The History of Wii Sports World Records

[00:24] platform video game of all time chances are you've played it before and if you have you probably think it doesn't lend itself well to speedrunning most games have a clear objective go from start to finish as fast as possible

[00:40] how do you do that in wii sports i made a video about wii sports resort golf a while back imagine the precision and skill involved imagine the precision and skill involved with speed golf multiplied by 5 sports

[00:54] done it this is the history of wii sports world records

[01:28] the biggest speed run category in wii sports is called all sports it involves winning a game in each of the five sports consecutively that means winning a game of tennis winning a game of baseball completing 10

[01:42] frames of bowling playing three holes of golf and beating a boxer you have to play them in order and since there's no other option you have to use motion controls

[01:55] now wii sports came out in 2006 but serious runs didn't get started until close to a decade later in 2014 and 2015 runs clocking in

[02:07] between 10 and 12 minutes were completed by plyd 823 rsr and nate 9000 but as is so often the case videos either no longer exist or are in very poor quality so we have to go to

[02:23] very poor quality so we have to go to july 2015 to get our first watchable run a 945 by the mid-2000s internet culture named nate 9000 there were five sports for nate to get

[02:38] through the first one was actually the simplest your opponents are picked based on your skill level at level zero you'll get miu and matt who barely know what they're doing out

[02:51] there you have to get four points to win so nate tried to just end each rally as quickly as possible by serving at the very top of your throw you'll hit the ball harder and make it

[03:03] tougher for the opponent to return it this has about a five frame window or a sixth of a second so nate did that four times and hoped his opponent would miss it which is random if they returned it he just hit

[03:17] rally it took him only 25 seconds to win the game and exit back to the menu and that's pretty much all there is to tennis in wii sports speedrunning you can lose a bit of time from returns

[03:33] seconds however the next sport is way way more tennis it was time for nate to play some

[03:45] baseball [Music] the most important thing to know here is that if a team's ever up by five or more runs after an inning the game ends right there from the mercy rule so the idea is

[04:01] that you want to get five runs as fast as possible in the top half of the inning then get three outs in the bottom half and have the game end after just hopefully rob manfred's not getting any ideas

[04:15] however getting an optimal inning of baseball is way easier said than done when batting there was no real strategy just swing at good pitches and pray you get hits

[04:28] nate reached on an error then lined one to left for a base hit from there he was off to the races a double in the gap then a bloop to right some bad luck for akira on the mound

[04:42] but there was nothing lucky about the 3 run shot immediately after that made it 5 runs for nate but he still needed to get out twice more to end the inning so he just struck out twice on purpose

[04:57] on fastballs that make barry zito look like bruzdar graderol in comparison for pitching you obviously want to get three outs without giving up any hits or runs but there's a lot more to it than that

[05:11] what you ultimately want to do is turn into mark burley there's a foolish youtuber who has a video if you want to know more about him but essentially what it means is you want to induce weak contact for easy

[05:23] outs and not strike people out strikeouts always take at least three while a ball in play for an out could be done in just one pitch the problem of course is you have little to no control as to

[05:38] whether the batter will swing or not so you have to make pitches that are good enough to not get barreled but not so good that they just swing and miss and of course get super lucky nate wasn't so fortunate

[05:53] his first batter stared at three straight strikes and his second one well hid it there his third batter struck out on an aethus before he finally got out of the inning on a ground out

[06:07] not the ideal baseball split but there were still three sports to go next up was bowling the strategy here was a bit more straightforward the more strikes you throw the better

[06:19] since strikes only involve throwing the ball once per frame instead of twice there exists setups to get a strike nearly every time but they're all pretty slow so nate just threw it as fast as he could

[06:32] he only managed two strikes before intentionally missing on frame 10 to avoid the third throw however his shots were all fast enough that it was still a decent split now it was time for sport number four

[06:47] golf there are nine holes playable in wii sports but to count for an all sports run all you needed to do was the three in beginner mode or either of the other three hole options

[07:00] and then it was time to play some speed golf golf [Music]

[07:16] you can go then hit it and hope for the best there's not much time to think you just line up and go there's one key difference between golf in wii sports and wii sports resort in

