of bonuses by accident while your chain executes, improving this record is now dependent only on luck. The first chain in this video is a 49x (which used to be my highest) that was worth over 81,000 points! Note that this is not my high score for this mode.
~~Achievement~~ - 3D Time Trial: 117,441. This is my best score in 3D Easy Time Trial, but I don't have it taped. Getting a high score is a bit random and silly, due to the bonuses; I never took it seriously.
~~Movie~~ - Super Hard Story Mode: 0 Continues (229 MB at Vortiginous). This is insanely difficult. I can beat one S-Hard opponent pretty handily, but getting through all 16 of them in a row is damn tough. I'm not the only one who's managed it, though! Makes for a fun movie.
~~Movie~~ - 23 Chain (3.6 MB at Vortiginous). A 23 Chain is basically the longest possible (non-garbage) chain in the game! To get this, you need to fill all 12 rows, have the random colours nearly perfectly balanced, avoid getting any lines that don't contribute, and get rid of every tile but (at most) 3 in one chain! Hell, you even need to make an effort to prevent combos of 4 tiles from occurring! Insane. 24 is the absolute theoretical maximum, but due to the extreme rarity of having a multiple of 3 of every colour of tile, I doubt this will ever be achieved. (I have gotten a perfect 16 chain on 8 rows in Pokemon Puzzle Challenge for GBC, though...) By now I've done many 23s in both 1-P mode (which is difficult) and 2-P. The one I've made a movie of was done in 2-player mode at speed level 6, so it moves very quickly. Great fun.
~~Achievement~~ - 3D Mode: 64 Chain. This is my last remaining world record, perhaps because nobody cares much about this mode. :) This record will never be maxed; it's very difficult and random getting chains this large. On 11 rows, you generally run out of blocks by the time your chain hits 45-50.
~~Achievement~~ - 3D Mode: 70 Combo. The main challenge is figuring out how to do it; the secondary challenge is being patient enough to set it all up. :)
Ahhh... this is where it all began. I first created the Perfect Dark Elite way back in the year 2000, and ran it by myself for almost a year. It's grown into one of the world's largest game-ranking sites, with a huge number of dedicated members. As you can see from the PDE History page, I was actually the PD champion for a little while, and kept competing for a long time. I eventually quit in frustration over the 1.1-1.2 control issue, and since then I've slowly dropped (far) out of the top 10. However, this game still holds a place in my heart as my first truly hardcore competition.
My times page includes proof pictures for all my times.
Way back when having videos online was a major achievement, I put together a complete set of Agent videos. Even at the time I put them together, they were far from my PRs (I only spent one day doing the entire set). And nowadays they are completely trivialized by other people's videos. However, they're special in that they were the first videogame movies I ever produced. And, way back at the outset of the PDE, many people learned the rudimentary Agent strategies directly from them.
~~Movie~~ - Duel SA 0:06 (1.6 MB at Vortiginous). Awful quality; captured using RealVideo by my friend twotontim. You'll need RealPlayer. Even though a zillion people have this time now, I was the first to prove it was possible by getting it, and my video probably helped innumerable others.
~~Movies~~ - Decent times on all Agent levels (44.2 MB at Vortiginous). Awful quality; captured using RealVideo by my friend twotontim. You'll need RealPlayer. Unless you're an historian, they're not really worth downloading. :)
Pikmin
For a year after this charming, brilliant game was released I played it off and on, competing with the good folks at GameFAQs. The better you get at the game, the more fun it becomes. I've put a lot of time into Challenge Mode, and gotten some very nice scores. I was even mentioned in Nintendo Power's Arena high score list for The Distant Spring! (Unfortunately, I was #2; somebody watched my video, copied the strategies, beat my score by a few points, and sent it in. Ugh.)
TomatoMan put a lot of selfless effort into compiling an actual DVD from the taped runs of various gamers. My Forest of Hope movie is on it. There are details at his site.
~~Achievement~~ - 30 Parts In 9 Days. 9 days is the minimum possible amount of time for getting all 30 parts. I was the first to realize it was achievable, to do it, and to help describe the strategy on the forums. It's not terribly difficult; the main challenge lies in working out a fast routine for each day. Many others have done it by now (including one person who has done it with no Pikmin deaths!). For a while I distributed a (huge) movie of this, but there's no point in doing so any more - especially since there's a very impressive 50-pikmin, 0-death, 9-day movie at SDA.
~~Movie~~ - Challenge Mode - Impact Site 273 (57.6 MB at Vortiginous). Great quality (not DivX). This was the first level I really considered "perfected", by which I mean getting all the enemies and pellets (to the proper colour Onions) in the level with no Pikmin losses. I was the first to do this by several months, but several others eventually got 273. I turned out to be wrong, however. Getting 273 requires 5 hits on the Flint Beetle, and to get another 5-pellet you have to hit it 8 times. I knew this, but didn't consider it feasible on a perfect run. Then TomatoMan actually did it, for a truly perfect 278; there is genuinely no way to improve on his score. Wow!
