How Zelda 2 Speedrunners Use Massive Glitches To Get World Records 

Please be sure to give Slack and FrostedPears a follow/sub, they really deserve it! Post video notes/edits: -Slackanater did NOT discover or was the first to use Neutral Jumping, he had the idea to use it more throughout his 15;59! LSDHippie420 was the one who discovered the i-frame strat on the bridge (trap 9B), and inspired the idea for slack’s neutral jumping -Inzult was not the first to discover scroll locking. There's an earlier find from runners "Genisto" and "Bliztag" via a collaborative TAS in 2005. tasvideos.org/561S Slackanater: YT: ru-vid.com/show-UCfXIDj6qnRZBRLgIib0PZbQ Twitch: www.twitch.tv/slackanater FrostedPears: Twitch: www.twitch.tv/FrostedPears YT: ru-vid.com/show-UCZPDeuouxScRRZD0pJ7b80g Website: frostedpears.com/

The most incredible thing about slacks damageless z2 run is back in may he made it all the way to dark link and landed 7 out of 8 hits without damage, miss played an attack and took a hit. Literally the last hit possible after an almost 2 hour run. You can see his heart rip in half.

It’s crazy how many glitches were first documented in Nintendo Power. Missingno in Pokemon and Stealing the fishing rod in Ocarina of Time were documented in a similar matter in 1999

The idea that Zelda 2 is beatable in 16 minutes is mind blowing

Man, dude played the game with his feet and had a MapleStory icon. What a champ.

The quality of your videos have done nothing but skyrocket over the months

The firebird messing the run is called a Fokkeru? That's a fitting name! Fun fact, Fokker was a famous plane pilot and that's probably why the bird is called that.

The plot of Zelda II is an earlier Zelda was cursed to sleep by her brother who is a different Zelda from Zelda 1. Interesting enough in the manga it's changed to be the first ever Zelda cursed by Ganon and despite it being from the 80s resembles the Zelda from skyward sword.

"8 seconds might not sound like a lot of time save" Anybody who knows about any Mario game speedrun: *WHEEZE*

Now I need a speed run of saving Marin from being trapped as a seagull forever !

I loved Zelda II as a kid! Thank you so much for explaining these glitches. It gives me a much better appreciation for what the TASers and speedrunners do.

Awesome video as usual Doc, really liked the presentation too, can tell you worked hard on it. I also had no idea how broken this game was

CrystalSaver...that avatar is an Ariant Desert Bunny from MapleStory. I hunted those things for ultra-rare quests for more hours than I care to admit...

Unreal editing and script writing

love the editing

Just want to shout out that username: "FrostedPears" is simple, unique, and has an adorable avatar.

The editing in this video is great and I love how you break down the glitches.

Some corrections and added details: Saver discovered FairyFeet while practicing Zelda II for the 2016 Red Candle 4-game bounty -> ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Fl03KT2ohTg.html He first shared his findings with me, and I immediately produced the clip in the twitter post shown at 0:29 : www.twitch.tv/eunosxx/clip/PlainApatheticRaisinPrimeMe. Following that, I tried to FairyFoot every type of screen transition in the game and it only worked on that specific encounter type. The next day I tweeted out the clip and later that day PresJPolk did that video, which further demonstrated that FairyFoot was not an x-position screen wrap, but an exploit of a routine checking Link's exit direction. I continued to stare at code until I discovered all the subpixel nuances of it. I put a little effort into a setup without Fairy, but didn't find a way to stabilize subpixels quickly enough to make a time save. Obviously, the FrostedPears setup was a huge breakthrough for something that laid fallow for almost 6 years. As for the flurry of progression in Any% routing that happened in May and June 2021, it started with Lite's May 4, 2021 World Record run: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-kTl-U2dsDOo.html. Lite made the simple realization that we didn't need one of the Magic Containers in the old 2-5-2 level route if we just set up a Blue Jar drop for the final bridge warp in Great Palace. This meant saving some 25 seconds by skipping the Container just south of North Palace. By June 5th, no one besides Lite had posted runs with the new route. I did a derust run with Lite's jar route in mind, but I misleveled to 2-4-3. Not wanting to reset, I improvised to get the Magic-5 level-up at the final bridge. It was immediately obvious that the full magic refill at the bridge could do a lot more. I took the discovery straight back to Lite, and we started brainstorming different routes that would get even fewer magic containers and levels. For example, it would be possible to finish the game with Magic-5 and 5 Magic Containers: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-1W9C56deVNg.html. But, before those routes came to fruition, something else happened. Unknown to us, LSDHippie had been lurking in my stream and started coming up with his own routing ideas after seeing what I did. He presented his new route idea in discord the next day: www.twitch.tv/videos/1048197003. That route would get ALL the Magic Containers and get the Magic-3 Level-up on the final bridge, after casting Jump. Since Link's max MP is 128 and Fairy magic costs 80 at magic-2, we cannot cast Fairy twice in a row without a refill until Magic-3. So that route cast Jump, killed Myu for Magic-3 Level-up, then did the two Fairy warps just as previous routes had. While this route had to pick up the Magic Container from Hidden Kasuto town, it also skipped a ton of experience grinding, leading to another ~60 seconds of time save. Throughout this sequence, Inzult had been hanging out in my stream chatting. At one point while I was streaming runs/practice/science, he teased me about taking that Magic level-up while in the HUD. If it could be done, it would mean we could refill MP between the Fairy casts, and again reduce the number of required Magic Containers and Magic Levels. Following my Hippie route PBs on June 15 & 16, on June 17, 2021, I highlighted the first proof of concept for the still current Magic-2 level routing: www.twitch.tv/videos/1059375694. I am very proud of this because it finally brought together new ideas from so many people -- Lite's Blue Jar refill, my Bridge level-up, Inzult's HUD level-up, and Hippie's grind-less East Continent. However, in that video you can see the Myus spawning in front of Link instead of behind. This was accomplished using an scroll lock setup where we enter a different sequence of doors in Glitch Town. It made Great Palace a lot harder because we had to deal with all the powerful enemies in our path. Dood made the simple correction of using the standard Scroll Lock setup and turning around on the bridge to spawn Myus. However, at that point it was still a terrible RNG mess waiting for the second Myu to move right far enough. In November, Slackanater started running the category, leading to his first contribution, the faster, more reliable Myu setup.

