Game Page: http://speeddemosarchive.com/EarthBound.html
Earthbound (Any %) (Single Segment) [Resets, Large-skip glitches]
Verifier Responses
Decision: Accept
Congratulations to 'nemi'!
Earthbound (Any %) (Single Segment) [Resets, Large-skip glitches]
Verifier Responses
Quote from 1CrazyFoxx1:
Well I've heard of a few of these glitches but all in all I found he was not playing on an emulator, there's a color glitch after ness's nightmare that shows up on the emulator and I didn't see it, all in all everything made sense and I can verify that this run was legit... at least as legit as skipping the game can be lol
Quote from CyberBotX:
A/V good, and 2 flying men at the end is definitely cheating! Wait, no, that's just a glitch, no cheating here. The run was very well done, even barring some of the hiccups like the Twoson skip, which isn't too big a deal because of the time saved in the end. The tricks were all pulled off successfully. Go ahead and give this an accept!
Quote from __sdfg:
Timing: the player assumes control when Ness hits the floor getting out of bed, at frame 5826. I'm not sure there's complete agreement on when to stop timing, so I noted a couple times. The final "Pray" input is given at frame 313542, which yields a time of 1:25:20 at 60.098864 FPS. Paula starts her last prayer (thus guaranteeing a win) at frame 314207, which would match the 1:25:31 time given in the StatID. The latter end point is what's currently used in races, if it helps the staff in deciding how to time this.
I watched the HQ encode all the way through and skipped through the MQ and LQ encodes. The A/V seems pretty good. I did notice more ghosting on dark backgrounds than I'm used to seeing from h.264, though. Check the background around the photographer from 1:36:38 to 1:36:54 for an example of this. It looks like an encoding artifact rather than an issue with the recording, but the StatID looks like it was generated by Yua and I don't get those artifacts from Yua, so I don't know what's going on. It's not nearly bad enough to make me question whether the run should be accepted, but it might be nice to figure out what's causing the issue.
I did not notice any inconsistencies in the run and I do not believe there to have been any cheating. The runner does some pretty crazy stuff, but based on my own experience and what I've seen from other runners, I have no doubt that this run could have been done in real time.
The stairs-glitch route for this game is somewhat well-known: you clip through a few walls to get into Threed early, then use the stairs glitch to walk all over the map and set the necessary event flags to fight Giygas. The twist in this run, as compared to other stairs-glitch runs I've seen, is that the runner uses RNG manipulation to set up certain critical things rather than taking more obvious approaches. The two instances are having Ness catch a cold in the Threed graveyard to set up the first stairs glitch – as opposed to calling for a pizza and waiting for the pizza to arrive – and doing all of the late-game grinding in a single fight against a Kraken rather than farming Fobbies. The latter is very ambitious given the precision required to keep the RNG under control through Magicant, but the runner is able to pull it off.
Oddly, despite the overall strategy for the run being very aggressive, the route felt too conservative to me in a couple places. The runner bought a lot of Hamburgers in Onett that I don't think were really needed. The runner did use most of them, but by preferring Lifeup against the police force, it's quite possible to get through Onett without the second shopping trip and without selling a Cookie to buy another burger at the beginning. The other place where I was surprised was the shopping in Saturn Valley. I think the runner could've cut back on the Secret herbs. Also, replacing a couple Secret herbs with a Brain food lunch would have let the runner skip a Salt packet earlier in the run, which would've let the runner buy the Cup of coffee in Twoson rather than having to stop by the Threed bakery.
The reason those two spots doesn't bother me much is that the extra shopping can't have cost more than a minute and the route already depends on a few very difficult/risky areas late in the run. I don't have a problem with taking extra precautions if it lets more attempts get through, especially given that before the runner started working on this category, there was no baseline for this kind of route on the English version of the game. For anyone who wants to beat this run, the shopping is one place where some time can be saved, but I don't think it's an issue with this run given everything else going on.
Also, did I mention that the runner skips the Franklin badge? The runner skips the Franklin badge.
Regarding execution, the runner's comments cite a few issues with menus, but the menus are so lightning-fast throughout the run that I can't find fault with them. I could watch the runner go through menus all day. I'm serious. They're beautiful. My main concerns with execution are actually the third wall clip in Twoson/Threed, where the runner was stuck in the wall for several seconds longer than I'm used to seeing, and getting around the second Kraken in the Sea of Eden, which I think the runner could have done more efficiently by luring the Kraken under one of the spires. Given that the trickier parts of the run were pulled off without issue, though, I don't mind seeing the runner lose half a minute or so total to those two spots.
