The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Speedrun World Record Holder Improves His Time

The route in this run is actually pretty new compared to 18:07, the biggest difference is using an old glitch that had some use recently called Get Item Manipulation (GIM for short) where you trick the game by first picking Deku Nuts right after exiting a crawl space, this activates a glitch called Walking While Talking (WWT).

When this glitch is activated and you stand in front of a chest, you don't need to open it, a certain memory value will be changed depending on the content in the chest. Then when you cancel the glitch, by jumping into water, you'll obtain certain item/s based on the value of the chest. This trick gives the runner a blue potion.

The only downside this route has it that it is extremely luck based at one part of the run as the chance to get Deku Nuts is 20%.

The last time you posted one of these speedruns, I mentioned that I preferred speedruns where no glitches were used.

After being forced to move house and change my name, I am not making that mistake twice.

Very good run! I didn't even know this speedrun path yet!

@Greenalink Nice insight, thanks!

Very good run! The new route made this possible. Sub 18 is now possible and I can't wait to see it happen. Here's hoping Cosmo comes back to run this game again.

Looks like he has done this a lot of times. Although he is using glitches to get fast through the game, he seems pretty skilled. I'm guessing all it takes to end up being too slow is one little mistake.

@Espy I see your point, but wouldn't an Ocarina of Time speedrun without using glitches take too long for anyone to watch?

There should be 2 categories for classifying speedruns: Glitchless, and well.... yeah. I dunno, it just feels dirty to call yourself a "world record holder" in a game when you exploit the programming to achieve that time. It's like running a marathon and then after the first mile you decide to just get in your car and drive to the finish line. Congratulations, you're the first one to make it to the end! Nobody can tell you that you didn't cross the finish line, but you kinda missed the entire purpose of the marathon and ultimately you're just going to look like a jerk to everyone who tried to finish naturally. You see, when you get in that car, it shouldn't be considered a foot race anymore - It's now a drag race. So I say congratulations to this guy for having the fastest car. Don't get me wrong, I think it's awesome that he achieved that time even with glitches, just as long as he doesn't consider himself the winner of the foot race.

And I do understand that glitchless speedruns exist, but let's be honest... When was the last time you saw an article written when one of those times was beaten?

@Shoxir
"Nobody can tell you that you didn't cross the finish line, but you kinda missed the entire purpose of the marathon and ultimately you're just going to look like a jerk to everyone who tried to finish naturally"

The runner here is definitely not considered to be a jerk of any kind just because he wrong-warped to Ganon. It's not unfair to other runners, because literally everybody else in the OoT Any% speedrunning community is aware of the wrong-warp to Ganon, and understands that it's used to reach the end quickly.

If he were playing the "no wrong warp" category, then doing the wrong-warp would disqualify the run from that record. But, there still would be no "jerk"iness going on, since the run would just turn into a different category of run.

Nobody is cheating anybody out of anything here.

@Espy No out of bounds/no glitch speed runs are still out there and just as fun to watch. (not OoT though because of the annoying HAYYUUUH Link makes to speed him forward)

Well, who would've thought that a SPEEDrunner would like to beat the game as fast as possible. NintendoLife tries to give us interesting stuff and admit it, you're more likely to read the article if it says "New WR: 18:05" and not "New Glitchless WR: 3:46:08"

@EarthboundBenjy Amen to that.

@Shoxir
Well to be fair there was an article on here a short while ago about a new record for someone collecting all 120 stars in Super Mario 64.

@EarthboundBenjy

I'm not gonna pretend like I know all the categories of possible runs, I'm just a spectator. But it's just a lot more impressive to me when I see someone set a record legitimately as opposed to using these methods. And it seems unfair that the only way you can be widely recognized as a record holder is if you use these glitches. I'm not saying they don't exist, but they're instead considered less important than the glitch users, as less people watch them since they're normally longer and they're not always as intricate. I've never seen someone actually be recognized for holding a glitchless record (unless it's in a game devoid of glitches). And if it's fun for people, great. If you want to do these runs, more power to you, I can't deny that this was an impressive display and it was fascinating to watch. But I just think that when glitches come into play, world records for a game should be nullified, or at least put in a different category. I'm not trying to come off as pretentious or anything, I just believe the spotlight should be shared. Instead of calling it Any %, it should be Any % w/ Glitches. Disagree with me, object to my views, whatever. Just think about it from another angle.

@CB85

I do remember that actually, the guy who got it in the dual run, but he did use glitches to get to some of the stars faster (going through walls and whatnot). Again, it was cool to watch, but I just don't feel it should be considered a world record overall, and instead be put in a "glitch" category.

