When did you start Speedrunning?

It doesn't have to be zelda... I wanna know how you were introduced and when you started to speedrun.

Early 2007 I found Kazooie's "Shadow Temple Early" video and was like... wtf <_< I then would find many other videos from Fluffy, Acryte, petrie, Yauty, AKA, and many others. Eventually I found SDA and speedrunning became an instant hobby of mine. I first tried to speedrun Mario Sunshine in the summer of 07 but quit... I would then attempt to speedrun many other games from SM64 to Banjo Kazooie and many others. Just about Febuary of this year I returned to the zelda community and competivley started to speedrun oot and mm....

Well it was near the beginning of last year, I had already seen numerous glitching/trick videos on youtube but I had come across a SM64 speedrun (16 star i believe). I was amazed for lack of a better word at the moment. Wasn't a couple days later I stumbled upon SDA and became a member, I decided I decided to do Wind Waker, beings that it was one of my favourite games. I decided to play through again on my own and due to frustration I ended up dropping it. I was off and on for a few months until just recently (3-4 weeks ago) that I played through Mystical Ninja for the N64 in about 6 hours. I decided since I have very good knowledge of the game, I'd speedrun that, which I have about 12 times within the same week.

Now I'm here coming back to Wind Waker, Highly interested in getting into the oot/mm game as well. Speedrunning's fun :D

i was always interested in watching speedruns and TASes but didnt think i didnt know the game enough to attempt any speedruns. so i spent last summer learning and doing all the tricks on the site. Once the ILs came around i figured i'd go ahead and try a run and it actually turned out pretty good.
im hoping i have enough time on thursday to see if i can do a deku 100% run

The day I got MK64, my first (owned) vg. I pkayed time trials all the time.

But it wasn't until recently that I started speed running something other than mario kart and break the targets, even though I've secretly followed the community for a long time. It was unreal's  "pro" challenge that started me. I was just going to show myself doing the bk skip, but then I was like "No, that won't do, a million people probably already did that." So I decided to do a speed run using that skip. And then I got better and did another. And another. Then I started the IL thread and here I am

I've always had fun trying to be quick at Donkey Kong Country, at around 1997-8 or so. But I didn't really speedrun or so, as I didn't even know what that was. But I believe that's the first "speedrun-kind-memory" I have.

Link's Awakening has always been one of my alltime favorite game and is also one of the first games I finished. I've played through it countless of times and I decided to see how fast I managed to beat it, somewhere during the first half of 2004. So I sat down and played it, most of it was played while taking a dump :P. Using my own route and tricks, died around five times or so. I got a time of 1 hour and 52 minutes, thought that it seemed kinda good.
Around 6 months later, I looked around the internet to see if there were other similar things there and found out that the current LA record was 2:07:39 at Twin Galaxies. Shortly after that I found SDA and blah blah blah.

I saw a video of SMB3 being beaten quickly, forget where at. It was the one TAS where in 8-1 he jumps on all the cannon's to get 1-ups. I didn't know it was a TAS (or even what a TAS was) so I showed it to a friend online saying this guy had a ton of skill. He told me that it wasn't skill, and linked me to SDA where people playing on a console submitted their runs.

I was fascinated by SDA. I've always been a big video game player, and in real life I am a runner so it was very appealing. I immediately took the largest interest in the N64 games, as those were the games I "grew up" playing. I thought the Super Mario 64 run was pretty cool, but after trying a SS of mine own just for fun realized I was over 2 or 3 hours behind the record.  :P I then turned to Ocarina of Time, and saw TSA's sub-5 run, and that he was planning on doing a segmented run. I lurked for a while until I saw fluffy kitten's segmented run. This was the run I looked at and thought, "Ok, I can do that". I didn't want to look like a nub so I would dig through pages and pages of OoT posts trying to find where the tricks and glitches were described in detail, because it appeared all the regulars already knew how to do them. From here I did 2 unrecorded runs of the same kind as fluffy kitten, one in 2:39 and one in 2:34 (his time was a 2:33 I think). I got my laptop in August '07 and learned to record video with it, so I was planning on doing a 3rd run that would beat his time. Around this time, Manocheese's run came out and so I set my goal to beat that as well. That's when I really first started with speedrunning.

tl;dr - A friend showed me SDA, I lurked for a while, got a laptop, started running.

