5 Speedrunners Who Claimed Records Without Proof

legend, a word, my friends, that can often be overused in speed racing games or any aspect of popular culture, but a word in its truest meaning that provokes thoughts about stories told by many people for countless generations, perhaps around a campfire or images written on the wall of a cave. stories that, for better or worse, may or may not be true or distorted over time, such as an old broken game of telephone from years spent drag racing,

proof

usually in the form of readily available video is critical for people believe his claim of a record. speedrun, however, was not always the case decades ago, when things like capture cards, dvd burners and pvrs were not available, many

speedrunners

claimed

records

without video evidence and were believed or not based on a set of evidence surrounding his character, any existing existence. videos of their play or other people who had seen them play in person, so here are five spearheads who

claimed

records

without evidence, whether they were believed or not and for how long.

These are all Nintendo 64

speedrunners

, as that's what I know the most about. and if you know of any other legendary speedrun claims that didn't have video evidence, please let me know in the comments as I'd love to hear about it. You can't make accusations like that without evidence. I assume you have some expert player. of seven founding members of the perfect dark elite in the year 2000 who had some really good proven records in their own right, he is credited with achieving 26 world records unleashed between the years 2000 and 2002, most of which have evidence like this 143 on Special Agent Infiltration still ranks in the top 30 today, but its most controversial record was a claim about the game's final war bonus level on the hardest difficulty.

Perfect Agent Expert Players set a tried and tested record of 56 seconds in July 2001, but a few months later in In March 2002 he made a cryptic post in the world record thread, but the old times were never posted, which included a perfect agent of war. 54th would be an untethered three-second world record over the rest of the competition, but it's not exactly the reaction you'd have to an untethered three-second and furthermore, none of these three records were tested, yet they were allowed to stand. Based on the expert's reputation as someone who had tested many other records and as a well-liked administrator in the community, people knew that the expert was capable of great speed. run, so they believed him and accepted his claims in the rankings, but they didn't know how good Perfect War Agent 54 really was.

It would be two more years until Carl Jobs, at the time, by far the best Perfect Dark Player he would get a 54 on video and to this day, 16 years later, only two other all-time greats, Brian Boshart and Perfect Ace, as well as a war specialist, David K5, have completed 54 seconds on the level. Four great players in 16 years, suffice to say that many became skeptical experts. The player actually arrived on time in 2002. Over the years, several threads were created considering the elimination of experts 54, but the opinion of the former elite administration was that it was a decided matter and time would remain 54 no would be beaten until Ace did it with 53 in 2007 and that wouldn't be matched until the boss in 2012 and no one would match or beat them until Carl turned 52 in 2016.

That's when Carl, now the perfect bow champion, returned to play as perfect war agent and realized how The notable 54-second claim by an expert in 2002 really was that Karl made a thread arguing some points as to why the record should be removed from the rankings, namely that 54 seconds It was a huge outlier compared to the rest of the experts multiplied by a huge outlier compared to other worlds. records from the same era, a good reputation is not a good argument for keeping time and it took Carl about 50 hours to recover 54 in 2004, so in the course of such a long and intentional work, why didn't the expert would have been recording even though he had the ability to do so, finally the community had enough and thanks to Carl's wise reason, the elite council, like a kind of sitting board or committee that decides on controversial issues in the community, voted to remove 54 experts from the rankings, the expert actually showed up like a few weeks later and gratefully posted about the timing of the removal, stating that he had been trying to remove it himself for a while, but couldn't do it anyway , what's done is done and the experts used the perfect agent 54 will always remain as one of the most notable record claims that he had no evidence berube was a similar case but even more controversial since his claim was that he tied the damn agent par excellence of brian bosshart 53 a truly remarkable streak in his own right berube was a fairly low ranked player, although one who did get a couple of proven world records like deposit agent 26 or surface agent 1 104.

That said, the Damn 53 was a much better record than these. Berube tried to prove that he at least had the necessary skill for prey 53 by sending a tape to a test. moderator with some of his other logs, as well as a bunch of damn agent 54 runs, although the final screen of these runs said best time 53, having 53 saved in the cartridge is not

proof

of the log, as it could use a game shark activate turbo mode or walk through walls, save a 53 second race in your cart, then play normally and get a bunch of 54 showing the best time 53 and the shorts of the game were very accessible at that day since you could just go go to a game store and buy a new one nowadays you have to find them on ebay most of them don't work you often need to stack two or three in a row to get it to turn on it's a big hassle However, Goldeneye's moderators at the time accepted Brewbase at number 53 in the rankings by virtue of his having demonstrated that he was capable of playing the damned agent competently in his tapes and the matter was considered settled forever in 2006, only Illou Walter Janssen and Dan Cervonne would tie for 53rd place before.

