Speed Run Races! A surprisingly fun past time

If you have been paying any attention to the stream, you may have noticed that a great deal of my free time has been taken up by speed running various games.  However only very recently have I taken up racing these games and I've found it to be rather enjoyable so today I thought I'd just share my first experiences with racing.

The site used for racing is called Speed Runs Live and through the magic of an IRC chat room players from all over come together to discuss games and perform speed run races.  Now going in I was extremely apprehensive because the majority of video game communities are complete trash.

Take DotA for example, if you suck at that game, people rage at you and throw all manner of insults which doesn't exactly do much to make you want to learn how to play and get good.  Even when you play the Vs Bot mode, which is designed for new players to learn the game, people STILL rage at you, it's a load of shit.

Now with speed running it's something different.  Now mainly I've been speed running Hotline Miami and They Bleed Pixels, and while I don't hold any records I've gotten pretty good at those games.  However, the game I started to race with was Megaman X, a game I started running a week ago.

Now I suck at Megaman X, it's a tough game to run and there is so much going on and so much to remember that I find it rather difficult.  So I hop on Speed Runs Live with my buddy, set up a race and start racing. 

Now I'm getting SMASHED, and people are more than welcome to come and see the suckage happen live on my twitch channel but none of the aforementioned shit slinging went down.  In fact, the opposite, people don't care if you suck, it's just not a big deal.  If you suck, then people will help you out, give you tips and offer advice.  I had people from the IRC in my chat room laughing along with me and telling me not to give up when I fucked up a skip and lost a bunch of time.  Racing Megaman X, despite my suckage was a truly enjoyable experience.

So to anyone out there looking to get into speed running but are afraid of "not being good enough" or whatever, it doesn't matter.  Just pick a game, get some splits and join the fun and the community will be there to help you and enhance the fun rather than berate you for your lack of skill or knowledge of the game.

Seriously, come race me at Megaman X sometime, you're guaranteed to win.