Why most speed runs are old games?

2015-11-16 11:12:19 am

i see a lot of speed runs from old games and consoles, most are from NES and Snes. But its rare to see a speed run from new games and platforms like Ps4 and Xbox One, even Ps3 and Xbox 360 had a few players that speed run. On Pc we can see new games but are most Indie games like Bosh, Vi, Shovel Knight and others like. In AGDQ the most games are old and from NES and Snes. So my question is: Why the preference for old consoles and old games?

Thread title:

Zergreenone

2015-11-16 01:00:04 pm

Well part of the reason would be because, people have had more time to speedrun them, people feel more nostalgia for them, and the category of what people normally classify as old games is generally larger than the category of what people normally classify as new games, meaning that a larger generation of players played them and run them. Old games were new games once, so it would sort of be weird if there were more speedruns of new games than old games.

Melodia

Edit history:

Melodia: 2015-11-17 12:55:51 am

2015-11-16 03:10:10 pm

As the above post said, a lot of it is that people have beeen enjoying older games over the years and speedrunning helps put a frech coat of paint to old favorites. It's also that older console games tend to be a lot simpler and streightforward, and perhaps more importantly less cut scene heavy.
Another factor to consider is that the most popular games run are the most popular games period -- games like SM, SMW, OOT, SOTN, MM2 etc etc aren't just a heavy speedrun game, they're beloved classics for a larger number of people in general. They've stoodf the test of time so they are popular - and popularity in watches helps fuel popularity in runners.

Also, newer consoles can't be emulated -- not only does this cut down the number of people who can play the games in the first place, but it ALSO cuts down on a lot of nitty gritty that sometimes can go into runs such as ram watching, etc. not to mention easy save state making for practice.

the_roth

2015-11-16 06:50:19 pm

DO THE MEATEO

Older games are generally faster to complete too, like Melodia said, with fewer cutscenes etc.

Youkai

2015-11-16 07:09:49 pm

Don't know what to speedrun :(

Also as I can attest from running Gears Of War, and Borderlands. Most new games use auto save which can not be disabled. Which makes reloading your saves if you are doing a segmented run a NIGHTMARE. But then if you want to do a SS run of a modern game you have to sit down for 4+ hours because for some reason every AAA game these days has to be "40+ hours" even though they spend so much time making them long and pretty that they end up being crap.

mrprmiller

2015-11-16 07:34:17 pm

Everyday is puppies and sunshine...

Yeah, the presence of emulators can't be understated.

One of the reasons, and I can't prove this but I have a pretty big suspicion, is that the old Nintendo and SNES games were marketed to kids in the 80's and early 90's (like I once was). Now those kids are the 25 to 35 years old, and still one of the key demographics for video game companies. It's one of the big reasons old games are actually getting released for virtual console. And we remember the "good old days" of console gaming.

But now my NES and SNES generation is old enough to actually be spearheading and organizing events. If the pace is the same, wait another 5 to 15 years, and you'll see this generation of consoles begin to come to speedrun prominence.

Arctice

2015-11-16 11:49:58 pm

new AAA games suck

GhostKingG1

2015-11-28 12:39:50 am

Why Hello it is Me

Easier to capture footage.

You don't need a fancy 200$ capture card to record a SNES game.

presjpolk

2015-11-29 10:39:43 am

HELLO!

When you play a game thousands of times it'd better be good.

That means speedruns are going to have a broader mix of games over the history of video games, since runners will gravitate to the best games. This is contrasted with most streaming which will focus on the newest games to catch waves of hype.

Copilot

2015-11-30 12:11:17 pm

Ruling the cosmos!

Older games will have a lot more little holes and sloppy coding, and are therefore more broken, and a lot of people like their speedruns to be glitch heavy

TheMG2

Edit history:

TheMG2: 2015-11-30 12:34:48 pm

2015-11-30 12:33:38 pm

Quote from Copilot:

Older games will have a lot more little holes and sloppy coding, and are therefore more broken, and a lot of people like their speedruns to be glitch heavy

I don't think this is really the case. Sure newer games won't have some of the same kinds of glitches as old games (I doubt you're managing to reach total control on say a PS4 game), but they can have plenty of other glitches.

Describing glitches as the result of sloppy programming isn't exactly fair in my eyes. Sometimes they are the result of ambitious design. The more risks taken in design, not only will it be harder to execute, but it leaves the opportunity for more glitches as well. It would be more work for programmers to plug all of the holes.