@Shoxir

The problem with your proposed solution is that, now you have to get a community to all agree on what counts as a glitch and what doesn't count as a glitch.

I mentioned this in a previous Nintendolife article thread, but I'll mention it again here too:

In Pokémon Gen 1, there is a glitch where a gym badge's stats would be applied multiple times to your Pokémon every time you receive a stat change in battle. This means that, at any point after obtaining the Boulderbadge, getting hit with String Shot or Growl will activate this glitch.
There is also a glitch with the move Focus Energy - instead of improving Critical Hit chance, it decreases it. Does this mean that, if at any point, any Pokémon uses Growl or Focus Energy, then the run is no longer "glitchless", and is therefore disqualified from that category?

There are also games where running into glitches happens way more often than you would think. Imagine trying to complete a "glitchless" run of Sonic the Hedgehog 2006. That game has weeeird snowboarding physics that I would consider glitchy as hell. Does that mean, the moment Sonic steps into White Acropolis Zone, the run is no longer considered "glitchless"?

There's also the matter of things that are NOT glitches, yet still lead to weird or unintended results. In Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, getting hit for more than half your max HP will (for whatever reason) cause you to go flying at ridiculous speed backwards. This is not a glitch, this behaviour was intentionally put in the game. But, when used in Luck Mode, it can be used to skip the initial confrontation with Death, meaning that Alucard gets to keep all of his items.
Does this tactic invalidate the run from the "glitchless" category, despite not actually using a glitch to bypass an important event?

Because there are soo many problems with trying to define "glitchless" and "not glitchless", it really begins to make much more sense to just define it as "you can do anything that's possible within the game", which just prevents use of things like Gameshark and things like that, which I totally agree with.

Why do people keep calling glitched runs "cheating."
Do you actually understand how ridiculously hard it is to do the wrong-warp glitch? A glitched run allows for more possibilities. Is a runner skilled enough to take a shot at a possible glitch? Do they have enough health to Shinespark across the next gap? That is why it is so great to watch these kinds of runs live, like durring AGDQ. I still see no point in discrediting glitched runs just because they use glitches. If you think it takes little skill, look up the Mirror's Edge speedrun race from AGDQ a year or two back. They say multiple times that it is a very, very hard game to speedrun. And they die and miss glitches left and right, Yet they are among the best speedrunners in the world.

Is there anything in the Japanese version of OoT that makes this record possible vs versions released elsewhere?

@Tazcat2011 The text is faster in Japanese, or on the Chinese iQue, which is what Cosmo uses. This is because they use fewer characters to say what they mean, because they use kana/hanzi instead of letters.

And to the rest of you arguing that this run isn't legitimate: I don't see him putting in a Game Shark anywhere. This is all stuff that is possible within the game how it is originally programmed. You could learn to do this too on your very own OoT cart were you willing to put in the extensive amount of time required to learn to do this.

@TheLobster thanks for the info Lobster

@TheLobster
Just to clarify something, this new route isn't possible on iQue, because, upon executing the glitch, the game crashes instead of giving Link a blue potion out of nowhere. It crashes on all N64 versions and on iQue, but will not crash on GameCube and Wii Virtual Console versions. Jodenstone also used iQue for the previous route, but now is using the Japanese Wii VC version.

@EarthboundBenjy Cool, thanks for the info!

That was a lot of fun to watch! Very nice.

I'll be honest, I don't usually enjoy watching videos about other people playing video games, but I've found these speedrun vids to be quite entertaining. I remember watching an AGDQ for Metroid Fusion. I was fascinated by the precision techniques the runner used, especially since he explained what he did. I hope you'll continue sharing these videos, @ThomasBW84.

On a side note, does anyone know of a site that does a good job explaining how/why the exploits in this video work?

@Auracle Try Cosmowright's youtube channel and look for his "with commentary" videos, or the short videos that give explanations. All the AGDQ archive videos on youtube are pretty good too. Make sure you watch the Super Metroid and Mirror's Edge races.

@Auracle I was curious about that as well. The is site has some good info. https://www.zeldaspeedruns.com/oot/wrongwarp/wrong-warp

I'm surprised the MM record is ~1hr 27min given that it has the same engine as OoT

Please let's keep this civil.

@Tazcat2011 @Maelstrom Thanks for the feedback. I'll be sure to check those out.

This is just in.
Skater82297 now has the Ocarina of Time Any% record.
WR is now 18:03 (2 seconds faster).

Happy Bday mr Aonuma!
https://miiverse.nintendo.net/posts/AYMHAAACAAADVHjI0cPLaQ