It'd be awesome if runnerguy was actually the 2489th track runner that became a speedrunner

Tompa, that's a long dump dude :P

Anyways, i've been "Speedrunning" for a while, maybe 2-3 years, but i've never really recorded anything. I mostly did Break the Targets in SSBM where i had sub 3 or something like that, which i thought was amazing :D Then i got into DKC2, which i played hours on hours for a whole summer, speedrunning IL's, Each area, and the whole game. I never finished the run but yeah.

Zelda speedruns have ALWAYS been interesting to me, i used to lurk SDA forever watching the Zelda runs, because they're my fav games.

Now that ZSR is out, i've finally man'd up and starting trying Oot Tricks, but i might play around with some MM.

shut the fuck up jer, nobody has sub 3 btt in melee lmfao

I started speed running last week when I felt like doing a snowhead 100% IL....

yeah, that's it...

the truth, Unreal is who first introduced me to speedrunning, I was glitching OOT and TWW but I had no idea of the things I coul get done, I uploaded one of my videos to youtube and saw Kazooie's channel as a related, went to his account and saw the SDA page. I wanted to sign in but I found with the questio 'The year SDA born' I asked to Kazooie but had no aswer, then Ureal answered and we were good friends, he told me about the TWW topic and about the speedruns, I knew about beating it fast and since there were no much glitches then it was easy to beat.

If unreal doesn't introduce me, then I may still without know about this great sites

I think Manocheese's OoT run got me thinking about speed running in general.  I took a gander at the TP thread and the time for the Wii version, and I knew that it would be beatable...

Tat was probably a couple of years ago, and to this day I have never completed a speed run of that game.  Oh well, tears killed that game.

I too started speedrunning with melee BtT, only got to like 4:30 though. Though I did get a 7.xx Young Link when I had 6 minutes total time, which beat everyone in beginner and intermediate. Yay for creating my own route.

Almost three years ago I saw a video of a sonic speedrun on google, and I ended up joining The Sonic Center. I TAed a bit of Sonic Adventure 2 (which I was borrowing from my friend; I didn't get my first sonic game till late february 2007), and then started ring attacking. I did ring/score attacking for the next year, with time attacking on the side. My first successful time attacking only came in mid 2008, when I started running Sonic and the Secret Rings. Slowly I creeped up the charts until now, when I have 105/110 records for time attacks.

In March I started time attacking Baten Kaitos Origins for SDA and am still doing that now. As for time attacking Zelda...well I've never done that. But I like making routes >_>

I started speed running in October 2007. My first speed run was Twilight Princess Any% and I got 6:12. After that I did a speed run of Wind Waker and got 7:02, some people said it was better than 6:42 because of wrong timing. After that I did a new run of WW and got 6:10 WR and at the same time I worked on a new TP speed run which I quitted and then my time was 1:23. After that I did speed runs of some parts of the dungeons in WW and did boss speed runs. In July 2008 I quitted and started again in June or July 2009. Then I did many speed runs of some N64 games. Now I'm doing a new WW run and I'm only playing the 4 3D Zelda games because they are the best.

I Always loved to, "Speedrun." even when I was like 5, but back then it wasn't really speed running more just trying to play the game fast.

Somewhere Around 2005 - 2006 I found SDA.  I never really did any speedruns / tried to.
Until I found ZSR and Finally got recording equipment.

i've been playing racing games like Mario Kart and F-Zero since 1997 but my first time doing speedruns in non-racing games has to be around 2005 with the GBA Metroids. i had found SDA in 2004 so i watched several runs since then and later, i was checking out many discoveries for OoT like superslides, bomb hover and many ways to cut time that were found around early 2006 and that made me play Zelda games for SBing and speed.

Nvr.

I used to try and beat Goldeneye levels quickly when I was a kid. I also played a lot of 10-Man Melee on SSBM as well as pretty bad time trials on MKDD and DKR. Then Super Metroid and Metroid Prime, but I never finished either. Finally Wind Waker, which I'm doing now. Atm I'm planning to do a Viewtiful Joe 2 speedrun after the Wind Waker one, but I'm not completely sure on that.

Phazon wrote

I used to try and beat Goldeneye levels quickly when I was a kid.

Now that you mention it I did this too, just for the cheats.  :P I'd say I wasn't half bad for a 9 year old. All my friends needed to ask me for help in getting the invincibility cheat on Facility.

