The Incredible Speedrun History of Zelda: The Wind Waker
Вставка
- Опубліковано 9 лют 2025
- Wind Waker is a very broken game. But where did this all start? And how did the World Record Speedrun drop by nearly 5 hours? That is what we are covering today, in the World Record Progression of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
Follow Our Twitter: / lowestpercent
Edited by: @zayloox
Voiced by: @Linkus7
Thank you for watching everyone!
I’ve dedicated the past 9 years of my life to this game, and I am very happy to be able to share this games history and highlights!
I really hope you enjoyed the video as much as I enjoyed making it ^^
these are true gamer hours you are uploading in, respek +1
I'm shitting in my actual pants right now dude
Love this video! It’s thanks to you that I got into wind waker at all, it’s my favourite Zelda game by far.
@@missbeckykmusic you havent watched 1 second of it
I got the notification for this while watching one of your wind waker speedruns lmaooo
Was thinking "hey this guy sounds a lot like linkus" for the entire video only to get to the end and realize the voice is in fact linkus
I was thrown off by him mentioning himself in third person lmao
Love how Linkus just mentions himself at 14:33
It's pretty common for speedrunners to causally mention themselves in these kinds of videos
@@SemiHypercube funny thing is after that, Linkus refers to himself in first person every time after that
@Druppelkat that's exactly what he did at the aforementioned timestamp
Plot twist: Myself is a different speedrunner 🤔
It's third person narration.
"when a fly comes into your room, it distracts you but doesn't threaten you." very poetic Linkus
only threatens your run
Oh man, this is going to be great. It's been five years since barrier skip and I'd love to hear everything that's changed.
Only 3 years since barrier skip
HD is technically a different game
Ikr
@@speedrunner1763 Ignore the little b*tch
@@OpossumPartyy they are different games with different barrier skips found years apart...
@@kylerclarke2689 🤓🤓🤓
From like 6 hours to around 53 minutes, that's such a massive improvement
Meanwhile OoT is like 10 minutes in any% if at all
@@thelvadam2884 LMAO its 4 minutes now crazy
@@eu_brawl1451 4 Minutes? Holy shit !
@@eu_brawl1451 i know its awesome
¹1
I didn't know AloaKirby was French, so when he hit the record and started speaking in French I laughed out of surprise
Nope, he’s Swiss 😂
I didn't even realize Barrier Skip was possible in the original until now. I remember hearing it was an Wind Waker HD exclusive trick.
I was so confused the first time I actually saw someone pull it off because I apparently misunderstood an early explanation of how the barrier worked. My understanding of it was that it was an entire volume that would push and damage link, even if he got into it.
yeah I remember first hearing about from Taran from Linus Tech Tips video on it
31:31 *Translation from French, for all those wondering:*
"I really don't care, about doing a good Ganondorf!
Where are you, where you at, where you at?
You're here!
Let's goooooooo!
And so? The middle Puppet Ganon Skip? Impossible ?
Waaah. Depends. Depends for who! Eh. Eh!
Eh, that wouldn't be... It wouldn't happen to be..."
More like "You're all here! You're all you're all you're all... You're all here!
I understood it better in the original French. I do not speak French.
it sounds like you put this through an ai, this is very innacurate
This feels like a very timely video for the 20 year anniversary of the game and 10-ish year anniversary for when the speedrun started really evolving
Glad this channel is still making videos! I feel like it brings a lot of different communities together and creates a deeper level of appreciation.
I remember watching these speed runs while they were at the 4:30 mark on twitch. Even waking up at 4 in the morning to see a new world record. This was a crazy nostalgia trip for me. I checked in every once in a while and had seen the record kept getting more and more ridiculous so thank you for showing the path to the sub 1 hour. So cool to see.
Anyone remember the Helmaroc long hover?
I remember the first time I ever learned about barrier skip; it was a video called “ The Legend of the Barrier Skip - The Holy Grail of Zelda speedrunning”
It really got me into watching speedruns and these sorts of “history of speedrun” videos
Same!!!!
