Speedrunners Uncover 20 Year Old Secrets in Devil May Cry 

i play this game sometimes www.twitch.tv/waifu

I have never seen a strategy guide literally telling you how the game is coded, this is insane.

16:07 I couldn't describe the hype that I felt when you said that Distortion, a DT technique being used in DMC4, where you hit Devil Trigger at the impact frames of moves, existed a whole three games prior.

Growing up in Japan, and played DMC when it came out when I was in middleschool, and I indeed owned Kaitaishinsho for DMC (I think it was a series of Koryakubon, or walkthrough books they'd release sometime after the release of the game, includes so many art works and back stories, many goodies. I purchased it for most of my favorite games)...never imagined or knew about speedrunning then, I sort of skimmed through all the small tricks and stats, damage counts etc. Never realized it was such a wealth of useful knowledge for the speedrunning community. Didn't realize it was never translated into English but makes sense, since these books contained sooooo much text, generic walk thru to dev interview, short stories newly written for the book, etc etc etc. Dang.

Japanese are built different. I don´t understand why nobody watched their speedruns, because (in the old years of youtube) their videos were like a mistical experience, so much knowledge is engraved in them, accesible only by simply watching. Amazing video.

A lot of mechanics were discovered in like the mid 2000s on GameFAQs by I think players like Joch, ryan86, sternn, and probably some more, and eventually Joch hosted it on her website called PhantomBabies in a DMD SB guide. Unfortunately, the website went defunct, so I assumed it disappeared off the internet and so did all of that knowledge. I did a lot of research and posted it all of their forums which also disappeared. I do remember the most optimal damage to Nightmare's top core was grenadegun stinger combo, DT 4 hit slash with high time, and fully charged Ifrit combos. It was written before they found out about perfect charging Ifrit. I remember a person doing a challenge run of Mission 20 SB with 2 red cores, and he simply just used DT Alastor combos on the cores. When it comes to the first fight, you want to break the core immediately, so Alastor is the perfect choice. I know that Joch's SB run back in like 2006 used 2 Infernos and an auto combo. Auto combo was what we called using the five hit combo from using kick-13 in DT. Last time I checked, I think the grenadegun breaks the core extremely fast, but Nightmare 1's core can't turn red, so that doesn't matter. Guide also mentioned that going to the underworld in Nightmare resets the core breakage too. This is done in Nightmare 2 and 3 for SB runs to avoid turning the core red. One thing I found later was that Trish cutscene in Nightmare 3 also resets the core, but you needed shadow Nelo's orbs for the SB, so that didn't matter, and hence why it took me so long to learn about it. That's the real reason why it doesnt turn red. For speedruns, I remember really pushing Nightmare fights when I was routing this way back then, because I had to wait so long for Nightmare to reveal his core. I was looking at how much damage I was doing, and I reverse engineered the damage function with my friend from the PS2 MIPS code(was nice but didn't help as much as I thought). I remember something annoying on Normal mode was that I was able to do exactly 7000 damage to Nightmare, and Nightmare has 7000 HP, but the code requires that enemies die when they have negative HP.

If we are talking about japanese speedrunners, if im not mistaken this month we have "RTA in Japan", an RTA/Speedrun event from the jp community that is pretty cool.

"Maxy was fast. The fastest, by far." True "If you couldn't beat him in execution, you can at least make it more consistent." NO WAIT, I DON'T WANT TO GRIND THIS GAME 4 TIMES A YEAR, PLEASE SPARE ME!!!

What I learned: DMC community has guys with good ass hair.

One day we will see a Speedrun leaderboard for how fast you can get blocked by Hideki Kamiya on Twitter

Trey, I have something I'd like you to look into as a DMC3 runner. This is entirely anecdotal, but here goes: I was playing DMC3SE on the HD collection on PS4 in 2019, and as I was going through each difficulty, I arrived at DMD with Dante and found myself at a wall. I took a break, and decided to get the Vergil completion trophy on Normal (Yellow Orb mode) instead. When I beat it, I saved the game in Vergil's slot and then went to the menu to continue Dante. I don't know what happened between that time, but after playing some more Dante I wanted to play Vergil some more, so when I went to load my game I noticed something weird: my vergil save was showing identical stats to my Dante save, both mission, play time, and secret mission progress. I loaded up the save, and lo and behold, Vergil had unlocked all the missions I'd beaten with Dante. Even better, I had an identical red orb balance to that which I had on my Dante save. Prior to this happening, I only had Normal cleared and Hard started with Vergil, but now I had unlocked everything up to DMD's mission as Dante where i stopped playing. I don't know if the game got confused and the separate save slots for the two brothers overlapped somehow, but the long and short of it is this could be a useful way to get a fully completed save for others in future if people find a way to replicate it. I can't be the only one this has happened to, and it's fascinated me for 3 years since it happened. Sorry if this doesn't make much sense, I tried to recant it as best I could.

