How is this speedrun possible? The Legend of Zelda World Record Speedrun Explained

leads to these two upper rooms, and a final tunnel leads Link to an encounter with a mini-boss and, eventually, Gannon. This is Patra. For now,

this

enemy can be avoided. With a combination of perfect positioning and a well-timed sword slash, Lack is able to leave the room without a fight. He will have to defeat the final Patra to open the door to Gannon. Here, Lack needs a heart because when he fights the final Patra, having 7 hearts allows him to survive three hits instead of just two. This is Patra, again. This one has to be defeated to open the door to Gannon.

He can almost exclusively be damaged with the sword. On top of that, the core is invulnerable until all eyes in orbit die. The outer eyes will rotate in two different patterns at random, so recognizing which pattern they are making is key to clearing them as quickly as

possible

. Finally,

this

is Gannon. He turns invisible and shoots fireballs at Link, but always moves 4 blocks, moves back if he hits a wall, and then turns 90 degrees toward Link. Normally, this causes Gannon to move along one of these two squares. Once he is hit, he teleports to one of two positions: here or here.

The location is random, but can be predicted. When he is invisible, Gannon actually cycles through 6 different poses in each frame. This cycle stops when he is hit, so he shows a single pose while he is stunned for exactly 63 frames. Additionally, Gannon's next location depends on the parity of the global timer: to the right on odd frames and to the left on even frames. Using this information, it is

possible

to deduce where Gannon will be after hitting him. Since the pose cycle and stun duration are fixed, the cycle can be divided into set A and set B.

In any fight, each of these sets will always go to each side of the room. Racers can use the first hit to figure out which set goes which side and predict Gannon's next location for the rest of the fight. This strategy is great on paper, but in reality it is extremely difficult to process all this information in a fraction of a second. Additionally, going to the right side risks running into Gannon, who, remember, deals four hearts of contact damage. Therefore, runners typically focus on survival and aim for the left side at all times. If he misses, they will have to wait for Gannon to move towards the center to hit him again.

Additionally, if the sword slash is timed correctly and Gannon is hit in the first possible frame, he will stay on the same side and essentially be stunned. Basically, it comes down to this: After the initial hit, Lack flips a coin. If he wins the toss, he will be able to stun Gannon. If he doesn't do it, he loses two seconds and flips the coin again. With the magic sword, Gannon takes 4 hits. Let's see how he was. As you can see, Lack was pretty unlucky and got it wrong all three times. Fortunately, he was far enough ahead to get the first 27.

Typically, these videos are when he discusses possible improvements in the race. But this is a little different. The Legend of Zelda is a unique

speedrun

. Even at the top level, there is no clear strategy that can be executed perfectly. A big part of the race is finding the fastest way to take out all the enemies, reacting to their random patterns on the fly, and using your limited toolset to the fullest, all while juggling internal counters and performing dozens of pixel perfect tricks. of times. It cannot be understated how incredibly skilled this

world

record

holder is, and yet there is so much room for improvement.

This minute of rest was an absolutely amazing achievement, but as crazy as it sounds, it may not even be the last.