~~Movie~~ - Challenge Mode - Forest of Hope 569 (100 MB, featured at archive.org). Great quality (not DivX). If you've played this vast level, you may find this hard to believe, but I actually managed a perfect score on it! Every single enemy was killed and captured, and every single pellet returned, all without a single Pikmin lost in battle. It was extremely difficult, but I've done it, and I never have to play this level again. :) For many months, I was the only one with this perfect score.
~~Movie~~ - Challenge Mode - Forest Navel 439 (86.7 MB at Vortiginous). Great quality (not DivX). An extremely difficult score that required a lot of practice and a lot of strategizing. This level requires efficiency above all else, and nobody else had broken 400 for months after I got this. Anything above 422 is crazy hard, and the absolute limit of my strategy is 442. However, I don't intend to play this level again. A perfect score is 482, and I was pretty sure that it was impossible - until half a year later, when Mike Pharvey accomplished that unbelievable feat.
~~Movie~~ - Challenge Mode - Distant Spring 516 (98.6 MB at Vortiginous). Great quality (not DivX). This is a very complex level, with many enemies and pellets scattered all over. A perfect score is probably over 650, but nobody could ever come close to that. When I got this score, no-one else had yet beaten 400. I was ranked 2nd in Nintendo Power's Arena for this score - but the person who beat me (by 4 points) did so only by viewing my movie, which made me rather bitter. That's what happens when I make my strategies public, unfortunately.
~~Movie~~ - Challenge Mode - Final Trial 299 (71.4 MB, featured at archive.org). Great quality (not DivX). This was my first perfect score (and the first ever done). The time constraints for a perfect score on this level are very lax - on this run I finished with a full tick and a half on the clock left! What makes the task very irritating, however, is avoiding losing any Pikmin. The Yellow Wollywog, Burrowing Snagrat, and especially the Beady Long-Legs are all very nasty to kill without losing a single Pikmin. It took quite a number of attempts. Ahlyis was the second to achieve this score (albeit several months later :).
I've been playing DDR for many years, and it's always been a favourite of mine. Somehow, the thrill of showing off one's moves in a crowded arcade never seems to wear off. :) Though I'm definitely no world-class player, I'm pretty good. I've passed all of the hardest Single songs except the Maxes, and the hardest Double songs up to 5th Mix. I've even full-comboed many of them (that means all Perfects and Greats - no missteps at all). You can't really say you've learned a song until you can full-combo it! A nearly complete list of songs that I've full-comboed is here. I've never been able to use a home pad for long before it breaks, so I mostly play in the arcade. And unfortunately, due to convenience and time constraints I don't play regularly any more. But my love of the game is undiminished!
Well, I'm a sucker for music games! Now that I have a PS2, I couldn't resist picking up FreQuency, and I definitely have not been disappointed. FreQuency is a very original - and impossible to describe - music game that is thoroughly addictive and a blast to play. In case anyone cares, I've put all my scores online. Some of them are pretty good, though naturally the true pros have slaughtered them.
Amplitude
FreQuency's fantastic sequel! What I did to this game is extremely unique and fascinating; read on. For a long time after it came out, I didn't put much work into going for scores. I settled for having 4-bar scores on almost all of the first three tiers.
That all changed in mid-2004. I'd had an idea circulating at the back of my head for a while, and I decided to try putting it into practice. It worked better than I could have dreamed. I now have every single WR on the Tier 1-4 songs on Insane, and if I ever lose them I guarantee I can get them back with relatively little effort. How is this possible? I'm actually not that good a player; I don't even have 4 bars on the brutal Tier 5 songs.
The answer is simple: computer-assisted strategy! I'm an accomplished programmer, and Amplitude has a unique score system that is amenable to computer search. You have many choices of routes through a song, some of which score better than others. Also, whenever you start a song, powerups are randomly scattered through it. If you restart the song, though, they remain in the same positions. Thus, you can take several paths through and map out where the most useful powerups are (in terms of scoring).
The positioning of the powerups affect scoring enough that you have to alter your route to take them into account if you want a really high score. But this would be way too hard for any human to do. Plug it into my program, though, and it's a Snap (heh heh). The program spits out the optimal route through the song based on the random powerup configuration I got. All I need to do is read the route, practice it, and get it right once, and I've got a new world record.
Even I didn't anticipate how much I would slaughter the previous world records using this technique. The computer routes were devious, subtle, and far cleverer than anything a human could hope to find. Furthermore, I could (and did) produce videos of all my records - and the routes in these videos are useless to anyone else, since they were tailored to my random powerup configuration! Can you say "unbeatable world records"?
~~Movie~~ - Boom! 6,844 (17.5 MB at Vortiginous). WR.
~~Movie~~ - Cherry Lips 7,122 (17.8 MB at Vortiginous). WR.
~~Movie~~ - Baseline 6,187 (18.6 MB at Vortiginous). WR.
~~Movie~~ - Shades of Blue 12,358 (32.6 MB at Vortiginous). WR. In fact, the highest score anyone's gotten on any song ever. :)
~~Movie~~ - Uptown Saturday Night 8,094 (18.3 MB at Vortiginous). WR.
~~Movie~~ - King of Rock 9,351 (18.7 MB at Vortiginous). WR.