I was a few years older than that and I still couldn't get the invincibility cheat (along with about 5 others lol). Then I discovered strafe-running.

I was playing Super Mario Sunshine about 7 years ago when I realized how much slower I was compared to Shadow Mario and the II Piantissimo guy. So I fcked around in Delfino Plaza trying to develop their 'reflexes' and realized there was a name for what I was doing, once I discovered Youtube.

I cant remember exactly how i was introduced. But I've been in the speedrunning community for about a year and a half.

I think I ended up buying masterquest off of eBay, and I looked online for a guide on the game, but instead found a guide on how to beat ocarina of time using all these glitches. Ever since then I have been lurking around here.

The year was 2009, I stumbled across a TAS of Doom II done in 13 minutes or something (I don't remember exactly), needless to say, I was immediately interested in the idea of speedrunning Doom.
Some time later, I realized that I couldn't speedrun FPSes for shit -_-
Sometime around 2010 is when I first considered running OOT, but, upon checking ZSR and seeing how many tricks there were, I gave up (I was much less patient back then).
I moved on to Banjo-Kazooie, gave up upon realizing how difficult Rusty Bucket Bay was (still wasn't very patient).
After taking a break from speedrunning, I eventually stumbled across Pokey's run of OOT in 1:16:59, and told myself "That's it, I'm gonna get serious about running Zelda now", and, well, here I am :P

tl;dr tried Doom, then Zelda, then Banjo-Kazooie, gave up, discovered Pokey's run, became interested in running Zelda again.

Basically all Mario. Whenever I played SMB3 or SMB, I would never take the long way. I would always go through the warps to beat the game. I didn't really try to beat any pre-existing record, but if I did it under an hour I felt okay.

Brawls BtT, I competed against a user from the SWF for a lower and lower time. I think I held the record between us on level 1 at the end, but then the official WR scores were considerably lower.

With the same user I tried to beat his SM64 time. Currently, I have 36 minutes, and he hasn't beaten it... but it's still about, twenty minutes above the current console record, so I need work there.

Everything on console btw... I don't think I've ever tried to speedrun anything else, although I'd like to try Majoras Mask once I have all the tricks down.

2006 I think. I remember taking ages to download a video that claimed to show Ocarina of Time being completed in 4h 57mins (it was the Mike Damiani run) and was blown away. I also stumbled upon the Goldeneye and Perfect Dark website (the-elite.net) which I joined and submitted times to. I sucked at that so I stopped after a while. Now I play the Mario Kart series (currently Super Mario Kart) and am on the ranking websites.

I still check this site every day for tricks and new runs (I'm specialising in +5 Boss runs at the moment). I'm planning to take my best time down below its current level of 3h 53mins.

I time attacked Super Punch-Out!! my whole childhood (Some of my times are tied with the TAS's time). I also played through OoT twice a year until I was about 12. I was playing through it and realized that it got really boring. I went to gamefaqs and saw Manocheese's uber challenge. So I started playing through that and I found a glitch on my own (clipping through the ceiling in GF). I put it on YouTube along with some other small glitches I found (most already known) and apparently people from the recently started (the homepage said Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask and the pages were almost empty) Zelda community had come across the glitch that I found. I believe I found some more small glitches in OoT/MM and next thing I knew ZFG pmed me saying it was "unusual for people who weren't members of SDA to be finding new glitches". So he sent me there and at first I wanted to run MM any% SS (my favorite game) but I quickly stopped. Then I decided to do OoT any% SS and everyone on SDA said that I could never go through with it and was awful at the game. a big FUCK YOU to the guys at SDA ;D

A few years ago, I saw a TAS of Super Metroid. It inspired me to pull the glitches off. So I practiced the glitches and got a 53 minute run.

Pokey wrote

Then I decided to do OoT any% SS and everyone on SDA said that I could never go through with it and was awful at the game. a big FUCK YOU to the guys at SDA ;D

Have a link to that?

Started at 2005, first speedrun game was Castlevania Circle of the Moon, after that runned plenty of other games too, but never Zelda games  :(

I've been pretty inactive runner since 2008 summer when I started with challenge records, but try run some games in future  :)

Two offical WRs I have :
http://speeddemosarchive.com/CastlevaniaCotM.html