I can't believe this but it's true. In kings quest IV . The character that wants to marry the playable character(the blonde princess named rosella) which rossella doesn't like at all is NAMED EDGAR. HOW .
In the bad ending, they get married but she faints after he kisses her but in the good ending even though the fairy queen turns him into a normal man. SHE STILL WONT BE WHIT HIM. Damn, Edgar gets rejected in every universe ain't he? If you know any other characters named Edgar who wanted love and never got it pls tell me.
Shout out to this video otherwise I wouldn't know this game even existed
I bet that one of the computer nerds who made this game watched at some point Electric Dreams and got the idea for the name. The game was released in 1988 and Electric Dreams was out in 1984.
There are a couple of speedrun history YouTubers I've been watching lately—Summoning Salt, the 700-pound gorilla of speedrun history videos, and OneShortEye, who I suppose would be a couple ounces if we continue that metaphor.
There are two interlocked differences between Salt and Eye: Eye focuses on classic adventure games, particularly Sierra games, and he's an active adventure game speedrunner. One side effect of this is that Eye regularly gets interviews with the speedrunners in his video, because he knows them. All of this, I think, contributes to the biggest difference I notice in the tone of their videos.
Speedrunning is an oxymoronic activity, a cooperative competition. Definitionally, it's an effort to reach the lowest time, to beat everyone else's score. However, more progress is made by the community discovering new tricks that everyone can use once demonstrated than by individual runners getting better at the game. That "paradox" is part of what I find interesting about speedrunning!
Broadly speaking, Summoning Salt's videos frame the history of a speedrun as a competition between different runners, trying to surpass each other, while OneShortEye's frame it as a competition between the community and the game. It's not about Lumophile and UrQuan and RetroTKS competing over who can do the best, it's about all of them discovering how to best conquer the game.
And I don't think this is because Eye covers adventure games and Salt (mostly) covers racing games, platformers, and Punch-Out! Playing a game at a top speedrunner level is just different than playing casually, especially for games designed to be played slowly and thoughtfully. When speedrunning Space Quest, you know all (non-RNG-based) inputs you'll make long before you make them—but the same is true of Mario Kart! In both cases, the skill comes from inputting them correctly, as quickly as possible.
And OneShortEye points this out. He points out how certain runners are skilled at certain things, both at finding new exploits and at execution, some in general and some focused on specific games. Summoning Salt will occasionally note that one player is "more skilled" than others, but aside from the odd button-masher, I can't recall him ever explaining what skills set one speedrunner ahead of others.
Let me repeat that. OneShortEye puts more focus on the skills possessed by individual runners, but his videos frame speedrunning as a communal challenge rather than an individual competition.
Why? Well, part of it is just that the adventure game speedrunning community is tighter-knit. speedrun.com only lists a couple dozen speedrunners of the King's Quest series, fewer than run specifically All Night Nippon Super Mario Brothers, a game you've probably only heard about from that one jan Misali video. It's easier to find a feeling of community when most of the speedrunners in a video share a Discord server.
But it's also easier to find a feeling of community when you look. Even if Summoning Salt covered a game with a community the size of OneShortEye's, he wouldn't show as much of that community, because for the most part, Salt doesn't do interviews. He looks at the stats, digs through old community posts, and presents his findings.
To be clear, I'm not saying this is a bad way to make videos. It works! I like his videos! But it also means that Salt's personal voice is very strong, shaping the video and its "message" even more than it would if he "just" wrote, narrated, and edited everything. And also, AFAIK, Salt is not a speedrunner—or at least, not a speedrunner who shows up in the middle of videos to claim a world record.
{EDIT: It turns out he actually is a speedrunner. I still think my thesis holds, though.}
I'm not sure what the alchemy is here. Some of it is OneShortEye's personal beliefs about speedrunning, which he had explicitly stated even before he started making videos. Some of it is that the people he interviews also share those beliefs. But I think some of it is that Eye has that insider's view, that he knows what it's like to be a speedrunner, that he embraces it.
But then, I'm biased. I also think speedrunners compete against the game, not each other. And I wish more people thought of it that way!
A chat with game developer, Paul, Korman, the creator of the retro adventure game, The Phantom Fellows, and Jeremy Blum, tabletop gaming developer, as we discuss game development and a documentary made about Paul and the game as it was being made and marketed. We also talk about the making of the Rocketeer pixelart game I've been working on.
A chat with game developer, Paul, Korman, the creator of the retro adventure game, The Phantom Fellows, as he discusses game development and a documentary made about him and the game as it was being made and marketed.
