Speed runs - the act of getting through a game as quickly as possible - arguably date back to Gunpei Yokoi’s Metroid for the NES, back in 1986, which featured different endings based on the the time taken to finish it. While taking over 10 hours would show the main character, Samus Aran, with her back to the camera, apparently holding her hand up to her face in an expression of sadness, finishing the game in under one hour would show Samus in a bikini - albeit, an 8-bit one.

The first online speed running community was 1994, built around the Doom newsgroups and websites of the time. Later, the release of the Doom source code made it possible for players to slow the gameplay down, which lead to the branching off of the tool assisted speed run (or TAS) community.

With the popularity of emulators, tool assisted runs became possible on older consoles, eventually culminating in the release of Morimoto’s famous Super Mario Bros. 3 video, in which he finishes the game in 11 minutes and 11 seconds. However, the relative obscurity of the tool assisted scene lead to confusion about the video - was it real, or was it cheating?

Accusations of “fakeness” miss the point of the tool assisted scene. Even the idea of “cheating” misses the point. These speed runs are created for entertainment, for the sake of pushing the game to its very limits and seeing what can be achieved when the abilities of the player are enhanced. The runs are not achieved by cheating - the games are not hacked, and cheating is discouraged.

Joel Yliluoma, better known as Bisqwit, runs NESVideos, arguably the centrepiece of the TAS scene, and comments on the site that “instead of walking on the paths created for us, we create our own paths, our own legs and so on, and we’re not listening to people who say “you can’t do that!”.”

The result is often awe inspiring, and always entertaining, even for people not familiar with the game in question, because the runs are done with entertainment in mind. The guidelines on NESVideos suggest creating “art even while waiting”, and to “play for entertainment, not for ego”.

As for the Morimoto video, the time was beaten in 2005 by Genisto, who finished the game in 10:35.

Little Mathletics spoke to Joel via email about the site, the scene, and the criticism.

What’s your history as a gamer?

Before my personal computer era, that is, before 1992, I played NES games a lot. I was a Mega Man fan, and I enjoyed NES games. I also wanted to make my own games, but had no means to.

After my computer era began, I gradually gave up games in favor of programming. Since 1992, I haven’t much played games at all, save some Duke Nukem 3D deathmatch level designing.

At the background, I was still influenced by NES games, and NES game music particularly surfaced often in my programming works. Around 1996, I found the emulation scene, which gradually began to raise NES games (and more modern console games too) back into my view.

Do you have favourites in terms of 8 or 16-bit music?

Somehow, coincidentally or not, the soundtracks of my favourite games have also became my favourite soundtracks. I listen to soundtracks of games like Tales of Phantasia more than any “normal” music.

What games would you rate as favourites?

Of all games, I’ve especially enjoyed SNES RPGs, such as the Final Fantasy series (IV, V, VI). Compared to them, other games seem like just toys to me (when played normally). In the PC world, my favourite game has been Star Control II.

How were you introduced to tool assisted speed runs, and when did you set up NESVideos?

Accidentally, I might say. Although I had previously seen a Doom tool-assisted speed run, it wasn’t until in December 2003 when I saw the famous Super Mario Bros 3 “timeattack” movie played by some Japanese fellow called Morimoto. Because the availability of that movie didn’t satisfy me (everyone was spreading it as a low-quality WMV file), I created my site to republish that movie in good quality and other movies I later found Morimoto had done.

Then it just gained wings and started living its own life. I wanted to defend that movie because people on different forums in Internet were understanding it wrong and spreading lies about the method it had been created with, and in that way, I think I became some kind of Internet spokesperson about tool-assisted console game speed runs.

Do you remember your reaction to Morimoto’s video?

I don’t really remember how I reacted exactly. I do know that after seeing it, I e-mailed the URL of the video to a ex-coworker who is a video game enthusiast, [then] I looked up the URLs shown in the video and became a regular visitor on the site, “Yarukinasu”, where Morimoto’s videos originated from, [and] I created the NESVideos webpage. It was just a page back then.

Has Morimoto left the scene? I’ve not seen anything from him for a while.

According to my knowledge, Morimoto hasn’t made any new TAS movies after the Rockman 2 movie he made together with FinalFighter. I think he became too busy with real life issues. The Japanese society can be quite demanding on peoples’ free time.