@1:55 i still have that issue of nintendo power from when i was a kid. #Memories...

I never thought I would see a RU-vid video to unironically use Waterworld music in it.

No, you CAN NOT use "help discovering speedrunning strategies" as an excuse to donate money for streamers to show their feet live

So, Zelda 2 is by no means my favorite Zelda game, bur as someone who played it back in the 80s, and for whom Zelda is my favorite game franchise, I always appreciate when these oldest games get some love, and attention. Your average RU-vid content creators didn't play it; might not have played Link to the Past, or even Ocarina. Hell, Breath of the Wild might be their only experience with Zelda, so it's not surprising that many of them don't discuss this game, or play it. Zelda is a lot more now than it used to be, and AoL doesn't necessarily 'fit in' with what now exists, as an overarching story, a mythology, or shaper in the world of video games, so when I can watch videos where people do the courtesy of going back to it, and playing it through, I feel nostalgic for one of those games I never beat, but have fond memories of, from my early childhood. Thanks for covering it, and it was fun to see bits of the great run.

10:48 Yo, is that some Battle Network music? Excellent taste, my friend.

Love the Waterworld SNES music. They went so hard with that soundtrack.

This video is really well made. I love the graphics that you used, specifically the map zoom out when explaining the wrong town glitch. Great job!

It's always so nice seeing the moment these runners realize they've done something incredible.

That's some high quality video production, and fantastic presentation, thank you :)

Can I just say, I love when people put in FFX music to explain stuff. Give me those "Pursuit" , "Splendid Performance", and "Thunder Plains" tracks. It is just the best music to explain over.

I was one of the tinkerer kids that would take apart and mod my toys just because... One thing I did to my Nintendo controllers was snip/cut/shave the d-pad rocker so it was flat on the back. This allowed all 4 of the directions to be pressed at once. It had various and often significant effects on many games (TMNT 1: weird floating "shield artifacts" & TMNT 2: "Moonwalk" sliding out of bounds for smaller enemies, etc.) In Zelda 2, it would sort of vibrate Link. If you get the timing just right, it would kind of slingshot him off screen faster than the scrolling could keep up initiating the "velocity" glitch spoken of in this video. As a Fairy, you can use it to instantly pass through the locked doors in palaces. I've never tried this on an emulator so I don't know if it'd still work. But if anyone still has an NES console with Zelda2 cart, I'd love to see someone post a video about it.

great video! i watched that sub 16 speed run and was so incredibly confused by everything, so came to find some "explained" videos. jobst's video was at the top of the results so i watched it first. good video that gave a broad general explanation. yours went SUPER IN DEPTH and helped me understand what was going on even more. sub'd!

Awesome production on this one. I love these speedrunning documentary type videos.

Slackanater also developed some nice strats for Faxanadu that are still used to this day. I think he is still top 4 in that game.

Seriously great video as always, your editing makes these videos so much more fun to watch

wow, phenomenal video essay, explanations and visuals were perfectly on point. it's surreal and exciting to see this game getting high quality content and the attention it deserves, as it's one of the most interesting casual games and speedruns from its era. great job and glad slack/frosted pears have been getting the attention they deserve for an unreal amount of time spent. no one really thought any% would get much faster than 17:4X, which would have been a grind for the god run on the original 2-5-2 route. 2021-2022 absolutely destroyed those expectations lol. ty for taking the time yourself to hopefully get more people into this amazing speedrun :)

love how this is edited it looks so cool and your little popups are neat!

