For this month's spotlight, we spent some time with the Prince of Persia (PoP) speedrun community. It is impossible to cover every fascinating detail about this community, but we hope this article can give a glimpse to the rest of the speedrunning world. Let’s get into it.



## Zipping



Nearly every person I spoke to in the PoP community has fond childhood memories with the original game, which was already being speedrun as early as 2000. But for a while, the community was more focused on the Sands of Time Trilogy released between 2003 and 2005.



It is impossible to talk about the history of PoP speedrunning without ‘zipping.’ Originally discovered in late-2014/early-2015, zipping takes advantage of the physics engine in the Sands trilogy to launch the player in different directions and clip through the environment.



“The depth and scope of zips was crazy so throughout the entirety of 2015 it was amazing working on this trick,” said Joee, a runner who used to go by “Heneko_”.



When the glitch was discovered, the potential seemed almost limitless. Pretty much anyone who tried could find new ways to use zipping, and this led to incredible time saves throughout the games.



In the second game of the Sands Trilogy, Warrior Within, zipping vertically can even be used to move between the game’s separate time periods. It’s not actually useful in runs, but it speaks to the breadth of possibilities the glitch provides.



At Summer Games Done Quick (SGDQ) 2015, Joee represented the PoP community with a run that, infamously, [did not go as planned.](https://www.polygon.com/2015/7/30/9073717/prince-of-persia-sands-of-time-sgdq-speedrun-henneko)



Clocking in at 16 minutes past the estimated time, pretty much everything that could go wrong did. However, while the run time was dead on arrival, the run itself was not a complete flop. 



In fact, Joee’s positive attitude through his missteps led to an increase in donations for SGDQ and showed the speedrunning world just how carefree and positive the PoP community could be.



Of course, there is more to the Sands trilogy than zipping, even if zipping gets most of the attention.



There’s the ‘first-person glitch’ discovered by epicdudeguy that allows players to teleport backward and once again clip through the environment.



“At first we found it by accident and we didn’t really know what to do with it but then we discovered later all the things you can do with it and that was really cool,” said epicdudeguy.



In 2019, when runner Jaka was still new and learning the game, he accidentally discovered a new, easy strategy in The Two Thrones that replaced a previous overly-precise run-killer.



He didn’t even realize he’d done anything important until 7eraser7, another PoP runner who was watching the stream, got really excited about the discovery.



A clip of this accidental discovery is available [here](https://www.twitch.tv/jakvrh1/clip/CredulousMistyTapirHeyGirl?filter=clips&range=all&sort=time) and while the chat messages are no longer visible with the clip, Jaka’s reaction to the revelations in chat give a strong impression of the moment.



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## PoPRuns



2016 was the first PoPRuns event, a yearly Prince of Persia marathon where the community showcases different runs and generally has a good time. In the words of 7eraser7, “the only purpose is to have fun together.”



For the past couple of PoPRuns, runner Samabam has hosted Prince of Persia-themed Dungeons and Dragons games to go along with the event. “It gives us an interesting way to interact with each other that we normally don’t since we’re usually focused on the video games,” he said.



While the event has mostly been held online, in 2019, ten community members crammed into 7eraser7’s home for a hybrid-live/online event.



“Even people who were not running the game anymore...still came,” said 7eraser7, who also thanked his girlfriend for being ok with hosting so many people at once.



“That was pretty special. I hope we can do that again sometime,” said epicdudeguy.



They are hoping to hold another partially in-person PoPRuns once the COVID-19 pandemic ends.



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## The DOS Boom



After the earliest known PoP speedrun in 2000, world records for Prince of Persia (DOS) progressed inconsistently with some segmented records here and there.



It wasn’t until June of 2015 when a runner called Cap’nClever performed the first continuous PoP DOS Any% 

record and uploaded it to Speedrun.com. He improved on the record in January of 2016, but from then on his 14:44 run remained unbeaten for more than three years.



In 2019, Prince of Persia (DOS) experienced a bump in popularity and some new runners challenged CapnClever’s World Record.



Eventually, a runner named Karlgamer took first place and that year, the creator of Prince of Persia, Jordan Mechner, included a screenshot of Karlgamer’s record in his self-published book on the making of the game.



Throughout 2020, Karlgamer continued to improve his run as new runners and glitch hunters entered the scene.

