Games Done Quick Speedrun Stage At PAX West 2024 Recap: Takeaways and Interview with the Dungeon Runners

This post was authored by Kristen G. Rosario.

A couple of Dungeon Runners take a trip over to Seattle, Washington for this year’s PAX West as Games Done Quick (GDQ) held a speedrunning mini-marathon during the event. During this small exhibition at the convention, we had just two Zelda runners there as one helped the other show off the fun experience you can have with the Twilight Princess randomizer.

We hope you enjoy our coverage as much as we enjoyed checking out this run!

Twilight Princess (Randomizer) by Phantom5800

Summary and Reactions

During the Twilight Princess randomizer co-op run back at this year’s Summer Games Done Quick, one of the people on couch commentary was a runner by the name of Phantom5800. Just recently, they got to show their stuff at this year’s GDQ PAX West event. Helped out by fellow runner Glubbers, it was now Phantom’s turn for the main stage in a solo run of the Twilight Princess randomizer.

The seed used for Phantom’s run was generated by Twilight Princess randomizer co-creator Isaac who definitely gave them a very enjoyable time. At the beginning of the seed, Phantom knew that the three dungeons they would need to explore included Snowpeak Ruins, Temple of Time, and City in the Sky thanks to hint signs at the beginning of the seed. The run started simple enough as Phantom explored Hyrule to see what they could gather before diving deeper into the game.

Both Phantom and Glubbers bring up early on how the most important chests to open during the early portion of the run are the zero-item-dependent ones (chests that don’t require anything specific to open). Considering how many random chests there are to discover in the standard version of Twilight Princess, they brought up how this Zelda title makes for an optimal randomizer.

And, just like with most randomizers, Phantom was able to find the most important of items in the strangest of places. They find the Hidden Blow ability by speaking with Ashei, discover the Dominion Rod upon completing the Fruit Pop Flight Challenge minigame, get the Master Sword from Coro’s Shop, and even obtain their first Clawshot by finishing the Goat Herding mini-game.

At this point, Phantom doesn’t have the second clawshot just yet, but decides to go to City in the Sky anyways to check on the chests they are able to get to this early in the run. While Phantom doesn’t really find anything truly significant there for now, they do find the Ball and Chain a short while after in a grotto filled with Toadpolis. Then after acquiring the second fishing rod from Sera, Phantom heads on over to Snowpeak Ruins in order to fully complete their first dungeon of the run.

Phantom makes quick work of this dungeon, even having enough time to show off a neat loading trick involving Blizzeta’s boss room. After they get done with Blizzeta, Phantom heads to Darkhammer and receives a Small Key for defeating him. Since that’s all they can obtain in Snowpeak Ruins, they head over to the STAR mini-game again (grabbing Lantern Oil this time), before returning to City in the Sky to properly finish it off after obtaining the second Clawshot. Using the Reverse City in the Sky Method, Phantom is able to make quick work of the remaining chests, as well as Argorok himself.

With that dungeon completed, the last item Phantom needs to complete this seed is the Bow, which they do eventually find in a chest located on Hyrule Field. Since they finally have that in their inventory, Phantom heads on over to the Temple of Time to begin the final stretch of this run. Once Armogohma has been slain, the rest of the seed is a cakewalk for Phantom.

They are able to easily get through Hyrule Castle with little-to-no problem with the last stretch of boss fights, showcasing more of Phantom’s skill. And thus, by using the iconic fishing rod trick to defeat Ganondorf, manages to complete the run with a final time of 2h 37m 43s.

Overall, while this was a very entertaining run (thanks in no part to the amazing back and forth banter between Phantom and Glubbers), it does show the challenges of running a Zelda randomizer. It takes a whole lot of patience and skill to complete a very fortuitous kind of run.

Interview with Phantom5800

Kristen got a chance to speak with Phantom5800 about training for a randomizer run, as well as the improvements implemented with the 1.2.0 version of Twilight Princess.

What were the key aspects you had to learn when training for a randomizer run? Compared to other Twilight Princess randomizer seeds you have completed, do you think this seed “put on a good show”?

Phantom5800: Early game is what matters the most, how I was going to go about gathering information and deciding with what I had and what would be the correct course to take. I think there are a lot of cool Twilight Princess-related things that we didn’t get to show off due to not finding boomerang until very late, but as a demonstration I think it went well and I’ve heard a lot of positive reception in general.

What are your thoughts about the seed’s difficulty and how the show went?

Phantom5800: I think the seed was appropriately difficult for the time slot we had. The estimate going in was three hours, and a good seed I would say typically lands in the very low two hour range. Since I had a seed prepared ahead of time by one of the developers, he was able to find something that he estimated would take a bit longer and fill more of the time slot we had. I think because of that it ends up being fairly entertaining as most people enjoy watching the rando player suffer just a little bit.

During your run, you mention all of the updates that have been made to the Twilight Princess randomizer, as it’s ran on the GCN version of the title. Which improvement do you believe has been the most beneficial to your randomizer runs and why?

Phantom5800: The hint system is new to the 1.2.0 release. What this did was add new signs that don’t exist in the vanilla game, each with one to two hints trying to guide you just a little bit. With a game as big as Twilight Princess, having zero guidance other than what your items have unlocked can be pretty daunting and results in much longer seeds.

Any advice or tips for people looking to get into Twilight Princess randomizer runs?

Phantom5800: Just play them really. The season one race settings (found in the Twilight Princess randomizer Discord), give a fairly streamlined experience that makes it a lot easier to jump in and learn. You don’t need to know any tricks to complete a seed, though some things obviously can speed it up the more you do learn. First few seeds will take a while, but the more you play it, the faster they’ll be.

Thanks for tuning into our wrap-up of Phantom5800’s run! What did you think of this amazing run from this year’s PAX West? What was your favorite moment, and what were you most impressed by? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!