AGDQ 2020 Vods You Should Watch

AGDQ 2020 concluded on Sunday and they finished with a whopping 3.1 million dollars for the prevent cancer foundation!  GDQ holds a special place in my heart with it being the event that inspired this very website and while the last couple of years haven't really held my attention too well, this year really knocked it out of the park.  Here are a couple of the runs (that I caught live) that I think you should check out once they get uploaded to YouTube in no particular order

1. Animorphs

Strictly speaking I don't think this was a part of the Awful Games block that they include every year but every crappy game they did a run of this year was highly entertaining.  This run, however, had me snort laughing at my office computer like a lunatic.  The commentary from the runner was funny, the crowd was super high energy and there was a part where the entire room is chanting "PUNCH THE SQUID!" over and over during a combat sequence.  Bonkers game, bonkers run, worth a watch 

2. Trauma Center New Blood

I love the Trauma Center games, a series about weird anime surgery where ALIENS HAVE TAKEN OVER HIS BODY and doctors that can slow down or freeze time using nothing but the power of raw concentration.  The only thing more bonkers than the plot of these games is the INSANE level of skill put forward by the runner who was donning a nice set of scrubs during the run.  Not only did he play the game and play it fast, but he managed to get an XS rank (the highest) on most of the missions.  If you don't know anything about TC then it might be a little confusing but if you even have a passing knowledge of this game its extremely easy to tell just how incredibly skilled and precise this runner was.

3. Ocarina of Time 100%

Just when I think OoT couldn't get any more broken someone comes along and proves me very wrong.  The 100% run this year had some extra thing in its category that I think was called "no source requirement", meaning that the runner was not obliged to go to each location in the game to actually get the items he needed to fulfill the 100% requirement.  This means he's using bottles to write spritual stones in his inventory, duping NPCs to get heart containers, all sorts of far out stuff.  I remember watching the any% run of this game being done in 20 minutes or so way back when and thinking "damn, you probably aren't getting crazier than that" only to have my jaw completely on the ground every year the play this game.  It was followed up by a glitch showcase as well which was equal parts interesting and hilarious.  

4. Super Mario World "One Mind"

Some of you may have heard of doing a game "2 players one controller" where one guy takes the buttons and one guy takes the movement and they must sync up their gameplay in order to achieve victory.  I even did a 2p1c marathon with my good buddy Pithoui a while back!  One Mind however is a different beast entirely.  It's a rom hack where each player is using their own pad but they are both controlling a single Mario.  Every so often the sprite will switch between the Mario sprite and the Luigi sprite to indicate which player is in control so when he's red its p1 and when he's green its p2.  The idea is that if you are of "one mind" then the run won't look any different from any other SMW 11 Exits run but if you try to do anything even slightly different it's going to start screwing things up.  Also when I say he swaps, I don't mean every couple of seconds or something, I mean he's swapping CONSTANTLY at high speeds.  It's a really interesting run and I can't quite explain it well so just go check it out for yourself.

5. Super Metroid Impossible

The finale run of the event and the title really isn't kidding when it says "impossible".  This is such an intense run that I don't really want to say any more about it, it's basically the Kaizo Mario of Metroid but it seems that some of the stuff in that game makes Kaizo Mario look like child's play.  It stands out for me because, I'll be honest with you, I don't give a rats ass about Super Metroid speed running and yet when I saw this run in motion I COULD. NOT. bring myself to look away.  It was so intense that I even clapped wildly at my TV when he finished, I just couldn't contain myself.

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So there's five runs to start you off, go and dig through those VODs on YouTube or Twitch or whatever and find some other games you like.  There's a whole bunch of runs that I caught live that I've not mentioned in this list that were awesome and probably a whole bunch that I missed live that I'm going to catch up with as soon as I hit "post"

Roll on SGDQ, I can't wait!

Game Idea: Survival Horror Surgery

So I’ve been watching a guy on YouTube recently who goes by the name of NakeyJakey. He’s one of those sort of analysis, video essay channels and the guy who hosts it is very funny, just search up his name and check him out. On his channel he has a series of videos called “Games that should bang” where he talks about two games that have ideas in them that he thinks would work well together. So while I was at work spacing out into my monitor on my slow day I had my own games that should bang idea and I’d like to share it with you. 

Survival Horror is getting a bit of time in the spotlight as of late with the success of the remake of Resident Evil 2 and its well deserved since it’s an extremely good remake. One genre however that doesn’t get enough love is the surgery simulator. Surgeon Simulator on PC gave people a fair bit of entertainment but the true king of the genre is Trauma Center. 

Trauma Center is a game where you play as a surgeon and it starts out fairly mundane but at the end of the game you’re fighting super parasites, diffusing bombs and fighting global bio terrorism, it’s great. It was originally released for the DS but had some great entries on the Wii and one on the Wii U, if you can get your hands on them you should absolutely try them out. 

So how do you get a game out of a survival horror and an action puzzle surgery game? Well if we imagine it as if Trauma Center and Resident Evil has a cross over game, I imagine it as a sort of maybe open world games where S.TA.R.S accompanied by Derek Stiles would go into an infected area where they might be a person or group of people infected with T, G, Las Plagas, I dunno and you have to uninfect them. You’d either have to escort the doctor, the sick or clear out an area Resi 4, 5, RE2make style and then round of the mission with a Trauma Center style surgery sequence. As you go you’d have to find samples to do medical research into cures or vaccines to stay ahead of whatever the threat was and maybe other parties would be attacking or trying to steal from your home base. There could even be big RE style bosses where instead of having a big glowing fuck me eye on their shoulder, you’d have to stun them and then get them under the knife in a sort of tag battle type deal. 

To be honest the idea is probably shit, I’m no developer, but I just want to see more games like Trauma Center and if there was some wacky cross over with something that has a plot (very loosely) based in pharmaceutical science it might work quite well. Feel free to steal the idea and make it not shit, just gimme an Easter egg somewhere in the game