The history of the Prince of Persia (DOS Any%) was [recently detailed in a documentary by Youtuber The Otter’s Pocket](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6E07UR6vDY), but even in the few months since the video went up, the run has gotten progressed even further.



In mid-2020, a new runner called Higlak joined the community and quickly rose to the top of the DOS Any% and Any% Glitchless leaderboards.



“The second that I joined in, everyone was very helpful with any question regarding the game mechanics,” said Higlak, for whom Prince of Persia was his first speedrunning game.



It’s a testament to how much impact a new member can have on a run as well as how much well-maintained community resources and a welcoming attitude can really make a game accessible to new players.



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## The Vibe



The most common word used to describe the PoP community has been ‘welcoming.’ With resources available for nearly every game in the Prince of Persia series and an inviting vibe, the community is always happy when newcomers show an interest.



“I’m not the type of person who usually joins an online community and makes friends, but just being there and being around them it was kind of inevitable. It’s full of a lot of helpful, polite people and they’re very passionate about the hobby,” said Samabam.



Another runner, WinterThunder said, “The guys are quirky and have a big sense of humor, and are quite helpful - if you have a problem with a trick, or setting up something - ask on Discord, and the answer will come in less than 5 minutes most of the time.”



The community also has something that pretty much any good speedrun community needs, rivalry and teamwork existing side by side.



“We are against each other on the leaderboard but in reality we are against the game. So we always try to help each other,” said 7eraser7.



New glitches, strategies, and exploits are readily shared so that everyone can compete on equal footing and work together to bring the game to new heights.



“I think most of the members are concerned more about pushing the games to the limits rather than getting themselves a personal record. We just love to see the records get lower because of new strats or just by improved movement regardless of who accomplishes it,” said GMP.



“The one trick that always was my Achilles' heel was jumping the guards...Almost every guard in the game can be skipped that way, and I couldn't do the trick reliably for the longest time - until Karlgamer, who seemed to pick up the technique more readily - explained to me that the set-up is more complicated and sometimes you need to jump twice before you're in the correct position,” said WinterThunder.



Because it’s existed over several years, some community members have become less active as speedrunners while still remaining part of the community.



Originally, Joee ran the community discord server before passing ownership to another runner, toca_1. Still, Joee maintains his connection to PoP. He said, “they are just my friends now.”



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## Technology and PoP



Throughout the PoP community’s history, there has been an undercurrent of community members using technical tools to push the games to new levels.



For the Sands Trilogy, this included user Sphere writing a script to visualize game code in Blender, a popular 3D graphics software, so community members could identify potential flags and triggers for runners to take advantage of.



![](https://next.speedrun.com/static/blob/2qnyp3np.jpg)For DOS, things get even more futuristic. In January of this year, glitch hunter Crem developed an artificially intelligent bot to optimize the best routes at the time.



Eien86, another glitch hunter in the community, initially found glitches with more common methods like brute force as well as tools like CheatEngine to get inside the game’s code and find ways to take advantage of it.



With those standard approaches, eien86 was able to find skips for the 7th and 8th levels of the game which were then optimized by crem’s bot.



About applying skips to the 8th level, he said, “I didn’t have too much evidence that it would be possible but I felt like I could do it and that it could be done. And I couldn’t sleep the day before...and I worked the full day thinking about -- I need to try this. As soon as I was over with work I threw myself to it and it was such a huge rush. It’s a single frame window opportunity.”



Then in March, eien86 and crem teamed up to push crem’s bot into new frontiers. The new, collaborative version of the bot, codenamed Jaffar, is widening the scope of applications, and eien86 has plans to run the bot in a supercomputer.	



What is also incredible is how Higlak and other runners were quickly able to implement the AI-discovered strategies and optimizations into runs that have been shaved down by more than half a minute



This is both a feat of computers and a feat of humans that brings new perspective to the idea of “man vs machine.” Here the computers and the glitch hunters who programmed them are just another part of the rival-teamwork dynamic, always pushing the game to see what is possible.



---



Thank you to the PoP community for being open and excited to share their stories with us.



*Header image of community members at an in-person Prince of Persia event in 2019, used with permission from the community.*

This month, we put a spotlight on the delightful Prince of Persia community. Let's learn about the history of these speedrunners.