~~Movie~~ - Urban Tumbleweed 7,168 (17.2 MB at Vortiginous). WR.
~~Movie~~ - Dope Nose 7,323 (16.5 MB at Vortiginous). WR.
~~Movie~~ - Everyone Says Hi 10,144 (25.4 MB at Vortiginous). WR.
~~Movie~~ - Super-Sprode 9,911 (17.6 MB at Vortiginous). WR.
~~Movie~~ - Respect 9,080 (17.5 MB at Vortiginous). WR.
~~Movie~~ - M-80 9,394 (17.2 MB at Vortiginous). WR.
~~Movie~~ - What's Going On 9,345 (18.5 MB at Vortiginous). WR.
~~Movie~~ - Rockit 8,728 (23.7 MB at Vortiginous). WR.
~~Movie~~ - Rockstar 7,711 (15.0 MB at Vortiginous). WR.
~~Movie~~ - Cool Baby 9,482 (22.2 MB at Vortiginous). WR.
~~Movie~~ - Kimosabe 10,532 (20.9 MB at Vortiginous). WR.
~~Movie~~ - Nitro Narcosis 9,513 (20.3 MB at Vortiginous). WR.
~~Movie~~ - I Am Hated 10,959 (25.3 MB at Vortiginous). WR. Easily the hardest of all my Amplitude movies; this song is hard to full-combo even when not taking an optimal route.
~~Movie~~ - Push 9,202 (20.0 MB at Vortiginous). WR.
I competed in this excellent game for a short while. To my knowledge, I was the first person to reach the Expert Extra stages, and also to discover and reach the phenomenally difficult Master stages beyond those. I also have it on reliable authority - SMB's level designer (!) - that I was the first person in the world to make it through the Master stages without continuing. I'm proud of this. :)
I sparked the competition for Practice Mode scores, too, but quickly gave this up, since (IMO) most of the records depend far more on luck and persistence than skill. The Super Monkey Ball Elite, an excellent page, keeps track of the top scores in every mode. I was at #1 for the first few months, but my scores are no longer significant.
~~Movie~~ - Passed Master Without Continuing (105 MB at Vortiginous). Great quality. A difficult challenge, which I was the first in the world to do. Months later, others surpassed this mark, passing it without dying! sdkess, the first to accomplish this, has several movies of it at Vortiginous. That's what I get for my indolence. :)
~~Movies~~ - Various level scores (33.4 MB at Vortiginous). For completeness' sake, here are all the SMB score movies I ever made. Many of them were WRs at the time, but they were outdated even when I quit years ago. :)
Super Monkey Ball 2
The SMB crowd immediately pounced on this fun sequel, with predictable results, and I didn't play it seriously, so I don't have any firsts here. Sadly, getting all the levels in this game is far, far easier than in the original, where only the true experts ever unlocked the final Master levels. Once again, there's a ranking page, run by the same people, at The Super Monkey Ball Elite.
The only real contributions I made to competition in this game were my Exact Timing Strategies (written up for GameFAQs by my friend Infil), a method of repeatably winning some very random levels. Several of the SMB2 masters used them to get through the game without dying. (Some refrained, though, since they involve pausing and are arguably cheating...)
For some reason, my hastily-achieved world records on the Monkey Shot minigame lasted a very long time, so I might as well list them. I suspect nobody likes playing the game for score, given how broken its scoring system is.
~~Achievement~~ - Monkey Shot Beginner 651,100. #4 in the world as of Sep. 2005.
~~Achievement~~ - Monkey Shot Advanced 201,890. #3 as of Sep. 2005.
~~Achievement~~ - Monkey Shot Expert 302,790. Still the world record, and by a LOT. Weird.
This Gameboy Advance game used to have a great ranking page run by Dave Crawford, but it no longer exists (though the game is now listed at Cyberscore). I was the North American champion for several months. For several weeks I held all 42 site records, and for several months I held 41 of them. I retired from this game in November 2001. I've heard that several new driving strategies were discovered (and many records shattered) after I left.
My score page includes some outdated proof pictures.
The main problem with FZMV is that times achieved in GP mode count as well; and by getting rammed by the faster computer opponents and getting speed boosts from the random bombs scattered around the tracks, it is actually possible to get much faster times in GP mode than Time Trial. However, even getting half-decent times in GP mode is extremely random and requires a lot of patience. I just didn't enjoy doing it, which is why I quit.
Another fun Gameboy Advance racing game. I competed in the game for a few days after it came out, getting a few decent WRs, but pretty soon decided I didn't want to continue.
Going for 3-star ratings in every GP mode would be an interesting challenge, but I've never gotten around to it.
A brief diversion. I only played each level once or possibly twice, and my times are terrible. The people at the Player's Page are absolutely insane at this game! My movies are of the few "Elite"-standard times I managed.
~~Movie~~ - Moo Moo Farm fLap: 25"15 (2.6 MB at Vortiginous). Ok quality (though my VCR was having tracking problems for the beginning), low size. My first Elite time; it's pretty easy.
