Zelda Runners – Entering Warp Drive

Hello and welcome to Zelda Runners, your bi-weekly reminder that self-isolation can be fun! This week, we’re looking at some of the movement options in the Oracle games, as well as one of the games’ more notable glitches. After that, I have a surprise in store for you, dear reader. What is it? Well, that would ruin the surprise, wouldn’t it… All I’ll say is make yourself comfy – this is a biggie. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the article (while remaining at least 2m away from your screen, I don’t want to catch anything).

Now Playing

The big news this week is the inevitable postponement of Summer Games Done Quick 2020. Due to the ongoing crisis, the event, which was due to take place on 21st June, has been pushed back to August 16th. It’s not all doom and gloom, however, as an online marathon event, Corona Relief Done Quick, has been organised, and is taking place over April 17th – 19th. You can find out more about this event in The Final Split.

Also going on this week:

• I hope you’ve all had a nice break from the countless rule discussions that were going on earlier this year, because they’re back! That’s right, the Ocarina of Time community are once again considering the use of SRM (Stale Reference Manipulation) in some of its categories, with the aim of finding a balance between new and old routes. Check back next article to see if any decision has been reached.
• The Zelda II community are holding a Mini-Hack Jam. This event encourages players to create their own hack in just 10 days. As usual, I’ll have any notable results when they come in.
• Finally, the Link’s Awakening 2019 community held a vote on whether or not a small key skip in Dungeon 4 should be allowed. The final result allowed the glitch.

Glitch Exhibition

As with most of the handheld entries, the Oracle games don’t feature too many movement glitches or exploits. That said, there are some simple speed values that are important to note. Walking, jumping with Roc’s Feather, and Swimming while pressing A all have a speed value of 40. Walking on stairs or grass is slightly slower, while walking on icy surfaces starts with a value of 5, then increments by 5 every five frames. Using a Pegasus Seed will multiply the current value by 1.5.

That said, let’s move on to the gritty stuff. To understand this Glitch Exhibition‘s main feature, we need to quickly cover another glitch known as Text Warp. By leaving an area on the same frame as a text box appears, the game scrolls Link to whichever area is stored next to him. This can be used to gain access to out of bounds areas, which is just what we need.

The trick, known as Veran Warp, involves the player reaching a particular out of bounds area, causing the game to become confused. It begins reading and writing memory in places that it otherwise wouldn’t and, as such, this glitch has a disclaimer: If you’re trying this at home, be aware that it can wipe your game save if done incorrectly. If done correctly, the game will mistakenly spawn Veran, and warp the player to the final battle. This only works on the US version of the game.

There are some final preparations we have to make before tackling this beast – you must have previously visited the right-most area in the secret palace, Ambi’s Castle, or the water area directly below it. Additionally, you cannot have previously visited the top left area of Symmetry City in the present. With all those preparations out of the way, buckle in, this is one complicated glitch.

Use a specific Text Warp (Owl Warp) to reach an out of bounds area. From here, play the Tune of Ages to escape the room, then head north for 3 screens (without moving horizontally). Position Link on the second tile from the bottom of the screen, then use the Harp to travel to the past.

Line Link up with the screenshot here, then load ember or Pegasus Seeds into the Seed Shooter. Equip the Harp on your A button, and Roc’s Feather to B. Jump and open your map on a frame when you can see Link’s shadow on the ground. Select the tile three from the left then exit the map screen. Once Link has landed, open the map and select the tile again, before closing the map again. Repeat this step until the cursor turns purple.

Well, if you’re reading this, it either means you’ve followed the steps correctly and completed the glitch (in which case, mad props), or you’ve skipped this section entirely looking for the article’s surprise (in which case, I’m only a little disappointed). If neither of these options are right, and you’re just looking for a link to watch the glitch performed successfully, then I’m happy to provide.

 

Spotlight

It’s a tough time all around the world at the moment. With most of us being stuck inside for the foreseeable future, what better a time to bring back the Spotlight section! For the next 5 articles, I’ll be bringing you a content creator, runner, glitch hunter, or other notable member of the Zelda community, and finding out what makes them tick. At the end of each interview, I’ll even link you to their social media, so you have even more to keep you going through the lonely times of self-isolation.

Kicking off this run of spotlights is probably the most notable member in the whole community. Admin of Zeldaspeedruns.com itself, and coordinator of all of its events and races, I had a chat with TreZc0 about his experience within the community.