Much later it would become a very common record, and several movements to remove burubase 53 would appear over the years, but they would be quickly quashed by elite administrators. Flash forward to hdq 2015. he was sitting in this very room in the basement of the Hilton Washington Dulles Airport. hotel, the site of the infamous Woody goes crazy video and just below the room where Oxwa's iconic 2000 track and field 100 meter dash world record would take place in 2000, Jimbo and I spoke to the founding creator and webmaster of the elite domain .net, Derrick Clark, on The Value of Maintaining and Accurately Maintaining History Clark seemed to agree that, in his opinion, time should be governed again.

I took that conversation to mean that, as the owner and webmaster of the rankings, Clark would eventually be willing to remove it himself, but what he really meant. was that if the elite council voted on the issue, he would be willing to use his sole vote in favor of eliminating brewery time. This misunderstanding resulted in an absolute fire in a forum thread when we all got back from gdq, which I'll link in the description, I know how much some of you love reading these old flame war types, but for some, several old guys who were still on the elite council at the time even though most of them hadn't played or cared about Goldeneye and Perfect Arc. speedrunning since about 2002 were vehemently against the elimination of the berube race.

Berube himself surfaced for the first time in years to defend himself against the threat and reiterate his claim, but in the end the 13 or so members of the elite council voted and Berube's claim to condemn Agent 53 was deleted from the rankings. elite, restoring what seemed to many to be the cursed agent order and retroactively crediting ilu for being the first to link the boss's cursed agent 53 approximately two years and two months after it was originally accomplished, there are still some who criticized the The elimination of Brewbase 53 and Experts 54 is inconsistent given that there are many other important records in the elite rankings that have not been tested; however, these are the two most notable egregious examples of the same ones that were in the rankings in both cases for over a decade.

A much more recent case shows a good example of how attitudes in speedrunning have changed over the last 20 years, especially when it comes to recorded tests. Aki is a young Japanese speedrunner from Super Mario 64 who should not be confused with Akikin, another Japanese speedrunner whose records were removed. The leaderboards had spliced ​​videos, well, Aki had a second place of 15 27 in 16 stars to Zaya's 1524, which had held for almost two years at that time, on March 23, 2018, Aki had been practicing a category of 120 unrecorded stars and then, randomly, I felt like playing. a 16 star race to freshen things up, I think you can see where this is going.

Aki started recording about 9 minutes into a good 16 star race when he felt he was on potential world record pace and we get to see him perform the finish. to get a 15-22, which would have been the world record at the time, most Super Mario 64 racers agreed that Aki was definitely capable of achieving the record and that he probably achieved it without any tricks, but also that the new record should not count in the classification. and it wasn't, it just goes down in history as this little side note or asterisk when talking about the progression of the 16 star world record.

The interesting thing is that half the recorded race is much more testing than in the previous two cases and a speed. Running in these circumstances would almost certainly have counted in 2002, so this really shows how the mentality of speedrunning has changed over the years. There was no drama or controversy. People in general knew that Aki had time, but they also knew that he simply couldn't count any more. Unfortunately for Aki, another upstart racer, Ouija 14, scored a new world record of 1517 just about two weeks after this, on April 5, and just nine days later, Aki would get another 15, this time fully registered and verified, but Aki would never be credited with retaining. the world record of 16 stars some intervened in our speedrun with one-liners like novid no did no record no record a hard lesson learned in fact this is a strange saga that spans almost 20 years in many games the Australian player andrew kent who also became call vulpex not to be confused with full fire type pokemon selections was a long time updater of an old site nintendo 64 high scores a very rudimentary site straight out of the 90s kent and others submitted their scores here on games like star fox 64 beatle adventure racing nagano olympic games and 1080 snowboarding, he even created some kind of wacky overall ranking system that awards n64 hs points based on your scores in each game where of course Kent himself takes the number one spot.

The site has a quiz page that lists all the players who have submitted videos or images. proofs to the site, although all the links redirect to now expired yahoo pages, but interestingly Kent's name is not among the players who ever provided proofs, even I am on the list with links to videos of some mario golf discs that I shipped in 2008, but there is no known Video or photographic evidence that Andrew Kent ever played a Nintendo 64 game, one would think that if he was truly proud of his gaming achievements to the point of ranking number one on a system of Nintendo classification, I would like to share it.