~~Movie~~ - Koopa Troopa Beach fLap: 27"58 (2.8 MB at Vortiginous). Good quality, low size.
~~Movie~~ - Kalimari Desert fLap: 34"00 and 3Lap: 1'50"05 (7.0 MB at Vortiginous). Ok quality (brief tracking problems). My first lap is Elite A standard (by far my best!), and the overall run is 0"06 shy of Elite.
~~Movie~~ - Mario Raceway 3Lap: 1'17"59 (7.3 MB at Vortiginous). Ok quality. This is perhaps my best 3-lap time.
~~Movie~~ - Mario Raceway fLap: 24"47 (2.6 MB at Vortiginous). Ok quality. I probably have the wrong strategy for this level.
~~Movie~~ - Banshee Boardwalk 3Lap: 1'51"00 (7.0 MB at Vortiginous). Ok quality, but dark. The Elite standard on this level is way too easy!
~~Movie~~ - Banshee Boardwalk fLap: 35"99 (3.4 MB at Vortiginous). Good quality, but dark. Again, I think my strategy is incorrect.
This game is ranked at the N64 High Scores page. Over the space of a couple of weeks at the start of 2001, I managed to sequentially claim every WR, which ended up earning me a Player of the Quarter award. Though I haven't played since, as of this writing I'm still the world champion. However, Nick Harvey has discovered several crazy new strategies and is very close to overtaking me!
My score page includes proof pictures for all my scores. (Note that Nick has beaten many of the scores I considered maxed!) I haven't taped any movies. Doing well in Yoshi's Story requires one to be meticulous, not fast; a movie of a high score in Yoshi's Story would be quite slow and boring.
Conker's Bad Fur Day
Though short, this is easily one of the N64's best games! As you can see from my main achievement, I played this game way too much...
~~Movie~~ - Zero Deaths (363 MB, featured at Vortiginous). Great quality (not DivX). That's right, I finally managed to get through the entire game (collecting all the money) without dying once! I did this in Chapter Mode so I could skip all the cinemas. From the start to when I defeat the final boss, it takes me about 2 hours, 10 minutes - quite a fast time, requiring a number of optimizations. One of my most fun movies.
~~Movie~~ - Countdown: 3:24 left (10.0 MB at Vortiginous). Good quality (not DivX). For no particular reason, I decided to try speeding through Countdown, the most difficult chapter in the game. It makes for good watching, but it's definitely not maxed; I make several horrid mistakes. Surviving the beach section is rare, though, so this is as good as I've managed.
The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask
I competed briefly with other PD Elite members in various Majora's Mask minigames. This game is also ranked at the N64 High Scores page. I didn't try all the categories, but I got WRs in the ones I did compete in.
~~Achievement~~ - 6-Day Challenge. This was fully taped, but a 6-hour movie is just too much; I don't think I'll ever capture it. The goal is to win the game fully in 6 game days - 3 to get the Ocarina, and then 3 to finish all the temples! By far the most difficult part is getting to Epona at the ranch before 6:00 pm on Day 4. It's just barely possible. I was the one who conceived of this challenge, and the first to pull it off. Many others have managed it by now; check out the SDA page to see various movies. Some of them skip Epona entirely, a new trick!
~~Movie~~ - Witch Archery: 64 (6.1 MB at Vortiginous). Ok quality (not DivX). A really impressive score on this minigame, IMO - remember, in order to get the Heart Piece you just need to break 20. :) My closest competitor had 61!
~~Achievement~~ - Swamp Archery: 2650. I believe getting this requires perfection to tie, and I don't think it can be beaten. As far as I know, it's still an untied world record; a couple of people got 2640, which is significantly easier.
~~Achievement~~ - Island Jumping: 46. This minigame is very frustrating, and depends a lot on luck, but I still held the WR at one point.
~~Achievement~~ - Deku Scrub Games: 36.14, 20.84, 22.70. Three difficult times, though I know people have since improved my Day 1 and Day 3 strategies by at least a second.
The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures
I had a great time playing through this old-school Zelda adventure. I got
interested in the strategies required to speed through the game; there are
some very cool speed tricks you can pull when you're controlling 4 characters
simultaneously. I spent a little while optimizing the first 15 levels in the
game. I never got around to doing the last 9, though. The large element of
randomness, difficulties moving diagonally using the GC controller, and the
fact that it's such a long game inevitably led to my getting bored
and/or distracted. :)
~~Movies~~ - Various Levels (featured at SDA, and archived at Vortiginous). Excellent quality (captured digitally). I made movies of 1-1 all the way through 5-3. All of my times were far better than the original run done by TSA, but he has regained the records on 1-1 to 1-3. I think they're great
watches, especially if you're a fan of the classic 2-D Zelda games.
Katamari Damacy
By far the weirdest game to come out in 2004. Ever since I first played it I
was itching to try my hand at speed-running the levels - especially since it
times you! It took half a year for me to get started, though. I was
actually playing it with my friend Infil and his brother when we decided to try
for the world records (which looked very impressive to us). 45 minutes later,
we had beaten the record on Star 1. :) Later, I improved the time even more,
got the video captured, and I was hooked. I took my time, but over the next
several months I obliterated the world records for each Star, often by whole
minutes!