[07:30] resort if you hit an incredible shot one that either lands near or in the hole from a long distance away you'll get a replay that loses time however that mechanic is not present in the original wii sports

[07:45] so anything is game the better shots you can make the more nate tried to take advantage of this on hole 1 but his second shot landed over his first putt was wide left so he had to take a par

[08:00] hole two was much of the same with his initial shot going beyond the hole then needing two more shots to get it in and on hole three despite the crowd getting excited nate once again was unable to get under

[08:15] par that made it three pars on three holes from nate which doesn't sound great but keep in mind he was against the constant pressure of needing to aim each shot as quickly as possible

[08:28] quickly as possible and finally the last sport is boxing you want to ensure your mii is ranked low to get an easy opponent like marco then just go ham on him until they're down and hope they stay down

[08:42] if you punch in a rhythm aiming for a nice 15 frame window on each punch you'll be landing critical hits that do more damage if all goes well you'll be able to avoid getting punched at all and knock your

[08:55] opponent down quickly hopefully they'll stay down and won't it's not known exactly what causes them to stay down but it seems to be a combination of knocking them down quickly not getting hit yourself

[09:08] and some luck and that's exactly what happened to nate this was the first ever sub 10 minute run of wii sports there were some highlights like a very smooth boxing match and the fast start

[09:23] he had to baseball but of course the large number of strikeouts and overall slow bowling and golf sections meant there was some big room for improvement nate knew this and just two weeks later

[09:37] he lowered it another 19 seconds his golfing was particularly improved in this run getting three birdies instead of three pars and not missing putts which made up most of the time save

[09:51] so 926 was the new time to beat and it would stand for over two years it wasn't a particularly optimized record or anything

[10:03] it was just one of those dry spells that speed games sometimes go through but in june 2017 the wii series discord server was created which helped spark more popularity in

[10:16] running the game in august a player named mr jimmy steele 25 joined and within hours said he had beaten nate's record with a 9 16. we'll get to this run in a moment

[10:30] but there's something else important to discuss baseball this cutscene played first this cutscene played first [Music]

[10:47] it but i guarantee there's a small subset of you who despite having played the game before have never seen this cutscene and there's a reason for that

[11:07] sold europe japan and most other regions of game however for a few months after its release the version of wii sports that was sold

[11:22] in north america was actually an early version of the game the community calls it 1.00 and it emits certain features present in 1.01

[11:34] the version sold everywhere else in the world the two most important features are both in baseball first the cut scene you just saw which wastes about five seconds and

[11:47] can't be skipped isn't present in 1.00 isn't present in 1.00 and second whenever someone grounds out an animation plays in 1.01 of them throwing the first

[11:59] which wastes about 0.7 seconds this animation doesn't play in 1.00 that means that for a typical all sports run playing on the early version of the

[12:11] game is hugely advantageous as it'll save you close to 10 seconds over playing on 1.01 now when wii sports was re-released in north america in july 2007 to promote the new remote jacket

[12:27] they updated it to 1.01 to match the rest of the world the cut scene and the animations were added back in this optimal speedrun version of the game can only be found on north american

[12:41] copies made within the first 9 months of its release any copy from the next 10 years is of the slower updated version that means that even though wii sports is one of the best selling games of all

[12:55] time this early version is quite rare it's estimated that only about 1 in every 20 copies of the game is 1.00 every 20 copies of the game is 1.00 or 1 in every 10 north american copies

[13:09] there's an easy way to check if your copy is 1.00 if it's a north american copy and the title screen says 2006 then it's 1.00 if it says 2006-2007

[13:23] and the wii remote has a jacket on it then it's not the early version since jimmy was playing on 1.01 he lost some pretty significant time in baseball from version differences alone however he had a smart strategy to use

[13:38] while batting once he got his 5 runs instead of striking out on purpose he bunted for a quick ground out this took far fewer pitches than strikeouts but it's tough to perfectly

[13:51] you want it to go on the pitching side jimmy was nearly perfect a strike then a ground out to short a ground out to first then a soft comebacker