The idea of trying to deload the barrier by having too many things loaded for it to spawn is pretty clever. I wonder if it could be used for any other games, or for stuff like a button chalanges.
depends heavily on the game
a lot of games just always assume that memory allocation succeeds -- they assume there's always enough memory -- so if it fails, they'll read and write to null and... probably crash. some games may check for allocation failures, but that's a very difficult error to recover from: typically, as a programmer, you need memory to do... well, much of anything, so if the problem is that you don't _have_ memory, it's often not worth trying anything but dump some debugging info to a log file and then deliberately crash.
if a game skips loading objects if allocation fails, or if the hardware just makes writes to null fail silently (i.e. no crash), then it all comes down to how the game's memory heap works, and whether you can consistently predict it
i wouldn't expect it to be possible in more modern games. heaps have gotten more complex, with some designs making wind waker's shenanigans harder or impossible just as a side effect of the ways they're more efficient
A trick like that exists in ocarina of time where the tombstone blocking Sun’s Song grotto can be deloaded.
Ross actually did that in one of his Mario Maker 2 levels
HD runners: hey, sorry you guys don’t have item sliding to do barrier skip, but I’m sure you’ll find a way to build up enough speed somehow!
GameCube runners: we’ve developed a twenty minute long lethally precise eldritch ritual to erase it from existence for daring to block our path.
HD runners: …um.
GameCube runners: oh wait we can just drop a bomb lol.
I love this type of videos that go in depth with the history of mechanics/tricks involved in speedruns
I would say the actual strongest defense system in videogames are coordinates checks, like the one for the Great Plateau in BotW.
"Have the paraglider or 99% of the game isn't playable"
Or just not loading in a zone at all until a progression flag is reached
I would say so, except it should be ensured impossible to actually legitimately leave before even thinking about that.
@@AkameGaKillfan777 then totk is "the paraglider is completely missable"
@@abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzsus Can you just face Ganondorf whenever then? Because at the very least, you need it to reach the Rito dubgeon.
I can’t think of anyone I know who feels more fit to explain windwaker speedruns
KlydeStorm's name brought me back. Rare to see someone that found so many groundbreaking glitches for various speedruns while also being an S-tier memer (You know "Luigi wins by doing absolutely nothing" and "When Falcon Punches collide"? That was them.)
Linkus was my intro into Wind Waker speed running. Watching you at GDQ was magic
hey linkus, i really enjoyed watching your summary on wind wakers speedrunnig history. honestly watching all these runs again made me a bit emotional as i spent hours as a kid following narcissa, demon, ace, gymnast and you speedrunning this game. i think some of the moments in this video like the barrier skip 101, memory corruption route or sub 1 hour mark are just absolutely iconic moments in speedrunnig overall and i was really happy to relive these memories for a bit. i hope we get to see more videos on this channel, absolutely love the videos that get put on here!! have a good one
+1 Same
This is some crazy nostalgia. I got into speed running via Siglemic’s SM64 Marathon in 2013(?) and then heard about the WW runs and watched them soon after. I watched as often as I could from about 2014-2016, including demoon’s first sub 4 at 17:18 live. Thanks for putting this altogether!
@te.legrammeLowestPercent hello fellow human 🤖
Mad respect for Demon, man was there from the beginning and he just kept coming back and taking back his record
Man, I remember your (Linkus7) grind when barrier skip was introduced. Some of the most fun speedrun memories. Thanks.
I love this channel because it shows how people work so hard to do the least they have to.
Excellent video as always from lowest percent. One thing I would love to see that is not typically seen in speed running history videos is more technical information on Glitches techniques and TAS speed runners that find these glitches. Can’t wait to see more
14:33 casually name dropping yourself is crazy
Fantastic video! Definetly one of my favourite nintendo speedruns so it's super cool getting a video on it.
Wind Waker speedruns will always hold a special place in my heart. Narcissa's runs back in the day were my introduction to speedrunning as a teenager when storage absolutely blew (and still does blow) my mind.
+1
Glad to see this channel getting more attention again!
Great video. The speedrun community for Wind Waker has been a joy to follow for many years.
14:22 The person clapping with a rainbow wiggler is iconic
It took me a minute to realise where I recognise that voice from. Nice work gent, happy to have you with us.
this brings back so many memories. i spent a lot of time in 2012/2013 watching early TWW speedruns. it's so cool to see how far the run has come.
