Shmups VS Speedrunning, Natural Vs. Fan-Made Meta | Ft. @neoxaquas .
Today's topic has been a subject that has fascinated me for a long time,
the difference between shmup scoreplay meta and speedrunning time meta.
What's interesting is that for a long time, I've heard speedrunners
talk about scoreplay in the tone of an outdated style of competitive
design. Like if you watch the history of speedrunning video by Karl
Jobst, he describes score play as essentially the ooze from which the
glory of speedrunning was born. This makes some sense if you only look
at speedrunning from their community perspective. However, over the
years I have become more skeptical of community / fan made meta (see my
discussion of the subject with the Crimson Blur about Melee) and in
today's video I am joined by Aquas who is the perfect guest on the topic
as he has world records in both speedrunning and shmup score play (a
rare accomplishment!). We cover a variety of fun topics, including his
world record progression in Pink Sweets, and the heart of the
conversation for me is what are the strengths and weaknesses of fan-made
meta, like speedrunning, and what are the strengths and weaknesses of
natural built in meta like scoreplay. In the end, I find that I greatly
prefer the natural meta of scoreplay (and fighting game tournament play)
because it is less arbitrary and prone to manipulation from fellow
players and outside forces (besides the developer). However, this
doesn't mean that I don't think speedrunning in itself isn't a cool
idea, and I even offer what I think is the best solution for the issue
in the form of what M2 Shottriggers have been doing with their shmup
ports. Imagine if Nintendo actually put some care into their wave of
ports and re-releases, and included speedrunning modes and leader boards
in their ports. Also I love that Aquas brought up how heavily nostalgia
plays into a speedrun game's popularity, because there are tons of
speedruns that I think could be fascinating (Dead to Rights Super Cop),
but sadly the non-nostalgic games tend to be extremely under-explored.
That being said, there are also issues that can rise up from relying
solely on the natural meta of a game, like Battle Garegga and its
infinite milk, so again I think this is where having robust ports with
patches really smooths out a lot of issues, other wise competitive score
play is going to rely very heavily on replay analysis and community
leader boards and we've seen enough "I GOT A CHEATED RUN PAST THE MODS!"
vids for a lifetime.
