Long Plays and Speed Runs

In my last post I mentioned I don’t play many games any more. One thing led to another, as things often do. I ended up poking around on various sites, ostensibly to catch up a bit on the current gaming scene and to see if anyone remembers the games I recall so fondly. Really, I was just killing time. Pretending I was on some personal, if inane, research project sounds a bit better.

I answered my questions pretty quickly. I’m missing out on some really impressive games and, yes, the hive-mind that is the Internet does remember with fondness the old games I used to play. I discovered something else I didn’t know about. Long play’s, Let’s plays, and Speedruns. Oh, my!

cc-by-sa:Flickr:moparx

They’re all closely related. You’ll either enjoy them, or find them mind-numbingly boring. I don’t think these have middle ground: they’re videos of people playing video games. For some reason, I’m in the “enjoy” group. If, from that description, you think you’re in the “boring” group, then move along. There is nothing for you here.

Long plays and Let’s plays are almost identical. Both record an entire game or, at least, one possible path through a game. Start to finish. The former is usually just the game play, and the later has the player narrating in some fashion.

Speedruns are recordings where the player tries to complete a game in the fastest possible time. These also fall into many categories. 100% Speedruns, for example, show the character picking up all objects (coins, power-ups, treasures). Tool-assisted speedruns (TAS), are games recorded using an emulator. This lets the player rewind the action or slow it down. Usually restricted to old console games, the end result is a video where the player performs perfectly. Glitch games use in-game bugs or errors to gain advantage, with the intent of triggering the end-game in the shortest time possible.

You’ve made it this far so it seems you have at least a curiosity. I’ll give you some examples to get you started.

• Let’s Play World of Warcraft: What a game to tackle! It looks like this guy has been at it for quite a while. It’s a series of over one hundred 10-minute YouTube videos showing a character levelling from 1 to 80. He records at 4x speed, then narrates over the resulting high-speed video.
• Long Play Commodore 64 Games: This user is one of many who has a collection of old C-64 game videos. Most are limited to the 10-minutes available to a single video on YouTube.
• Speed Run System Shock 2: A complete play through of a game that can take days to complete. Or 36 minutes, in this case.
• Glitch Run Tomb Raider Aniversary: A good example of a Glitch run. Uses bugs to walk through walls, walk on air, and skip doors.
• TAS Super Mario Brothers: Mario played like no human can. How far did you get in 5 minutes and 34 seconds?

Still here? Why? It looks like you may suffer a similar chemical imbalance that I’m starting to think effects me. To find more of these, simply search on YouTube for “long play”, or “let’s play”. Look for videos organised into YouTube Playlists. They’re easier to watch and are more likely to be a complete set. You can also visit the dedicated (yeah, go figure) site http://speeddemosarchive.com, or visit the video games section of the more generalised site http://www.archive.org.

If there is real value in these, I suppose it is that you can view them to determine if the game you intend to buy is actually worth the money. No. Not really. They’re just a way to kill time while you wait for your lithium prescription to be delivered.