Having followed wind waker speedruns since 2012, it really has been a crazy journey.
One of the most interesting speedrun history video I’ve seen, thank you Linkus7 and the editor if that was not you
I always love it when the speakers have to reference themselves in the videos
It’s like “wait a minute that’s you!”
wind waker is probably my favorite zelda speed game to watch besides maybe BOTW so seeing it grow this much over the years is fascinating
Damn that Forest Water trick sounds so inconceivably difficult.
Like, not only is it frame perfect, but the frame in question has no telegraphing or really any way to know it's coming.
You have to perfectly time a 20 minute interval to the exact frame? That sounds borderline impossible tbh.
I wasn't aware that this trick existed, and I truly cannot fathom how anyone could possibly do it reliably.
Was confused for a second because barrier skip was found way earlier than 2019, but then I realized this video is only talking about WWSD not HD lol
So good to hear Jiano and Narcissa get recognized. Those were the good old days!
Wonder where they are now
miss this channel, I need my fix of bizarre speedruns
Merry Christmas glad to see this channel coming back. X
25:00 this is the moment I realized it was linkus narrating... Man I'm oblivious I did this with Smant too...
This channel is pure joy.. please keep uploading guys, you're the bests !
Speed Running:The art of spending a lot of time in games to spend not a lot of time in games
great video! i remember back when i played the wind waker hd remake and heard about barrier skip for the first time, hearing all this history is amazing and the editing is v well done
Please do more game speedrun history videos!!! I love the ones like this where you go in complete depth on speedrunning history!!!
Thank you for addressing Narcissa correctly. It's such a low bar but I see so many UA-camrs screw it up (sometimes due to ignorance, sometimes due to malice) that it's a breath of fresh air to see somebody get it right for once
I love the community support and celebration! You’re a rockstar linkus
Thank you for documenting speedruns for all of these games.
I'm surprised you didn't go into the details about how barrier skip worked prior to the bomb push strat
It's actually pretty cool knowing how recent is the history of this game's speedrunning
This was one of the best, well done video I've seen in a while. I wish I watched it when it came out.
great video, touches on all the important bits while remaining incredibly concise. good job 👍🏻
Glad to hear there’s actually a skip to get around the barrier. As a kid I tried for hours to bypass it 😭
The thing I remember about the strat at 12:00 was a stream where Narcissa was practicing it and someone asked if it was worth doing. She said "It saves time so yes, but I expect to lose 70% of attempts here." For a trick so late in the game, that felt insane to me at the time, and it was one of the first times I realized how intense speedrunning was going to get.
Also wasn't there some thing where different models of Wiis/Gamecubes had different disc read speeds which affected how this trick worked?
Great video! I discovered Speedrunning pretty late and I appreciate I can learn more about its history through these videos
Streets 112 will NEVER get old, thank you for keeping it alive Linkus ❤
"infinite soup glitch" ... I love speed running
The Wind Waker is never over, is it? SD is now faster than HD, partly thanks to one of the silliest re-discoveries! Very fitting for TWW. Linkus has a video explaining the current route.
I once found an item duplication glitch by accident in Minecraft Pocket Edition around 10 years ago. I went to use a furnace in my main survival world, but then accidentally put my stack of logs in, I believe in the output slot. I realized this quickly and almost immediately took them out, then my game closed itself.
When I opened the game again and went back to my survival world, my logs had been duplicated. Then I tried the same thing with a diamond and got the same result (I don't want to risk losing too many of those if it doesn't work). Then I kind of went crazy. Then eventually it got patched.
I love seeing the moments where people break wr and they’re just so excited or so tired
I'm surprised about no mention on the discovery of the original barrier skip you mention by Girtana1 in 2017.
That aside, this was a fantastic video.
Yeah. Felt like a missed opportunity to mention Wind Waker HD and its symbiotic speedrunning relationship with the GameCube original. I get that this was GameCube-focused, but the HD barrier skip definitely galvanized the community to replicate it in GCN (and we even see HD footage of the item slide strat in this video).
I think its already covered pretty in-depth in another video on the channel, so its kind of redundant here. I think.
As someone who mainly just follows oot speedrunning, its interesting to know Narcissa was also a legend in WW
Such a great vid, love hearing Linkus and Gymnast together :)
im so excited you guys are posting again on lowest percent!
