How Speedrunners Beat Hollow Knight in under 5 Minutes: A (Brief) History of Any% All Glitches 

I remember seeing my first any% ag run I understood nothing but now after I saw many glitched runs I still dont understand anything sadly

I always love people who’ve never done speedrunning saying that glitched runs - or speedrunning in general - “disrespects the game”. Like, my man, these people _love_ this game and put more time into figuring out all of its little quirks than you ever would just playing casually.

I think people who think "glitches are cheating" don't understand how game code works or how rules work. In a "no glitches" run, glitches are breaking the rules, and are thus considered cheating. In a "glitches" category run, it is not cheating. Being able to creatively exploit glitches in the code and game, especially for such a well-bolstered game like hk, is very very impressive. Glitches aren't inherently bad, they're just an unintended way of playing the game

The game be like "Okay, so you got all the Dreamers: Monomon the Teacher, Monomon the Watcher, and Monomon the Beast".

I kind of miss the times when the final boss strat was to load THK into a room at Crystal Peak and let it kill itself on the spikes, that was the peak Any%AG for me... but this NG+ method might just make the category more popular than it ever was

Someone who should also get some credit is SpringSylvi, who did a ton of the routing of the dupe, and was one of the first to get a leaderboard run with the room dupe route!

i really think it deserves to be mentioned that prior to the competition with ghmms in any%ag, ghmms was a major revolution in teag due to the noclip + starting with voidheart. it took a little while (ie many many months of teag being the most popular glitched category) for us to realize this was optimal for any%ag as well (the result of us discrovering dream gate noclip which allowed us to keep noclip for the whole run instead of losing it after monomon) and any% was basically a dead category during that time, while we were making major revolutions in the ghmms route through everyone running teag (also, you should still run agag 🥺)

I find All Glitches speedrun categories absolutely fascinating, as a tale of how dedicated fans of a game will scour it for broken lines of code and exploit them until the game is nearly unrecognizable from its base. Plus they're just cool as shit to watch.

So glad to finally see this coming out! I’m glad folks have been able to make use of the silly glitches I found/helped find ❤

13:43 As someone who has watched the entire Mario 64 ABC Challenge series I LOVE in depth glitch and game mechanic analysis. I’ve been waiting for so long for someone to do a video about AG so thank you for doing this!

I finally understand room dupes due to this video. I had a basic understanding before (connected at bottom left, oldest room deloads, etc), but that clip about how movement works was what made me finally get it

genuinely all major glitches runs are some of the most enjoyable speedruns to watch, especially when you have an outside perspective, literally at any point in time there is something just stupid going on that does not make sense even if you have played the game before

Player: About to kill THK and finish the game. Game: Wow, they really find this bench comfortable!

thanks for the vid Blue!! I love watching glitched runs but had trouble understanding how transitions work and what new route is. Glitched runs really deserve more explanation videos like this aimed for casual players, so that more people can enjoy watching them. Glitches (and speedrun strats in general) are fascinating

"Glitched speedruns are cheating" is like saying that all basketball players are cheating because soccer doesn't let you use your hands

I wish this video was at least twice as long lol I could watch this type of video forever and never get bored

this video was so well put together really good script, editing, easy to understand best hollow knight channel ive seen

I think that Glitchless speed runs are more fun to watch, mainly because you can see the skill and relate it to your own. While any% runs are so far above that you don't realize the skill involved to get the any%. I will say that history of any% videos are usually my go to as a first watch. I want to hear the story of how one person found something that monumentally changed how the speed run was done and how it went further than that.

Love the vid as always Blue! Hope you're doing well. Even got a sensible chuckle from the "Wonderer's Journal" joke. Anyone who didn't laugh must live in Egypt since they are in denial of a good joke!

Thanks for another great vid! You always pick interesting topics for these. Appreciate you!

Watching glitched runs (and TASs too) is always insane to me. Love this game, love this community, love Blue, thanks so much for making this vid

Great video whole way through, congrats Blue😄

Great vid blue ! As someone who was never interested in glitched speedruns, this was very clear and cool

Its insane how much time Garfield saves from the run.

