World Record Progression: The Legend of Zelda (NES)

[00:01] Zelda is one of the most successful video game franchises of all time. Practically every game in the series has sold well and gotten raving reviews from both critics and casual gamers. It's got a great mix of action, puzzle solving,

[00:14] and story to keep the gamer entertained for dozens of hours. But through all the millions of copies sold and all the 10 out of 10 from IGN, the success of the series can be traced back to one game. That game, of course,

[00:27] is the one that started it all. the original Legend of Zelda for the NES. It was the most ambitious game that had ever been created up to that point. Released in 1987 in North America, it left players in shock when playing it.

[00:41] The amount of depth had never been seen before, and for many, it was the game that first introduced them to how amazing video games could be. To this day, the game is cherished by the gaming community. But some people take the game

[00:53] to another level. Instead of the occasional casual playthrough, they speedrun it. play through the game from start to finish as fast as humanly possible. And over the course of several years, these gamers have been able to

[01:05] take a game as long as Zelda and beat it in half an hour. Let's see how they got there. This is the world record progression for The Legend of Zelda. The origins of Zelda speedrunning go back to a contest that was held over the

[01:19] summer of 2003. Twin Galaxies, the website that used to be the headquarters for speedrunning, offered a $100 bounty to anybody who could beat The Legend of to anybody who could beat The Legend of Zelda in under 36 minutes. Players were

[01:31] close to it. Some reported they could beat it in 37 minutes, but nobody could break that 36-inute barrier. But finally, a player named Tom Vaiva made a fool out of everybody else trying. He didn't just beat 36 minutes, he smashed

[01:45] didn't just beat 36 minutes, he smashed it. In July of 2003, Vodiva beat the it. In July of 2003, Vodiva beat the game in 34 minutes and 5 seconds.

[02:10] You have to get eight pieces of the Triforce from the eight levels, but the order in which you go through them is your decision. So, the first thing Vodafa did after getting the sword at the start, of course, was head into

[02:23] level two. He was trying to get as many bombs as he could early from enemy drops. When you kill an enemy, they can drop an item for you to pick up. During Vaiva's run, there was almost no way to control what you would get from each

[02:36] enemy. He picked level two first, however, because the room before the boss, the dongo, is guaranteed to give you a bomb drop, and the dongo himself is guaranteed to drop them two if you hit him in the correct way. So, with the

[02:49] help of these two drops and a few other random ones, Viva left level two with eight bombs in his inventory. As he progressed through the other dungeons, one trick that he constantly used was the continue warp. By plugging in a

[03:01] second controller and pressing up and A, the game kills you and gives you a chance to continue from the start of the dungeon. This can be used to get back to and saved Vodiva around a minute of walking in total. In later stages, such

[03:15] as level 5, he went out of his way slightly to quickly kill enemies to get more bombs. It ended up working perfectly for him. By the time he right amount of bombs that he needed to fly through them. He entered into the

[03:29] final fight against Ganon in level 9 and had a really beautiful fight. He got hit only once, taking one heart away from his health bar, and it looked like he knew exactly where Ganon was going to be at all times so he could hit him. All in

[03:41] all, Viva's run was really well done for how old it is. He didn't use any glitches in his run, and considering the basic strategies he had, he executed very well. He may not have known as much about the game as players do now, but

[03:53] what he did know, he took full advantage of. Now, Vaiva's run was done in 2003. As years passed, some minor strategy changes were found, but people were still finding it incredibly difficult to beat his run. It really was executed

[04:08] well. Well enough that a considerable amount of time passed before it could be legitimately beaten. And by a considerable amount of time, I mean 9 considerable amount of time, I mean 9 years.

[04:28] submit fake runs that were faster, they were both eventually caught. 9 years later, speedrunners found it hard to believe that still nobody could beat Tom Vodiva. His strats were primitive. He had little knowledge of any glitches,

[04:42] speedrunning was hardly even a thing. Yet, it was so good and so well executed that even with the explosive growth of speedrunning in the mid200s, nobody could beat him. Finally, in 2012, somebody was able to get a faster

[04:57] non-cheed run. This someone was named How Yotuba, a Japanese speedrunner who that April was finally able to top Viva's run from 2003, finishing with a time of 33 minutes and 14 seconds. From

[05:12] a pure strategical standpoint, there's not too much that Howal did differently. He was still using up and a to do death warps when needed and still wasn't using any major glitches. But over the 9 years that had passed since VA's run, runners

[05:25] understanding of how the game worked. Parts where VA struggled, how was flying through. This run was just what would naturally happen to any record set 9 better and everything would look cleaner. So Tom Viva's record stood for

[05:42] 9 years. How long did Halo Yotuba's record stand for? 1 month. Starting in early 2012, a Twitch streamer by the name of Darkwing Duck was on a mission to push his time as low as he could in Zelda. But his runs were

[05:56] came before his. You see, whenever the game was played in a marathon format, game was played in a marathon format, such as AGDQ or SGDQ, the players always decided to not use the up and death warp. Darkwing Duck decided to adopt

[06:09] this method of playing for his runs. And to this day, this method is stuck. By far the most popular category for Zelda nowadays is no up and a with standard any% just having a few runs. So from now on, the record that I'll be covering

[06:23] will be the no up and a record. But anyway, Darkwing Duck was getting runs very close to Howal's record. Even though he wasn't using the death warp, which put him at a time disadvantage, he pushed his time from 37 minutes to 34

[06:36] pushed his time from 37 minutes to 34 minutes to 33 minutes. And on June 5th, 2012, he pulled it off. After he pushed his sword into Genanon for the last time, he went up to rescue Zelda and closed out the first ever 32minute run

[06:49] closed out the first ever 32minute run of The Legend of Zelda.

