For the first time in three years, there's a new route in the fastest The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time speedrunning category, and it comes down to an unlikely savior: the Wii U.
Any% runs of Ocarina of Time are under four minutes these days, thanks to a particular way to exploit the game's code that runners call Stale Reference Manipulation, or SRM. The technique used in any% OoT speedruns is called the Lightnode SRM, which allows players to alter the game's memory based on the characters of the save game filenames.
Back in 2021, a method was found that let you use Lightnode SRM to instantly warp to the game's credits from the starting area of Kokiri Forest. Boom - four-minute speedrun. But this particular technique was only possible with the Wii Virtual Console version of Ocarina of Time, thanks to a bug in how the system's N64 emulation works. As a result, Wii became the platform of choice for most of the game's any% speedrunners, since it was the only place you could use this particular Lightnode SRM technique.
But as MrCheeze - a member of the Zelda speedrunning community who's been instrumental in devising strategies like this - explains on Reddit, the Wii isn't actually the best place to speedrun Ocarina of Time. Rather, the ideal platform is the Wii U. That's because the Wii U N64 emulator achieves much better frame rates than the Wii, and over the course of the four-minute OoT speedrun, the reduced lag on Wii U could theoretically save you as much as two seconds over the Wii version.
Again, the particular SRM technique used on the Wii VC is only possible thanks to a bug in the emulator. But now, after three straight years of runners using this same technique, MrCheeze has managed to find an SRM filename that works on Wii U. If you want to see the technique in action, you can check out the video above from runner Malicia - the first to set a new personal best with the new discovery. MrCheeze also has a more detailed technical breakdown of the new technique on Mastodon.
Whether we see a new OoT any% world record on Wii U is up in the air for now, since runners will have to decide if they're willing to switch to a whole different platform for a potential two second time save. But there's another advantage to the Wii U for this speedrun: the TV remote button. Yeah, remember how the Wii U came out when it seemed like every game console needed to double as a way to control your cable box? Now that option is finally useful.
Triggering the appropriate Lightnode SRM requires an extremely precise input on the analog stick. The Wii U can take analog stick input from multiple controllers at once, but one input will override the other - unless that second input is on a Wii U gamepad with the remote control menu up, which pauses controller inputs. So, in theory, you could use a rubber band or some other implement to hold the gamepad's analog stick in exactly the place you need it, bring up the remote menu, use another controller to play the game, and then deactivate the remote screen, instantly giving you the exact input needed to finish off the trick.
The video below from bradyONE shows how it all works, and it makes a very difficult part of the Lightnode SRM route much easier to execute. There's just one problem: it might not be legal. The current rules for OoT speedrunning note that "throughout the duration of any speedrun, you are only allowed to use one controller with one analog mapping per controller port. In other words, you may not switch controllers, switch mappings, change calibration, or toggle on/off calibration or mappings during your run."
With that in mind, the controller manipulation part of the Wii U run is currently banned, but that's been the topic of a fair amount of debate in OoT speedrunning circles. Allowing the Wii U technique would violate the current rules against controller swapping, but this is also just the default behavior of the console. That's the question the community is going to have to unpack for the next phase of the game's speedrunning scene.
For now, though, this is the first major development in the OoT any% run in three years, and that alone is cause for excitement. Never underestimate the speedrunning community's ability to keep giving old games new life.
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