I assume everyone who had a chance at beating enough records to claim the bounty read it and understood
I am not sure if I could have beat 7 anyways but I probably would have only responded if successful so I assume people read it and just didn't respond because they weren't successful at beating enough runs(not aware of any runs maybe someone did beat some and just didn't respond)
To call Ness 6:16 a "Free" record gives you a good idea of the difficulty of claiming this bounty; I assume the difficulty scared everyone away from trying or responding
I'd say more that it was a bounty to beat 7 records that took years to accomplish in like 3 months for 50$. Absolutely not worth the trouble. Ness was beaten already, just never submitted but yeah I guess it made sense to call it the easiest run to beat. "Free" was still a big exaggeration !
Just noticed people talking about this in the last couple of weeks, so I'll explain more about why I made this.
To start, this game has 36 "main" categories for Classic mode (12 characters, 3 difficulties). As a result, it is impossible to optimize every single category. Most categories are far from optimal, and I strongly believe a strong player could easily beat them (Fray proved this with Ness over this last Summer 2021). Yet a lot of people were claiming that my runs were "godlike", and too good to beat, which I felt was completely inaccurate. I had already quit running the game at the time due to being bullied out of it (mostly by runners who wanted WR and saw me as the runner who could prevent them from getting it, or take it away if they did get it, notably Entei64). I also left the smash 64 speedrunning community as they did nothing about the bullying for the entire 3 years it was happening. So I wasn't going to be beating any of my runs to show anyone otherwise.
So I decided to put this bounty. The goal was to get a strong competitive player, better than me, to speedrun the game, and beat this bounty. My whole goal was to get someone to show everyone that my runs were not the godlike runs that everyone seems to think they are, and many are very much beatable. The other reason was to try to encourage people to run the game in general, and increase competition in speedruns of the game. Everything was for good intent, and to try to support a community I had already left. I was low on money at the time, in my final years of University, so I couldn't really afford to put a large amount of money on the line, so that's why it was $50.
Another reason I made this bounty, a personal reason I don't think I told many people, was to try to encourage other strong players to beat my WR runs, as I hoped that if that were to happen, it would reduce the amount of bullying I received, as my runs were no longer the "WR" runs to beat.
The way it was received was the complete opposite. It was memed by the smash 64 speedrunning community for the entire time. It was memed by the competitive 64 community. Something I made for good intent was basically taken and used against me. Nobody attempted to beat a single run as far as I was aware, and the bounty basically expired without a single run beaten. Had someone beaten 2-3 runs, I would have given them part or all of the bounty for being willing to take on the challenge and put effort into it, but nobody bothered, and instead everyone decided to meme it. And given everything else that was going on in the community as explained earlier, an attempt to try to support and grow a community I left just made things worse for me.
Fast forward to a few weeks ago in late November 2021, two years after I initially created the bounty, I decided to try out this challenge myself, giving myself a one month timeline instead of the original 3 months in the bounty. I had not touched the majority of the categories in over 2-3 years, so I was coming in extremely rusty. The way people spoke when I said I was taking on this challenge in only 1 month, it seemed like nobody thought I would have a chance to beat it.
The first night, I beat Fox. The second night, I beat Samus and Jigglypuff. The third night, I beat Ness. 4 PBs in 3 nights. I then did Pikachu attempts for a couple of streams, but shortly afterwards took a week break, as I got busy with IRL stuff. When I came back, the very next stream, I beat Pikachu, Mario, and Yoshi (the bounty time for Yoshi, not my actual PB, as I PB'd in the Summer). So I beat 7/12 characters in less than 2 weeks, including a 1 week break. It effectively took me less than a week of effort for me to beat this bounty. On top of that, I didn't necessarily pick the easiest characters to beat, but the ones I felt like running at the time. Had I picked the easiest, I could have maybe beaten this sooner. The whole time, some people doubted I could beat the bounty, let alone some of the characters I was trying to beat.
If it took me less than a week of effort for me to beat this bounty, then I hope that shows that this bounty was not the "impossible" challenge people thought it was. Any strong competitive player could have beaten this bounty rather easily. And while this may sound stupid, I did take it personally when some people, most notably nearly the entire Smash 64 speedrunning community, memed the bounty that was simply meant to grow their own community even after I left it. I'm happy I beat it, especially in less than 2 weeks (and only effectively a week of effort), as I feel I defended and validated the entire intent of the bounty, even if only to myself. However, I don't think the general community will see it that way, and I feel this may be a permanent meme I'm stuck with.
That's basically my side of the whole bounty.
My successful attempts:
Fox:
Samus:
Jigglypuff:
Ness:
Pikachu:
Mario:
Yoshi:
@pikashy Man… can’t believe how cruel people can get. As someone who’s been bullied myself, I give you my condolences to how you were treated back in 2020, especially when you made the bounty. It’s important to treat others the way you want to be treated, something I know all too well can be a huge problem in the Internet age.
