The Zelda one requires exact angles to be held on the analog stick, and I've heard of people creating guides out of cardboard and rubber bands in order to help them achieve the angles more reliably.

The Mario one requires some pixel-perfect precision, and runners often used hacked ROMs that display coordinates in order to train. To answer your question of 'how likely is one to pull this off' for those three, the Pokemon one requires no almost advanced execution, other than turning off the console at a precise point to corrupt the save data you otherwise just need to follow a simple (though long) series of steps. Off the top of my head I can think of such routes for Pokemon Red/Blue, Ocarina of Time, and Super Mario World. something a human could pull off, as distinct from TAS). I don't know about the run shown in the OP, but there are a fair number of memory-manipulation/ACE speedruns that are feasible in RTA ('real-time attack', a.k.a. If you're interested in the topic, you might like the Super Mario World speed run that uses a similar technique ( ), or the recent work on removing randomness from Wind Waker runs ( ). So it's creating a whole new genre of runs that simply isn't about execution anymore. Third, the games themselves are understood better (as recently exemplified by the Super Mario 64 full reverse engineering). They now include better ways to track what's happening in memory. Second, the emulators available to the speed running community have evolved. First, it's difficult to improve on the regular world records since they're so optimized (just have a look at Quake Done Quick and its sequels). Never expected this video to turn into a full on reverse engineering explanation.Īs a side note, this kind of speed run has become more popular in the recent years for a combination of reasons: I'm impressed the author went to recreate the run frame by frame, and then used those findings to analyze what was happening.

Super mario bros world record vs tas