Poor Ganondorf, his skull was wrecked an unhealthy amount of times throughout this video :’p
it’s always a good day when lowest percent uploads
Man, that 2013 GDQ footage brings me back. I think that was the first event I watched. Loved that grassroots feel at the time. I miss Blueglass' laugh.
This is insane. I just watched Linkus' history of windwaker HD speedruns last night because I was craving some speedrun content, and this comes out today. Sweet!
I am so happy to see more from you again.
honestly, This game has been one of my favorite games to watch being speedran
Wind Waker soundtrack is the only one ever to come remotely close to Ocarina of Time. Even though it’s known for its cheerful bright vibes it’s actually one of the deepest and darkest stories of the whole franchise. The story, lore, music, characters, companion, etc… It’s absolutely amazing and I find it to be one of the most memorable Zelda experiences of all time. I was 6 years old when it first came out.
I'm amazed it took so long to figure out the Tingle Tuner can be used in Ganon's Castle by simply unplugging it and plunging it back in
probably could have mentioned how berrier skip had already been found in the hd version, since i got kinda confused for a minute there.
I'll never forget the day barrier skip was found. People were losing their minds.
Wind waker was actually considered bad? What???
I'm so surprised by that, that's actually insane. It was so good for a gc title, and the cel shaded effect made it look so clean compared to the n64 titles.
14:32 oh, I wonder who that guy is
25:30 if i decided to swallow that drink 1 second earlier i would have been snorting it out of my nose in laughter at that glitch
Having this narrated by Mr. It's only Frame Perfect himself was the cherry on top
Babe wake up Lowest Percent just uploaded a new video
Man zelda speed runs are something truly special. The most dedicated most insane people working for years to exploit the tiniest flaw to gain the smallest amount of time.
I didn't even have any doubt, I knew linkus was voicing it when I saw the thumbnail lol
I just started playing the HD version of the game recently, so this was a treat to see it pop up in my subscriptions feed! Also another lowest percent video is always great!
Just a quick correction note. Demon's Windwaker time using Manual superswim was set in july 5th of 2018 not 2015. but yeah that killed the run until a viable Barrier skip was found
Bring this back!
OMG THE CHANNEL STILL LIVES YESSSS
I love the 007 legendary speedrun reference casually thrown in!
While I know hardware modification is a huge nono in speedrunning for a level playing field (an example that I might be remembering wrong was a case where someone had opened and filed down a nub in their controller so they could push buttons simultaneously in a James Bond game), it feels strange for me to see a field of people who simultaneously go 'oh yeah man, GLITCHES!' and 'wait, is it even legal to use an actual game mechanic?'
As soon as I saw the Thumbnail I knew this was gonna have been made by Linkus7 :) looking forward to watching the video!
"hours and hours of content" yeah, hours of trying to get past the fortress at the start as a kid. Damn was that level hard
as someone who needed like a year to finish that game the first time..
I've always stared at that portal to Hyrule as a moment begging to be glitched into early.
amazing video, I loved the content of the channel
speedruns are so much fun
Love the Ryan Lovkwood impersonation when you skipped 105, if only it was a 113 skip, but alas can't be too perfect can we.
And yes you are a F Legend
Great video! Learned a lot from it. I could watch these all day. I run mirrors edge and a few others, and haven't played any of these games besides BOTW but seeing why people have discovered in other games always amazes me.
Small thing but I appreciate how you used the correct name and pronouns for her. You might be surprised at how often people don't, and it makes me feel comfortable in this community as a trans woman to have you setting an example of respecting the identities of trans people. A lot of the speedrunning community doesn't, and it's sad especially considering how much trans people have done for different runs in a variety of games. when popular people don't it genuinely does influence people and create a shittier community that attacks us for no reason. So thank you 💕
Oh, I was wondering why she looks like a man. Thanks for explaining!
@@fronthal157she transitioned after these videos were taken
I always love when this channel uploads.
Me when new lowest percent video: 🎉
Love the Channel! Always nice to see a new upload
I remember being in the chat tons of times with Gymnast86 doing "counting streams" it was hilarious. And then suddenly... Oops it just takes 1 or 2 bombs no more counting to 1000.