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After almost 28 years, Super Mario 64 has been beaten without using the A button
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this post was submitted on 23 May 2024
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Jokes aside, a lot of devs love watching stuff like speedrunning. It means someone loved their creation enough to minutely analyze it and spend countless hours with it.
eg check out the devs watching a guy beat Psychonauts https://youtu.be/lsDc1YVxHA0?t=517
(I'm pretty sure there was similar version of this where they guy wasn't in the room and they were just watching the earlier recording of the speedrun but I can't find it now)
a lot of devs love watching stuff like speedrunning
True, but some of them hate it. But with the growing presence of speedrunning friendly features in new titles (looking at you, Supergiant), I think that's becoming less of a problem.
Either way, these "devs watch" reaction videos are fantastic.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/lsDc1YVxHA0?t=517
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I would have conflicted feelings about it if I were the devs, often speed runners even forget or don't even know the story of the game they run lol I imagine it's like spending all day cooking something really nice and your serve it to someone who absolutely loves the dish but mainly because of the plate you served it on, they come back every day to order it only to throw the food away and stare at the plate
Yeah, I haven't ever met a speedrunner that hadn't played the game casually at least a few times. Just because its a running joke that speedrunners don't care about the story because of the effort taken to skip it to save time doesn't mean speedrunners literally don't care about it. Kingdom Hearts speedrunners are the only ones I have met that can hash out the entirety of that convoluted mess.
Your experience doesn't invalidate mine. I watch speedrun events very often and and runners will say stuff "Im not really sure why he wants to kill us but skips the entire fight with clever use of game mechanics that was the boss fight!". Many of them did play the entire game without speedrunning at first, but many dont.
You're correct. I've watched many live speed runners mention that they only know how to speed run the game because they started playing the game with the intention of speed running it to begin with.
Thanks for confirming, I know it's true but it's funny seeing people downvote my comment as if there was an unspoken rule for speedrunners to experience the game in full before speedrunning
Social media people are petty
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For anyone wondering, this was done on the virtual console version, so the floating point glitch that lets you skip the climbing pole from Bowser in the fire Sea is available.
The A Button Challenge still stands for the console versions.
"Still stands" means is impossible. Is there also a "no thumbstick" challenge? Or a "no controller plugged in" challenge?
"Still stands" means is impossible.
New to speedrunning?
Pannenkoek does have a few videos documenting stars that can be beaten with No Joystick Allowed strats (these are old and there are more on the secondary UncommentatedPannen channel but I don't see a playlist compiling them). A full run is definitely not possible, but at least some stars are doable.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
"Still stands" means that there is no known way to achieve it. Not that it's known to be impossible.
Until the discovery of the virtual console glitch for BitFS a few years ago, the A button challenge "still stood" for all cases.
Oh boy, is the A Button Challenge still ongoing. There is quite a hunt to further reduce the approx. 18 presses to get 120 stars in a full-game TAS, or to find faster and human-viable strategies to avoid these A presses.
Damn I was hoping they solved the issue.
Can we please stop adding “After 28 years” to every article and video about this game?
not to worry, it won't be long until "after almost 29 years..."
And then 30 years...
On and on until...
"After 28 years" received a 6-minute standing ovation at Cannes
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H h h , th t's re lly wesome. Congr tz to the pl yers.
Wow, this success is truly something to be proud of. I extend the most unreserved compliments to the whole group involved. Nintendo's most well known title is thoroughly deconstructed now. I, for one, find myself delighted by the outcome.
B sed.
B sad, because A button gets to rest.
Could they not afford to buy a new controller when the A button broke?
In this economy? Better believe I'm looking up the No A Button strats.
Perhaps it was eaten by the larger buttons
The A button is already the largest button so it had to be stopped
Step 1: Run the game in an emulator
Step 2: change "A" button function to another button on your controller, set "A" button to a non functional button assignment. NEVER have to press "A" again.
Step 3: PROFIT
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Can't view content without enabling targeting cookies, thanks eurogamer
Can, without js.
The jump button. Saved you a click.
More than that, it does all sorts of things that also had to be worked around.
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Finally!
Clip of the moment it was beaten: https://clips.twitch.tv/ZanyIntelligentSwanAMPTropPunch-7MB14zIDcRvO0X-a
Video documentary on the history of this challenge (2022) [5h22m]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXbJe-rUNP8
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=yXbJe-rUNP8
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Came wait for the explanation video to drop. Bowser I'm the Fire Sea was the last stronghold a year ago. Here is a history of the no press challenge.
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Why?
Because they can as well as being fun and novel to try and beat the game in weird, unintuitive ways? There are challenge runs similar to this* in Minecraft that get super popular all the time.
Similar in a conceptual sense, I've no idea the relative difficulty of these two different games nor the differing challenges offered in playing these way
Has no one really done an RTA 70 star ABC before now?
I love the concept of this challenge, good on this lad for doing this, I thought most strats were TAS only.
Many still are, but 70 star offers a lot of flexibility in routing to just pick the stars that are RTA-able.
I'm curious what the A count for RTA 120 could be. TAS is 13x, but humans will need more.
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We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new bragging rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all speedrunners. But why, some say, zero A presses? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask, why climb the highest mountain? Why, 55 years ago, fly to the Moon? Why does Mohun Bagal play the Delhi Capitals? We choose to do zero A presses. We choose to do zero A presses... We choose to do zero A presses in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too.
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WOOOOO YEAH BABY