Any% guide Start a godseeker file hit the hardsave quit out and dupe the main menu load into kp with noclip put on charms place a dgate at black egg store the crossroads stag then go left right down left right down left right up left right up left right left down right left right transition storage dive left right left then get airwalk enter archives go up left down skip uumuu enter the dream three times get monomons quitout dgate overcharm fury and kill thk

Im glad you made a video clearing this up. I watched a glitch speedrun cause i was curious and I was like what is even happening

I love glitches, like seeing the different ways you can break a game and see the crazy stuff, love it

Yesss I’ve been so excited for this video since you’ve mentioned it on stream! I always thought this was one of the coolest categories but it’s super underapprecated and I’m so glad it’s getting some recognition!

as a glitch hunter myself (for death's door) this is really nice to see c: while not as huge, it was not that long ago a couple of "simple but effective" glitches were found, and I can say with confidence that it's one of the best feelings to get a new tool in the toolbox (especially after stagnation, idk if that was the case here but ye)

Awesome video ! :)

Main menu storage works incredibly similar to Back in Time from the legend of Zelda Skyward Sword. I love speedrunning and was introduced to the concept by speedrunners in The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess and I honestly can't believe people think that it is cheating. It takes more work than no glitches! Especially if you're the one finding the glitches.

Hi Blue! I don't know if you remember me, but I love your streams and your vids, and I see you grinding to put out content, even when you have school. I am inspired by you, and I hope to see more videos coming out soon. Keep up the good work!

Another great video blue

holy its another uplaod this is insane

Nice video!

I'm sure the NPC in game saw these speed runners as godlike entity that teleporting everywhere and beating everything in blitz speed. This entity even understand the pattern of the rainfall and doesnt get wet. All of those while doing weird stuff and moves erratically. Crazy magic.

I always loved this game for how fun, cool, and the ability to express yourself through your own game play. But I never thought that breaking the game would make me love it even more than I already do. This video made my love for this game swell and I'm glad I clicked on this video.

I think its worth mentioning that when you open your inventory with bench storage while not cdqshing or going through a transition, you cant control your character until you take damage

Great video ! And take ur time :)

That Megamind no glitches joke definetly made me love the video

Finally a new BlueSR video!

If folk think all glitch runs are 'low skill' as the comment you flashed on screen showed, I'd be fascinated to see them try. I may not get much out of _watching_ all glitch runs, but they're usually one of the more fascinating categories to hear about, along with low% runs, and I have intense respect for the amount of skill required for them.

Just as I bring cookies and milk to start binging Blue's videos again, he posts a new video. The timing couldn't have been better 👍

i love all glitches speedruns, they're always super interesting

Tbh at first I was also like "Oh, glitches... That kind of sounds like cheating." But this video made me do a 180 on that. This stuff is so complicated! How do people even find this? And *understand* this? Definitely a new-found respect for glitch speedrunners.

This is just fascinating

"go right to go left" - who knew Doc Hudson would turn out to be a HK speedrunner

Great Video

Thank you so much, even though I am a huge Hollow Knight nerd I knew absolutely nothing about glitches besides wall-cling storage.

The dude speedran the game faster than my PC could boot up

Blue Vid! Blue Vid! Blue Vid! GOOD CONTENT!!! and well scripted with regards to what to talk about and at what point

I didn’t understand half the things you said, but it was very interesting to watch.

I was waiting for this for 5 months

I liked the wonderers journal joke :)

Ohhhh another video to listen to while I fight 2.0. Thanks mate :D Edit: Your starting jokes made me lose a really good run from laughter how could you 😭.

It is pretty cool. Another great speedrun: Ocarina of Time, maybe the most impressive one. For me even the non major glitches category uses glitches too much and I myself prefer 112% speedrun (steel soul of course) and hitless Pantheon for HK but I have nothing against any category as long as everyone who participates plays with the same rules. As long as you enjoy it it is all good and I definitely recommend every Hollow Knight player to finish the pantheons and beat every boss in the HalL of Gods hitless.

