From four-hour record demolitions to arbitrary code execution in Pokémon, and even hay bales launching runners over invisible walls, the scene continues to prove that no game is ever truly “solved.”
Let’s break it down.
A Four-Hour World Record Swing in Pokémon Stadium
The biggest headline of the week goes to werster, who set a new world record in Pokémon Stadium with a staggering 15:49:31 — beating the previous record by four hours.
In long-form RPG-adjacent categories like this, shaving minutes is impressive. Shaving hours? That’s seismic. It’s a reminder that even older games can hide massive optimization breakthroughs when routing, consistency, and strategy align perfectly.
Gen 3 Pokémon Save Corruption Breaks the Game Wide Open
If that wasn’t enough Pokémon for one week, the Gen 3 titles — Pokémon Ruby, Pokémon Sapphire, Pokémon Emerald, Pokémon FireRed, and Pokémon LeafGreen — were completely upended by a discovery from CasualPokePlayer.
The breakthrough? Exploiting how the games save data across 14 separate 4KB sectors — each with its own checksum, but no global integrity check. By intentionally corrupting saves during sector transitions and abusing box misalignment, runners can manipulate Pokémon data into enabling arbitrary code execution.
The result:
- Tool-Assisted Speedruns under 9 minutes.
- An RTA world record in Emerald by Caterknees at 16:25.
- Hall of Fame warps that skip essentially the entire game.
Even more shocking: it’s RTA viable because checksum calculations take 1.5 frames. That’s the kind of tiny technical detail glitch hunters live for.
This discovery is exactly the kind of moment that can redefine a game’s speedrunning identity overnight.
What Kills a Speedrun Scene?
One of the week’s most thoughtful discussions asked: What actually kills interest in a speedgame?
Games like The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, GoldenEye 007, and even Super Mario Bros. have seen shifts in activity over time.
Common themes emerged:
- Over-optimization: When improvement margins shrink to frames.
- Overpowered glitches: When a single trick trivializes most of the run.
- Arbitrary Code Execution: When the game stops looking like the game.
- Aggressive patching: Modern titles like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom constantly closing exploits.
- Community burnout.
But the flip side is important too: sometimes a massive glitch doesn’t kill interest — it revives it. Gen 3 Pokémon is proof.
The Rise of the Hay Bale Launch
In one of the most charming posts of the week, the small community around Ruffy and the Riverside discovered a “hay bale launch” glitch.
By manipulating physics with a hay bale, runners can vault over an invisible barrier and access endgame areas early — saving over 50 minutes.
It’s a perfect example of how even obscure indie platformers can produce breakthrough moments that dramatically reshape routing.
2 Minutes of Elden Ring
On the opposite end of the spectrum, a TAS of Elden Ring Any% “Zips” clocked in at 2:05.490.
Two minutes.
From a game that casually takes most players 80–100 hours.
Zips continue to redefine what “beating the game” even means in FromSoftware titles.
Records Everywhere
It wasn’t just Pokémon and Elden Ring. The leaderboard boards were on fire:
- Banjo-Kazooie 100% No FFM — 1:58:39
- Astro Bot 100% — First sub 4:50 at 4:47:04
- Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment Any% Easy — 2:48:50
- Double Dragon 3 Arcade — New WR
- Returnal Fresh File Glitched — 27:14
- Katana Zero Chinatown — 58.43s
- Slot-Car Derby — 14/14 WR sweep
Meanwhile, personal bests rolled in for Nioh 3, with one runner cutting their time from 4:00:00 down to 3:11:00 in just days — a testament to grind and refinement.
Glitch Hunting Never Stops
A thoughtful post from a runner experimenting with glitches in Moove Dash Rush sparked a broader technical discussion:
- Are ice mechanics inherently glitch-prone?
- How do scene resets affect exploit persistence?
- Can glitches truly be understood fully, or are we always approximating?
Add in version differences like PAL wind physics in Pilotwings 64, and it’s clear: even decades-old games still have mechanical secrets left to uncover.
The Big Picture
This week perfectly captured the dual nature of speedrunning:
- On one end, hyper-optimized, frame-tight legacy games.
- On the other, brand-new tech blowing categories wide open.
- In between, small communities finding joy in shaving 10 seconds off a 30-second run.
Whether it’s corrupting Pokémon saves, riding PAL wind currents, or launching hay bales into invisible walls, speedrunning remains what it has always been:
A relentless, creative conversation between players and the code.
And if this week proves anything, it’s that no game is ever truly finished.
See you next week. 🕹️
Source: reddit.com