Twilight Princess speed run in under 6 hours
by John Bardinelli 
{ Jun 4th 2007 at 1:30PM }
A new speed run for The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess has just been posted on Speed Demos Archive. Daniel Hart blazed through the game in 5 hours 39 minutes, about ten times faster than we hobbled our way through on the first try. Daniel says he could shave 5-7 minutes off the final time but is happy with the current achievement. We say he's bragging, but boy has he earned it. Videos are available for download as well as embedded in Flash (Part 1 is shown above) for easy ooh-ing and aah-ing.
[Via Nintendo Wii Fanboy]
[Via Nintendo Wii Fanboy]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
hvnlysoldr @ Jun 4th 2007 1:37PM
I regret buying SPM before LoZ:TP.
Crono @ Jun 4th 2007 1:40PM
Did you guys just recently discover speed demos archive or something. There's alot of news about it recently, relative to a year or so ago when I first started coming here.
More on topic: The OoT speedrun is about this long, as are most of the RPGs on the site. Paper Mario, Thousand year Door is one of the longest runs up there at around 7 and a half hours long. I won't watch anything over 2.
And the Super Metroid Speedrun is still the best run on that site. Never before have so many glitches been used to totally destroy a game. A truly incredible watch, if you're at all familiar with the game.
Crono @ Jun 4th 2007 1:43PM
Edit: Damn, I forgot how good that game looked.
megaStryke @ Jun 4th 2007 1:52PM
Didn't Eiji Aonuma state that they were looking for a way to defeat speed runners in the latest Zelda game? Looks he FAILED monumentally.
Triforceowner @ Jun 4th 2007 2:01PM
@ megaStryke
I do not recall that.
Chris @ Jun 4th 2007 2:10PM
Why would a developer care if it's possible for someone to blast through a game like that? It's not like it hurts the game's image or anything. Yeah, he ran through it in 6 hours, but the reason you play a Zelda game is to enjoy the details. It's impressive that he ran through it like that, but he obviously had to play it a lot before he could do it. I don't see why he'd care.
Evan @ Jun 4th 2007 2:13PM
Speed runs are getting a lot longer (they used to be mere minutes in the NES days) but they are also very boring. The majority of modern speed runs are running from place to place (or, as the case may be, horseback riding). It illustrates how much time is wasted in modern games travelling through the world, and not actually playing the game! It's like developers are placing enemies and items further apart in the game world just to drag out games, and not actually adding real content.
Jonathan Tran @ Jun 4th 2007 2:14PM
meh it was more impressive to see the half life and HL2 runs, or when that guy beat diablo2 with a level 7 character solo
megaStryke @ Jun 4th 2007 2:15PM
I think of it like a contest. The developer tries to outfox the speed runners. Eiji Aonuma had actually seen a speed run from this guy, TSA, for Ocarina of Time, I believe. He spoke with him in order to learn tricks that runners use to exploit the game. It wasn't so much that he doesn't WANT people to finish his game so quickly, but rather that he wants to craft a game that is truly lengthy and expansive, even when exploited.
thispaceforsale @ Jun 4th 2007 2:49PM
No canon glitch?
slackerdan @ Jun 4th 2007 3:39PM
5 hours and 39 minutes... Isn't that the exact time the gimmick of the Wii wears off?
NvM @ Jun 4th 2007 4:00PM
@11.
I beat Gears with a friend in 6 hours and i haven't even played it before..
Jonathan @ Jun 4th 2007 4:05PM
Haha slackerdan I'm pretty sure this "gimmick" has been whipping pretty much all the other consoles in terms of sales for the last 6 months. 5 hours 39 minutes? Try almost every weekend with friends.
Justin U @ Jun 4th 2007 4:19PM
It took you 6 hours to beat Gears?
Damn. You are slow. I don't count those stupid cinematics as a time, either, so It may actually be shorter.
Leshrac @ Jun 4th 2007 4:22PM
Anyone else start watching these and notice that:
1) He uses a glitch to get through the closed gate at the beginning (and bypasses getting a sword).