[14:05] a four pitch inning the rest of his run was up and down getting two strikes and bowling and a birdie in golf birdie in golf next up was nikro who set a 9 15 just

[14:17] days after jimmy's 9 16. he has a pretty big internet presence nowadays but back then he had just a few hundred followers now nikro's world record run was solid and all particularly in golf where he

[14:32] got all three birdies however the highlight of the run was his he had one run in but two outs he still needed four more runs and with a ground ball hit at the second

[14:47] baseman it wasn't looking good it wasn't looking good but then uh drop that yes

[15:07] oh my god three errors the odds in that happening were one in a thousand nikros 915 would stand for a few months before being beaten by alaska xp2 in

[15:21] january 2018. alaska had an interesting skill set he was particularly good at bowling and golf in bowling he managed to hit seven strikes without carefully lining up

[15:35] and in golf he had more experience than most thanks to his golf runs in wii sports and wii sports resort he managed birdies on holes one and two and thanks to a beautiful second shot on hole three he got an eagle there

[15:50] however alaska struggled mightily with boxing losing 9 seconds from mistimed critical hits still it was good enough for a 904 six months later nikra would come back to snag another record

[16:06] to snag another record 901 once again it was an up and down run his baseball was quite fast with five quick runs while batting and no base runners while pitching however his one strike in bowling paled

[16:21] in comparison and let's just say his golf hole 1 wasn't ideal the run had good moments and it had bad moments we've seen a handful of records at this

[16:33] point and you can probably tell that this up and down nature was typical for outside of tennis any of the other four sports can cause massive time swings in baseball you've got to deal with

[16:48] batting and pitching both are extremely random and can literally cause minutes of time loss with bowling a good game versus a bad one costs up to 30 seconds in golf each missed shot can cost 10

[17:04] seconds and across 3 holes that really adds up and in boxing missing critical hits can lose a dozen seconds or more this game wasn't like your traditional speed run where you can optimize it and

[17:19] eventually grind down every split no the time swings in wii sports were different they were more random and far harder to control the record was 901 and with everything

[17:33] listed before going in the right direction it could potentially go way lower into the eighths or further but the odds in having all those time swings go your way

[17:45] it just wasn't realistic well unless alaska had anything to say about it

[18:02] embark on a push to take the all sports record into the 8 minute range and he certainly had the credentials to get it there but the issues of before still remained getting all 5 sports to line up properly

[18:17] was just too difficult he was going to need some help and over the next few months that's exactly what he got one new strategy he used was expanding the scope of bunting

[18:31] players had been bunting for a quick out for months but if you very carefully angle your wii remote slightly more forward you could potentially bunt for singles as well the margin between bunting for a hit and

[18:45] bunting fern out was razor thin but with a lot of practice you can fairly reliably bunt it to third for a hit so now alaska could theoretically bunt four

[18:57] times to load the bases and score a run then hit a grand slam then bunt three more times for outs it could still go wrong but there was potential for a really fast batting split

[19:11] now for bowling the days of games with just two or three strikes had to be in the past alaska is going to shoot for more like alaska is going to shoot for more like six or seven strikes in a good game the

[19:24] record at the time nikros 901 had only one strike alaska could easily save 20 seconds over that he was already quite good at bowling strikes but with more experience he

[19:37] could save the time more reliably in golf alaska began using an impressive looking strategy to save a few seconds the driver chip [Music] similar to a trick used in wii sports

[19:52] resort the flag on the green acts as a wall if if you're able to use a driver and hit your ball into it it can fall straight down and enter the hole

[20:04] saving time over having to slowly put it in or get it closer to the hole now the driver chip may seem super precise but there's actually a setup on hole 2 to get it nearly every time

[20:18] by hitting your first shot into the bunker you can then line up with the flag and pull out your driver by swinging as hard as you can the game will automatically hook the ball to the right at just the correct

[20:31] angle and speed to hit the flag and finally there was boxing this was the sport that alaska struggled with the most there wasn't any particular new strategy he had to use here

[20:44] he just had to improve at it get better at timing the criticals avoid getting punched himself and ensure that his opponent had no real chance of getting up over time he did get better

