I see nothing wrong with the title choice.

After a little while away from it, I decided that I'll go and ramble a bit about my speedrunning experiences of Kirby and the Amazing Mirror. The last I posted anything regarding this was to show off an average run that was a little under 50 minutes, if I recall correctly. Since then I have reduced that time to under 45 minutes, which is slightly more than four minutes longer than the Speed Demos Archive record, which has been untouched since 2008.

...I really don't know where to begin. I never, at any point, thought that I would be trying to practice competitive speedrunning. Funny enough, the idea of doing so started with two separate incidents. The first feels so unrelated, but it's the first time it really gave me confidence to put effort into speedrunning.

The first incident actually started at a Smash 4 local down in south Florida. While the venue was hosting Smash 4, it is a gaming/LAN center, with a ton of computers that also have retro emulation. After I was eliminated (I believe I went 3-2 that day, but that's not important), I took to one of the computers, plugged in my PlayStation-styled PC gamepad, and took to play Kirby and the Amazing Mirror through the emulator. This was about eight months ago at most. I had no idea that a single soul was watching me play through the game, but one of the more known Smashers (and one known for being loud and VERY critical), NickRiddle, suddenly yelled, "Holy [expletive], you're [expletive] amazing at this game!" to the point where I heard it through the headset I was wearing loud and clear. I was somewhat surprised that he, of all people, said anything. He's usually the quickest to spot a mistake and rake you over the head for it (he still messes with me over my "mistake" of sticking it with Kirby in Smash 4), and here he was actually very impressed, although my skills at the time only warranted what MAYBE was a 1:15:00 time at best, since I wasn't as aware of the choreography of a playthrough as I am now. It's odd, but sometimes when someone who you know is a hotshot in something even slightly relating to what you're doing tells you that you're doing well, it just sort of sparks an extra motivation to do more, even if you never planned it.

The second incident was meeting up with a member of Extra Life during CEO (Community Effort Orlando) 2015, the first regional I ever attended (although I did not participate in the Smash 4 tournament). I remember wanting to join Extra Life before, but I was too nervous to actually sign up due to my inconsistent schedule. The girl I met, though, reassured me that every bit counts for it, even if you barely get to do anything at all. So, I signed up shortly afterward and began linking my donation page around (no donations yet, though. RIP). This is what has given me my motivation to not only continue striving for a good speedrun, but also to strive for doing so at a big-time charity event (my latest target: SGDQ 2016).

It actually wasn't until about a month ago when someone actually spoiled me the time to beat in spite of my wishes (I wanted to remain clueless about it to not let myself be blinded simply by wanting to have the best time), and it was also during what is, so far, my best fully-recorded run (although I have yet to upload it anywhere as it was a stream), which was the aforementioned sub-45 time. He mentioned to me that the SDA time to beat for my category (any%) was actually 40:34.

I flipped. There was no way that in only about six months of intermittent practice (because I have the attention span of a goldfish), I was five minutes away from breaking the record, which has stood on Speed Demos Archive for what is soon to be eight full years unconquered, while getting little help from anything outside of my own intuition (I got some slight overall speedrunning help from Trihex, and some small tips on ability selection from a another runner by the name of Lvl99Charmander, whose name I swear I've seen before), and admittedly while also still having a ton of mistakes. It's STILL not a deathless run (and none of those deaths were for any sort of death abuse), which means I have at least five minutes of easy, avoiding-death error. And I'm certain that my run isn't optimized completely yet. There are probably several things I'm missing.

Either way, less than a year has passed since I've started this, and I've made a huge improvement over this time spent practicing. The fact that I am only five minutes away from a new record is alone outstanding to me. I never expected that. Here I am, chasing an SDA record. I can't even begin to express how excited I am.

Speed running is tough... It's a thankless task honestly... but it's great that the community is helping you out... You see the problem most speedrunners get is that they don't have any competition around... so it gets boring..., etc


Also make sure to follow SDA guidelines and stuff because... i'm pretty sure you can't use emulators anymore and they have quite a strict set of rules and guidelines for entry... 

Also remember that these records are held by people that had all the technique and knowledge down.. but they still had to do like 300 or so runs to beat the record.... Speedrunning ironically is all about patience... 

Tyrian Delirium : I'm well aware of the number of the level of knowledge and skill they hold and how much they have to work for their record runs. That's why my fast progress towards one of them is such a huge shock, considering that I've been making up a lot of my own techniques as I go along, taking little from other runs (minus getting past the intro level's gate without the help of the other Kirbies, shown off in TAS runs primarily since it's pretty precise and not too much of a time boost (maybe about three seconds total if you do it perfectly)).

I mean that's why I've been so shocked with my progress. I know it's something extraordinary to be that close to an SDA record.

Also, I'm not really THAT close to being able to submit a time. I still have plenty of work to do. So I'm not too worried about that. However, I want to be able to boast getting at the very least within a minute and a half of the record before applications start for SGDQ. While I'm recording through emulator use, as someone who's played the original plenty, as well as the official Virtual Console titles (both 3DS and Wii U), I'm certain it's close enough to the original to count on when I transition to that original hardware, although I need to get the game once again, since I lost my original cartridge a few years ago, although I suspect it was stolen from me. I'm also planning to get myself a new SP, and the Gameboy player, since that's the primary thing that's used in SGDQ, at the very least, and I don't want to try to control that game with an analog stick or the Gamecube Controller's D-Pad. XD

SWTerra : it depends honestly.... it's not that hard to get witihin 5 mins of an SDA record... it's the seconds that count at the end

Tyrian Delirium : As I've already mentioned, I haven't fully optimized a single run that I've stuck to and haven't even finished a deathless run yet (even my 45 minute time had 2 or 3 costly deaths in it), which surely counts in minutes of error on its own. That's my biggest reason for surprise.