It may not be a long run or even very fun, but damn it’s a treat to watch

Imo Glitches contribute to some of the most fascinating runs in gaming. Wether it be a speedrun or challenge run, sometimes to push the limits of a game you need to break it, and that's part of the fun.

I don't really enjoy 'heavily' glitched runs, not because they're "cheating," but because they feel just too far removed from my understanding of the game. I literally don't understand what's going on. When I see people pulling off cool strats in NMG, they feel like something I can do, as if I'm learning something about the game that improves my ability to play it better. Because glitch tricks are often more difficult or add weird visuals to the screen, they feel more out of reach, and I lose some interest because it feels like I couldn't pull them off or they'd basically be me wildly flailing around (in the case of things like Back in Time or Main menu storage type glitches). And at the end of the day, I like seeing the game get played. I'll check out the super glitched speedruns if they're up at GDQ, or summaries like these, but in general these types of runs don't have nearly the same degree of lasting engagement/enjoyment for me, where I want to see a runner make multiple attempts or want to see how other runners go through the game. Also depends on game length for me. A glitched speedrun that takes 5 minutes doesn't feel that engaging to me personally. But a 30+ minute NMG run or 1.5 hour TE run has time to breathe, have a runner delve into mechanics as they slowly unveil the game, and pull off a mix of smaller and bigger skips or optimizations that I feel like I can try out myself or otherwise learn from. For the same reason, I don't really find most NG+ RPG speedruns of games on a low difficulty setting that engaging. There are still strategies in play, obviously. But when most of the combat complexity is removed/just a bit too far divorced from how normal players experience, it feels like I'm not getting anything out of watching the run, even if the times are significantly faster. I'm not learning strategies that actually make me approach the game differently if I were to restart it and approach it with fresh eyes. Glitch speedruns are still valid, obviously, not saying that they're not or that people shouldn't be able to play the game the way they like.

I'm always in awe of how crazy the speedrun community is. The runs just keep getting faster and faster. Some of these glitches would need to be frame perfect. The dedication.

Cool, now I can say I completely don't understand something that until 20 minutes ago I never heard of. Very interesting topic, maybe next you could do a video on how speedrunners beat Hollow Knight in under 5 minutes. I do believe that the only people that understood this video were already speedrunners that already knew all this stuff.

People play the game for different reasons of interest and that is so cool guys! I personally love speedrunning but major glitch runs doesn't interest me but it is still impressive!

I think what is really going on with the "glitches are cheating" crowd is something more like "glitch runs are inherently less interesting to me and so I don't consider them [as] valid." Its not really my thing either, but I took the time to think about why. (it's not important to my point, but those interested it's because, to me, it feels like the game is sanitized of its character in favour of mechanical minutia). Taking the time to figure that out, it's easy to see that the glitched runners are just enjoying the game differently, and that's ok. It may not be my cuppa, but it's increasing the joy in the world and that seems like a good thing.

All glitches tas reaction video in potential future bluesr?

Someone: _angry wall of text about glitches being cheating_ BlueSR: damn that's crazy 😂 Like, thanks for the algorithmic engagement, I guess? I don't understand some people.

as much as i love your puns im gonna have to take a kings pass on that one

Hollow Knight is a game that takes around 20 hours to beat casually, 30 minutes in a no-glitch speedrun, and 5 minutes with glitches. That's how you know you've made a replayable, speedrunnable game.

I always wondered why it said any% no major glitches…

wow😨 I can't believe 😱anyone😱 would use 😞glitches😞 don't you know 👉glitching👈 is 😠cheating😤and cheating is 🤢wrong🤢 you should play the game the way the 😇developers intended😇 I am 🙁disappointed🙁 in the speedrunning😫 community😫 for allowing such 🤢disgusting🤢 acts to take place

Im excited to watch it, cya in 20 min 💕

His 2:10 description of a regular any% is the complete flipped version of what ive done in my first playthrough lol. The watcher nights where last, and the dream nail was after c dash.

