I like games a whole bunch. Enough to where I enjoy spectating games almost as much fun as playing them. Especially meta gaming via 3 different ways: rhythm games, speedrunning (RTA & TAS), and e-sports. I'd like to share a few of my favorite videos of my spectating hobby.
I'll start with rhythm games. First is Izzy playing the song Vertex Beta on Stepmania. Stepmania is a game I've been playing for about 11 years so I'm kinda biased putting this first. It is essentially Dance Dance Revolution for the computer and you can use whatever you want for input. This song isn't anywhere close to as hard as it can get but the timing is amazing. For reference - marvelous timing is within a window of 0.0225 seconds so...yeah. This is almost inhuman.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2zjy0Ti-nQ
Next vid is Cookiezi playing The Big Black in Osu! Osu! is a computer version of Elite Beat Agents from the DS. Basically use mouse or tablet to hit circles in unison to time. Cookiezi is considered the best Osu! player in the world and there are many more videos out there if you like this one of him. This is a replay but the active leaderboard for the song is to the left as is his combo counter.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HU_S1VkG9k
DOLCE playing 嘆きの樹 on a Beatmania arcade machine. Beatmania is played with 7 keys and a turntable. By this point I think you get the point of rhythm gaming and what a human can possibly do. When you play a game long enough you can develop skills which seem impossible.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqC_lscRMVg
One more freak of nature, tho quite an old video. Still impresses. Grandmaster Tetris by TGM HOLiC. Watch until the very end if you have not seen this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwC544Z37qo
Speedrunning time! I love watching these. There are basically 2 types of speedruns. RTA and TAS. RTA stands for real time attack. This is a human playing from start to finish. Depending on the game there are different categories set by their respective communities but two easy ones to remember are any% which is beat the game as fast as possible by any means possible (except cheating) and 100% which is complete the game 100% fully or w/e the set rules are.
TAS (Tool-Assisted Speedrun) on the otherhand is COMPLETELY different and not meant to showcase skill but instead showcase the technical limitations of the game. Played on an emulator by maybe even several people, a game is slowed down and played frame by frame to near perfection using save states and rewinding, highly thoughtout route organizing, manipulating RNG (game luck), and creating a video of a speedrun that is near perfection. Show what is technically, but not humanly, possible. Again, it is for entertainment purposes and not meant to showcase skill and there is no hacking or editing in either type of run.
RTA first. You can watch dozens of people speedrun almost any game you can think of on twitch.tv or speedrunslive.com. This first vid is Cosmo playing OOT from AGDQ 2012 (speedrun marathon for charity - which is awesome) and beating it in 22 mins. He gives a good description of how OOT eventually came to be beaten in only 22 mins. The world record (WR) for this game is currently 19:20.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0M7IINwTFVw
Next is CGN playing F-Zero GX story mode, single segment, very hard. Current WR. You can see his comments that this run isn't very good which goes a lot with RTAs: WRs are always being broken. Which makes it so fun to spectate someone live beating a game as fast as possible.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BXkbXeWTg0
TAS time. This is a short intro one and goes well off the last vid. F-Zero GX, Time Attack, Lateral Shift, played by CGN again. The difference between TAS and RTA is huge in this game.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NbduA_aLT0
TAS of Super Mario 64 120 star in 1 hour and 21 mins. Pretty entertaining if you got the time to spare.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xL6VE_5PddM
TAS of Super Mario World. "Beaten" in 99 seconds. Both RTA and TAS exploit glitches to their fullest but this is an example of memory manipulation. I can't explain much more than that cause I don't freaking know wtf goes on in this video at all.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHErkex2tXg
Now on to e-sports. Not everyone's cup of tea, e-sports is basically competitive gaming with sponsors and tournaments and prize pools and w/e. I'm not very competitive but I highly enjoy watching people play competitively to the top of their ability in their chosen game. I've NEVER played starcraft or LoL or any fighting games at EVO but I love watching people play the metagame. I'll share 3 vids, 2 of which I saw live (and was freaking incredible).
Starcraft II, MVP vs Squirtle, GSL Finals. Archon Toilet. You don't have to understand starcraft at all to like this video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0eg9h4iCek
xPeke backdoor. League of Legends. Not much of a fan of the game but this was pretty exciting.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeD0nhvMzPM
One of the classics. Diago vs Justin Wong. EVO 2004.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pS5peqApgUA
Thats it for e-sports from me. Time for silly stuff since I've already spent way too much time on this post.
Automatic Mario synced to beatmania music. Hell yeah.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9J89q3Lfm7M
Midi of smw athletic theme. Wait for it. If you couldn't tell.. I like mario. I grew up with nintendo so sue me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MI4HlPUxCU
OC Remix song of The Wind Waker. Nothing special here. I like videogame music and OCremix has thousands of free remixed songs from hundreds of games.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VV2Enalo0c
A certain Super Smash video. You've probably seen it if you know anything about SSBM but IDGAF its still awesome to me. Full vid for suspense. Watch until end.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A60AjGrwEyo
That's a glimpse of my personal hobby. <3 Meta gaming and gaming in general. If none of these videos entertained you in any way then I pity you.
