Gamer Update: Zelda SpeedRunners

This weekend I found an interesting article on Yahoo News titled “For the World’s Fastest Gamers, Failure Is Just One Bad Jump Away”. This article was from Wired magazine online and was published on October 17, 2013. It caught my eye because it mentioned one of my favorite games, “The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker”. This article describes speed running, with the gamer finishing a game in the shortest possible time using bugs in the programming to his advantage, and focuses on 23 year-old Cosmo Wright as a primary example. Wright holds the record for the fastest time on the Wind Waker game for GameCube and is practicing to hold the fastest record for the Wii U version.

The Creators of games don’t exactly appreciate gamers exposing the bugs in their games and they aren’t very likely to give for doing so. However, it is possible to benefit from a speed running habit. Speed runners can increase their popularity by entertaining viewers online and they also make money from companies who advertise on their videos. There are also competitions which speed runners can enter to earn big prizes for having the fastest times.

While striving to have the fastest time on a game, you might notice that others take your place and are going faster than you. This causes many speed runners who have been working for hours to find the bugs in games and minimize their time to become a little competitive. It also discourages some gamers when their tricks and hacks are copied or used by other speed runners better and faster. This is why there is no time for you to do your homework, or your chores, because ABC123 or whatever their name is just beat your best time.

 Now that I’m done somewhat describing the struggles and hardships of speed runners, let me explain explain the plot of Wind Waker for those who are unfamiliar with this game. Wind Waker begins with a boy named Link living on an island with his sister and his grandmother. It is Link’s birthday and his sister gives him a telescope. Then his sister is captured by a giant flying bird and taken prisoner by an unknown enemy. Link learns the story of the hero of time, inherits the hero’s clothes, finds a sword, and teams up with some pirates to save his sister (warning: this is the extremely abbreviated version).

The rescue attempt fails and Link meets a talking boat (weird day) and gains power from the Wind Waker (that name is familiar somehow) to control the wind due to some adventuring and practice. After a while of adventuring, Link gets some new weapons, gains some experience, makes some new friends, and improves the world in general. Near the end of the story, Link learns that one of his pirate friends is actually a princess named Zelda (where did I hear this before), a guy named Ganondorf is responsible for his sister’s capture, and that Zelda has a dad that lives under the sea. In the end Link saves the world, defeats Ganondorf, gets his sister back, saves Zelda, watches Zelda’s dad die, and returns home only to start a new adventure later with his pirate friends.

Wind Waker is a game that was created in Japan and is exported across oceans to countries that can afford to play video games in their free time, like America, Britain, Canada, etc.