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Speedrunning, in the gaming world, is all about completing a game as quickly as possible. While that’s the basic idea, it’s far from simple. This practice demands skill, patience, and precision, with most “runs” taking place under specific rules or restrictions that add an extra layer of challenge.
Irishman Vincent Smyth is one such talented speedrunner who hails from Co. Tipperary. Most recently he was featured on Games Done Quick‘s regularly scheduled programme Hotfix which showcases a vibrant lineup of various speedrunning communities, challenges, and styles.
But where did Vincent start with gaming? For that, we need to boost up the Amiga and go for a trip down memory lane.
Vincent loved reading and anything to do with tech growing up and his first memory of gaming was one Christmas when his dad hooked up a Commodore Amiga A500+.
“It could have gone two ways depending on the first game I played from the box – if it had been The Simpsons: Bart Vs the Space Mutants I might have sworn off gaming there and then!” he says. “Instead, I played Lemmings first and got the bug”.
“After my OG Amiga, I’ve mostly been a PC gamer since then but have had PS2 and Xbox360 etc over the years,” he adds.
These days, Vincent streams as vjsmyth on Twitch and works in IT as a tech support. “Even with my job being dealing with computers all day it hasn’t taken away any love for computers,” he says. For his featured run on Hotfix, Vincent speeds through the game Enemy Zero, a 1996 horror game for the Sega Saturn.
“I love retrogaming, with a particular interest in point-and-click adventure games and retro horror,” he tells me. “I collect PC Big Box games, mostly horror. The more obscure the better – it’s fun finding hidden gems”.
Vincent says that it’s fascinating to look back on older titles that had fantastic premises but were hindered by hardware limits (or paved the way for better games).
“There’s a charm to be had with jank games showing creativity,” he muses. “For me, a game being “bad” isn’t a dealbreaker because there’s almost always something good you can find – plus there’s always the fun of riffing on cheesy voice acting or dodgy game mechanics. Also with retro gaming, you can find a game you remember having issues then find out “Oh hey, some fan made a patch/content fix for it and it’s actually great now.”
Vincent began speedrunning late last year and got a taste for it by watching Games Done Quick (GDQ)’s Horror Block. He came across the UK streamer Punchy running one of the Silent Hill titles a few years ago too and that impressed him.
“I went to look up more runs by him on GDQ and stumbled across their Hotfix show dedicated to horror games, Speedruns from the Crypt,” he says.
“The host Ecdycis was fun showcasing a lot of old jank horror titles. I ended up watching him on his own stream and joined his Discord”.
How does he stream his sessions? Well, it turns out the great thing about doing retro PC gaming is that streaming them is usually simple.
“If you’re playing console games you need to worry about buying a capture card, extra adapters etc.,” he explains. “If you can run the streaming software OBS and just capture your desktop screen with it you’re good to go! I don’t have a dedicated setup for it, just my trusty gaming PC I’ve had for years”.
Late last year Vincent shared a photo of his recent game pick-up Enemy Zero on Ecdycis’ Discord.
“It’s the middle game of the “D” trilogy and most people know it as a Sega Saturn game. However, back in ‘98, Sega did an official PC port which later got a budget re-release and this is the version I had got,” he tells me.
“Punchy asked me casually if the PC port had skippable cutscenes or if it was the same as the Saturn release. Checking the game discs I got an idea of how the game was set up and tested a theory for how to mod the game. This theory turned out to be right and I started work on what is now Enemy Zero Minus Edition“.
Vincent mostly started speedrunning the game just doing it to see if he could. Before this, nobody ran Enemy Zero because, apart from being notoriously difficult, the game is part FMV and billed as “An Interactive Movie”.
A Minus Edition run is ~35 minutes, but a vanilla version would be about two hours and most of that is putting down the controller and waiting for FMVs to finish playing. Another kicker is that dying in the game means sitting through all of them again!
“Testing Minus Edition I said “Well, might as well go all the way with this” and started running it properly,” he tells me.
Vincent applied to set up the SRC (Speedrun.com) leaderboard page. He populated it with all the resources needed for anyone wanting to try and run it, and while doing some research for the run collected the art book and official strategy guide though sadly most of it is in Japanese only.