At first I used Cyberscore for comparison, but when that melted down I found a nice Katamari Damacy forum devoted to KD competition. My videos inspired some intense
competition there, and many of my times were subsequently beaten by a few
very dedicated players like Bruno and smiley-o. I'm sure most of the record
runs followed my routes, though, which is still flattering. :)
~~Movies~~ - Various Levels (featured at SDA). Excellent quality (captured digitally). Comments are available on the linked
page. They're all fun videos to watch, but by far the best one is Make The
Moon in 6:26. At the time I made the video, the world record was a little
under 10 minutes. :)
~~Movie~~ - Make the Moon 882.532m (90.1 MB at Vortiginous). Excellent quality (captured digitally). I was requested to make a video of an 880m+ Moon, so I went ahead and captured the full Moon level after my 6:26 run. I never really cared for size competition, since it's
unfortunately somewhat complementary to speed running (you actually want to
take your time and roll up small things before they disappear). Still, this
is a decent size, about a meter smaller than the WR. But the movie's a bit
boring to watch after the first 6:26, I'm afraid.
Donkey Kong Country
One of the classic SNES games! I spent a fun few days optimizing the hell out of it. Alex Penev and Nick Harvey have gotten some good scores in the game, and there are also some listed at Twin Galaxies. My movie of 101% in 50 minutes is one of my main claims to fame at SDA.
~~Movie~~ - Time to 101%: 50 minutes, 0 deaths (324 MB, featured at SDA). Great quality. This was a truly awesome run, where I go straight through the game, winning every level and getting every bonus game without saving, dying or even slowing down. A few well-hidden warps were found after I made this movie, and a couple of people have beaten the time. However, it still remains one of my cleanest, most exciting speed-runs.
~~Movie~~ - Enguarde Bonus Game: 999 (12.1 MB at Vortiginous). Good quality (not DivX). I don't think anybody had gotten close to maxing out this bonus game before I managed it! Of course, a large part of the difficulty in these minigames is coming up with a good strategy.
~~Movie~~ - Expresso Bonus Game: 999 (10.1 MB at Vortiginous). Good quality (not DivX). This game is cake to max out.
~~Movie~~ - Rambi Bonus Game: 848 (6.9 MB at Vortiginous). Good quality (not DivX). Good, but not great; the Twin Galaxies record was 858, but I'm not sure how to get that high.
~~Movie~~ - Winky Bonus Game: 999 (9.5 MB at Vortiginous). Good quality (not DivX). Another very difficult bonus game to max out, but somebody else had done it on Twin Galaxies.
Donkey Kong Country 2
This is a great game, and probably the best of the DKCs. Again, I spent a fun period optimizing the hell out of it.
~~Movie~~ - Time to 102%: 1 hour, 33 minutes (606 MB, featured at SDA). Great quality. A great run (with 1 death that I really didn't deserve). This is a more difficult game than DKC1, but I think I've still come fairly close to the limit for a contiguous, no-save run. I doubt I could manage 0 deaths without a BFD-esque amount of effort. And I don't think anyone else has come close to this time. Another great watch; be sure to download it!
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
One of the best games of 2003's Christmas season! I couldn't get enough of it. I ended up challenging myself to speed-run it in a single segment, with great success. This ended up a very popular movie at SDA.
~~Movie~~ - Single-Segment Completion: 2:10 (555 MB, featured at SDA). Great quality. A highly entertaining speed run, one of my favourites. The time at the final save was 2:05, which is really what I was shooting for - the final boss battle is trivial. I have finished the game without dying before, but this run ended up faster despite one death. As fun as it was, there were some frustrating elements to speed-running, including some crashes and bugs with Farah following. Also, skipping battles requires considerable luck. So the run isn't "perfect", but it'd still be difficult to beat this time. I haven't heard of anyone else breaking 2:30.
Prince of Persia 2: Warrior Within
This game didn't grab me nearly as much as the first one. However, it was still quite enjoyable, and going through it I couldn't help assessing its speed-runnability. :) After watching Mkt's somewhat half-hearted multi-segment run at SDA, I finally caved in. I challenged myself to get a single-segment good-ending run on Hard (the ultimate speed run), and still beat Mkt's time for his multi-segment bad-ending run on Easy. My friend twotontim scoffed, and even I thought it might be impossible, but I wanted to try.
I spent my free time over the next 2 months optimizing routes through the game (showing them to twotontim for suggestions), and practicing sections over and over. This was the longest game I've ever tried to single-segment, and I had to internalize every part. It was long enough that I'd forgotten some of my early strategies by the time I finished; fortunately, I'd kept movies of each segment, and a little practice refreshed my memory. Finally, the time came to start my single-segment runs. And, undoubtedly thanks to all the practice, it wasn't long before I'd executed a smooth run without major errors. The final time? A solid 20 minutes faster than Mkt! I overshot my goal. :)
The result is the longest, hardest, most intricate, and altogether best speed-run I've ever done. And hopefully one of the most entertaining, too. I'm extremely proud of it.