I suppose I should comment on the luck in the run. I haven't run this category myself, so I'm not sure exactly what to expect, but it looks like the runner got pretty good luck overall. The Titanic Ant fight was rough, but the runner had a very quick grind up to level 8 before the fight, so I'd say Giant Step went well enough. The cop fight seemed about average for the strategy the runner used. Threed and Winters required a bit more encounter-dodging than usual, but the fights with Ness's Nightmare and Giygas both looked good, and I think that made up for the earlier patches of bad luck. It's worth noting that Giygas was cooperative in the third phase of the battle and held off on using Thunder until the very end, when it didn't endanger the run. I'm guessing that's why the recovery items the runner bought in Saturn Valley seemed unnecessary – I don't think they could be cut out of the run entirely unless someone decided to bank on getting great endgame luck every time. This time, the runner got that kind of luck, but I don't know how often it happens.
So... yeah. This might not be the God Run yet, but I still think it's a huge achievement for the runner to get everything to come together as well as it did. Congrats!
Accept.
I watched the HQ encode all the way through and skipped through the MQ and LQ encodes. The A/V seems pretty good. I did notice more ghosting on dark backgrounds than I'm used to seeing from h.264, though. Check the background around the photographer from 1:36:38 to 1:36:54 for an example of this. It looks like an encoding artifact rather than an issue with the recording, but the StatID looks like it was generated by Yua and I don't get those artifacts from Yua, so I don't know what's going on. It's not nearly bad enough to make me question whether the run should be accepted, but it might be nice to figure out what's causing the issue.
I did not notice any inconsistencies in the run and I do not believe there to have been any cheating. The runner does some pretty crazy stuff, but based on my own experience and what I've seen from other runners, I have no doubt that this run could have been done in real time.
The stairs-glitch route for this game is somewhat well-known: you clip through a few walls to get into Threed early, then use the stairs glitch to walk all over the map and set the necessary event flags to fight Giygas. The twist in this run, as compared to other stairs-glitch runs I've seen, is that the runner uses RNG manipulation to set up certain critical things rather than taking more obvious approaches. The two instances are having Ness catch a cold in the Threed graveyard to set up the first stairs glitch – as opposed to calling for a pizza and waiting for the pizza to arrive – and doing all of the late-game grinding in a single fight against a Kraken rather than farming Fobbies. The latter is very ambitious given the precision required to keep the RNG under control through Magicant, but the runner is able to pull it off.
Oddly, despite the overall strategy for the run being very aggressive, the route felt too conservative to me in a couple places. The runner bought a lot of Hamburgers in Onett that I don't think were really needed. The runner did use most of them, but by preferring Lifeup against the police force, it's quite possible to get through Onett without the second shopping trip and without selling a Cookie to buy another burger at the beginning. The other place where I was surprised was the shopping in Saturn Valley. I think the runner could've cut back on the Secret herbs. Also, replacing a couple Secret herbs with a Brain food lunch would have let the runner skip a Salt packet earlier in the run, which would've let the runner buy the Cup of coffee in Twoson rather than having to stop by the Threed bakery.
The reason those two spots doesn't bother me much is that the extra shopping can't have cost more than a minute and the route already depends on a few very difficult/risky areas late in the run. I don't have a problem with taking extra precautions if it lets more attempts get through, especially given that before the runner started working on this category, there was no baseline for this kind of route on the English version of the game. For anyone who wants to beat this run, the shopping is one place where some time can be saved, but I don't think it's an issue with this run given everything else going on.
Also, did I mention that the runner skips the Franklin badge? The runner skips the Franklin badge.
Regarding execution, the runner's comments cite a few issues with menus, but the menus are so lightning-fast throughout the run that I can't find fault with them. I could watch the runner go through menus all day. I'm serious. They're beautiful. My main concerns with execution are actually the third wall clip in Twoson/Threed, where the runner was stuck in the wall for several seconds longer than I'm used to seeing, and getting around the second Kraken in the Sea of Eden, which I think the runner could have done more efficiently by luring the Kraken under one of the spires. Given that the trickier parts of the run were pulled off without issue, though, I don't mind seeing the runner lose half a minute or so total to those two spots.
I suppose I should comment on the luck in the run. I haven't run this category myself, so I'm not sure exactly what to expect, but it looks like the runner got pretty good luck overall. The Titanic Ant fight was rough, but the runner had a very quick grind up to level 8 before the fight, so I'd say Giant Step went well enough. The cop fight seemed about average for the strategy the runner used. Threed and Winters required a bit more encounter-dodging than usual, but the fights with Ness's Nightmare and Giygas both looked good, and I think that made up for the earlier patches of bad luck. It's worth noting that Giygas was cooperative in the third phase of the battle and held off on using Thunder until the very end, when it didn't endanger the run. I'm guessing that's why the recovery items the runner bought in Saturn Valley seemed unnecessary – I don't think they could be cut out of the run entirely unless someone decided to bank on getting great endgame luck every time. This time, the runner got that kind of luck, but I don't know how often it happens.
So... yeah. This might not be the God Run yet, but I still think it's a huge achievement for the runner to get everything to come together as well as it did. Congrats!
Accept.
Decision: Accept
Congratulations to 'nemi'!
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