How do you feel about being put in the position of spokesman for the TAS scene?

Well, as long as I know what I’m talking about, it’s good.

You make it pretty clear on the website that the difference between TAS and regular speed runs is that what you’re doing is primarily for entertainment. Do you still get a lot of criticism for this?

It is not that regular speed runs can’t be entertainment as well. What I’m trying to stress is that tool-assisted speed runs are not performances of one’s playing skills. This is the point newcomers often get wrong.

However, once they understand that, they often switch to the other extreme: they think that using the tools takes away all the challenge, as if a perfect completion was just as simple as not screwing up while playing. They think we’re cheating. I’m still seeing that occasionally, though not enough to disturb me anymore.

Do you think the fact that people are no longer accusing you of being “fakes” is a sign of the acceptance of the TAS scene?

I suppose so. Of course, it also means that the popularity is changing shape.

How difficult is it to plan for a run?

What most people don’t understand that there’s often significant effort behind in creating a speed run (tool-assisted or not). While in speed run a major challenge is to become a good player, in tool-assistance the strategy planning is more complicated because you have to also evaluate strategies you would never dare to attempt without tool-assistance.

What tools would you normally use for a speed run?

A movie is usually made with just an emulator. Different emulators have different features, but here are examples of the “tools”, in order from common to less common:

• Speed adjustment
• Savestates (that work also while recording a movie)
• Frame advance
• Resuming a recording session
• Frame counter
• Debugger

And sometimes (rarely though), a hex-editor is used to copypaste sequences of movie input data between different versions.

Do you have any interest in regular speed runs?

Certainly. It is not the “tool-assistance” I’m attracted to, but the multidimensional performance in each video game movie. My site specializes in tool-assisted movies in order to have a clear focus and purpose, and its well-deserved nook of Internet.

Would you attempt a regular speed run?

No. I don’t feel like that would be a motivating use of time for me. I’m rusty, my reaction time isn’t very good, etc, etc.

Do you think tool assisted speed runs qualify as art, or are they purely entertainment?

Video game speed runs are performances. Isn’t a performance always art? People define art differently, so I don’t think there’s a single right answer to that question.

Is the scene competitive? I assume it would have an element of competitiveness to it, seeing as you measure records in frames, rather than whole seconds like regular speed runs, but then there’s feeling of joy in everything that you do…

Yes, there is competition. It varies depending on movies and players.

I’ve seen references around to BisqBot - is this something you’ve created?

BisqBot is a name I use for an emulator feature that searches for best approaches of playing in unpredictable but limited situations.

When activated, it runs the game frame by frame, and at each frame, it reads the game RAM, the CPU status and analyzes whether certain user-defined goals have been met. At each frame, it feeds the game some random input (a pseudorandom combination of some buttons being held), and from the analysis, it decides whether to run more frames, retry over again or report success with this particular input.

It can be used to find a seemingly random sequence of input that yields a given goal, such as an enemy turning into a weapon refill item when killed. It requires programming to work, and it must be customized for each game and situation it’s used in.

Have many runs have you done?

Something around 40, if I count also all the versions that were eventually surpassed by a better version by me or someone else. 11 distinct games. Currently, four of those are featured on the NESVideos website.

I’ve also contributed [in small ways] in a couple of other published movies.

Why are only four featured on the site?

Because the others have been surpassed or otherwise deemed not publish-worthy.

How many runs are on NESVideos?

310 currently, plus all the movies that have been surpassed, and submissions that have not been published. Overall amount might be something around 500-600.

Would you reject a submission based on their choice of game?

Yes. Sometimes, no matter what you do, it’s not going to be interesting. The best example of such games is Front Line. In Front Line there’s a chinese soldier that walks forward slowly on a wide road, and other chinese soldiers wander randomly on that road. It’s 3 minutes of walking almost straight in a 2D road viewed from air. You can throw grenades. They explode unspectacularly. You can also fire a gun. There is no music, just the sounds of your steps and the occasional firearms. After the 3 minutes of walking, you reach the end of the road and the game is over.

Is there a game you would like to see attempted?

Lunar Ball. I’m quite low on ideas now, because so many good movies have already been made.

Do you have a favourite?

Nope, I have favourites though, but those favourites might vary from time to time.

That’s very diplomatic…

But it is true.

Joel Yliluoma’s NESVideos site can be found here.