"Pressing the button with a certain rhythm makes you shoot much faster than their "intended" fire rate." I thought that was always an intended mechanic?

This is true for DMC3 as well. The only thing I've learned in the last year or so is that we know almost nothing about these games beyond the surface. Exciting times!

"These strats may be obtuse but you are A-cute"

The DT charge attack is like DMC4 distortion damn.

true gamers completely fucking miss the shotgun

Fuckin hell mate. I always knew people overlooked how powerful Ebony and Ivory were in DMC1 and exaggerated how overpowered they were in DMC2, but I never knew that they were *more* powerful in DMC1. There is one thing I'd like to correct about the Marionettes. You said that there were 3 types of Marionettes including the Bloody Maris but in reality, excluding Bloody Maris and Fetishes, there are a total of 5 types of Marionettes: light blue (no ranged attack, standard behaviour), light green (no ranged attack but they roar and trap you on strings), indigo (most standard behaviour and most similar to Bloody Maris and they have more health than the others), dark green (can do the spinning attack at any health level whereas the indigo Marionettes and Bloody Maris can only do them at low health), and dark blue (most aggressive with ranged attacks, but also the only type that doesn't jump on you without a warning). But damn. I just love that even after all these years there are still so many new things to discover. And great video. Good on you for discovering all of these things and organising them into a very easy-to-understand video.

If we speed run every DMC, we might get DMC6

Reminds of people discovering DMC2 moves had names and other mechanics

As soon as I found out dt distortion was a thing in dmc1, I jumped on my switch and completely broke the game. It was fun

Based MachineGirl BGM

Ebony and Ivory baby

It's been 20 years since I've played the game but I remember using a charged upgraded meteor on nightmare's cores to finish him quickly. Really helped me unlock Super Dante.

Your videos are always so well crafted. Keep up the amazing work. You are one of the people who have inspired me to speedrun and now I hold 3 records in my game.

"Mr. Kamiya, if you could use one word or phrase to describe your game direction, what would it be?" HK: *Lowers sunglasses* "DTF"

DMC Community strong.

I've beaten this game 20 times and had no idea Ifrit had a just frame, or anything about how Nightmare's orb mechanics worked lmao. nice shit.

18:13 Waifu : ... allowing for massive damage MachineGirl : Good

bro i can't think of a better boss expeirnce than nightmare. the entire fight for first timers is "what the fuck" and being totally overwhelmed. every time he makes a reappearance its the same groan too - this fight gonna be some bullshit i know it. so good

speedrunners break ground for people who don't speedrun. i'm currently running a much more comprehensive playthrough than i ever have, not having played DMC since it came out in 2001, and the things speedrunners have learned is extremely helpful to my style of play, but i don't plan on speedrunning DMC

Whoa...that Ifrit damage multiplier...what the hell man, amazing

Waifu once again hitting another one out of the park! freaking loooove this content!

3:22 thank you! People always talk about how OP the guns are in DMC2 but They were strong since day one. Hell the grenade launcher can kill most enemies in 1-2 shots.

I dont see much stuff about the technical mumbo jumbo in dmc1. Its really damn nice to see. Most of the dmc fandom talks about 4 and 3 gameplay wise

I love these Speedrun explanations, especially these ones where the explanation is that the American community discovered something that Japanese Speed Runners found out ages ago, roughly after the launch of said game.

great video as always was very informative and entertaining keep up the excellent work

The faster fire rate ebony and ivory reminds me of something more or less the same in DMC3 Also quite the strange interaction with nightmare beta there, especially seeing as it’s supposed to do no damage against nightmare I really want to play DMC1 now lmao

Love the Machinegirl tracks in the background 👌🎶👌

I will never be able to do speedruns. I'm a DMC veteran and Shadow still kicks my butt all over the place 😵 Kuddos to those of you who handle the game with more grace.💕

I have never played the game despite having it for many years but I watched the entire video nonetheless. Well explained and an interesting analysis of the core mechanics.

It's incredible that people are still discovering secrets in a game that's over 20 years old. This game was basically my childhood and still holds the title of my favorite game of all time and I never knew about the hidden mechanics behind the Nightmare's cores until I watched this video.

Why did they remove holy water in dmc and dmc 5

I expected nothing less from the people who would become P+ games. As it happens, this is my favorite game. I've owned that book for years but I've only ever managed to Platinum the game on PS4. I'm not really interested in the speedrunning aspects of the game but I'm always eager to learn about just how much thought and care went into its creation. Another level of appreciation. Honestly, I don't think there'll ever be another game like it.

dmc 1s final bossfight is unique and dope asf

The part about the handguns in the beginning reminds me of when this was my favorite game. I got so fast with manual firing that I carved a divot into my Square button.

