Speedruns

About it

I always thought speedruns were cool, but I never really followed the scene closely — until I discovered TAS (Tool-Assisted Speedruns) and saw how people were doing incredible things in games: inserting code into Super Mario World, pulling off insane combos in fighting games, and so on.

That’s when I remembered a game I used to play a lot as a kid: Biker Mice from Mars. When I saw the TAS made by Baxter, I was amazed — I had no idea the game could even handle that. The camera couldn’t keep up with the character!

Out of curiosity, I looked up a human speedrun of the game — and to my surprise, it was done by a Brazilian runner, BearRtype. When I watched his run, I thought it was awesome and figured maybe I could try it myself, since I had played that game endlessly as a kid.

Around March 2021, I did my first real run — just using a timer, without recording anything — and somehow, I actually got the world record on my first try. That got me excited to learn how to record properly, understand the rules, and figure out which emulators to use.

Through that, I also discovered LDspeedruns, another runner whose streams I spent a lot of time in — asking questions and just chatting.

After a while, I managed to hold WRs in all categories for quite some time. When AlfredoSalza stepped down as moderator, I became the moderator for Biker Mice from Mars on speedrun.com, where I helped organize the leaderboard — separating Any% and 100% categories properly.

Eventually I took a step back to focus on my personal life — until a new runner named Zibraws came along and took most of my WRs. One day, I hope to come back and improve my times

To me, speedrunning in its essence is like playing a game within a game. Not because the main game is boring, but because the act of speedrunning makes you see that same game — one you’ve played countless times — from a completely different perspective. I believe the same game can be played many times, but in different ways. Speedrunning is a way to challenge yourself — to keep improving — and knowing there’s a community of people doing the same, sharing strats, times, and motivation, is something truly amazing.