Now, will I have the stamina to do PoP3? Will I even want to? Will I even BUY the damn game? Only time will tell. But if my DKC record means anything, don't count on it. ;)
~~Movie~~ - Single-Segment Completion: 3:19 (842 MB, or 1.58 GB High Quality, featured at SDA). Phenomenal quality. Detailed comments on my run can be found on SDA's page. Regarding video quality, this is by far the most pristine, highest-quality video I've ever captured. It was captured directly to Hard Drive at 640x480 resolution, and compressed over the course of several days. Enjoy!
Metal Gear Solid 2
While I think the MGS series is a little lacking gameplay-wise, I couldn't resist the challenge of getting Big Boss rank in MGS and MGS2.
~~Achievement~~ - Big Boss rank in 2:04:35, 6 saves. Many people have gotten Big Boss rank, admittedly, but it's still a worthy task. I think my time was fairly good (and I used several saves fewer than the minimum). And I made a movie of it that achieved some limited distribution. I later saw a Japanese video of the game being thoroughly slaughtered without any saves, though. I can't compete with that. :)
Timesplitters 2
I never competed seriously in TS2, but I do have 2 notable achievements. TS2
is ranked at NGC-Elites.net, and you can see my scores there.
~~Achievement~~ - All Platinums. Probably a couple of hundred people have done this, but still, TS2 was a very difficult game to get all Platinums on. :)
~~Achievement~~ - Bags of Fun 14 bags. This one level caught my eye, since it looked "perfectable". It took a while, but I finally got a score of 14 bags, pushing the 50 people with 13-bag scores down a rung. :) It's tricky, because you have about 5 seconds to spare on the entire level, and every time you're slow picking up the speed-up powerup or a bag, you lose a little off that time. For half a year, I was
the only one with this score. However, then a suicide trick was discovered that helps your computer teammate capture the bag; a number of people have 14 bags now, and one even has 15! Crazy.
WarioWare, Inc.
A fun, unique GBA game that grabbed me when it first came out. I spent a
month or so happily breaking records on the various stages. I never bothered
going for records on the individual microgames, though; that just
screamed "time sink". The game is ranked at Cyberscore, although it's possible many
players haven't resubmitted their scores after the site melted down. As of
Oct. '05 I still seem to have a few WRs.
~~Achievement~~ - Orbulon 999. A few
people have managed this, but I was the first. You just need to get into a
"loop"... that is, lose slightly less than 1 life every 15 points. Once you
manage that, you'll hit 999 in a few hours.
~~Achievement~~ - Jimmy 321. My only
other "loop", but as this one's a lot harder, I didn't manage to take it all
the way. I don't think anybody's come close to this score.
~~Achievement~~ - Easy 999. Simple.
But I did this without losing a life, which is pretty cool.
~~Achievement~~ - Total Boss 76. Requires "looping" Boss mode, which is rather annoying (especially the damn
baseball boss). I probably got lucky to get this, 20 points further than any
other scores I know of.
Ikaruga
Ikaruga... worldly gamers will know this as one of the crown jewels in
Treasure's lineup. Probably the best shooter ever designed, and possibly one
of the best games, it is as much a work of art as it is a videogame.
And it was designed specifically for hardcore gamers; the beautiful
3-of-a-colour combo system - that the entire game is designed around,
is a unique, elegant mechanic with near-infinite depth.
In case you can't tell, I fell in love with the game. I played it exclusively
for several months when it first hit American shores. Atari was sponsoring an
online score competition, which gave me something to shoot for. I
ended up coming #3 in the Arcade listings and #4 in the Prototype listings,
both of which earned me an official Atari trophy. (I was actually the 2nd best
non-Japanese player in the rankings at the time the contest ended.)
Some players played the game in Tate mode (with monitors turned vertically)
and using authentic arcade controllers. I always wanted to try the game that
way, but I just ended up playing on a normal TV with the GC analog stick. I
don't think it was a handicap.
As good as I got, and as well as I knew the game, I have to admit that the
Japanese far surpassed me. In fact, as the game was several years old by the
time it was released Stateside, basically all the strategies I learned had been
developed by Japanese gamers. (My usual strength lies in coming up with
strategy, but I did none of that in Ikaruga.) And the best Japanese gamers
make my measly scores look pathetic. WIZ's Ikaruga run on the
Treasure-released "Appreciate DVD" is the single most incredible gaming feat
I've ever seen. His ship dances through the game, effortlessly accruing
chains while taking ridiculous risks just to "bullet eat" for a few extra
points. It was a thing of beauty.
~~Movie~~ - 32,102,850 on Normal Arcade (166 MB at Vortiginous). This was the score - and the movie - that put
me on the Ikaruga map. It would have been #4 in the rankings by the contest
end, but I beat it a little later. A very smooth run, with no deaths or chain
breaks (except one during the chaotic bonus enemies at the end of Chapter 3,
which doesn't really count). For a time, this movie was the best online
resource for Ikaruga players who hadn't bought the Appreciate DVD.
