I have never been big into speedrunning, but lately I have been watching Darbian playing SML2 for Gameboy. here is a link to their channel:
there is a certain whimsy to seeing people play Gameboy games, and SML2, while being a platformer (a genre that I Just Don’t Want To Deal With Any More), it’s magical and fun. and great great music.
so he has been locked into a neck-and-neck battle with a German speedrunner named oh_deer!. Darbian will get a new wr (world record), and then oh_deer! will come out of the woodwork and beat it by half a second, and they go back and forth.
now, here is where the dilemma comes in.
both darbian and oh_deer! use the SuperGameboy2, hereafter referred to as SGB2. you may not know this, but the SGB1 ran at an incorrect speed, it was too fast by 2.7% or something like that due to an incorrect or lack of timing crystal. this was fixed in SGB2, which was only released in Japan (and also has support for link cable, I used to have 2 giant Sony CRTs with 2 Super Famicoms and 2 SGB2s and I would play multiplayer GB games like this).
so both of these runners are using SGB2 and everything is fine. AND THEN this guy Adam64 comes along and “gets the WR”. using SGB1. wtf.
so I confront him on Twitter and he basically says it’s no big deal at all and that he has his muscle memory all down for SGB1.
Adam Ferrari 64 blocked me due to this.
and also some other person is out here defending his times:
“You sir really don’t know gameboy speedrunning.”
even darbian seems to take no issue with this.
am I insane?
also here are some ad hominems, the adam64 guy is into the Yankees and sports and he just seems like such a bad guy GOD why won’t he just fucking buy a SGB2 it’s $50.
he seriously plays the game at a totally faster pace and then they calculate / convert his time back to original Gameboy speed. am I going insane here wtf.