Sakurina / Yanik Magnan

There are no people in Sakurina’s collective.

Huffduffed (308)

  1. selectbutton 60: Gotta Go Fast

    Man I should have been there for this goddammiiiiiiiit

    On history: In my misspent youth I downloaded every single new video on SDA and TASvideos.org, watched them to completion, deleted the boring ones and kept the good ones. Haven't done that in a long while but I do have some history with the scene. It was mentioned that SDA originally started as a Quake-centric site, and someone said it was basically the beginnings of organized, competitive speedrunning. But from what I understand those beginnings are actually with Compet-N, which was a Doom/2 speedrunning community. I think they still basically hold most Doom/2 records to this day - we are talking about seriously passionate experts here - but I haven't visited the site in ages.

    As for speedrunning's popularity, it's directly related to the ease of video use. Early on in interhistory there wasn't a great way to take video footage of a running videogame. Instead, sites distributed demos - ingame recording files that use the game's own software to recreate the recording. (This is where the "demos" in "Speed Demos Archive" comes from.) These files are tiny relative to generic video files, but they require the game itself to run, which obviously limits their popularity. Later on SDA started offering things like mpegs and .movs of speedruns, but this was the pre-streaming era and they were massive direct downloads from their FTP. Easy streaming made speedrun videos popular, like it made all internet video popular.

    On PC vs. Console: I agree that a lot of the most popular runs these days are of classic 8- and 16-bit console games, but I think that's just because of general nostalgia and nerd cachet. Speedrunning basically started with PC (Doom and Quake) and continues on in a grand tradition. One of my favorite speedruns ever is Morrowind, which when I was current on these things had like a 14 minute record based on abusing alchemy and magic items. I'm sure it's much lower now. Also the Half-Life 2 speedruns do amazing things with the gravity gun and Source physics to produce truly outrageous speeds and jumps.

    On the collaborative community: Though speedrunners are ostensibly in "competition" in that they try to beat each other's times, I think the collaborative spirit comes with the basic desire that drives all speedrunners: The Perfect Run. It's a kind of Platonic ideal, and anything they can contribute towards that perfection is something worth doing, even if ultimately they are not the player that pulls the run off.

    In my mind there are basically two kinds of speedrunners: the perfectionists and the collectors. Perfectionists are ones who run popular, well-run games over and over, looking for new glitches and strats, anything to shave off a few seconds and get ever closer to The Perfect Run. By contrast, the collector faction wants there to be a solid speedrun of as many games as possible - these are the types that seek out obscure, infamous, or otherwise curious games, which is why the SDA database has swelled. But both share a kind of teleological mindset where work is constantly done to eventually produce a gleaming example of perfection, whether it be a single perfect run or the perfection of every game ever made being run. Actually speedrunning in general is an interesting example of the OCD tendencies videogames evoke taken to extremes.

    On TASes: Some of my favorite TASes are labelled "playarounds," where the goal is not exactly the best time but rather ridiculous feats of superhuman exploitation. Apol mentioned the Mortal Kombat glitch/combo fest (this is actually pretty common for fighting games, which are otherwise fairly boring for pure speedruns), the funny correct-answer Brain Training drawings, and the hilarious Family Feud phrases. I think my favorite in this category is the Mega Man X1/2/3/4 speedrun, which plays all four games simultaneously using ONE input. In other words, one controller controls all four games. It's almost impossible to watch, but it's an exercise in what can be done with dead input frames. Also you might take it as a snide comment on the similarity of Mega Man games but why would you be a jerk like that?_________________Let's Play, starring me.

    http://forums.selectbutton.net/viewtopic.php?t=40593

    —Huffduffed by Sakurina

  2. The Incomparable 197: Fail Fast

    We love Pixar, and we’re a bunch of creative professional types. So as you can imagine, we devoured “Creativity Inc.”, by Pixar president Ed Catmull. Is it a business book or an anti-business book? How do you foster creativity? Is Pixar’s formula one that provides safety while preventing works of staggering genius? How much is a director or writer the author of a Pixar movie, and how much is the studio itself? And is the wild success of “Frozen” proof of anything?

    http://www.theincomparable.com/theincomparable/197/index.php

    —Huffduffed by Sakurina

  3. The Incomparable 200: Butter Zone

    We celebrate our 200th episode with this mega-sized installment. We discuss what it means to have geeky enthusiasms (and whether we should grow up), and then listen to some reader feedback. Plus there’s a draft, some beer, and special guest stars.

    June 27, 2014

    180 minutes

    • Special

    Jason Snell

    with John Siracusa, Serenity Caldwell, Dan Moren, Erika Ensign, Monty Ashley, Greg Knauss, Steve Lutz, David J. Loehr, Dan Benjamin and Glenn Fleishman

    http://www.theincomparable.com/theincomparable/200/

    —Huffduffed by Sakurina

  4. Electric Shadow 7: Irons in the Fire

    Ben Thompson joins and Guy English returns to discuss the "Puck Problem" and WWDC 2014. Do we really want one centralized box, or is specialization the new convergence? Will Apple shake up Microsoft and Sony, or can they address a market that no one is really going after?SPONSORSDrobo: mass storage for the masses. Use offer code MOISES for $50 off Drobo 5D or 5NBackblaze: unlimited, secure, online back up your computer for just $5/month. Visit this link to support the show and learn more.PANELISTSBen Thompson has written a series of articles about Apple, TV, and the future of content distribution found in the show notes. He writes Stratechery and co-hosts Exponent, a relatively new (and excellent) podcast.Guy English is best-known for being on the first episode of Electric Shadow, and is also known (we suppose) for being a brilliant developer, podcaster, and blogger.SHOW NOTESThis episode pairs nicely for listening after this week's ATP, which Moisés and Ben were listening to while they threw this episode together with no planning.Ben's most recent post, about whether Apple will disrupt the major consoles. MacSparky seems to agree, with a particular focus on Metal.John Gruber's post picking out a couple of Ben's points in said article.Indie Game: The Movie is available at a ridiculously cheap sale price as I write this, with one bundle option including a copy of all the games, the movie, and the extras for ten lousy dollars.The Original Trilogy of "Ben re: Apple and TV" posts from 2013: (1) The Cord-Cutting Fantasy (2) Why TV Has Resisted Disruption (3) The Jobs TV DoesThe Appendices/Footnotes to said posts: (A) Steve Jobs on Television (B) My AppleTV Prediction (C) Additional Notes on TVCNET compares MFI ("Made For iPhone) game controllers.9to5Mac says Apple will finally make the (very short) list of MFI-controller-supported games searchable by customers.Moisés and Horace Dediu talking about the Beats acquisition, the morning of the day that it was officially announced.Watch Jimmy Iovine and Eddy Cue at CodeConf the day after the Beats deal was officially announced. Interesting that one of them sticks to a narrative of "the way things are", and Iovine sticks to "entertainment and tech can work together better and smarter".Vince McMahon's WWE Network plan blew up in his face, like a top-rope suplex to his stock portfolio and net worth.

    52edbc9de4b0b870f5f7ed49:52fa945de4b00527f3008790:539b572be4b0a705ae2a6cfd

    —Huffduffed by Sakurina

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