Last weekend I was up during the day on Saturday so I joined in on the second of the 'Get Yourself Speedrunning' races. It was for the SNES Zelda game, A Link to the Past. I managed to get in a few practice runs and actually knew where all the keys were located and where to go for the entire run. I didn't get lost and I only game overed once, and it wasn't even much of a time loss since I'd just entered a dungeon and dying in that game takes you to the start of your current dungeon. Since it healed me back to 4 hearts it might even have been faster than not dying!
The race winner finished in 22 minutes and 1 second. I finished in 28 minutes and 33 seconds. This means I only took 30% longer than the best person which is way better than my Mario 3 result where I took more than 4 times as long as the best person. In the Mario 3 race I did come 91st out of 140 people. In Zelda I only came 121st! Which sounds worse, except attendance for Zelda blew the attendance record set by Mario 3 out of the water. 301 people showed up! 290 of them even finished the race!
The rating system the SRL website uses is clearly flawed though, as this race showed. The guy currently in 7th place overall on the A Link to the Past leaderboard has only done one race. This one, where he came 34th. 33 people beat him, but only 6 people are ranked higher than him on the leaderboard. Presumably the system treats initial races as more important, or only cares about how many people you beat, or how many higher ranked people you beat, or something of the sort. I feel bad for the people who may care about the Zelda leaderboard since this huge race clearly messed things up.
121st place was actually good enough to get me some ranking points. Not enough to skyrocket me to the top of the charts but I have an actual number for a game now which is pretty cool. And it was fun!
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