Spotlight: Prince of Persia Community

This month, we had the pleasure of speaking with four different women in the speedrunning community. They told us about their speedrunning tastes, the communities they’re a part of, and more. So without further ado, let’s jump in.



## t0uchan



A speedrunner and a high school teacher, t0uchan started running games in the early 2010s.



Whether she’s running games she grew up with or something that otherwise has meaning for her, she says, “everything that I run I have some sort of connection to.”



She enjoys trying new games and learning new routes and she gravitates towards games with “fast, twitchy movement.”



But the thing that makes the biggest impact on if she will run a game or not is simply whether she thinks she can get more out of it.



“Have I milked this game of all its vanilla fun and do I want to keep playing it?” she says, comparing speedrunning to another game mode like New Game Plus or Time Attack.



When it comes to communities, t0uchan says she’s met some of her best friends through different speedrunning communities. She’s happy to see the world of speedrunning becoming more connected with runners from different games connecting and turning what was once a loose web of speedrunning communities into an increasingly cohesive community.



She believes that speedrunning is best when it is inclusive and welcoming to all kinds of people.



In addition to speedrunning, t0uchan teaches high school computer science and animation classes and she admits that her students are sometimes impressed when they find out about her game records.



“I get all the cool kids,” she says.



[Check out t0uchan’s most recent record in Sonic the Hedgehog - All Emeralds - Glitchless.](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/822832542?t=0h14m22s%2F%3Ftt_content%3Dtwitch_logo)



## Amethyst_Rocks



When it comes to streaming, Amethyst plays *Super Mario World* and mods of *Super Mario World* almost exclusively.



In particular, Amethyst_Rocks enjoys Kaizo mods which are designed to push the limits of players with intricate routes that often require tons of practice to pull off correctly.



While she tends to focus more on first plays than on speedruns, certain mods will catch her attention for further practice and honing into a speedrun.



“I’m very, very picky about my speedruns,” she says.



In general, she says the main focus for most Kaizo speedruns is making it through with as few deaths as possible. For this reason, she tends to focus on shorter mods for her own runs.



Despite that preference for shorter runs, her proudest accomplishment as a runner is a 1h 19m 42s run of a mod called Grand Poo World 2.



About the first time she played it, she says, “it kicked my butt so hard.”



But something about the challenge enticed her to run it.



Amethyst is also a former geologist and though she’s a few years outside of academia, for enough channel points she’ll share a rock fact with her audience. An example:



"The oldest terrestrial material we've found on earth is 4.40 billion years old - the age of the earth, for reference, is about 4.54 billion years old."



[blob:B8CfBcCUanJ0KtC2laxXKnb35tcZBtc7KrhS5+Qqi6s0l1csiXv2KaK0i19GkEWqiZ,align=center]



## Lizstar



For Lizstar, speedrunning started as an offshoot of her interest in game collecting. Now, she says the two interests are intertwined.



“I like exploring libraries and trying to find all the interesting things that people don’t pay as much attention to,” she says.



As an extension of both passions, she has undertaken a [“Genesis Quest”](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1RsLU-DYmEPTWBEPB7vq8Ji47e3Ff9P2rohCKLp5esT8/edit#gid=0) in which she is streaming through every game ever released on the Sega Genesis. With a library of over 800 games to tackle, she is already more than halfway through.



At the end of each title, a raffle decides who in her audience will pick the next one. The quality of the games varies, to say the least, and sometimes her audience likes to stick her with some of the less polished options.



It’s all in good fun, and Lizstar actually enjoys trying the strange games.



She likes exploring lesser played titles including those that are not as well made but can still be a source of joy while allowing for some fun discussion about just how bad a game can get.



“I like trash and trash is not necessarily bad,” she says. “It’s just things that people don’t pay much attention to and kind of throw out as worthless but there’s a lot of worth in there.”



In addition to her passion for “trash,” Lizstar is passionate about the communities she has found as a runner.



“The community in general is really what lifts speedrunning up even further for me,” she says.



Lizstar has participated in multiple GDQ events. She says that more than once while practicing for the event she’s discovered new time saves (often with help from other top runners). That puts her in the chaotic but exciting position of rerouting a run while still preparing for the event.



As advice to other runners and potential runners, Lizstar encourages everyone to explore outside of their comfort zones.