These achievements with others After all, have you ever heard of someone who claimed a lot of fast runs or high scores but never showed them for a long time and then it turned out to be legit? Kent also supposedly played Goldeneye where I got to know him and if we take a look at his Goldeneye times page hosted on Angelfire and we'll see that his last update was in 2011. That makes sense since that was around the time the elite rankings were completely automated and players no longer had to host their own timing pages. The page lists some achievements, including having retained over 3k points for over 9 years, which is about the number you need to stay inside the top 50.

So, Kent had been in the top 50 at this point since about 2002 and had remained in the top 50 and every time they appearedOf course, he would jump to about 45th place, he would stay in the top 50 for half a year more or whatever and this would continue in Infinium. He never posted on the forum or otherwise interacted with the elite community at any time. This time, at least as far as I can remember, we noticed this strange pattern of behavior that was discussed lightly on the forums, but no one really cared much due to his lower rank and lack of good moments.

Another strange fact is that Kent never at any time. point held or claimed a golden eye world record, not even the extremely common and easy to tie ones like bunker 118 or runway 23, when those were records in the past, this is completely anomalous for anyone else ranked within the top 50 for so many years somewhere in the world. Likewise, any top-50 player usually achieves at least one or two common records here or there, but Kent couldn't have been his way of avoiding a trial call. Finally, in 2013, Goldmine's moderators froze the Kent Times page, which meant he would have to contact a moderator who posted more records.

We hoped this would bring him out of the dark and we could ask him what was going on, but he never did. . I always thought that at some point in 2014 he was about to fall out of the top 50 again. I went to post More times I noticed that his times page was frozen, I thought the template was over and he quietly walked away into the shadows. Some Kent defenders, however, raise the idea that Ken simply retired and hasn't played Goldeneye since his last time series in 2013. I find this difficult. To believe that his behavioral pattern was consistent for over 10 years and that his theoretical withdrawal coincided exactly with the freezing of his times page is too much of a coincidence.

Earlier this year we had another discussion on the forums about Kent and Axel Z, the golden eye. The ratings moderator who froze Kent's Times page in 2013 revealed that he did so because Kent never responded to any messages requesting videos for his complaints at the time and Axel messaged him on the forums and sent him long emails throughout over the years praising all his interesting web pages, but Kent never responded to anything he wrote. The elite decided to back up all the rest of Kent's staff. the registry claims to have their best times proven so nothing, their times page is now blank to be clear, kent is not excluded from the rankings, the community simply asks him if he claims scores on the site to provide some proof, so kent yes Somewhere, you are more than welcome to come back and submit times as long as you have some videos.

Coincidentally, just a few weeks ago, a new user named bert86 appeared on the elite forum and posted in Kent's months-old discussion thread revealing more evidence. of kent bert's incomplete claims showed a link on the n64 hs website where kent claimed a crystal lake 1080 snowboard time of 102.64, which bert suggests is impossible because the way the game increments the stopwatch by the scenario can only get 102.60 0.63 or 0.66 I don't know if this is true or not, but if Burt is right, this is just more evidence against Kent's credibility. It was also discovered while researching this video that Kent did something similar in Super Mario Kart claiming records adding decimals that they were not. possible, which also resulted in his removal from those rankings with Kent having so many scores and claim times on so many Nintendo games without videos.

We can only imagine what is really going on there. Is it possible that Kent was just a Luddite who played honestly? Nintendo got some scores and maybe had some errors entering them into an old database or made it all up and none of these past claims are credible. Most of those who have been around a long time agree that Kent did a great job. manually and laboriously updating scores submitted to n64hs and creating an early gaming community and maybe that should be his legacy instead of claiming a bunch of untested average level speedruns with no world record.

I certainly like to think that it's all a thing of the past now, but it's a very interesting case. however, almost like a more subdued Cowan Haynes of someone who claims tons of scores and games for a long time without any evidence to back it up. I would be remiss if he didn't end this video by at least discussing the current situation surrounding Steven Jortis. a man who many claim to be one of the true nintendo 64 greats and there is some evidence to support this jortis is documented to have appeared and performed very well at live events including the nintendo power series european tournaments and the annual nintendo tournaments in waddingsville, netherlands, which were frequented by many of the top regional players at the time, including patrick wessels and carl van dwehenbolden, who are still around today and have corroborated much of this information.

Jorti's reputation from having witnessed him play live was so strong that the vast majority of his 77-year career. mario kart 64 world records 64 gold race world records 9007 and many other records and other Nintendo titles largely set between 1998 and 2001 did not have any supporting video evidence, however, in an era where reputation in-person was considered more important than video evidence. all of his world record claims were considered valid and accepted by various online leaderboards at the time, however, two claims made towards the end of Schwartz's career were the ones that ultimately drew attention and were removed from their respective rankings. in early 2002.