~~Achievement~~ - 32,331,050 on Normal Arcade. This came in #3 in the official Atari contest, earning me a
trophy. However, though I had improved my strategy a lot, this run had both
a death and a chain break in Chapter 4, so I decided not to make a movie out
of it. If I'd managed a run as flawless as the above at the peak of my
skills, I'd have broken 33 million. Oh well. :)
~~Movie~~ - 33,036,940 on Normal Prototype (152 MB at Vortiginous). This came in #4 in Prototype mode in the
official Atari contest, earning me another trophy. However, I never really
cared much about this mode, and didn't try especially hard. It's a lot easier
to get a good score here, because many of the bosses end up trivial - killable
in 3-4 seconds! I just put in a little effort to learn the mode, got a
decent score, and went back to Arcade.
~~Movie~~ - 4,221,840 on Chapter 1 (23.2 MB at Vortiginous). I pulled off a perfect 134 chain here, something I'm seriously proud of (though rjpageuk beat me to it). It's the
only perfect chain I've managed on any chapter. It took many many many tries
to get both 74 chains after the midpoint bonus enemies and the crazy 24-chain
sequence on the final bonus enemies.
~~Movie~~ - 6,001,160 on Chapter 2 (31.2 MB at Vortiginous). A fun chapter, but not my best.
~~Movie~~ - 7,022,720 on Chapter 3 (33.1 MB at Vortiginous). As any Ikaruga vet will tell you, this is by
far the hardest chapter to properly chain. I spent a LOT of time practicing
it, and this is probably my best score. I executed WIZ's incredible up-down
ship strategy almost perfectly (missing 1 chain), and did really well on the
bonus enemies at the end. Back in the contest days, this was far higher than
any other American scores.
~~Movie~~ - 7,006,880 on Chapter 4 (38.2 MB at Vortiginous). This was definitely my weakest chapter. I just
never got around to properly learning Wiz's path through it (which is
absolutely incredible to watch).
Iridion 2
After the superlative game that was Ikaruga, I was desperate to try other
shooters, even though I knew none of them would live up to it. One such new
release was Iridion 2, and it had an interesting online ranking system, so I
bit. I then spent a couple of weeks idly getting the world record on every
level. :) My scores were quite good, and I'm still highly ranked at the ranking site.
Unfortunately, I soon discovered an infinite-scoring bug in a few levels. I
never publicly explained how the bug worked, but I did mention it just before
retiring. I never used it to get my scores, but I can tell from the current
high scores (on, say, level 1-2) that at least one other person eventually
found and exploited it. Combine that with Gameshark cheating (which,
unfortunately, works), and I'm not sure how far to trust the scores above
mine. (I do think Madvin is legitimate, however.) Well, even if the rankings
were compromised, they still served their purpose as a fun game feature.
I sent the details of the infinite-scoring exploit to Shin'en, the developers. They said
they'd put me in the greets for their next game, which is pretty cool. Now
that it's out, I should go see if I'm
in there. :)
~~Achievement~~ - World Championship 503,557. This is just the sum of scores on all levels. As of this
writing I'm still 4th in the rankings,
assuming (and this is a big assumption) that you can trust the scores above
me. Several people had wondered if breaking 500k was possible, and I was the
first to do it.
~~Achievement~~ - World Challenge 14:26. This is essentially a boss rush mode. I still have the best time
in the world on this, if you ignore the 3 idiots with the obviously
Gamesharked records. :)
Ninja Gaiden
Out of all of my gaming adventures, this one probably earned me the most fame.
Which, admittedly, isn't that much. :) It's a long, but very cool, story.
When Ninja Gaiden was first announced, Tecmo mentioned that there would be
a tournament run over Xbox Live: the Master Ninja Tournament. Out of a field
of thousands, a few people would be selected to battle it out in the Finals.
From the moment I first heard this, I was interested. I figured I had no real
chance; after all, there would be a MILLION people entering this thing, and
some of them would be able to spend ridiculous amounts of time on it. But I
made sure to pick up the game the instant it was released and devote my time to
this mysterious tournament.
And the game itself was absolutely incredible. One of the best action games to
be released in years. However, the MNT itself left a lot to be desired! The
challenge was to get the highest Karma score on completion of the game, but
you could refight almost every battle in the game multiple times, getting
first full Karma, then 1/2, then 1/4, then 1/8, etc. And you also needed to
complete the battles under a fixed time limit if you wanted a special Karma
"bonus" each time. So getting an optimal score required repetition to an
extreme degree. I believe I spent 100+ hours on my winning run - and that's
not counting restarts!
As it turns out, nobody else was silly enough to spend so much time on the
game, and I ended up winning handily. Or did I? Before I even finished
my run, taibhse entered the fray with a score that was patently ridiculous.
His responses to queries about it were worthless. Either he was a clueless
cheater, or a random player whose game fortuitously bugged. To this day I
still don't know which.
To make matters worse, the official rules of the tournament weren't even
announced until a week before the end of Round 1. A lot of people were shocked
and dismayed when it turned out that only the top 3 winners would advance to
Round 2! Most were anticipating 10 or even 50. And by that time it would
have been literally impossible to start a new run and complete it by the
deadline - there just weren't enough hours in the day. As for me, my
obsessive-compulsiveness really paid off; since I had been shooting for
optimal, time be damned, I ended up placing #2 (just below the cheater) and
advancing. I also won a cool wooden Katana, signed by Itagaki himself (maker
of the game).
