Bomb Rush Cyberfunk Community Races Towards 50 Minute Barrier

Released on August 18th, Team Reptile’s Bomb Rush Cyberfunk (BRC) took the internet by storm with its flashy visual style, 3D platformer flare, and amazing soundtrack. The game, heavily inspired by the likes of Jet Set Radio and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, tasks the player with going through the city of New Amsterdam to go “All City”.

With 5 story chapters, each one facing an opposing street crew, the early Any% runs saw players spraying graffiti with very little more. However, runners soon found the most important tech in the run, with a trick known as the zip even catching the eyes of casual players.

Zips were immediately tested, and many unique use cases were found. Be it basic movement or huge skips, they proved to be important aspects of the run. One of the biggest skips was found just 3 days into the game’s life.

Chapter 5 of BRC finds you facing the crew Futurism. However, it was discovered by @ZumoDePapaya that the story trigger to start the final boss sequence is always active far away into Mataan, the final level. Using zips, it was found to be possible to get to this trigger from the very start of the chapter. This was a 20 minute timesave, skipping a ton of story content. A setup was soon found after by @Xyphles, Zumo, and I.

https://twitter.com/shovelclaws/status/1693788196927058038

This skip showed the true potential for zips, and began the search for more skips. Soon, the community found ways to enter the mall early in chapter 3, skip the last half of the prologue, and beyond.

The game had taken off, but the record stood at 1:16:53 by @JackieNewguy and then 1:16:48 by @kitcarson. How did the run get so much shorter? Well, some help from the developers over at Team Reptile helped out. They updated the game, and in the patch came a change that saved 7 minutes: cutscenes that could be skipped would be skipped 3 seconds faster.

On top of this cutscene skip change, a new skip was made real by a change in a respawn trigger. At the start of Chapter 4, the game wants you to find the Flesh Prince to provide some medical attention to the main character. Afterwards, you’d be off to Pyramid Island to fight against Devil Theory, the fourth crew.

Patch 1.0.19864 changed a respawn trigger on Pyramid Island, which allowed us to entirely skip the Flesh Prince sequence by voiding out as we loaded into the Pyramid Island docks. If done correctly, you’d respawn on the island, and the story would play out as normal. These two tricks instantly dropped the record to a 1:07:08.

The community rallied, with the sub hour in sight. Following a ton of graffiti reroutes, new skips such as Nightmare 1, Nightmare 2, and Baseball, and movement optimization, the community quickly closed in, with records dropping minutes by the day.

Finally, the bullet that allowed sub-hour hit BRC when user @Ninja_Cookie discovered a skip that allowed us to skip a multiple-minute section of the early game. In order to skip the prologue, runners used an out-of-bounds to hit a level transition trigger. It was found that if you hit the trigger and paused at the same time (frame-precise), you’d load into the next level.

This instantly gave runners the boost they needed, and @kitcarson, @Storied, and @ItzBytez would race to get the sub hour first.

Then, on September 6th, Storied would tap against the glass with a time of 1:00:32. kitcarson would post his own cursed run, clocking in with a time of 1:00:10. Bytez would get the closest, with a run with a final time of 1 hour exactly. Tensions were high and the community was eager to see who would close out the race.

And then, Bytez claimed the crown, grabbing himself a 58:37 just under 24 hours after his cursed run. Not only did Bytez get sub hour, but he skipped past the 59 minute barrier. However, he wouldn’t be alone for long: not even 15 minutes later, Storied would nab the world record back with a 57:20. But even kitcarson wouldn’t be out of the sub hour club for long, posting a 59:06 within 2 hours of Bytez and Storied.

What had been a race to sub hour ended with the three of them coming out winners, all having the sub hour back-to-back. The community, waking up hours later, buzzed with excitement as our eyes set themself on the 50 minute barrier.

Since the sub hour, the community has left no stone unturned searching for new ways to break the game. A recent discovery, @Ninja_Cookie found a new way to zip called Zip Storage that allowed them to be done faster, easier, and more frequently: the 3 things that matter most to us! This new discovery turned some of the absolute hardest skips into easy skips with simple setups at the top level. It also allowed zips to be more ingrained into the basic movement.

After so many people dedicated so much hard work and time to breaking this game, the world record currently sits at 51:34 by Bytez, with Storied just 2 seconds behind. Sum of bests have recently gone under 50 minutes, and as of September 26th, the entire top 10 is composed of runners with times under 1 hour.

What started as a highly anticipated release, and a day 2 record of 2:34:46, has turned into one of the greatest speedruns of the year. In the wise words of community moderator @Helix, “BRC feels like it progresses a month in a week.”

With Awesome Games Done Quick 2024 around the corner, which Bytez and Storied have both submitted to, the future is looking bright for this newly released title.

If this short history lesson has you interested in the game, you can join the Discord here: https://discord.com/invite/EWCfbJDrh4.