3 speedrunning glitches that were found more than a decade after a game released

Speed runs are an exciting pastime among video game enthusiasts. They showcase a skill level and intimate knowledge about a game that few players will ever truly have. Some players can finish long games in a fraction of the time it would take a normal playthrough to reach the end. People can accomplish such feats through the use of clever shortcuts and glitches that allow them to skip over large portions of a game, bringing them to the ending in unfathomable times. To the uninitiated, it may look like an almost superhuman level of skill.

Most of the games that people love to speedrun contain certain bugs and glitches that were discovered long after they were first released, sometimes more than a decade later. But without them, a lot of the most popular video game speedruns would not have been possible. They enable the impossible to become quite possible. Here are three glitches that were discovered years after the game was released, but led to some amazing speedruns.

3 Pokémon Yellow

Saving corruption finish

How fun would it be to complete a Pokémon game without entering a single battle? What players were able to discover was possible with Pokémon Yellow. Instead of going through the game normally and fighting many battles, a series of steps from the Name Entry menu can enable someone to skip directly to the end of the game. They wouldn't even need to battle the Elite Four to reach the game's ending.

The glitch is done by naming both the player's character and their rival as ASH and BLUE. After that, you stand right next to the door of the player's house and save the game. However, once it shows the game is saving, you turn off the console right away. This will corrupt the save file once it's powered back on, which will be shown by the menu being very glitchy. If certain options in the menu are selected, the game will switch the exit of the house to automatically warp to the final room of the Indigo Plateau, where you can speak to Professor Oak and roll the end credits. It's that simple.

While there are other steps for various kinds of speedruns and playthroughs, those just looking to reach the end of the game in a short time don't need to do much. However, trying to accomplish the glitch could lead to corrupt save files and other problems, especially since the game gets very glitchy when turning off the console as it's saving.

2 Super Mario 64

Speeding through stairs

For many speedrunners who play Super Mario 64, there are a number of glitches that are helpful for scoring faster times. One of the biggest and most helpful glitches in the game involves a backward jump to bypass the endless stairs towards the end of the game. This is a section where Mario can only access the final Bowser confrontation when he has enough Power Stars collected to get passed the staircase, otherwise he walks up the stairs endlessly. However, using the power of the glitch, it becomes a non-issue and allows someone to skip over the majority of the game.

Getting to the point where you can execute this glitch requires some progress through the early portions of Super Mario 64. While there are other glitches that enable people to get around this, what ultimately matters is getting to the endless staircase, even though the technique can be done on any staircase. Whenever Mario is near a staircase and uses a backwards long-jump, the animation can be interrupted and enable him to gain a huge amount of momentum backwards. If this is repeated, Mario can be flung up the staircase and to the final area. This is a very popular trick used in most speedruns of Super Mario 64, where the challenging part comes down to perfect execution at key areas within the castle.

When used in conjunction with other glitches in Super Mario 64, some players have achieved insane completion times. The record for the fastest Super Mario 64 speedrun is 6 minutes and 15 seconds. This was done without finding any Power Stars and reaching the final battle against Bowser. Other speedruns have included gathering up to 16 stars, while others have been bolder in trying to get all 120 stars within a short timeframe. The fastest time in doing so was 1 hour and 35 minutes.

1 The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

Manipulating the code

One of the more complicated glitches used in speedrunning is for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Given the name Arbitrary Code Execution, this requires manipulation of certain aspects of the game's code, which involves a series of actions during gameplay. At its heart, Arbitrary Code Execution allows players to interject specific favorable outcomes into the game's code, leading to many sections within Ocarina of Time that can be broken in various ways. To many, this is something of a holy grail for speedrunning Zelda games, where almost everything in the game can be manipulated and used to speed up times and change the way certain scenarios are approached by players.

The method is not easy to execute and requires a lot of knowledge about the game, even though it's used in speedruns where any percentage of completion is allowed. However, some events have put certain restrictions in place when utilizing the method to judge speedruns for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. The fastest time ever achieved using Arbitrary Code Execution was in 2021, with a time of 6 hours and 59 minutes.

Glitching to success

Video game speedruns are something unique and exciting to witness when more is discovered about how a game is played. While some can spend years mastering techniques on how to get through a game's hurdles for a fast completion time, there's always something new discovered to make it even better. Even after years following a game's release, people are able to still comb through a beloved classic game and find something helpful within it for a faster speedrun. It goes to show you that even when you think you know it all, there's always another glitch that pops up to show you something new.