Not necessarily talking about only tool-assisted speedruns here, just the generic 'totally awesome mindblowing display of gaming excellence' videos you see in say, Youtube. I find that it's almost like the uncanny valley argument, that once you see people do certain things that are clearly impossible you stopped thinking it's an accomplishment.
For example let's take the famous Street Fighter 3 video where Diago parried a super arts with no life left and come back to win. I played SF3 a bit and I'm pretty sure if you give an average player the exact script and just keep on practice over and over, he'll eventually be able to pull it off. Clearly any top level player should be able to do it with ease if they prepared themselves enough for that situation. If Street Fighter 3 is played with your generic TAS tools (rewind, save & load, slow time, etc) I wouldn't be surprised to see someone beat Street Fighter 3 while parrying every single move.
Yet I think if you want to find a video that represents fighting game excellence, this one is it, even though it's trivial to come up with something that's technically harder even without tools involved. Why is that so? I'd say it's because you know it's real, not just someone who tried over and over again until everything went exactly right.
Now let's go to the opposite spectrum, say the initial Super Mario 3 video which is clearly tool assisted and that clearly has its place in history of awesome gameplay videos. But by TAS standards it's not doing anything too amazing. Certainly there are far harder levels in the custom hacked Marios (mostly Super Mario World) that involves doing even crazier stuff. But you don't hear about those too unless you're really into TAS videos. I'd argue that the Super Mario 3 video involves things that, while they're almost certainly impossible, looked like something you could do. There is nothing possible about say a TAS video of someone playing on a level with all spikes and just tossing a turtle shell and jump back on it over and over, but if you're good at Super Mario 3 the idea of jumping on all those cannonballs in the tank stage at least would appear possible.
I remember seeing a making of XYZ video video, and it says that all these amazing manuevers in a 30 second fight was done on the 1/20 scale, and since it took more than one try to even do it right, the video ended up taking around 20 hours to make when all is said and done. But I don't think anyone finds that to be impressive. It'd just be like you using an emulator to get pass a boss you otherwise cannot beat with the instant load/save function, but on a greater scale.
For example let's take the famous Street Fighter 3 video where Diago parried a super arts with no life left and come back to win. I played SF3 a bit and I'm pretty sure if you give an average player the exact script and just keep on practice over and over, he'll eventually be able to pull it off. Clearly any top level player should be able to do it with ease if they prepared themselves enough for that situation. If Street Fighter 3 is played with your generic TAS tools (rewind, save & load, slow time, etc) I wouldn't be surprised to see someone beat Street Fighter 3 while parrying every single move.
Yet I think if you want to find a video that represents fighting game excellence, this one is it, even though it's trivial to come up with something that's technically harder even without tools involved. Why is that so? I'd say it's because you know it's real, not just someone who tried over and over again until everything went exactly right.
Now let's go to the opposite spectrum, say the initial Super Mario 3 video which is clearly tool assisted and that clearly has its place in history of awesome gameplay videos. But by TAS standards it's not doing anything too amazing. Certainly there are far harder levels in the custom hacked Marios (mostly Super Mario World) that involves doing even crazier stuff. But you don't hear about those too unless you're really into TAS videos. I'd argue that the Super Mario 3 video involves things that, while they're almost certainly impossible, looked like something you could do. There is nothing possible about say a TAS video of someone playing on a level with all spikes and just tossing a turtle shell and jump back on it over and over, but if you're good at Super Mario 3 the idea of jumping on all those cannonballs in the tank stage at least would appear possible.
I remember seeing a making of XYZ video video, and it says that all these amazing manuevers in a 30 second fight was done on the 1/20 scale, and since it took more than one try to even do it right, the video ended up taking around 20 hours to make when all is said and done. But I don't think anyone finds that to be impressive. It'd just be like you using an emulator to get pass a boss you otherwise cannot beat with the instant load/save function, but on a greater scale.
