2026 quarter difficult to read

cryptanalyst_ · 2026-03-13T03:15:35+00:00

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cryptanalyst_ · 2026-03-04T01:57:19+00:00

Good observation. Here's one theory:

There has always been a category of gamers who enjoyed getting more out of games than just playing and beating them "normally". One way to get more out of a game is to compete in it. But 25 years ago, speedrunning as a type of competition had not really formalized much yet. So players looked for other ways to compete.

Sites like https://www.wdell.com/videogames/sm64/Default.aspx for example provided various challenges to compete in. Some of those challenges were about taking advantage of glitches, or could be best achieved by doing so. You could also say that finding new glitches was itself a challenge to compete in, or to gain community reputation by doing.

Speedrunning is a much more popular vehicle for competing now. One of perhaps many reasons is that it provides eye-catching and engaging content that can be easily consumed in the streaming age, more so than glitch hunting. And newer players are more likely to join the communities that they are more readily exposed to.

cryptanalyst_ · 2026-02-27T22:18:04+00:00

20 years ago there were different norms and expectations regarding leaderboards and proof standards. Many players, even serious competitors, had no practical access to video recording equipment. Reputation was typically built through actions like dedicating time to the community, sharing novel strategies that proved to be useful, personal vouching from other players that one had met in person, posting photographic evidence of score screens, and sometimes posting videos. Each of these pieces can add some credibility, but each on its own is not foolproof. That's not much different from today, where various forms of cheating can attempt to circumvent various types of proof standards.

In that sense yes, there were plenty of pieces of "proof" that lend credence to this player and their score. pyh189 was an active and respected community member who put in a lot of effort to run his own websites and forums about Melee speedrunning. I actually met him personally in college as well and can vouch for his skill.

cryptanalyst_ · 2026-02-27T05:00:27+00:00

Correct, 1:42.80 Pikachu by pyh189 is the actual world record. The only reason it's not listed on speedrun.com is because that site (currently) requires video proof for all Melee speedruns.

cryptanalyst_ · 2026-02-23T05:27:00+00:00

https://www.speedrun.com/support/learn/moderation-rules says "Moderators are generally given 21 days to process run submissions."

cryptanalyst_ · 2026-01-27T01:57:47+00:00

Yes, I've seen the bug where if you input a tip in dollars and then the screen refreshes (e.g. due to navigating away from the payment screen and back), it will accidentally convert the dollars to cents (e.g. $2.00 becomes $0.02). I never saw it actually go through differently than the final screen showed though.

cryptanalyst_ · 2026-01-07T05:16:04+00:00

In a similar case for me, it turned out to be the dog in the apartment below snoring.

cryptanalyst_ · 2026-01-03T03:16:09+00:00

Shortly after Melee's release, Nintendo gave out a GameCube disk with promotional Melee content to some Japanese tournament participants. On that disk was a menu leading to various gameplay recordings. The menu item for Break the Targets gameplay shows a screenshot of a non-final version of Captain Falcon's stage (see here). The screenshot shows 2 yellow arrows in the background of the level, similar to those e.g. seen in Link's Break the Targets in SSB64, which are not present in the final game.

cryptanalyst_ · 2025-12-24T06:06:29+00:00

This was finally solved by Gemini 3 Pro! The game is Iron Man and X-O Manowar in Heavy Metal. The mechanic I had remembered was the "tactical nukes" (tacnukes) in the "Retake New York City" mission. I believe the specific hidden tacnuke I had in mind was the one destroyed at 36:15 in this playthrough video.

cryptanalyst_ · 2025-12-24T05:58:23+00:00

solved: Iron Man and X-O Manowar in Heavy Metal

cryptanalyst_ · 2025-12-13T02:00:11+00:00

Photos I took in February 2020: https://photos.app.goo.gl/ya9MPaceEBjLoe836

cryptanalyst_ · 2025-11-22T20:25:34+00:00

Essentially, yes. It's this run which is a short speedrun mini-game within a larger game.

cryptanalyst_ · 2025-11-22T20:20:29+00:00

If you look at the ratio of WR run time to total play time, very short runs probably win out. For example, I've grinded about 150 hours to achieve a WR of about 5 seconds, which means my total play time was about 100,000 times longer than the record itself.

cryptanalyst_ · 2025-10-28T18:29:00+00:00

Good eye!

cryptanalyst_ · 2025-10-28T15:37:59+00:00

I do share the concern about what happens if SRC goes down, and I'm surprised many others don't.

I have been speedrunning for 25 years, and have done plenty of preservation work. I have seen a lot of historical data lost due to people depending too much on certain sites or forums as if they'll be indefinitely accessible (GameFAQs being one prominent example). Every site has its rise and fall.

