Greetings again, my fellow life-having compatriots. It’s been too long.so long, in fact, that I’m happy to report that I can no longer find anything good to watch on Netflix. This has led to an uptick in 3 alternative ways to spend time: cooking, reading, and watching video game speedrunners.
For cooking, I recently made enchiladas and a carrot cake. For reading, I’ve been dipping into the *fascinating* world of Windows Powershell. Most importantly, for speed running, I’ve been watching a lot of Link to the Super Metroid randomizer.
Unsurprisingly, my interest in the third topic originates from my fledgling years. Having played through both Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and Super Metroid multiple times as a tween, I liked to think I was reasonably familiar with both. Fast forward 20 years and I find out that some millennial version of a mad scientist created a mashup of both games with items placed randomly throughout the worlds of each, a discovery that is simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying.
Think of it like this: One day you’re at home, flipping through your well-worn copy of War and Peace on your vintage chaise in the main ballroom and you suddenly have a craving for spinach quiche. Now because you’re deliciously eclectic, you tend to store your foodstuffs and kitchenware in odd places around the house. You head to the garage to fetch your 9” pie tin only to find that some crusty jugglers had vandalized your abode, absurdly hanging your garden sheers on the peg where the pie tins should be housed. After hours of searching, you finally manage to find the pie tin stuffed into the engine housing of your modified Model T. Good luck finding the dairy-free ghee!
I think the appeal here for your average Joe and Jill is two-fold: 1) randomizing the way you obtain items to progress through the game makes every run through it a somewhat novel experience, and 2) the added complexity of the playthrough makes it that much more entertaining to spectate. When watching two people go head to head, it’s akin to watching two babies trying to play shuffleboard. There are so many divergent paths the game can throw that you’ll see different players take wildly different approaches to beating the game, an idea that’s entertainment factor is compounded by the fact that most of the players have been playing the source games since the 90’s.
So if you find yourself with nothing to do on a Friday night, consider heading over to twitch.tv and looking up some ALTTSM. I can guarantee you won’t regret it for quite some time.