[20:58] but it was still a battle with all this a sub 9 minute run was definitely possible but was a sub 8 realistic 2 it would take a miracle run

[21:12] but it could be done alaska quickly began seeing results he got an 843 on july 22nd and then in 8 30 on august 15th

[21:24] his bowling and pitching were great but his batting was far from perfect and he missed a putt on hole one there was still a long way to go there was still a long way to go and then came september 29th

[21:38] and then came september 29th [Music] [Applause] [Music]

[21:52] [Music] yes come on five six nine [Music]

[22:11] [Applause] will that work four five eight nine

[22:23] nine ten still a record by four seconds what happened

[22:37] what happened well it was the god run up until boxing his batting was near perfect with four bunt singles a grand slam and three bunt his pitching was solid with two strikeouts and a one pitch out

[22:52] he hit four strikes while bowling and in golf got a birdie a driver chip birdie and an eagle it was sub 8 pace but he just couldn't hit criticals which led to a slow knockdown and his opponent

[23:07] getting up but alaska wasn't done yet on but he had about half a minute he could save on boxing alone this sub 8 grind had to continue

[23:22] he had come close once he just had to do it again [Music] [Applause]

[23:38] [Music] oh my god

[23:51] yes [Music] let's go [Music]

[24:14] oh my god please dude dare oh my god oh my god [Music]

[24:26] yes oh my god oh my god i've done it i've [ __ ] done it oh my god dude a legendary run

[24:39] alaska's sub 8 dream had finally come true it was beautiful from start to finish a six pitch inning while pitching six strikes in bowling three birdies in golf

[24:53] and finally a boxing where his opponent stayed down it all added up to a 754 the first sub 8 in the history of wii sports this run firmly cemented alaska at the

[25:07] top nobody was really close to him behind and 754 continued to stay on top people got a little closer but there wasn't much new to use

[25:23] they had to replicate what alaska did and find somewhere to save time after 18 months of this it was clear there was only one person up to the task competing alaska

[25:36] and that person was alaska in may 2020 alaska beat his own record by eight

[25:52] seconds most of the time save came while batting his old record other than that it was nearly identical a six pitch inning six strikes and three

[26:06] birdies he had found a way to just eke out the time he needed many more months passed and his 746 remained alone at the top at this point he had held the record for

[26:19] about two and a half years that's significant for a popular game like wii sports but by early 2021 he finally had some close competition two players had achieved sub eights of

[26:33] their own one was sphere cube and the other was paul in the mall spherecube's personal best was 748 just two seconds behind alaska but on february 16th

[26:49] he had a run within striking distance of the record going into golf and on hole 1 he did this he did this [Music]

[27:07] hole two had a driver chip and he finished on hole three with an eagle in all he saved 15 seconds over alaska on golf alone on golf alone it was enough to edge him out with a 743

[27:21] making it the first time someone had dethroned alaska in nearly three years and the best part about it he did it while playing on 1.01

[27:34] is game spherecube was unable to acquire a copy he lost about 10 seconds in baseball from that and still was able to beat

[27:49] alaska he was pretty good paul in the mall was making strides for the record he got a sub 8 but took a break from running the game around the time sphere

[28:02] cube got the record he came back a month and a half later he came back a month and a half later and got a 7 37 a record by six seconds paul played on 1.00 so he saved quite a bit of time in baseball over sphere cube

[28:17] but immediately after this record was set set controversy arose fastest way to move on to boxing is to reset to the menu

[28:32] for years the rule was that once the golf ball hit the bottom of the hole you however in july 2020 in july 2020 runner emoad nomad hit this unbelievable

[28:46] runner emoad nomad hit this unbelievable shot however you can see that when he reset the ball was in the process of bouncing back up on chip ins like this

[29:02] it's actually possible that the ball hits the bottom bounces up and lands outside the hole meaning you need another shot so the community came up with a rule that whenever there was a chip in you have to

[29:17] wait until the phrase chip in appears on the screen to reset it seemed like a logical rule however in paul's 737 his whole three however in paul's 737 his whole three ended like this

[29:34] he reset right away but since the ball hit off the pole it technically would have been a chippen and he didn't wait but then again there wasn't any chance this ball would

