Rambling post about some of the gdq stuff I've watched so far

• mario 64 on the drum kit was fucking amazing. I love how each movement type had a different beat. The lead up and precise positioning had this drum roll that completed with a big a press beat to jump and get the star. The swings to do the bowser toss was beautiful. Incredible ending with the drum cover of the music. Could have been an event ender but I can understand not wanting that pressure.

• starfield was exactly the buggy mess I expected. Stand up to skip long animations. Clip under the floor for faster traversal. Slide through the universe. Go straight to quest 12 from quest 2. Artifact cave is rando gened and can be 10 minutes long so seeded for convenience. Classic bethesda jank. Thank god they didn't try to do 'glitchless' like with the skyrim run that one time.

• hades I really enjoyed the three weapons race. Having two wives who met through speedrunning the game doing the race was very cute. I swear, one of them did one less cerberus the best boy pet to resync them into the final lap, but I can't blame them.

• bloodstained was very fun. Still annoyed at this fake record shit that people get on at gdq. Yeah, it's cool to get the record at a live event, but don't make shit up. They say wr but the speedrun.com leaderboard literally doesn't have a category extension for zangetsu all bosses nmg hard, they only have that category for normal. I don't like calling it a wr record if it's the only record, and no one else has even had a chance to try.

• granny nanthology was pretty fuckin funny high as shit late at night

• I was asleep by the time the hitless rese2make run happened but I'm def gonna watch the vod later (same goes for the rest of the block until I woke up)

• metroid dread race was pretty fun, too bad about the controller batteries though. Good on the other runner for always pausing to keep things fair.

• Of course the pokemon crystal randomizer went over estimate. Was still really fun. Last time they couldn't get fly and it delayed everything. So they added a special flag to the randomizer to make sure fly is obtainable early. They still got stuck trying to get fly. Incredible.

• The super metroid tas was great, absolutely hilarious clipping through the floors with the moonfall tech. I hope someone returns to it and adds the new tech to save the extra seconds. Rip to them animals, but tasbot is an unfeeling speedrunning machine. Shout out to the dipshit on reddit seething there (and in the gdq chat) because they didn't read their 2000 dollar dono that pushed it from save the animals to save the frames. Next time write an actual fucking message. Also very funny to see people asking about if it was using a camera hack after they explained the camera hack three times at the start. The keeper of the tasbot was fielding questions from redditors who just don't seem to fucking get it.

• Doom 2016 100% was interesting showcase. They were showing the ultranightmare route on the marathon safe nightmare difficulty. Messed up a couple things so they didn't hit 100% anyways. They had a dev on, Hugo. Interesting commentary occasionally but he didn't get to speak too much, and was clearly staying up late. Audio issues on his call didn't help. Still, props to the runner for organizing getting Hugo on.

• Sneak king was funny for five minutes and then overstayed the welcome

• bootleg ninja gaiden was pretty funny

• the last ninja was the most non spatially consistent thing, it even beats out manifold garden. Must watch to see turning corners on the building's side to end up on the roof.

• fort boyard was pretty funny. I had never seen the gameshow, but I had seen some of the other computer games in the series at esa. My partner is english and had watched it growing up. Surprisingly faithful adaption. Rip on the riddles, runner had to get audience help.

• rise of kong was about what I expected. $10 slight change in fur color dlc. The video game industry should be lit on fire. Great run.

• LOVED celeste strawberry jam beginner lobby. Absolutely lovely art and great level design. Fluid movement all around. Celeste is great every time, be it a normal run, all berries, 100%, b sides, c sides, TAS, or on a fucking dancepad. I liked frozenflygon's mod run with the cute tail mod on, wish the runner had the tail here. I'm glad they had even more cute bows on the couch this year. Their vvvvv inspired levels were excellent, I could remember some of the exact screens they were inspired by. To bad they watched it get broken by a dash removal skip.

• Really enjoyed the pokemon diamond run. That's the pokemon I grew up with, and had an action replay for. Really fun to see the dumb shit I got up to with noclip cheats as a kid has been implemented into the run to just teleport to the end. The glitch showcase was great, and the velocity pokesprite was CUTE!

• armored core 6 was fun, too bad they were playing on an unstable patch. A false start with several crashes at the beginning. Half an hour delay to get it working. More crashes in the run. And then a final crash after time at the very end. Was like fucking poetry. The science commentary was okay. Didn't really take anything away. I liked the robotics talk more than the space physics talk. The highschool science lesson after was fun enough. I just wish they gave a better indication of just how much of it was lies of simplification. 15 years later and people are still making 'magnets how do they work' jokes.

• super mario maker 2 glitch showcase was really fun. That game is BROKEN. I am impressed by how much it didn't crash. Loved watching carl get trolled, loved the final hard lock. My friend watches carlsagan's streams and knew what was coming at the end, but didn't spoil it for me (which I appreciate)

• Halo coop was fucking great. Hilarious tricks and tech. 💜HR. They showed off rex. Quick kill and sneaky teabag for funsies. Constant banshees out of bounds and just flying through level geometry. I salute the way they 'saved' the marines. The big grenade jump was incredible. Input sensitivity precise tricks and logiteching in the middle of the run. They were on wr pace at one point. TOO BAD THEY HAD A HARD CRASH. This started out as one of the least buggy gdq's so far, but between the jsfr half broken cable, the pcs crashing, and dead controller batteries, it's gotten pretty bad. They celebrated multiple wr's again for low runner count categories, but of course the actually competitive record is robbed by tech difficulties ;-;

• undertale race was pretty fun. Started out close, then a big lead, then an accidental opening of 8 windows of the game at once reset things, then a big lead again. Also, it sure was 'glitchless'. Glad we all agree on hugging the goat tho

• luminescent was pretty fun. There's mario kaizos every year, and I enjoy them (almost) every time. I hope they let shojo do another kaizo run, she was great last year, and before that at the sight read relay races. I got a big purple knitted yoshi head hat off etsy after seeing her's.

• dark souls was quite fun. Glad to see a run that isn't just the wrong warp to the end, really shows off some funny stuff in the game. It's a shame about the save file load. For not getting the drop and having to cheat spawn it in, why are they still doing that? Especially at a marathon. Hades is modded to make sure the sack always drops on the second chamber set. They should just have a marathon mod for the game to set the droprate to 100.

That's the stuff that's really stood out to me so far. I was asleep for a lot of runs, so I'll definitely be watching a lot of vods after the event.

Also shoutout to the nsfw artist I follow who's posting artwork to go alongside the games on the schedule. o7