Even so, I and a lot of other people were quite irked, as you can see from
this article that appeared in Xbox Nation. I
came off sounding rather petulant. :)
Then Round 2 came out, and all of the MNT's ills were corrected. Tecmo really
listened to our complaints. First of all, while we 3 advancers had our Round
2 as planned (a two-week competition, with the highest score at the end
winning the trip to the Finals), everyone else also had a one-month
competition for yet another Finals slot. And second, the tedium of Round 1
was solved directly: repeating battles no longer earned you any bonus Karma.
All of a sudden going for a high score required a lot more skill and a lot
less patience. Hooray!
I had a problem, though. I was traveling to Prague one week into Round 2 - cutting the time I had to compete in half! But after the sheer effort I'd sunk into Round 1, I was determined not to let that stop me. As soon as the
Hurricane Pack was released, I downloaded it and got to work. For a full 5-6
days, I went more hardcore than I ever had before, playing literally 18+ hours
a day. At last I was done, and had a score that was almost as well-optimized
as my previous Round 1 score.
The week of craziness paid off. I slaughtered the other two advancers -
taibhse never did submit a score, and the other was very, very far off. In
fact, my score was good enough that it stayed in 1st until just before Round 2
ended... and its final placing was still third! It was official. I was in
the Finals!
The trip was awesome. The Finals took place at the Tokyo Game Show (TGS) in
Tokyo, Japan - not the venue originally announced when the game was released,
but even better! Microsoft put us up in an amazing hotel, treated us to meals
at wonderful restaurants (including the one with the bar seen in "Lost In
Translation"), and best of all, got us in to TGS. The first day was our
scheduled tournament, but the second day we were left to see the show on our
own. It was really a dream vacation.
And how did the tournament itself go? I didn't even care; as far as I was
concerned, I'd already won the prize that mattered. :) But the tournament was
fun, and went well. We had serious language barriers with the 2 Japanese
competitors, but they seemed friendly enough, and the rest of us really hit it
off. The night before, we were treated to a preview of the challenge. It was
hard, but we were all hardcore, and merrily chatted about strategies and
techniques. One of us had even brought an Xbox, and we went to his room to
practice one of the bosses who showed up in the challenge.
On the day of the Finals, we were all ushered into Tecmo's booth at TGS. With
serious butterflies in our stomachs, we were led one by one onto raised
walkways above the stage as an announcer called our name. Hundreds of people
were below, watching us. The initial jitters faded as we picked up our
controllers and the event began. A giant screen above the stage showed the
crowd snapshots of our play, with smaller dedicated screens reflecting our
monitors. I finished the challenge in 11 minutes, and had 4 remaining minutes
to stare nervously over the crowd and watch the others' screens. One other person finished, just before the 15-minute time limit elapsed. Despite taking
longer than me, though, he'd decided not to use his Ninpo, and the score bonus
he got from that pushed him over my score. The tournament ended, and I came
in (unofficially) second. Still, I was satisfied. I'd done well on the stage
(as, indeed, all five of us had), throwing myself at a seriously hard challenge
in front of hundreds of spectators.
And that concludes the story. I got to meet Itakagi - and, uh, he hugged me on
stage as he gave me my plaque ... I hope he was consoling me for coming in
2nd! :P Famitsu had some pictures of the event. That's me! Here's another picture a Japanese magazine took of me next to a lovely booth babe. IGN had a writeup of the tournament. And best of all, Gamespot has video coverage (go here and watch the "Ninja Gaiden Master Ninja Tournament" video)! I look very bemused in it. :)
~~Achievement~~ - 21,261,405 Karma. Here are the final rankings of the MNT round 1. This
score advanced me to Round 2 and paved the way to TGS. It was the best
genuine score in the world when Round 1 of the MNT ended, and due to the
tedium of getting it, probably always will be. I only "officially" got #2,
though, since taibhse claimed 26,819,978, an impossible score.
~~Achievement~~ - Hurricane Pack vol. 1 34,727,240 Karma. Here are the final rankings of
the MNT round 2. This score won me my trip to the Finals. :D Even though I
"only" came in 3rd, note that my score was achieved after a single week;
everyone else took a month to get theirs.
~~Achievement~~ - 2nd in the world in Master Ninja Tournament. Beat that. ;)
Miscellaneous Stuff
Here's a list of games I've won, complete to the
best of my recollection. I've been playing games for a loooooong time. :)
Much of my gaming time these days is spent playing the ever-addictive
World of Warcraft. I play a
Night Elf Druid on the Eonar PvE realm. I'm an officer in a medium-size,
modest raiding guild,
Ascendence.
We've killed Ragnaros and cleared Blackwing Lair through Firemaw, and I'm at
full Cenarion. Raiding is a fun challenge, unlike anything I've ever done
before. But it's also frustrating, because I constantly have to rely on other
people. ;)