3:55 - "...while FOOTage of this run no longer exists..." maybe im laughing too hard at a joke that wasnt even intentional, but that was funny :-P

I like how your style has developed over this year. Digging these videos.

Loving the new look and feel of these vids my dude! Keep up the great work! Another CERTIFIED SWELLY Banger!

Hell yeah I've already got my water ready

"While foot-age of this run no longer exists..."

nice, pokemon tcg music. Also, good shit on putting all the music in the description, it's crazy how little I see people do that nowadays.

Love your videos i think you deserve way more attention!

To me, being good at the game at all let alone speedrunning it makes this super impressive

Haha 3:56 "footage"

3:54 *While, foot-age of this run may no longer exist...* I see what you did there.

liked your video cause i heard Legend of Dragoon music at 3:00

Great vid!

Subbed the second I heard the falsebound kingdom track

What a great video. Good job :D

Lamer: too bad this had to come out after someone else's vid on Zelda 2 :( Gamer: TWO videos about Zelda 2! F yeah!

Your editing is exquisite. That is all.

I literally just watched Displaced Gamer's video on this speedrun yesterday.

Great video, congrats to slack

I think yours might be a better than Karl's, you cover the glitches used in more detail. You also explain why it's called Link Feet.

Well played

What is it about the second game in major series being so difficult? Mario, Zelda, Metroid (I really struggle with the second metroid)

the baba is you music was a VERY nice surprise :0

Love the thumbnail

thumbnail raw af

KJ explained this half as good as you

you think you can just slip lufia music in there and I won't notice? naughty naughty

Zelda II is the goat

0:05 -- 2001: A Zelda Odyssey. Amirite?

MMBN's & CHRONO CROSS' music are always fantastic 👍😎🤟

subbed for baba is you music

3:55 heh. footage

bruhh i was deadass just playing zelda 2 n this the first thing i see 😳

MMBN music & MMSF SFX 😍🥰

I think the most interesting speedruns are thochs, wich test the knowlge of the game like programming level and on a gameplay level

Good vid

I think accessibility is the biggest issue, someone should come up with new instruments

Can I get the thumbnail art on a t-shirt? It’s sublime!

the entirety of adventure of link is just one glitch.

wtf why am i hearing lufia music all of a sudden

Wow and I thought I was king of all zeldas

what's the music playing at 20:50? i swear i think it's a mega man theme, but i can't remember which...

I'm watching this anyways but sad that this come 3 days later than Karl Jobst video :(

no ads? no request to like and sub while being informed of how many ppl dont sub? i like and subbed

all thanks to feet

wait??????? Ninja gaiden without taking damage a record????? I miss my chance I was doing that when i was teen in like 1996. My fun was to pass game without get touch. Did same for Megaman 5, all ness mario, other ninja gaiden (until final boss only sadly) , I tryed with start ship Hector but keep get crushed in late game. Zelda 1 without be touch as been done? I got a whole book of my old personal record before it been popular. Mario 1, i was like at 5 minutes 1 or 2 second a iforget.

No other game uses massive glitches to get world records, so this fascinated me. I hope other speedrunning communities take note that using massive glitches is a great way of getting world records.

much better produced than Karl Jobst's video imo! I had put off watching it because I had already watched the Jobst video, it's just terrible timing

Bad timing. There just was some Zelda 2 video that had a title like "How Speedrunners broke Zelda 2" that came out recently. EDIT: Found it, it is by Karl Jobst.

Rakanishu

'CrystalSaver did a speedrun of Zelda II with his feet.. While FOOTAGE of this RUN no longer exists...' Hah. I see what you did thar.

I Believe that Speed Runs should NOT allow Glitches. It's totes CHEATING. 🙃

bro this video go dummy hard frfr on god no cap sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Is "Word Record" in the title intentional?

Wouldn't it be funny if you showed us your feet run?

Eggs

GreatValueContent

Unfortunate timing with Karl Jobst's video...

0:32 those feet got a lot of RNGesus in them...

Slackinator earned his kudos but there's still more time to shave. I'll bet anyone it's under 14 in two years...head over to displaced gamers his Zelda 2 code analysis showed there's possible options...what up with everyone using the same graph type

FEET?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

Zelda 2 > Every other Zelda game If you disagree, it's just because you can't beat it.

How painters use paint to make paintings.

Uh, I hate to break it to you, but the "Any %" speedrun category in *virtually every game ever* is nothing but abusing as many glitches the runner can, as frequently and as effectively as they can. It's why I tend to just roll my eyes at the category in general. These people aren't playing the game, they're just hitting a sequence of buttons (albeit with extreme precision), *bypassing as much of the actual game as possible*, until they "win".

Thumbnail is blueballed fnf pibby lmao

It should be illegal for speed runners to use glitches