She says, “I picked up multiple games to speedrun on a dare and they are some of the best games that I’ve speedran and they’ve really helped me grow my community.”



## ShesChardcore



ShesChardcore has over **3000 posted runs.**



She got into speedrunning after losing her job and getting diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.



“So bad things led to good things, essentially,” she says.



She has a preference for games that haven’t received much attention, and newly released games before anyone else has a chance to get in a run, and meme runs.



Most of the time, she focuses on cultivating new strategies and time saves.



“The technical aspects more than the actual runs themselves sort of attract me.” she says.



As an analytical person, she likes to pick apart games and see how she can push them to do strange and interesting things.



When exploring a game, she says, “I think outside the box and think can I do this or can I do that and then try it. And if the answer is yes then we probably found a time save. And if the answer is no then I think of something else to try.”



Any time she sees an empty leaderboard, ShesChardcore wants to put a time on it.



“I may not really care too much about the game but I want someone to have something to beat so if they just happen upon that page or its a game they liked as a kid or whatever. There’s something there for them to accomplish,” she says.



When it comes to meme runs where the goal is to quickly pull off a strange or silly in-game situation, one of her favorites is Hamsteak% for *Maniac Mansion* on the NES which involves putting an NPC’s hamster in a microwave and getting the player killed. [At the time of this publication, she holds the record in this category.](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/846417009?t=0h0m1s%2F%3Ftt_content%3Dtwitch_logo)



Outside of speedrunning, ShesChardcore used to bowl and has multiple perfect game rings. Comparing speedrunning and bowling, she says, “You can pause in bowling.”



In fact, she enjoys the ways speedrunning forces her to keep pushing through a run.



“It’s a bigger rush,” she says.



[blob:BRcfB9CUan3J5+prlaLqh6bNi+p7BtcYlrpSh+Hnh6bnhVWJi1hZK1UOh+cGva0E,align=center]

*View the Twitch VOD featured in the above tweet [here](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/952750403?t=0h0m2s%2F%3Ftt_content%3Dtwitch_logo)





Thank you to all of these women for taking the time to share their perspectives and experience with us. You can find out more about what each of them are up to at the following links:



t0uchan: [Twitch](https://www.twitch.tv/t0uchan/about)  

Lizstar: [Socials](https://lizstar.bemuse.link/)  

Amethyst_Rocks: [Twitch](https://www.twitch.tv/Amethyst_Rocks/about)  

ShesChardcore: [Twitch](https://www.twitch.tv/sheschardcore/about)  



Want to read about more awesome people involved in speedrunning? Check out [our feature on Bobby “TheBlacktastic” Cruz.](https://www.speedrun.com/news/596-2021-2-25-spotlight-bobby-the-blacktastic-cruz)



*Lizstar at AGDQ. Photo via Games Done Quick, photo by Brian. Shared under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/.*



In March, we spoke with four different women to discuss how they engage with speedrunning, the community, and their favorite games.

Spotlight: Four Women in Speedrunning

The greater speedrunning community is a web of smaller communities where players come together over common interests. In this series, we want to highlight communities and community members who help to make speedrunning what it is.



Bobby Cruz, aka TheBlacktastic, holds multiple records in various retro and retro-style games. 



Beyond that, he is a community moderator, a game show host for Games Done Quick, an esports event producer, and a Twitch partner. But no matter what he’s doing, Cruz brings his personal charm everywhere he goes.



In a recent record-breaking run of *Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon 2*, originally streamed at two in the morning, he slides between jokes and commentary on the game.



Occasionally he drops into both recognizable and unique character voices, noting that he dreams of becoming a voice actor.



Even exhausted and “slap-happy,” he performs the run and the stream with personability and skill.



# Getting started with speedrunning



Cruz’s interest in speedrunning can be traced back to the early 2010s when he and his local gaming friends would gather to play fighting games and watch speedruns of *Super Mario 64*.



“I always admired the amount of technical skill and patience required to dedicate one's self to the craft of speedrunning,” Cruz said.



Cruz didn’t begin posting his own runs for several years. Eventually, he started running *Castlevania: Symphony of the Night* and the rest was history.



Since then, his list of runs has only grown.