EC: Tell us a bit about yourself!
TreZc0_: So my name is TreZc0_, or Chris (that’s not a big secret), I’m 28, and I have been a part of the Zelda Speedrunning community for…oof…I think 8 years at this point? I started out as a Twilight Princess speedrunner, but had to face the reality that I am a decent runner when it comes to tech and execution, but just absolutely not made for grinding or even playing for a long time in one sitting. So I moved on to documentation, glitch hunting, guides…that kinda stuff. From there, it just basically became more and more. I helped administrating leaderboards, then ZeldaSpeedRuns, and now I am the owner of ZSR. I lead the community, the website, the re-stream channels on Twitch (3 as we speak!), and try to be the best I can to serve the community. Sounds dramatic, doesn’t It? hahaha

EC: Being the admin of ZSR must be a daunting task. How do you stay motivated to organise and run all of the different races and tournaments?
TreZc0_: It definitely is. To be fair, a lot of the load and general time consuming tasks are pretty on me. We could always slow down, but we kinda want to improve all the time and be there for more communities, offer more coverage for our viewers, and improve the overall coverage of Zelda speedrunning. That’s one key aspect of my motivation. I want this to be better every single day. At the end of the day I want to see an improvement, even if it is ever so slightly. Most of this comes from myself – communicating better, improving the relationships between the different communities, or improving our massive and (I need to say it as I am proud of it) absolutely outstanding streaming back-end. I just love what I am doing. That makes it a lot easier. ZSR has been my passion for the past few years, and while I work full time and am a ambitioned musician, I always come back to this as my little “love child”. It’s just fun to connect so many people and also be able to entertain an audience on so many different levels

EC: As admin, you must have communication with just about every Zelda speedrunning community there is. What’s it like being a part of so many different groups?
TreZc0_: Honestly, I am in the lucky position that most Zelda communities do enjoy to maintain themselves. They have their own ideas, ideals, and quirks. I only see me, or not just me but ZSR as a whole, as the connector between these groups of fantastic people. In all honesty, I would love to bond a lot more with the different communities, but between the coverage and back-end work, it’s not always possible to do that. There’s times where I don’t speak to a community for a few months, and I usually regret that cause they are all awesome people. When I started out, especially the 2D community had turned away from ZSR, and I am really thrilled to say that I managed to change that in some aspects – that’s the best part of the entire “being in so many groups” – to be able to build bridges, even rebuild bridges that were previously burned. I started out with Twilight Princess only – now we pretty much built connections to all Zelda communities and pretty much all Zelda randomizers as well, and that’s a fantastic feeling.

EC: You yourself have taken part in a few sub-goal ‘rewards’ (you might prefer the term punishments) such as the hellsanity run last year. Do you enjoy these? What’s it like being part of an incentive for the community?
TreZc0_: So, especially in comparison to other “organisations” (weird term) in the scene, I love the idea of people not just expecting a professional platform for their competitive races, but also getting the feeling of bonding and interacting with the people that are running the show. That’s why we do these a lot, and also let our re-streamers interact with the audience a lot. I think it’s a fantastic thing to have such an intensive bond between the viewers and ourselves. These sub goal rewards are expressing this the most. The audience keeps us running with their amazing support, and I want to give them something back for it. Often, this means making a fool out of myself, but hey, I’m fine laughing with others about myself, so that’s all good. I love these events and small things. It even influences our emotes on the twitch channels, like :BlameTrez: haha

EC: The header of the ZSR Twitter is a photo of lots of different members of the community taken at a Games Done Quick event. Like you said, there are times where you don’t speak often with communities due to other commitments, so what’s it like having an opportunity to come together and meet each other in person at events like GDQs?
TreZc0_: Yes, this picture was taken at AGDQ 2018. We wanted to do another one this year, but it just didn’t turn out. I have been to AGDQ again this year with our second admin dragonbane and it’s just a fantastic experience. You meet so many people from all over the world, and we all share this one, kinda nerdy and quirky hobby. Besides the entire networking aspect, and don’t get me wrong, that’s really important – it’s just really fun to meet the people you otherwise only interact with online. It gives the entire thing another level of…”feeling real”? These events are exhausting for sure, and with it taking me a 15 hour flight to even get there, the week flies by in an instant and you need roughly 3 weeks to recover haha – but it is absolutely worth it cause you meet all these people and everyone is enthusiastic about what we all do and is very open in general. And all that for a good cause. GDQs are great – if you can, consider going there at least once!

EC: Do you have any favourite memories or events that have happened thanks to ZSR?
TreZc0_: Uhh yea, there is a ton of moments I really don’t want to miss. For example, the very first ZSR Marathon I ran together with my mates here on ZSR, back in 2017. Everything was still so new, our tech was quirky at best, and it all was a gigantic trainwreck, but we loved every second of it. That weekend, I stayed up for 50 of the 62 hours it ran, and at the end, I actually broke into tears while doing the outro. Everyone was so heartwarming and supportive, it just hit me at that moment lol. The ZSR Marathon 2018 was as crazy, and these two I will never forget for the rest of my life I believe. (ZSRM will come back 2020 I hope!) On top, there is just these small things in everyday’s business that remind you how funny and just quirky this community still is. Like my first subgoal reward where I played an Ocarina of Time Randomizer hellsanity seed and it took around 20 hours because I hadn’t played through the game in like 15 years (I was always more the SNES guy 😛 ). Or us hitting 1000 subscribers (dang, we dropped :P) during Season 2 of the Ocarina of Time Radomizer Main Tournaments as one emotional moment where it just felt surreal. There is too many honestly – I love ZSR.

