A new waste of time

Artistry comes in many forms. A human pours all his attention into a skill, honing his ability, harnessing his innate talent. He has to learn the field inside and out. This is the real pleasure in watching a sporting event: seeing someone really good at something you know is really hard. It makes it all the more pleasurable if you have actually played the sport. Similarly, watching a concert pianist hammer out Rhapsody in Blue flawlessly is immeasurably more amazing if you have dabbled in piano.

Hence it is that I come to my guilty pleasure: watching other people play video games. Specifically, people at the Speed Demos Archive. It's like the Olympics or Hall of Fame for video games. A person will set out with a specific goal, usually finishing the game as fast as possible, and spend months trying to accomplish it. He makes a video, which is then submitted for inspection to make sure there was no cheating involved.

This drab discussion doesn't begin to convey the wonder that someone like me experiences when he sees someone finish Mario 64 in 2 hours and 10 minutes. I played the hell out of that game as a teenager, and so I know how spectacular it is when the player suddenly dives off the side of a cliff, only to land safely in the most out-of-the-way place. It's like watching somebody disarm a bomb: he does tons of incredibly dangerous things, any of which could end the run. In the case of death he would have to start over. Imagine, then, at the 1:30 mark leaping into the lava in order to access a star more quickly. Even one poorly executed move could put him back at the beginning.

It's not simply a matter of being dexterous with a control pad. There's also extensive route planning and strategizing. Consider the 2-cycle completion of Majora's Mask. This doesn't just require practice; the guy had to sit and figure out how this would even be possible. He has to open the 4 temples, clear all 4 main bosses, and have enough resources to finish off Majora's Mask in only 2 cycles (around 3 hours real time). This requires the work of hundreds of people screwing with the game, trying to find sequence breaks, and then sharing the information. The player has to be conversant with all of these tricks, in addition to having virtually memorized the game maps (that run in particular took the player 2 months).

Other runs I would single out: an incredible Super Metroid run, Bionic Commando in 18 minutes, and any of the Metroid Prime runs.

There are also Tool-assisted runs. If the Speed Demos were like Curling, Tool-assisted runs are like Chess. Basically a guy programs his emulator to complete the game in the most efficient way. I don't particularly like this, because it allows things which are physically impossible to accomplish by a human, and because it removes the performance nature of the runs.

Of course, one has to find some "alone time" to watch these videos. Actually playing video games is already perceived as a waste of time (but, somehow, sitting and watching football for 8 hours on your free days is considered normal). I'd rather not have someone catch me, sitting at my computer, agape at the adroit way someone navigates Sonic the Hedgehog through Hill Top Zone. It's really not viewed the same way as someone watching Ali beat Foreman.