As previously discussed on this site, I am big into games-as-art; that just-linked article, about -AIR-, was an attempt to encapsulate how a movie of a person playing a video game crawled into my head and sat there for a week, just like Sufjan Stevens‘ “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.” or the first time I ever saw Twin Peaks. I know Hideo Kojima just spoke out against the notion (and I am definitely envisioning him placing his hands squarely on his hips while doing so, elbows akimbo and bellowing out “Haw! Haw! Haw!” just like Reggie Van Dough used to do at Richie Rich), but when a dude wants to make a game that could sack-tap me for losing¹, then I reserve the right to discount that dude’s opinion until he learns how to thread a tight narrative².

Super Demo World is to Super Mario World as -AIR- was to Super Mario Brothers — a patch which modifies level layout, sprite design, and object behavior, in order to make a new game out of an old one, kind of like making a dress out of an XXL Smashing Pumpkins t-shirt. The difference is that SDW is zero percent objet d’art and 100% hard-ass game. -AIR- was experimental; SDW is an Olympic triathalon. SDW was originally, in fact, constructed as a way to show off Lunar Magic — hence the “Demo” in the name — and from there somehow cannonballed into its existence as a sprawling and near-impossible game. The speedrun, as a result, is like being in the front row at G3 with binoculars trained on Satchmo’s fret-hand and two drunk luthiers flanking you, “WOOOOOO”s back-bending your cochlea. If -AIR- is a stage and the timeattack is the Beckett play staged on top, this Super Demo World runthrough is like a Dream Theater concert DVD, but in the bad sense, where it’s all pasty dudes on scooters in front of chintzy flags with these robot hands, pounding out pitch-perfect multi-octaved scale runs, and you’re like, “What’s the point.”

I’ll tell you what the point is: The point is, sometimes you need to get bludgeoned with proficiency. Hell, what’s the point of any championship, ever? Aside from seeing who’s the best³? To Get Wowed. And when it’s on here, it’s so on, like the last castle, where dude’s zipping so fast up screens that he has to chillax for awhile to let the auto-scroll catch up. There’s some boring junk with the cape, all scooting over actual terrain by hanging out on high, but that’s part and parcel of nearly any speedrun that shoots for 100%; it gets good, real good when he’s simul-carrying a P Switch and green shell⁴ and spin-jumping through walls and just kicking the shit out of some collision detection, all zoop zoop zoop, diving onto the level’s exit before you’ve even processed that it’s on-screen. This is what I like to see from speed runs: An approximation of movements no human could possibly make. That SMB3 11-minute run that ate my brain like it was a baby wasp? That’s the Is This Real? of the speedrun world; short, concise, impossibly great. I guess what I’m saying is, we need a clips show from the speedrun community. Like a skateboarding demo, except nobody dong-slams a railing.

¹ Yeah, this is probably hearsay, since all I could find on it was this Google cache of a messageboard where someone goes “Didn’t he once…?” S’far as I’m concerned, though, this is the video game industry’s version of Zeppelin’s Mudshark or the Go-Go’s sex tape, and what the industry really needs more of: Rockstars; outlandish, impossible behind-the-scenes apocryhpa.

² Also, dudeweiser: Way to make the scenes in MGS3 b/w Snake and Eva so very painful, like watching Mary Sue fanfic played out straight from a Yuu Yuu Hakusho Trapper Keeper to a $10m budget. The fate of the free world is dependent on a secret agent with the emotional wherewithal of my 4′ cousin and the inability to tear his gaze away from any breasts, anywhere? That was also nice how you let us look too, with the shoulder button. That made me feel like I was part of a narrative and was a wise use of my time. I hope you set MGS4 far enough in the future to keep the romance out of the picture, and get down to the gritty, even if it means we have to hop to the items screen to pop some Centrum Protegra once in a while.

³ The speedrun community is actually in constant battle over who holds the lowest time for many popular games, the Mega Man 2 tumult being particularly interesting and vicious; every time somebody figures out a way to use an exploit more advantageously, there’s another flurry of activity, and the resultant videos make less and less sense as time goes on. Case in point: The Link’s Awakening speedrun, which takes four minutes and spends most of its time breaking the map screen. I don’t even know.⁵

⁴ Anyone else remember the SMW issue of Nintendo Power where they listed various plumber acrobatics, ranked by difficulty? That blew my tiny grade-school mind.

⁵ Well, okay, yes I do. It involves, if I remember correctly, pressing Start and Select at the exact moment you move between screens — this moves you an extra screen in the direction you’re facing. I don’t know who out there could possibly use this information, but here it is. I’ll be checking my referrer logs obsessively from now on just in case.