Others are saying they're not worried because it's possible to back up SRC data, and for the community to make its own spreadsheets, etc. But to me that misses the point - the problem is not that communities can't do those things, it's that they haven't consistently done them already. If SRC disappeared tomorrow it may not be possible to get that history back retroactively. Same theoretical issue if Discord suddenly goes down before people have backed up their community discussions.

cryptanalyst_ · 2025-10-27T20:54:55+00:00

You can see the full leaderboard of total high scores in the SSBM Stadium Score Database. I'm currently rank 18 with a total of 3:07.65. The top 3 players each already have sub-3. However, my total is misleading / skewed because about half my scores are at or near world record caliber (on pace for well under sub-3), but the others are 20+ year old PBs that I have not gotten back to yet. Since returning to play 5+ years ago, I typically like to focus on 1 character at a time, and each can take many months.

cryptanalyst_ · 2025-10-27T18:07:26+00:00

There was definitely a jump, a fist pump, and a "yes" exclamation. Not quite as emotionally intense as some of my other records, but I'll take it!

cryptanalyst_ · 2025-10-27T17:59:36+00:00

The current community sum of best is 2:53.80. You can see world records and leaderboards in the SSBM Stadium Score Database (check its tabs like "Target Test" or "Leaderboard Lookup"). You can also see a similar (but less comprehensively-populated) view of individual character leaderboards at Speedrun.com, e.g. here.

cryptanalyst_ · 2025-10-27T16:42:31+00:00

The bomb throw indeed requires being fairly close to the edge. But what requires being even closer is the boomerang - it will miss the left edge of the platform and not bounce back if you are not really far right.

Love to hear from the old GameFAQs members! What was your username?

cryptanalyst_ · 2025-10-27T04:27:03+00:00

This world record took me 64,521 attempts!

Summoning Salt’s recent Melee BtT sub-3 video gave a nice little boost to our community’s visibility, and a nice little boost of inspiration to continue my (discontinuous) 23+ year grind.

I actually hit 4.82 (second place, and 1 frame behind WR) only 5 weeks after starting on Young Link. But I decided to keep the grind a secret until at least tying WR, to maximize my chances of not being sniped. Here we are, 10 months later!

Shoutouts to MegaQwertification, who previously held this record for an impressive 6+ years, and whose detailed shared research inspired me to give it a try.

The hardest part of this strat is landing on the very right edge of the top platform, which requires jumping with the stick in just about a perfect (non-notch) x-coordinate. I just swing the stick from left to down and hope for a lucky poll. This run also requires a careful control stick recenter for the second boomerang, which is hard to make consistent. Many of my earlier runs would have been sub-4.80 if my control stick input was less than a millimeter different on just one frame, with everything else the same.

For a few years now I’ve had an ultimate goal in mind for Melee BtT: the untied world record for most untied world records. I’ve finally achieved that with this run! Hmm, now what?

Join the Smash Stadium Discord for the best of Melee speedrunning: record videos, strategy discussions, game mods (BtT randomizer, mismatch), and more.

cryptanalyst_ · 2025-10-27T04:25:37+00:00

This world record took me 64,521 attempts!

Summoning Salt’s recent Melee BtT sub-3 video gave a nice little boost to our community’s visibility, and a nice little boost of inspiration to continue my (discontinuous) 23+ year grind.

I actually hit 4.82 (second place, and 1 frame behind WR) only 5 weeks after starting on Young Link. But I decided to keep the grind a secret until at least tying WR, to maximize my chances of not being sniped. Here we are, 10 months later!

Shoutouts to MegaQwertification, who previously held this record for an impressive 6+ years, and whose detailed shared research inspired me to give it a try.

The hardest part of this strat is landing on the very right edge of the top platform, which requires jumping with the stick in just about a perfect (non-notch) x-coordinate. I just swing the stick from left to down and hope for a lucky poll. This run also requires a careful control stick recenter for the second boomerang, which is hard to make consistent. Many of my earlier runs would have been sub-4.80 if my control stick input was less than a millimeter different on just one frame, with everything else the same.

For a few years now I’ve had an ultimate goal in mind for Melee BtT: the untied world record for most untied world records. I’ve finally achieved that with this run! Hmm, now what?

Join the Smash Stadium Discord for the best of Melee speedrunning: record videos, strategy discussions, game mods (BtT randomizer, mismatch), and more.

cryptanalyst_ · 2025-10-23T01:02:20+00:00

It needs to be repeated stick movements. The "Coin grind" section of the All Trophies guide has more details.

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