Jortis claimed an Aztec record. Agent 131 in Goldeneye would unleash a 25-second world record using a strategy that he claims lured a guard into opening this glass door, thereby skipping a large portion of the mission. No one would be able to replicate such a strategy for about half a year. Later, when Brian Bosshart appeared in the community with a detailed description of how he was able to make it work, watch that speed story episode if you want to learn more about it, Schwartz was always vague when describing his strategy, he really only shared that he was able . to make it work with a guard and a different guard than the boss and now the community was able to successfully use a decoy to open the crystal and even with the discovery of the boss no one could match Schwartz's claim until illu in November 2007 left alone He surpassed it until Mark Rutsu in 2009.

The 131 was finally re-run in April 2004, but left a lasting legacy in GoldenEye history. Jorti's other notable claim was at Luigi Jortis's racetrack. He set an impressive world record. of three laps without shortcuts in 1999 of 158.65, which was one of the few records that did have video footage. This record lasted two and a half years until William Lacy barely beat it by 0.01 seconds and former champion Michael Jongrias would improve it another year later by 0.02 seconds, however, in May 2003. Shorty's friend and fellow Carter, Lars Novin , shared on the Mario Kart forum that Schwartz had run 158 14, beating the previous record by 0.48 seconds, an incredible cut in Mario Kart 64 terms, but without video evidence.

What is notable is that this would be the first world record. shorties would claim from a pair in 2001 and the last one he would claim to have set it would be another two years until michael jonarius could finally beat this claimed record by just 0.02 seconds setting a one five eight twelve and it would be another six years until someone could reduce that even more so when Matthias Rustmeyer said that one five eight or seven Jortis claimed the second lap time in this race of 3832 has only been equaled or surpassed once in 15 years a 38-31 by Vincent Tolhouse the race in question Would be enough good for fifth place in the current Luigi Raceway standings.

Needless to say, Jorti's claims to the test of time are far greater than most records from that era. That being said, I'm holding back on judging the outputs for now because through the research process of this video. Schwartz has resurfaced and shown us this scroll test footage of his old Mario Kart 64 cartridge showing both his 15865 and his 158.14 tested on the cart. Of course, this is not a test by today's standards or the standards of 10 years ago, for example, and it is editable. via gameshark or everdrive, however, it's still a lot more than we've seen in the past, some players have noticed that the gaps between schwartz's luigi runs saved in the file are unusually large at a level where it's common to enhance only a few frames at a time. time, so this really gave us as many questions as answers.

Some of those still in contact with Schwartz are also trying to get him a golden eye cartridge that he gave to his brother a long time ago, but he seems determined to finally play again and reveal the Aztec to him. 2002 strategy, we know from what you described that you claim that his strategy was something completely unique to anything we've discovered so far, so we can't just show a known strategy and pretend it's the one he used years ago if it's able. Demonstrating a completely new technique for opening the Aztec glass door will be absolutely historic and could go a long way toward gaining credibility that he doesn't have among newer players who weren't around to witness his game in person years ago.

I'm planning on following up on jortis, more specifically by diving into other records and other games he claimed over the years, tracking down VHS tapes that some people claim he sent over the years, and talking to those who saw him play, but First we need to see how this whole recent Shorties quest plays out to prove his records unfold once again, so keep your eyes peeled because if he finally reveals some ancient strategy about the Aztecs, it will shake the very foundations of Goldeneye speedrunning until its core. I have to conclude. at least with the mention that i really despise revisionist history, you know when you see some peace minders pop up on twitter or facebook about how george washington or john macdonald wouldn't have been considered good people by today's social standards, so We should move on. renaming public parks and schools that bear their names, and how this is different from applying modern testing standards to legendary claims from speedrunning's past.

It's certainly a philosophical struggle I have when I go back and try to tell the stories of these old speedrun legends, but is it? It's a little different if we're actually going through history if we're trying to figure out if something really happened or not. Being good and witnessing many gives you free rein to claim whatever records you want and take away your right to If anyone else questioned it, in the famous Todd Rogers case, we definitely learned that many of his claims were impossible, so revised the story or, better yet, corrected it, but in all the cases I covered here the claims turned out to be possible, perhaps by sheer luck. or maybe because they actually happened, so there you have it.

I hope you enjoyed these five legendary stories of sprinters who claimed records without proof. There are definitely more stories of unproven claims I could tell and I will continue to investigate Schwartz's case over the next few years. short time, so subscribe if you like this video and want to see more speedrunning history and content and let me know if you know of any similar cases in more modern or non-n64 speedrunning titles. I would love to hear new stories that I missed. In the meantime, thank you for watching and supporting the channel, stay loyal and see you in the next broadcast or video.