He notes that Enemy Zero’s PC port now has PS4 controller support and a save manager utility called EazyEZ. If anyone wants to play the game casually and gets stuck, he has an in-depth walkthrough for GameFAQs.
But how was Vincent approached by GDQ? Well firstly, he wanted to challenge himself.
“I’ve social anxiety and running a game live with commentary at an event was a goal I set myself to help fight it,” he said.
“I made a demo video with commentary and submitted it to the speedrunning showcase event Big Bad Game-a-thon in September this year. I managed to get in even though I wasn’t convinced it’d be taken!”
Vincent tells me that it was a great experience and the run went better than he thought.
“Konception who runs the GDQ Hotfix show “Awfully Silly” saw my run there and thought it was fun, then invited me to be on his show,” he muses. “At first, I thought it was a spambot message until I actually read it and went “Wait, this is genuine!”
Vincent says that doing a live event run was nerve-racking. He spent an hour or so most evenings practising the game either on his stream or offline.
“I didn’t script my commentary but I did make a mental checklist of some things I needed to talk about. I forgot a chunk of them on each event between nerves and concentrating on the game too much!”
A marathon showcase is different from doing a normal run because you have to plan for getting the run finished no matter what. If a run on your own time fails it can be annoying having to restart, but you can’t start from scratch if you make a mistake at an event.
“You have to plan “okay, the strategy I use here causes an instant death sometimes if I mess it up, do I go for it, or take a slower but safer route?”, he explains.
“There’s also the issue of having safety saves made in advance to recover (or spots planned out to take the time to save) and a realistic time estimate. If the best time you ever got was 35m, you do not submit that as your estimate. You have to take a look at an average run and try to find a balance between “worst-case scenario” and “everything going smoothly”.
Vincent tells me that Konception and the GDQ tech team were super nice on the day even though he was sick with the flu come run time.
“Talking with both him and the tech crew before the run was good for my nerves and they were a good laugh,” he says.
“I had really bad practice runs all before the event but on the actual day, it went well. I’m very happy with both the BBG and the GDQ Hotfix runs. I do wish my commentary was more thorough and that the actual runs were deathless but I had a blast doing them”.
What’s next for Vincent? Well, he has a couple of games he’s checking out to see if it’s possible to run them. One is a bad action-adventure DOS game based on the music of the band Queen!
“I’d love to be good at something with crazy tech/skips. Alice: Madness Returns is a good game with the speedrun absolutely breaking it in fun ways but it’s a very precise run,” he says.
“I’d also love to do The Evil Within on Akumu mode (the hardest difficulty) like the Irish speedrunner Jigzaw_Killer does (who is the record holder for the PC New Game category) but I’m not sure I have the skill or patience to do it”.
Vincent encourages people to give speedrunning a go and notes that the only barrier to entry is being able to play the game.
I picked up a horror point-and-click game called Silverload and finished it as a casual playthrough. Out of curiosity I checked out the SRC leaderboard and noticed some potential tech with some alternate puzzle solutions. I started chatting with the mod Jayeffsee on the board and we figured out a new faster route.
He says that speedrunning is a collaboration and that it’s fun to theorise and see them pay off. For those interested he recommends checking SRC to see if there’s a leaderboard and from there scouting out dedicated Discords.
“Runners are usually happy to help new people get started and welcome some new blood into the scene,” he tells me.
“There is a competitive element to it but honestly, that’s down to your own personal preferences. You can learn a run with a goal in mind for yourself or you can gun for first place on the leaderboard”.
Vincent says that the horror game speedrunning community as a whole is wonderful and he hasn’t had a single bad interaction.
“It’s also great that it doesn’t matter where you are in the world, there’s someone you can geek out with about a title,” he says.
“Ecdycis in the USA, Punchy in the UK, Juh0rse in Singapore: all great people who have been friendly, supportive and helpful to me – a complete stranger on the internet taking first steps in a hobby. I envy their ability to multitask- they effortlessly do complicated speedrun tech while holding multiple conversions with their chat!”
Vincent says that he plans to apply for GDQ next summer in person and hopefully, if he gets accepted, we’ll see him again on screen. Go n-éirí go geal leis!