Updated (Video): CosmoWright Sets a New Ocarina of Time World Record, Besting Himself
Posted on July 20 2014 by Nathanial Rumphol-Janc
The following article is part of our archives and does not reflect current style guide standards. It is kept as is for posterity.
For those unaware, there are several types of speedruns. 100% completion runs, every dungeon runs, tool-assited runs, and then of course just be the fastest to get from start to finish by any means necessary in-game. This allows for glitches and such, so long as they can be performed within the game itself and don’t need any additional tools to help achieve. CosmoWright is a speed runner of the last variety, and he literally just set a new World Record that he himself likely won’t be able to beat. Here is the breakdown from
Yep. 18 minutes and 10 seconds. This was achieved by CosmoWright (best known for speedrunning OoT and Wind Waker/WWHD, as well as Commander Keen and Castlevania 64), who has been running this game for a hell of a long time. This run was 19 seconds faster than his previous, already insane world record.
In particular, the last few months of his streams have been non-stop Ocarina of Time; new tech emerged not too long ago, allowing the player to skip collecting the Kokori Sword and bypass Mido (who blocks the entrance to the first dungeon, hence the trick’s name, the “Mido Skip”). This tech, along with the infamous wrong warp skip (go straight from the Gohma battle to the collapse of Ganon’s Castle), the HESS skip at Ganon’s Castle (manipulating falling boulders to blast Link down the castle stairway to skip 3 floors, including some annoying Stalfos fights) and some god damn lucky RNG with the Kakariko chickens, plus the usual damn good execution, equals a speedrun that will likely never be beaten.
That’s right, this Ocarina of Time speedrun is pretty much dead forever.
Some qualifications:
- This is only one Ocarina of Time speedrun category, namely any%. This means get from the beginning of the game to Zelda sending Ganon to the Sacred Realm as quickly as possible. Other categories do exist, including all dungeons and 100%, and these are still contestable as far as I’m aware.
- This is very likely unbeatable, but it’s not perfect. There’s still ways to save time in Kakariko and on the castle collapse… buuuut the difference is neglible. Sub-18minutes would require perfect execution.
- This version of the game is played on genuine hardware, but not Nintendo 64, Gamecube or Wii; this is the iQue version of the game, released in China. It’s a console that comes with several N64 games pre-installed… with the added benefit of Chinese text, which displays faster than English or even Japanese. Yes, Cosmo bought one of these just to completely fucking destroy this game. (And yes, other languages and versions count as their own categories too.)
- …this game is a mess of glitches, so new bugs could be found… who knows. Who knows.