His current records include multiple first-place runs in *Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon and Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon 2*; first-place runs in the *Mega Man Legacy Collection 1 + 2* versions of *Mega Man 9* (Proto Man Category) and *Mega Man 10* (Bass Category); first place in *Castlevania: Rondo of Blood*; and multiple highly ranked runs in other games.



With as much experience as he has speedrunning, Cruz has a good idea of which kinds of games appeal to him as a runner.



“I’m extremely particular when it comes to my games,” Cruz says.



Regardless of when it was actually released, if he is going to run a game then it needs to have a retro feel with controls that are both crisp and responsive.



He says he enjoys “games that require and reward trial and error and then execution.”



In addition to his own enjoyment, Cruz wants his runs to be equally fun for his viewers.



“I always like incorporating a bit of visual spectacle because if it’s fun for me, I want it to be fun for someone else to watch,” he says.



Cruz enjoys the ways speedrunners can bring new life to older, sometimes forgotten games through exploration and mastery.



Perhaps even more than that, he loves competition.

# Cruz as a host



Over on the Games Done Quick Twitch channel, Cruz co-hosts “Super Boss Bros” with fellow speedrunner, Big Jon.



Together, Cruz and Big Jon cook up fun and categories for contestants to face-off and show off their retro speedrunning chops.



Rounds tend to last about a half-hour and usually focus on a short race like who can get to beat level 20 first in *Dr. Mario* or a timed trial to see which player can accomplish the most of a specific task in the time limit like collecting coins in *Super Mario Bros 3*.



As hosts, Cruz and Big Jon have amusing and genuine chemistry. They laugh about running animations in *The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past* randomizer, discuss the meta nature of providing commentary for *Mario Golf* in hushed golf-announcer voices, and argue whether or not a stage hazard in *Bonk’s Adventure* is a uvula.



“[Big Jon] loves the old-school, PG, weekday-night game shows and I just love the flame of competition,” Cruz says.



When it comes to the speedrunning communities he frequents, Cruz considers the retro platforming scenes to be  “extremely, really really good, wholesome communities.”



In addition to the friendships he’s found there, he also admires the spirit of solidarity in these spaces.



In fact, Cruz mentioned Castlevania4aCause, which started in 2019 as a streaming event where Castlevania-community-member Aphotic_Ktulu put together a charity marathon stream to help a community member cover some overwhelming medical bills. Since then, the event has become a recurring opportunity for the classic Castlevania community to raise money for charitable causes and other community members in need.



“I love being part of things like that and I love being around people who are doing things like that,” he says, revealing that in addition to games and competition, Cruz just cares about people plain and simple.



# The Black Cup



Outside of speedrunning, Cruz has a long-standing love for competitive fighting games.



He enjoys them so much that he produces The Black Cup, a monthly fighting game tournament series featuring different games for each installment.



Additionally, The Black Cup previously hosted the Bloodstained Speedrun Exhibition Series, so there’s something there for everyone.



The next installment of The Black Cup is set for February 28 at 3 p.m. EST.



Links to Cruz’s social media are available at [https://solo.to/theblacktastic](https://solo.to/theblacktastic).



*Header photo courtesy of Bobby Cruz.*

We're putting our February spotlight on a very busy man: Bobby "The Blacktastic" Cruz! Let's talk about what Cruz is up to and where you can follow him.

Spotlight: Bobby "The Blacktastic" Cruz

summertimealice

The moderation team has decided to halt submissions until leaderboards are properly set up. Thank you all for your patience! Please join the Discord server or use the forums to help discuss and share findings!

ENA: Dream BBQ

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1 HOUR LEFT
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# THE LEADERBOARD WILL BE LOCKED FOR 4 DAYS TO GIVE US TIME TO THINK ABOUT THE RULES, CATEGORIES ETC...

## *If we consider that the leaderboard doesn't need to stay this way anymore, we'll end the embargo early and you will finally be free to submit your runs!*

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**For the time being, if you have any questions, wanna participate in the community or offer your help for the moderation, feel free to join the Speedrun Discord Server! :**

[https://discord.gg/9bH3G9jEGs](https://discord.gg/9bH3G9jEGs)

R.E.P.O.

HASTE: Broken Worlds

Lets discuss any relevant rules and any questions before we open the leaderboards

A Game About Digging A Hole

This leaderboard is a work in progress. Be sure to check the speedrunning discord server for updates! https://discord.gg/5DzQ3bVwbC