[29:48] have bounced out it rolled in rather than falling in off the polar flag despite technically being a chip in this run but ultimately it was allowed to stay on

[30:03] the rule was changed so that as long as the ball rolled in the hole even if it was a chip in you could reset once it hit the bottom and so paul 737 was the official world record

[30:18] just like the dozens of records that came before it the 737 was great but in a matter of days it was going to be obsolete because this story is going to take a bit of a turn

[30:32] every so often a speed game gets a new strategy that transforms the run there's canonless setup in mario 64. the scroll glitch in castlevania

[30:44] bros when you think of those speed runs those tricks seem intertwined with them up to this point wii sports didn't really have a trick like that

[30:58] there were unique strategies to use but no mind-blowing iconic tricks that was about to change because in early 2021

[31:10] wii sports game defining trick was going to be discovered to the wonderful world of disconnect strats [Music] this bizarre looking trick has a

[31:24] treasured past for years players had noticed an odd glitch that sometimes occurred if your remote disconnected engulf you could sometimes hit the ball twice but you couldn't hit it far and it

[31:39] couldn't be easily replicated so nobody was too interested in it was too interested in it from 2018 to 2020 this glitch happened to several players including simple strat 17 and even world record holder

[31:53] alaska xp2 but it remained just a curiosity in early 2021 plyde decided to investigate it a bit plyde decided to investigate it a bit more to figure out exactly how it worked

[32:06] and what he found shocked the community then disconnect your remote by taking the batteries out you can put the batteries back in and swing a second

[32:18] time the catch is that the sum of these two shots can't add up to more than four bars of hit power so you can't hit it further than a normal swing however if your second shot happens

[32:32] after hitting water the ball will stop on a dime after a quick transition and you'll be placed wherever it is including potentially on top of the water this saves time in a couple of ways

[32:45] on a hole like hole 5 you're supposed to take a curved path around to the green but with disconnect strats you can go straight to the hole across the water and take a more direct path and second your ball completely stops

[33:01] once the transition occurs so if your timing is good you can hit the ball into the water quickly hit it a second time and avoid the time the ball would normally take to stop rolling from even just one shot

[33:14] the river p wipeout jack and nomad found fast routes for the intermediate holes so that was the new course to use on hole 5 you can save about 7 seconds by going straight across the water and

[33:28] on hole 6 you can save about 4 from using the transition to stop right where that meant that in theory 11 seconds could be saved wii sports run suddenly had potential to get quite a bit lower

[33:43] as not only could extra time be saved but golf could be more consistent as the first player to use disconnect strats in a record was shockwave tls who

[33:55] lowered the time down to 735 as you'd expect he gained time on golf despite his initial disconnect shot on hole 5 being mistimed it helped when he hit this shot on hole 4.

[34:11] 4. [Music] however shockwave is from the uk and he wasn't

[34:25] able to import a copy of 1.00 from overseas so he lost time in baseball next up was sphere spherecube again who lowered the record 9 days later with a 732 he had switched to 1.00 so he saved the

[34:42] time in baseball but he didn't use disconnect strats yeah especially in the early days of disconnect strats even some top level runners found it too difficult to go for since it wasn't technically needed for

[34:57] about a month later shockwave took it a couple seconds lower shockwave took it a couple seconds lower but still he was playing on 1.01 a few months after that spherecube took it back

[35:11] while still not using disconnect strats nobody was willing to string it all together but in the summer of 2021 shockwave would finally get a copy of 1.00

[35:25] a top runner now had all three pieces of the puzzle 1.00 a willingness to do disconnect strats and a lot of skill they all combined for a 728

[35:38] a new record just one day after sphere cube 7 30. this world record really had a lot going into it bunting for hits aiming for strikes

[35:52] driver chips disconnect strats and much more implemented all of them and the end result was a 728 was there any time save left well there were seconds here and there

[36:08] his batting was near perfect but while pitching inning three strikeouts which we know from before are slow there was room to save about 15 seconds

[36:22] his bowling was perfect 9 strikes so no time to save there for golf he missed the putt on hole 6 and his boxing could have been a bit

