Game Page: http://speeddemosarchive.com/StarFox64.html
Star Fox 64 (ntscj/ntscus) (n64) [Any %] [Single Segment]
Verifier Responses
Decision: Accept
Reason: The verification copy was incorrectly encoded, but we have the raw file and will make new encodes.
Congratulations to 'Hayate1129'!
Star Fox 64 (ntscj/ntscus) (n64) [Any %] [Single Segment]
Verifier Responses
Quote from zallard1:
Hey, zallard1 here verifying this new SF64 any% run.
First things first. The A/V on the encode isn't so hot, but I was assured that the raw file is acceptable and will be properly encoded in the future, so it sounds like it won't be an issue. Also, the frame count I got for this run from the encode supplied yielded a 22:45.269, so the timing suggested by the title of the video seems spot on.
I remember how a speedrun of this game was initially a Cinco de Mayo gag by TSA where he jokingly submitted a 27:47 SF64 any% run to SDA. After TSA's run, Psonar took a more serious approach to the speedrun and lowered the time down to 25:41. I then submitted a 25:17, and years later DSX submitted a 23:09. Now we have this run by Hayate, which is an astonishing 5 minutes faster than the original time that TSA submitted. Let's give this a look, shall we?
Corneria - Runner uses "half boosting" which collectively saves a few seconds over the course of the entire run compared to full boosts everywhere. He lets Falco die on stage 1 too, possibly for lag management purposes. The boss fight seemed fine to me.
Meteo - He kills Peppy which seems to save a bit of time on making the stone tunnel spawn quicker than usual. He also lets Slippy die, which might also be for lag management purposes? My guess would be that he's setting it up for Katina so there's less ships when he uses bombs at the start.
Katina - This stage has a super interesting quick kill that never used to be in the any% route. When I was trying to re-route 100% for this game, I messed with some parts of the game with gameshark codes to see if I could find anything interesting. With the "super-bomb" cheat, I found that the hatchers were still vulnerable to bombs, even if they are closed. This led to me trying it regular bombs and I ended up finding that it's still possible to do... if you backflip into the ship itself. I wasn't ever sure if you could get all the hatches before the cutscene played, but eventually runners were able to get it to work. So anyways... the stage starts with the runner bombing the pyramid twice & collecting a 3rd gold ring to increase his health. He then full boosts over to the mothership and starts carefully bombing the hatcher positions of the ship. Once he successfully kills the 4th hatcher, he turns around and bombs the ship's core as it appears, then quickly looks away from the bomb explosion to reduce lag. An excellent stage overall.
Sector X - He bombs the hordes of ships that appear from behind, which is a good choice since that is easily the most laggy thing to encounter in this stage. He also uses cockpit mode to look away from the closing walls right before the warp gates, which are also pretty laggy. His warp gate section was pretty good, as well as the following warp sequence.
Sector Z - The Great Fox got hit by a missile and Falco was killed so the missile wouldn't get destroyed. Amusingly enough, despite being an "All-Range mode" stage, this is the only true autoscroller stage in the run where you can literally do nothing to gain/lose time. Nothing else noteworthy in this stage.
Bolse - This stage has its fair share of challenges. You need to kill all 6 towers in one pass, which the runner does excellently. He uses a Charged Unlocked Shot (CUS) to gain an extra point on a ground turret, which is necessary for making the cores spawn. He then bombs the center to kill any enemies close to the core, which luckily was enough to make the core spawn right away. This let him kill half of the core panels immediately as Star Wolf spawned, which let him finish the other half before the Star Wolf dialogue tree finishes. I love that Fox is flying away from an already exploding Bolse while saying "Just what I need to see, Star Wolf" hahaha.
Venom 1 - The fastest path through this stage is all lefts at every fork, which is taken in this run of course. The Golemech is more or less the final serious threat to a speedrun since he has several different weakspots and most of his vulnerable spots are often blocked by the pillars that he summons. The runner takes out his feet first, then his shoulders since those end up in a chain reaction destroying his arms, then his torso/butt get finished off. This lets you shoot off his head & finish off the mech by shooting the glowing torso again. The boss was finished & crumbling to the ground before Slippy got to put up his health bar, which is more or less a stellar fight against this boss. The tunnel leading to Andross can be dangerous in terms of losing your wings depending on how many objects you've smacked into during the Golemech fight, but since the runner smacked into nothing, he can go through 2 of the doors without needing to worry about his wings breaking off. Once he collects the laser upgrade, he can fly through 2 more doors safely since his wing health is replenished. The Andross fight was a pretty good one. You can definitely get a faster time on his second phase without using a bomb, but I can understand resorting to it to ensure he dies since his hitbox in phase 2 is extremely inconsistent and spotty.
All in all, this is an amazing run. I doubt you would see more than a couple of seconds get taken off of this run without either new strategies or resorting to running this on an iQue system. I happily accept this run, congratulations Hayate!!!
First things first. The A/V on the encode isn't so hot, but I was assured that the raw file is acceptable and will be properly encoded in the future, so it sounds like it won't be an issue. Also, the frame count I got for this run from the encode supplied yielded a 22:45.269, so the timing suggested by the title of the video seems spot on.
I remember how a speedrun of this game was initially a Cinco de Mayo gag by TSA where he jokingly submitted a 27:47 SF64 any% run to SDA. After TSA's run, Psonar took a more serious approach to the speedrun and lowered the time down to 25:41. I then submitted a 25:17, and years later DSX submitted a 23:09. Now we have this run by Hayate, which is an astonishing 5 minutes faster than the original time that TSA submitted. Let's give this a look, shall we?