Should do a video about that book when more of it gets translated.

i think it's hilarious that "pressing the button faster makes you shoot faster" is on the list like what.. what revolutionary idea.. XD

TIL I've been doing a speed strat by accident for 20 years just by shooting hella fast.

i like the part where waifu said i'm a cute ♥

WAIT! There is a way to shoot faster with pistols?? HOW??

It really been 20 years I'm lucky he made this game the last time I played dmc was from 2012 I played dmc devil may cry and I thought it was the end but dmc 5 came put in 2019 I was like wait what's this and bam devil may cry 5 and I was so happy then before 10 years I wait I did not know there was a new dmc coming out that my dmc true story thank you man you gave me a full explanation of speed run

how works the fast shooting with ebony and ivory?

Thank god who discover the DT distortion because if that didnt discover, its so hard to speedrun the game

Do the Japanese not have their own speedrunning community to share things with each other? He makes it sound like the west is the only ones with a speedrunning community.

Do you have a link to the Devil May Cry 1 Dev book? I would love to read it

ayo ginger claps at 16:47 fit too perfectly for nightmare bossfight

To clarify, Nightmare Beta only affects left-hand attacks _outside_ of DT, and going _into_ DT disables that multiplier, replacing it with extra DT damage, hence 'cancelling it out'

I love this channel, but I swear when you talk about the details, mechanics, and vernacular of speedrunning it's like it goes in one ear and out the other 😁 I mean that in a good way tho lol :)

i have a speedrun collection of runs from like 2008 from some guy who did DMD SB and he explained most of this stuff back then. i think he lived in japan and is english native. was always trying to find good 100% DMD SB runs back in the day and it was really only the japanes ones that had any info on it.

Finding for JP speedruns is sometimes a challenge

My favorite game series of all time

yo this videos dope frfr

Wait, so distortion already exist in DMC 1? I didnt know this! Such a thing that got carried over with such detailed. I am so proud having to played all 5 dmc games. :)

please more of this stuff

He said the thing POGGERS

What is the music you use in the video?

I knew Beowulf in 3, 4 and 5 has just frame charge atks i didn't know Ifrit had it to that's actually so cool

Good stuff

Dang that damage multiplier with ifrit and the nightmare gun , wow . Does any of those multiplier also apply to Alastor ?

Oh my god they had Devil Distortions since the first fucking game!?

16:12 Wow so distortion was a thing in dmc1

Devil may die

Played this back in the day. Don’t remember a thing

theres always something new to find in this game, i need to learn japanese

Due to family issues when younger I fell out of gaming. Used to love it tho and I still think I was quite good at a lot I played and I played a WIDE range of games since my mum was legally blind and had no hand-eye coordination whatsoever but loved platformers like James Pond, Alex the Kid (still haven't completed that f@#ker), RayMan, Sonic, Mario and so on. Whereas my taste was more Doom, Resident Evil, Any shoot um up & Any racing game. Then things sorta fell apart for me and I was on drugs by 13 and homeless at 15. I went to rehab and I went to prison. Neither I recommend. I now have my own flat, I'm back I reality, got a steady gf and I'm starting education in January. I never knew Speed running was a thing. I'd love2 get back into gaming again. I think I'd love the technical things that can b done now in the new generation of games.

It's kinda funny that about half of this entire video focuses on Nightmare, because it's such a weird fucking enigmatically designed boss. That Ifrit damage boost and DT distortion is spicy tho 👌

Where can we find these translated pages?

Nice Vid. -Mamy

I was like "oh god, what an awesome recomendation made by RU-vid" then I clic on the video and the first thing I hear is Machine Girl and I was like "oh my, this video is definitely for me"

big ups we love machine girl

Im still baffled about how well nightemare beta and sparda work on phantom.

You make speedrunning so interesting

I seriously love these videos. I'd love to see a video on og re2 or re2r

Phantombabies chads where you at?

fuck the inverted flying controls on mundus though god damn

Made my fuckin head spin when he said it was supposed to be RE4

This is all so coooooool!!!!

Not gonna lie dmc 1 is easily cheesed with the grenade launcher and nightmare

I thought it was obvious that not spamming guns in dmc1 was faster

But then.. Hefest got THIS run

MACHINE GIRL

I wonder why this guidebook was never translated or at least some of the tips.

MACHINEGIRL !

DMC1 is genius.

Watching this makes me feel that Japanese people are some kind of aliens

I thought taunting boss makes ur damage double

Hey ma! I made it in a Waifu video, does this make me famous now? #Blessed Love these videos, absolute pleasure

Speedrunning that like and comment.

Wish someone would explain the critical hit system more in depth or make a video about it. Or certain enemies have "weakness" to certain moves.

13:22 voice crack xD