2) There's some missing time between videos 4 and 5. He saves after crawling through a hole and then wakes up as a wolf... Or is that just a clever way of bypassing that whole cutscene/sequence? I thought that you at least had to run from that area into the twilight area... or is it all cutscene?
-Jeff
http://alinktothefuture.com
tAF @ Jun 4th 2007 4:37PM
It's a cutscene, he just skipped it. Link is sent to Hyrule's prison automatically.
TouchmyWiimote @ Jun 4th 2007 4:46PM
This video keeps automatically playing whenever I log on to Joystiq. STOOP!!
Brian @ Jun 4th 2007 4:51PM
#17 I agree with you...Stop the auto play on this video.
bigd7387 @ Jun 4th 2007 5:18PM
God someone actually thinks the graphics look good. Common on. It looks the same as N64 Zelda. And you will have to wait for the Wii(2) for a sequel, which is a shame. Nintendo milks out their good ip's slow. I think that speaks volumes about how little decent games are out for the Wii that someone would keep playing Zelda after they have solved it.
blgd7387 @ Jun 4th 2007 6:11PM
I'm a massive troll. Please pity me.
Gavin @ Jun 4th 2007 8:01PM
The autoplaying of this video is supremely annoying. Please make it stop or just post some more stories and get it off the front page as quickly as possible.
Christian @ Jun 5th 2007 12:16AM
Wow, how far have you fallen Link! I remember when I first played the Zelda games on the NES, they were mature Nintendo titles for that time.
When the SNES and later games came out they seemed to become more and more kid-oriented with cute sound effects and playful looking enemies.
Seeing this video reminds me of why I stopped playing later iterations of this 20-year old game (by the way, which I find is too long for any series to run). The number of load times is also very troublesome and annoying. Numerous or long load times take people out of the game experience and often pester them with having to constantly wait for the game console to finish loading the game.
I would be more forgiving of this aspect if it wasn't so often; however, these load times are all over the place, and even between some text conversation scenes-- with no audio. . . what is there to load that takes so much time?!? Also, this is also supposed to be a next generation console, and, as such, should make the obvious upgrades (such as reduced load times). For example, take a look at Oblivion, there are load times; however, they were only between major intervals (outside to inside and vice versa). Not between one little path to another (Oblivion never had load times outside or they were near seamless) Where is the dynamic loading? (I ask this rhetorically knowing that the lack of RAM is the cause for this problem).
Anyway, if anyone could please explain to me the draw of playing so many of these Nintendo games which are often built off of the same concepts as their previous iteration. Personally, I will play only around 3 iterations of the same game series before the whole story or game elements start to wear on me.
P.S. Don't even get me started on some Nintendo games that have been re-released up to 4-8 times (or more) for Nintendo's profit. These are the same games people may have even bought years prior, yet they buy them again. Why?
vidGuy @ Jun 5th 2007 1:25PM
"I'm a massive troll." Yes, yes you are. (I'd bet we will see the first info on Zelda Wii by Holidays 2008, for release by Summer 2010 - only three years away).
"The autoplaying of this video is supremely annoying." Yeah, what gives?
Christian, I think you are giving the art direction too much emphasis. Zelda games /may/ have "cute" enemies, sound effects, etc (it's up for debate), but the Zelda storylines are some of the most mature out there. Wind Waker, with it's cell-shading, featured a great storyline and Twilight Princess is the darkest story yet. Of course, I judge "maturity" on elements other than sex and blood.
Load times are a pain, but Zelda does a good job at hiding them. When you play you hardly notice them, just like the Resident Evil games. Like you've said, more RAM is necessary to load larger portions of the game to eliminate these loads, but then you are left with a longer load in the beginning. Without faster read times, there's a tradeoff. I'd rather have constant 2-second loads than a few 2-minute loads, but that's just my preference.
I believe the draw of Nintendo's franchises is the same of any franchise that strikes a good balance with a core audience. I know Bungie is saying they will stop at Halo 3 (with this formula, anyway), but I can imagine that they could release a new Halo every two years and consistently sell umpteen million copies. With Zelda, Mario, Metroid, Super Smash, etc, gamers know what they are getting. The Zelda games have followed nearly the same formula since LttP, but each one is a great game.