I swear, I just though about how long it was since the last video There's some black magic going on

It's not blue without a healthy(?) dose of joke explanations huh Great video (otherwise)! Finally got the chance to watch it - I've been missing blue content, and i absolutely loved it. And it's lovely to see this category getting some exposure

And for that Wanderers Journal pun, have my like.

one of my favorite parts of the anniversary stream i believe it was they did a few years ago was the all glitches speedrun where they just spawn a room to kill the hollow knight LOL

12:16 I think you meant HE. You misspoke quite a few times but dw :)

A speedrunner I watch a lot likes to do hollow knight challenges, and they always seemed to be on some hollow knight new game + mode... now I know how they do it. I saw someone call hollow knight glitches black magic and just... they're so beautiful. I love this game and all the ways it can be broken.

With room storage and main menu storage, these people don’t need to have the same level of control or understanding of Hollow Knight’s movement. Things like QGA and other famous skips are useless to them, so they don’t need to spend hours getting good at them. Instead, they need to understand how the game code works on the smallest level, and risk breaking everything in order to figure out how to use and abuse every quirk of the code in order to beat their best times. It takes a level of technical knowledge that I don’t even begin to comprehend. These times are insane, good on them!

HE’S BACK!

"Main menu storage lets you merge saves, even bringing progression between saves" So you're sort of merging timelines in a way Or... Merging universes What I'm trying to say, is that to talk about main menu storage, we'll have to talk about parallel universes

Thumbs up for those Hollow Knight Dad Jokes. Never played the game, never watched anything around it really, but you were recommended to me and I'm here for the puns and the fascinating storytelling.

I had someone argue with me that breaking the wall in false knight is cheating so...

This is one of those videos that you know is going to be good right from the intro

I think blue has to know this: wander and wonder are different words.

I loved the pun at the beginning.

Glitched runs be like “you go left by going right”

I think I found a skip that could be used in speed runs if you vengeful spirit and open the map immediately after you can start to fall slowly until you get hit.

A couple runs that I had seen in this category featured the room storage trick but stored a Crystal Peaks room to instantly kill THK by loading him into spikes. Is this route now out of favor or just suboptimal because you have to take the time to go get that room?

Now the triple Monomon doorway near black egg temple makes sense

3:59 once in my speed completion run i must've accidentally performed some frame perfect jump in greenpath (the room behind massive moss charger specifically) because i jumped out of acid dashed into the room to the left and came out of the transition in a state of swimming haven't been able to replicate it ever since

Babe wake up new bluesr video

Glitches speedruns are the defacto speedrun in my mind. They are quite literally the fastest way to beat the games.

In the time it takes to watch this video you could beat hollow knight 4 times

I have gotten main menu storage accidentally so many times (or almost, I've never been in-game with the menu, but I've had two menus at once) and still, as of starting this video, I have no idea how it's even done Edit: Now I kinda understand, and it makes sense I did it accidentally, I play on controller, and for some reason my first A press whenever I go to the main menu counts as a B press or something like that because it opens the "would you like to quit" option thing, and since I mash the button every time I leave, I immediately click the quit game option and un-select it whenever I leave, which makes me accidentally open 2 main menus (or at least that was what I got from the explanation)

omg I did not know the game could be broken open this much

the wanderer's journal pun took longer than it took to beat the run.

So, where's mossbag to explain the lore implication behind all these glitches? I want a full documentary, complete with how the Pale King managed to hide all these 'secret passages' from the eyes of the common folk.

2:24 i got so scared since that's my notification sound lol

If you think that people saying "glitched is cheating" is annoying wait until you hear of "speedrunning is taking value from video games" Yeah, some people genuinely believe this

Was hoping you'd show the entire pathing of the run on the big map so we can see how ridiculous the 'actual' in-world pathing is (since you already sorta show some bits of it)