Corneria - Runner uses "half boosting" which collectively saves a few seconds over the course of the entire run compared to full boosts everywhere. He lets Falco die on stage 1 too, possibly for lag management purposes. The boss fight seemed fine to me.
Meteo - He kills Peppy which seems to save a bit of time on making the stone tunnel spawn quicker than usual. He also lets Slippy die, which might also be for lag management purposes? My guess would be that he's setting it up for Katina so there's less ships when he uses bombs at the start.
Katina - This stage has a super interesting quick kill that never used to be in the any% route. When I was trying to re-route 100% for this game, I messed with some parts of the game with gameshark codes to see if I could find anything interesting. With the "super-bomb" cheat, I found that the hatchers were still vulnerable to bombs, even if they are closed. This led to me trying it regular bombs and I ended up finding that it's still possible to do... if you backflip into the ship itself. I wasn't ever sure if you could get all the hatches before the cutscene played, but eventually runners were able to get it to work. So anyways... the stage starts with the runner bombing the pyramid twice & collecting a 3rd gold ring to increase his health. He then full boosts over to the mothership and starts carefully bombing the hatcher positions of the ship. Once he successfully kills the 4th hatcher, he turns around and bombs the ship's core as it appears, then quickly looks away from the bomb explosion to reduce lag. An excellent stage overall.
Sector X - He bombs the hordes of ships that appear from behind, which is a good choice since that is easily the most laggy thing to encounter in this stage. He also uses cockpit mode to look away from the closing walls right before the warp gates, which are also pretty laggy. His warp gate section was pretty good, as well as the following warp sequence.
Sector Z - The Great Fox got hit by a missile and Falco was killed so the missile wouldn't get destroyed. Amusingly enough, despite being an "All-Range mode" stage, this is the only true autoscroller stage in the run where you can literally do nothing to gain/lose time. Nothing else noteworthy in this stage.
Bolse - This stage has its fair share of challenges. You need to kill all 6 towers in one pass, which the runner does excellently. He uses a Charged Unlocked Shot (CUS) to gain an extra point on a ground turret, which is necessary for making the cores spawn. He then bombs the center to kill any enemies close to the core, which luckily was enough to make the core spawn right away. This let him kill half of the core panels immediately as Star Wolf spawned, which let him finish the other half before the Star Wolf dialogue tree finishes. I love that Fox is flying away from an already exploding Bolse while saying "Just what I need to see, Star Wolf" hahaha.
Venom 1 - The fastest path through this stage is all lefts at every fork, which is taken in this run of course. The Golemech is more or less the final serious threat to a speedrun since he has several different weakspots and most of his vulnerable spots are often blocked by the pillars that he summons. The runner takes out his feet first, then his shoulders since those end up in a chain reaction destroying his arms, then his torso/butt get finished off. This lets you shoot off his head & finish off the mech by shooting the glowing torso again. The boss was finished & crumbling to the ground before Slippy got to put up his health bar, which is more or less a stellar fight against this boss. The tunnel leading to Andross can be dangerous in terms of losing your wings depending on how many objects you've smacked into during the Golemech fight, but since the runner smacked into nothing, he can go through 2 of the doors without needing to worry about his wings breaking off. Once he collects the laser upgrade, he can fly through 2 more doors safely since his wing health is replenished. The Andross fight was a pretty good one. You can definitely get a faster time on his second phase without using a bomb, but I can understand resorting to it to ensure he dies since his hitbox in phase 2 is extremely inconsistent and spotty.
All in all, this is an amazing run. I doubt you would see more than a couple of seconds get taken off of this run without either new strategies or resorting to running this on an iQue system. I happily accept this run, congratulations Hayate!!!
Quote from CyberBotX:
A/V good, no cheating detected. I can't make any comment in regards to the runner's comments as they are in Japanese and I can't read Japanese (plus Google Translate isn't much help). But in any case, the run seems to be really well done, so I'm giving it an accept.
Quote from Pottoww:
A/V has already been accepted by the staff, but the video I have been watching doesn't make me worry about the final result.
Zallard basically described all of the stages perfectly. When I discussed with the community about destroying all the four hatches in Katina before the cut scene I did believe it would be possible, but I didn't think it would be done so consistently in speedruns. Dsx and Hayate disproved me on that one though!
The runner does an amazing job throughout the run. For anyone who hasn't been speedrunning this game I can tell you that maintaining time in the different levels is harder than it might seem. Every stage was spot on with just a couple of seconds over all to be cut based on what you can see with your naked eye.
I have promised the community not to speedrun Any% with iQue (and currently I am the only SF64 runner who speedruns with/owns(?) an iQue) so I don't think a run on that console will be submitted anytime soon.
No cheating what so ever is detected. Just pure skill throughout the game. Well done Hayate, easy accept!
Zallard basically described all of the stages perfectly. When I discussed with the community about destroying all the four hatches in Katina before the cut scene I did believe it would be possible, but I didn't think it would be done so consistently in speedruns. Dsx and Hayate disproved me on that one though!
The runner does an amazing job throughout the run. For anyone who hasn't been speedrunning this game I can tell you that maintaining time in the different levels is harder than it might seem. Every stage was spot on with just a couple of seconds over all to be cut based on what you can see with your naked eye.
I have promised the community not to speedrun Any% with iQue (and currently I am the only SF64 runner who speedruns with/owns(?) an iQue) so I don't think a run on that console will be submitted anytime soon.
No cheating what so ever is detected. Just pure skill throughout the game. Well done Hayate, easy accept!
Decision: Accept
Reason: The verification copy was incorrectly encoded, but we have the raw file and will make new encodes.
Congratulations to 'Hayate1129'!
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