[07:01] [Music] and everybody was kung fu fighting. able to improve on their own record. As good as Vaiva's run was for the time, he

[07:14] himself was never able to beat it. Howal wasn't able to beat his run either. But Darkwing Duck was a little bit different. He improved his record seven different. He improved his record seven times in a row.

[07:31] Perfect Ganon, but it was pretty good. [Music]

[07:43] little bit of luck, but I have great left.

[08:09] [Laughter] [Music] the way to 3107. The key to him being able to do this

[08:21] repeatedly was a trick known as forced item drops. Normally to the average player, it seems to be completely random what each enemy will drop, if anything at all. And for many years, speedrunners felt the same way. But by 2012, it was

[08:36] realized that it's not actually random at all. It can be nearly completely controlled. It all comes down to this chart. Whenever you kill an enemy, you corresponding item in the chart or nothing at all. For example, if the

[08:50] first enemy that you kill is from group A, you will either get a rupee drop or nothing at all. If the next one you kill is from group C, you'll either get a heart drop or nothing. If the next is from group X, you will not get an item

[09:04] no matter what. It goes like this all the way through the chart and then loops back to the beginning. At first, Darkwing Duck was hardly able to use this to help him. He only used it to get a bomb from the first enemy and

[09:16] then played the rest of the game without thinking about it. But as time went on, he realized how much this chart was able to help him. If he needed health and he knew he was on the sixth position in the chart, all he needed to do was look for

[09:29] an enemy from group A or D to kill. Anything that he needed to help him progress through the game was now available to him. It was just a battle use the chart to help him move through the game. And on top of that, he was

[09:42] able to use a trick known as the screen scroll. By standing exactly 5 pixels from the edge of the screen, you press both up and down on the D-pad for one frame only. After Link turns himself around, you simply walk off the edge of

[09:56] the screen, and Link appears on the other side. This can be used to not only save time walking, but also to skip over certain areas, such as going past this river right at the start of the game. By mid 2014, Darkwing Duck's dominance over

[10:10] the game was apparent. Nobody had taken the record from him in 2 years. Even though in those two years, he himself had broken the record more than half a dozen times. It seemed like nobody was up to the task of beating him. But then

[10:24] a new challenger emerged. I don't believe it. I don't believe it. For 2 years, nobody could beat Darkwing For 2 years, nobody could beat Darkwing Duck but himself. But in July of 2014,

[10:37] Lack Attack 24 decided he would be able to do it. And by using mostly the same strategies that Darkwing Duck used, he was able to stop his reign as King of The Legend of Zelda. Go, go, go, go, go. We got it. Go,

[10:53] go, go. What happened over the following months has got to be one of the best rivalries

[11:07] in speedrunning history. It started with Darkwing Duck quickly firing back, beating Lax Run by about 25 seconds just a month later.

[11:22] get pretty crazy. Still, there were no major strategy changes, but just these two players getting better and better. At the end of January, Darkwing Duck once again lowered the record with a 3029, but Lack fired back with a 3025 2

[11:37] weeks later. Go. Yes. Then Darkwing Duck lowered it. Then Lack lowered it. They just kept going back and forth. And as they traded the record, they knew what their goal was.

[11:50] Somebody was going to beat the game in under 30 minutes. After Lack got 3006 in late February, it seemed so close, but nobody knew which of them was going to get it first. Finally, that March, Lac attack was in

[12:04] position to do it. He was ahead of his splits, and all that was left between him and the sub 30 was Ganon. Oh my god,

[12:30] the battle against Darkwing Duck and he was the new champion of Zelda. He himself admitted he couldn't see the record going much lower than the few seconds. So, it seemed the category was just about at its limit. But as Lack

[12:42] would soon find out, the category was far from being dead. He got to work looking for more strategies he could use to save time. And over the course of 2015, he realized just how much he could still do to the game.

[12:55] World record. [Music] World record. Go. Yes. In order to get more runs that went deep into the game, he would build up as many

[13:10] resources as he could early on. [Music]

[13:22] Yes, we did it. [Music] the level five boss so you didn't have to go to the menu to use the recorder.

[13:34] to go to the menu to use the recorder. Another world record. New world record. level eight so you can make it past Paul's voice without stopping.

[13:52] Getting a backup quick kill on Ganon in case you don't get the stun lock on him. Yeah, 5 seconds away. God, that's awesome. By December, Lac Attack knew that a 28-minute run was possible. He was the

[14:06] first to get a 29minut run and he knew he could be the first to get a 28-minute run. He was far ahead of anyone else's time. He just needed to battle himself time. He just needed to battle himself to get it. And on December 9th, 2015, he

[14:18] to get it. And on December 9th, 2015, he got it.

[14:31] I don't believe it. [Music]

[14:47] has broken the record a couple more times, 2847 and 2843, but he says that he thinks that his best run is the 2850. The only other person to get a 28-minute run since then is Cantalope Me, but he's still 14 seconds behind Lax's world

[15:03] record. So, that's the world record progression for The Legend of Zelda. Over a decade of Zelda speedrunning has brought the record to where it is today. There's been long-standing records, long-standing rivalries, and periodical

[15:17] dominance from a couple of different runners. Where will the record go in the future? Who knows? But if how far it's come so far is any sign, we've got a long way to go before The Legend of Zelda has seen its final run. Thanks for

[15:30] watching. [Music]