Adventure Island 3 + Eye + New Game Dev
Welcome back! It is great to see you. Today I have a few things to share. Grab a snack and let me get you up to speed on things.
First of all, I got the world record in the warpless category of Adventure Island 3. The last post on this blog related to speedrunning was about the game Claymates. I had a great time speedrunning Claymates, and was able to get the world record in both categories of the game that people compete in. As of this writing, I still have both records.
The project that I started after Claymates was Adventure Island 3. Here’s a picture of the cart I got the record on:
The game’s plot is best summed up by watching the hilarious introduction that plays when you boot up the cart. I grabbed a video of it for you. In the video, I am running the English version of the game, which is what I use while practicing. I only use the Japanese cart pictured while doing live runs on Twitch.
Yes, our hero, Master Higgins, is the latest in a long history of video game men to get his girlfriend stolen. This time, aliens did it!
The previous world record for beating this game without using any of the game’s built-in warps was 28 minutes and 12 seconds, accomplished by Alice_CuteQwQ on December 21, 2023. I was able to improve the time to 27 minutes and 37 seconds.
The run took place on January 11, 2025. Here’s the Twitch vod and Youtube video if you want to check it out.
Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2350580563
Youtube:
end of a speedrunning era
While I plan to continue speedrunning, Adventure Island 3 did mark the end of some sort of era in speedrunning for me. From August 2024 through the completion of Adventure Island 3, speedrunning was my #1 focus in terms of ‘things I am working on’. I stepped back from the video game development that long-time readers of the blog came to know, and ventured out into the world of speedrunning on Twitch. It was a whole thing. I have chronicled it pretty well on this blog.
I love it. I’ve found community that I have sorely lacked. I have reignited a competitive spirit that died a slow death at the hands of capitalism in a corrupt world. I have reconnected with the same love of learning that propelled me into game development, but with a fresh set of subjects.
It has also helped my game developer spirit feel recharged. Starting with the conclusion of my Adventure Island 3 project, I am bringing game development back into the fold. I foresee my dedicated time to game development and speedrunning to be close to a 50-50 split.
For people who haven’t been following my speedrunning on a regular basis on Twitch, the way I go about releasing content is very focused on performance. I only perform live when I feel like I am ready to set a new personal best time. A typical project of mine will unfold over the course of 6-10 live streams, at which point, I am ready to start learning a new project. This results in a new period where I will release no content, since I am learning a new game. That learning process takes 2-4 weeks depending on the game, and that was while I was focused full time on speedrunning.
My point here is that I was never the type of speedrunner to be live-streaming the most hours even as it were, and now I will be live even less often, as game development grabs up half of the time I was allotting to speedrunning. This is what marks the end of this first era of speedrunning.
Ninja Turtles and a gruesome injury
On January 30 2025, I went live on Twitch for the first time since the conclusion of Adventure Island 3. The new project I picked out was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2, for the NES. My best time on my first day back was a 36m56s, well short of the world record of 30m32s - an expected outcome for a first stream.
Normally, once I go live the first time, I start going live every few days as I am now in the performance part of the speedrunning lifecycle. Unfortunately, about an hour after I was done streaming, I had the worst physical injury I have ever sustained.
My neighbor’s dog got out. The dog started running toward the street, and I started running after it. I was running down my neighbor’s sloped driveway. Once I caught up to the dog, she suddenly stopped in her tracks. I did not stop as suddenly, and instead tripped over the dog, and landed face-first into the concrete slope that marked the edge of the property.
I am not going to post pictures, but trust, this was a gnarly injury. I had one gash above my left eye, and one below. I went to the ER. The first ER doctor said that the cuts were too deep and too close to my eye for him to handle, and instead he was going to call a facial trauma specialist.
An hour or two later, the facial trauma specialist appeared. He unwrapped the layers of gauze and inspected the injury. The first words he said after examining it were, “lucky”. I guess lucky is only one word. Anyway, as close as this cut was to my eye, the eye itself was, and is today, totally fine. I had all sorts of thoughts while waiting for this news, including that I might never speedrun again. I guess you can speedrun with one eye, I wasn’t thinking about that at the time. The point is that it was scary, and while the fall itself I suppose was unlucky, the details of the injury seemed very lucky indeed. The surgeon put a whopping 30 stitches into my face, and the recovery process started.
For the next 11 days following the injury, my left eye was swollen to the point of being completely shut. On day 12, it cracked and spent a day half open. Today it’s back to being just about fully functional. My peripheral on the left side is still not all there because the left side of my left eye is still part of the healing injury. I might end up with some aesthetic changes to the way my left eye looks. Maybe some scarring, maybe my left eye just looking (but not seeing) a little different than my right eye, but all in all I couldn’t be happier. I am counting my lucky stars to be sitting here and looking at a computer screen with two eyes. To my readers, every day is a gift. It might not feel like it, and yes it sounds corny, but I am not kidding you. Today is truly a gift. Use both of your eyes to their fullest today.
Chip n dale and beyond
Do you remember Chip N’ Dale? They are a duo of chipmunks that were in a few movies and TV shows and such, made by Disney. Since my injury came right at the start of my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 performance period while also sidelining me for two weeks, I decided to move on from that project. Perhaps one day I will return to TMNT 2, but for now, it will go down as a half-completed project. I ended with the #30 time on the speedrun leaderboards.
In its place, I will next be speedrunning Chip N’ Dale, for the NES. I am hoping to go live somewhat soon - maybe in a week or so. Make sure to follow me on Twitch if you want to catch the runs.
As for game development, I am on the move. Longtime readers might remember that I have spent time both working on a sidescrolling platformer while posting to this blog, and also a JRPG. During this latest revival of me doing game development work, I will be working on the platformer. I will leave you with some new artwork. These are the animations for dashing, ducking, and sliding - three bits of movement that were not needed for the JRPG, but that I need now that I am back to working on the platformer. More updates to come!
