Gossip Stone: What is Your Favorite Zelda Game to See a Speedrun of?

SpeedDemosArchive’s charity speedrun marathon, Summer Games Done Quick, is coming up later this month, and Zelda fans are excited as ever to see the runners break their favorite series titles to the point of no return. Speedrunning is certainly a fascinating concept, but Zelda games display some of the most interesting ways of breaking a game and exploiting holes in their design, making Zelda games some of the most popular games to see speedruns of. What is your personal favorite? What game do like to see broken, cheated and exploited the most?

Join the discussion after the jump!

The most notorious Zelda speedruns are almost certainly those of Ocarina of Time. The game has been broken beyond belief for years, and even after its most famous runner, Cosmo, hit his famous 18:10 Any% record last year and stated that the game was likely as broken as it will ever be, runners like JodenStone and skater82297 continue to find new tricks and set crazy new records. Between the insane wrong warps, the ever-exploitable Infinite Sword Glitches, and the just-plain-clever movement optimization, I still think that Ocarina of Time has some little trick just waiting to be found, which will drop the Any% world record to five minutes, or something nuts like that. And that is not even mentioning the long, but awesome 100% runs. Just search for one of ZFG’s runs, and be amazed for a good four and a half hours.

My favorite is still the long and arduous The Wind Waker runs. Besides being my favorite Zelda title, The Wind Waker is a great sigh to see when speedrun. It has very odd bugs letting you activate super swims, which can literally send Link swimming across the entire ocean in one shot. This is used all throughout certain runs, bypassing the King of Red Lions entirely. The technique is extremely hard to pull off, but seeing it done is amazing. The same is true for zombie hovers, sending a technically dead Link hovering through the air, only to be heals with the Tingle Tuner of all things. The runs are long and tough, but they are a joy to watch, and it was interesting to see the new runs emerge for The Wind Waker HD, as some bugs were fixed, and new tricks were soon found.

What about you guys? Do you prefer long and eventful 100% runs or short and sweet Any%’s? Which games are more fun to watch, the classic top-down titles or the later, more modern 3D games? Drop a comment below!