Basically they can check to make sure common glitches aren't in the game, but when the game introduces a mechanic that is not really common, that introduces a ton of potential new holes.

From what I can tell, ambition is not completely dead in the gaming industry (though sometimes it may feel like it), so there will always be more mechanics to explore and more glitches to find.

Personally I think the big turn offs is from newer games are nostalgia, length, price, and the like.

EDIT: Though sometimes modern games do suffer from sloppy programming too, see Sonic Boom for a recent example.

[quote="Copilot"]Older games will have a lot more little holes and sloppy coding, and are therefore more broken, and a lot of people like their speedruns to be glitch heavy[/quote]
I don't think this is really the case. Sure newer games won't have some of the same kinds of glitches as old games (I doubt you're managing to reach total control on say a PS4 game), but they can have plenty of other glitches.

Describing glitches as the result of sloppy programming isn't exactly fair in my eyes. Sometimes they are the result of ambitious design. The more risks taken in design, not only will it be harder to execute, but it leaves the opportunity for more glitches as well. It would be more work for programmers to plug all of the holes.

Basically they can check to make sure common glitches aren't in the game, but when the game introduces a mechanic that is not really common, that introduces a ton of potential new holes.

From what I can tell, ambition is not completely dead in the gaming industry (though sometimes it may feel like it), so there will always be more mechanics to explore and more glitches to find.

Personally I think the big turn offs is from newer games are nostalgia, length, price, and the like.

EDIT: Though sometimes modern games do suffer from sloppy programming too, see Sonic Boom for a recent example.

narshe

2015-12-07 10:46:12 am

Quote from Copilot:

Older games will have a lot more little holes and sloppy coding, and are therefore more broken, and a lot of people like their speedruns to be glitch heavy

I would say the opposite.

Older games are way more solid than newer games. They only had one chance (for the most part) to release the game and it had to be bug free, or as close as possible.

New games come out extremely broken and get patched many times. A lot of the time the console games don't even get the patch, due to the cost of releasing a patch. Xbox 360 was something like $10k for a patch, iirc.

The old games have just been around for a lot longer, and due to emulation, people can take apart the roms and really dig deep. Many of the "broken" older games have just had their glitches found in the past couple of years.

Omnigamer

2015-12-07 12:36:56 pm

All the things

Quality of code is not something that has really improved over the past couple decades. Complexity is one thing, but the end effects of bugs are handled very differently by the console operating systems. For example, loading data from any part of the ROM or registers to be used in a subroutine is valid on SNES, but would be invalid and possibly cause a fault on a modern system like PS3 due to different types of protections. A lot of times this will just lead to a hard lock, making whatever potential the bug had for (real-time) exploitation unuseable. Basically, the more complex the interactions, the harder it is for a game to continue to operate when unintentional paths are traversed.

As for the OP, the simplest answer I can think of is that older games are often more amenable to the speedrunning mentality. Lots of modern games just plain take longer to get through. There are exceptions to be sure, but you're comparing a generation of games with ~30 minute* average playtime to a generation with ~2 hr+* average playtime. It's a lot easier to commit to a shorter game if you're going to be playing it hundreds and thousands of times.

* - numbers were pulled out of thin air.

Quality of code is not something that has really improved over the past couple decades. Complexity is one thing, but the end effects of bugs are handled very differently by the console operating systems. For example, loading data from any part of the ROM or registers to be used in a subroutine is valid on SNES, but would be invalid and possibly cause a fault on a modern system like PS3 due to different types of protections. A lot of times this will just lead to a hard lock, making whatever potential the bug had for (real-time) exploitation unuseable. Basically, the more complex the interactions, the harder it is for a game to continue to operate when unintentional paths are traversed.

As for the OP, the simplest answer I can think of is that older games are often more amenable to the speedrunning mentality. Lots of modern games just plain take longer to get through. There are exceptions to be sure, but you're comparing a generation of games with ~30 minute* average playtime to a generation with ~2 hr+* average playtime. It's a lot easier to commit to a shorter game if you're going to be playing it hundreds and thousands of times.

* - numbers were pulled out of thin air.

Koller

2015-12-11 04:30:12 am

Quote from GhostKingG1:

Easier to capture footage.

You don't need a fancy 200$ capture card to record a SNES game.

plus million.