I'll start with rhythm games. First is Izzy playing the song Vertex Beta on Stepmania. Stepmania is a game I've been playing for about 11 years so I'm kinda biased putting this first. It is essentially Dance Dance Revolution for the computer and you can use whatever you want for input. This song isn't anywhere close to as hard as it can get but the timing is amazing. For reference - marvelous timing is within a window of 0.0225 seconds so...yeah. This is almost inhuman.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2zjy0Ti-nQ
Next vid is Cookiezi playing The Big Black in Osu! Osu! is a computer version of Elite Beat Agents from the DS. Basically use mouse or tablet to hit circles in unison to time. Cookiezi is considered the best Osu! player in the world and there are many more videos out there if you like this one of him. This is a replay but the active leaderboard for the song is to the left as is his combo counter.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HU_S1VkG9k
DOLCE playing 嘆きの樹 on a Beatmania arcade machine. Beatmania is played with 7 keys and a turntable. By this point I think you get the point of rhythm gaming and what a human can possibly do. When you play a game long enough you can develop skills which seem impossible.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqC_lscRMVg
One more freak of nature, tho quite an old video. Still impresses. Grandmaster Tetris by TGM HOLiC. Watch until the very end if you have not seen this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwC544Z37qo
Speedrunning time! I love watching these. There are basically 2 types of speedruns. RTA and TAS. RTA stands for real time attack. This is a human playing from start to finish. Depending on the game there are different categories set by their respective communities but two easy ones to remember are any% which is beat the game as fast as possible by any means possible (except cheating) and 100% which is complete the game 100% fully or w/e the set rules are.
TAS (Tool-Assisted Speedrun) on the otherhand is COMPLETELY different and not meant to showcase skill but instead showcase the technical limitations of the game. Played on an emulator by maybe even several people, a game is slowed down and played frame by frame to near perfection using save states and rewinding, highly thoughtout route organizing, manipulating RNG (game luck), and creating a video of a speedrun that is near perfection. Show what is technically, but not humanly, possible. Again, it is for entertainment purposes and not meant to showcase skill and there is no hacking or editing in either type of run.
RTA first. You can watch dozens of people speedrun almost any game you can think of on twitch.tv or speedrunslive.com. This first vid is Cosmo playing OOT from AGDQ 2012 (speedrun marathon for charity - which is awesome) and beating it in 22 mins. He gives a good description of how OOT eventually came to be beaten in only 22 mins. The world record (WR) for this game is currently 19:20.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0M7IINwTFVw
Next is CGN playing F-Zero GX story mode, single segment, very hard. Current WR. You can see his comments that this run isn't very good which goes a lot with RTAs: WRs are always being broken. Which makes it so fun to spectate someone live beating a game as fast as possible.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BXkbXeWTg0
TAS time. This is a short intro one and goes well off the last vid. F-Zero GX, Time Attack, Lateral Shift, played by CGN again. The difference between TAS and RTA is huge in this game.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NbduA_aLT0
TAS of Super Mario 64 120 star in 1 hour and 21 mins. Pretty entertaining if you got the time to spare.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xL6VE_5PddM
TAS of Super Mario World. "Beaten" in 99 seconds. Both RTA and TAS exploit glitches to their fullest but this is an example of memory manipulation. I can't explain much more than that cause I don't freaking know wtf goes on in this video at all.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHErkex2tXg
Now on to e-sports. Not everyone's cup of tea, e-sports is basically competitive gaming with sponsors and tournaments and prize pools and w/e. I'm not very competitive but I highly enjoy watching people play competitively to the top of their ability in their chosen game. I've NEVER played starcraft or LoL or any fighting games at EVO but I love watching people play the metagame. I'll share 3 vids, 2 of which I saw live (and was freaking incredible).
Starcraft II, MVP vs Squirtle, GSL Finals. Archon Toilet. You don't have to understand starcraft at all to like this video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0eg9h4iCek
xPeke backdoor. League of Legends. Not much of a fan of the game but this was pretty exciting.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeD0nhvMzPM
One of the classics. Diago vs Justin Wong. EVO 2004.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pS5peqApgUA
Thats it for e-sports from me. Time for silly stuff since I've already spent way too much time on this post.
Automatic Mario synced to beatmania music. Hell yeah.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9J89q3Lfm7M
Midi of smw athletic theme. Wait for it. If you couldn't tell.. I like mario. I grew up with nintendo so sue me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MI4HlPUxCU
OC Remix song of The Wind Waker. Nothing special here. I like videogame music and OCremix has thousands of free remixed songs from hundreds of games.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VV2Enalo0c
A certain Super Smash video. You've probably seen it if you know anything about SSBM but IDGAF its still awesome to me. Full vid for suspense. Watch until end.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A60AjGrwEyo
That's a glimpse of my personal hobby. <3 Meta gaming and gaming in general. If none of these videos entertained you in any way then I pity you.
I got to watch that play live as well! 