[36:34] so sub 7 was definitely possible but the problems of before still remained it required perfection from all five sports and that just wasn't realistic

[36:50] but that didn't mean people couldn't try by september another contender showed up emo ad nomad and over the next few months these guys were going to engage in a battle both against each other

[37:05] both against each other and against the sub 7 barrier massive seven second cut of the record he had time to save on pitching and on

[37:18] hole six so he gained 12 collective seconds there but lost a few seconds while batting thanks to a foul ball a few weeks later he'd take it down to a few weeks later he'd take it down to 718 and nomad was right behind him with

[37:32] the 721 nomad would then have a run a few seconds ahead of the record but needed a miracle shot on hole 4 to keep it going

[37:47] on october 11th shockwave got a 7-16 nomad followed up shortly after with the 7-17 a run that came just 24 hours too late to be a record

[38:01] on the 15th shockwave had a run that lost time early to batting but had an extraordinarily fast 5 pitch inning to bring it back to that showed how much potential there still was to squeeze out of the record

[38:16] it finished as a world record of 7 15 but could have been several seconds lower had he not been forced to foul off an inside pitch okay so one thing was starting to become clear

[38:30] this wasn't much of a competition the battle between shockwave and nomad was a blowout shockwave had set the past seven records in a row nomad hadn't set any

[38:43] time sometimes even within a couple seconds of the record but never overtook him this was starting to become personal nomad had to prove that he was still

[38:57] capable of taking the record well he kept doing attempts and on october 16th nomad was gonna have his chance nomad was gonna have his chance [Music]

[39:21] he was three seconds ahead of his personal best going into boxing but he had time to save there he could theoretically get as low as a 7-10 five seconds of wiggle room over the record he just had to lock it down

[39:52] nomads final time 715.733 second nomad could keep going record his next personal best would almost

[40:08] certainly be it and sure enough the very next day he got himself a 7 14. it was a new world record had it not been for shockwave getting this just hours before

[40:29] it had just about everything nearly perfect batting 4 pitch inning great disconnect strats it just missed sub 7 because of a missed shot on hole 4. nomad kept trying but at this point

[40:45] shockwave was way in the lead it was going to be really tough but he wasn't giving up he kept chipping away at his time and by november he had gotten within a stone's throw of the record

[40:59] a commonly used metric to determine a runner's pace is best possible time it can be measured from any point in the run if the runner matched all of their best splits from a certain spot in the run to

[41:12] the end it measures what time they would get on november 12 2021 nomad exited baseball at 3 14. it was one of the fastest paces he had ever been on

[41:27] and his best possible time from there was 6 44. this was a golden opportunity he entered bowling and started throwing

[41:39] strike after strike five in a row then six eight and nine it was a perfect game on one of his best paces ever he did lose a little time in frame 10

[41:54] from slow falling pins but according to his splits his splits nomad's best possible time was still 6 48 but one of the biggest run killers was

[42:06] coming up in hole four it's hard to get a birdie on this hole as winds can throw everything off and make life harder nomad was gonna try to land in the bunker then driver chip for a birdie

[42:22] now more than ever this had to work this had to work [Music]

[42:35] he didn't get a hole in one so he couldn't get in the 640s anymore but his couldn't get in the 640s anymore but his best possible time was still 6 54. three splits to go but he had to get through hole five's

[42:51] two disconnect shots shot one went well but on shot two he landed far from the hole it was tough but nomad had to sink this putt

[43:04] he had missed enough world records this shot had to be the difference this shot had to be the difference between all his past runs and a sub 7. between all his past runs and a sub 7. [Music]

[43:31] players like emo ad nomad are often overlooked in speedrunning shockwave is an incredible player as evidenced by his nearly endless list of world records but nomad's skill is right up there with

[43:45] him people often focus on the world records but really the path to getting there is what's important nomad has had a lot of near misses but he's going to break through

[43:59] but he's going to break through his sub 7 dream might not be done yet but the journey it took him to get there is what will make it feel so great really that's what speedrunning is all about

[44:13] [Music] if you enjoyed the video i'd really appreciate you sharing it with a couple other people and hitting the subscribe button thank you