EC: Are there any ongoing or upcoming events that you or ZSR want to promote?
TreZc0_: Oh definitely! Ongoing are multiple tournaments, Ocarina of Time Randomizer Season 3, The Wind Waker Randomizer Season 3, an A Link to the Past All Dungeons Tournament, the first ever The Minish Cap Randomizer tourney just started, the Skyward Sword Any% Tourney is on, the first ever Majora’s Mask Randomizer tourney will start in a month or so, and Ocarina of Time Ganon Source Requirement in May. There is so much more to come. We also want to do another Relay race this year and hopefully finally another charity ZSRMarathon.

EC: Obviously you’re not a runner yourself, but from all of the runs and randomizers you’ve seen throughout the years, do you think you could pick a category or game that you enjoy watching the most?
TreZc0_: I mean, I ran Twilight Princess Any% for a long time, so it still has a special place in my heart and I keep going back to it from time to time. I also love A Link to the Past Any% NMG and The Minish Cap Any% and their runs, just always have, same with Breath of the Wild Any% which I did for a little while after release and still commentate every once in a while. I also learned to love Zelda II runs!! Last ZSRM18 run gave me a passion for Spirit Tracks too…the longer I think, the more runs come to mind, even “offbrand” stuff like Hyrule Warriors or Cadence of Hyrule, and the Tingle Games! You see…this will go on forever, so I will just stop now hahaha.

 

Thanks for the chat, TreZc0_! You can find all of his hard work on ZeldaSpeedRuns.com, as well as details on the site’s streaming schedule, and many, many tournaments, races, and other events.

 

Round Up

Ocarina of Time

Any%. dannyb21892 – 7:38.608
100%. glitchymon – 3:45:58
No Wrong Warp. realtimeattack64 – 33:04
No ACE. RichardSage – 16:55.033
100%, NSR. Plyd8233 – 37:07

 

Majora’s Mask

All Masks. mousse1204 – 36:32
100%. popesquidward – 4:30:14
Total Dungeon Completion. dopeZera – 1:38:00

 

Oracle of Ages/Oracle of Seasons

Any%. Nitroz – 2:52:06

 

The Wind Waker

Any%. Ian_Miles29 – 59:32

 

Triforce Heroes

All Levels, Single Player. Koopary – 2:13:09
All Levels, No Costumes, Single Player. LustNoel – 2:36:33
All Levels, Multiplayer. LustNoel + Koopary + Koopary2 – 2:35:04
All Challenges, No Costumes, Single Player. LustNoel – 12:03:31
Den of Trials, Single Player. Koopary – 24:55

 

Breath of the Wild

Master Sword and Dungeons, Original, Restricted. Vivoxe – 2:28:09.467
Master Sword, Extended. evolchronicle – 56:23.910

 

Cadence of Hyrule

Any%, Co-Op. 2_snek + hashtagkats – 24:18

The Final Split

The psychical world may be in lockdown, but there are still plenty of online marathon events to keep you entertained  (and indoors) over the next few weeks.

Corona Relief Done Quick -17th April ~ 19th April – A miniature GDQ event to help raise funds for Direct Relief. The schedule is being released on 13th April, so keep an eye on their Twitter page for more details.

 

ESA Together – 6th April ~ 13th April – This online event features plenty of exciting runs, including Untitled Goose Game (Honk!) and… Ring Fit Adventure?

 

Speedcon 2020 – 15th April ~ 19th April – Some Skyward Sword All Dungeons tickling your fancy? Or perhaps you’d prefer a Celeste Any% run. Either way, this event has something for you!

 

Retrothon 2020 – 19th April ~ 27th April – Or perhaps modern games aren’t your thing at all? If not, this event is absolutely jam-packed with retro titles, both popular and otherwise. If that’s not incentive enough, it finishes with a bumper 10+ hour Zelda block!

And that’s all from me this week! I hope you enjoyed the slightly extended article – if anything a little extra time will have passed, and we’ll all be a little closer to normality. Or insanity. I know which I’m closer to. Catch you later!

 

Euan is the host of Zelda Dungeon’s Speedrunning series, Zelda Runners. He can be found on Twitter and Discord, and he’s forgotten what it feels like to have the sun’s gentle rays caress his cheeks.