Nick
Hometown: Northeast Ohio
Currently Living: Northeast Ohio
Primary Speedgame: Spyro: Year of the Dragon
Q: What's the first speedrun you ever watched? What got you into speedrunning?
A: The first speedrun I ever saw was Super Mario 64 by Siglemic, back when he used to do 24 hour streams of it. My friends, who are all big Nintendo people, started watching and told me to start. As far as getting into it, I branched out and found Spyro and Crash Bandicoot runners, though not right away. I always wanted to try those games since I replayed them a lot as a kid. I tried a couple separate times with a couple different Sprash games, but it never stuck. When I picked up Spyro the Dragon, it was the attempt that actually stuck and now I run all six games (Crash Bandicoot, Crash Bandicoot 2, Crash Bandicoot: Warped, Spyro the Dragon, Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage, and Spyro: Year of the Dragon).
Q: What was it like when you first started speedrunning? How has that changed?
A: Since I never did any offline runs, everything from the start was live. I was very easily embarrassed in the beginning even when no one was watching. Obviously, I made a lot of mistakes but I don't think I ever got mad since I expected to mess up at the start. Since then, I've gotten a lot more comfortable with screwing up and more used to streaming in general. I've gotten tilted here and there, but nothing major. Speedrunning is still fun for me, but what I want out of speedrunning has changed a bit. In the beginning, I was never sure if I'd stay committed to what I wanted to do. My initial plan was to just find some level of consistency to get a decent time in Sprashfecta. Now I look to push myself beyond what I think I can do or even just go to see how far I can take my time down.
Q: What are you currently working on?
A: Right now I'm definitely on hiatus. I've just been enjoying playing various other games. I tend to get pretty committed to whatever my current speedgame is, even to the point in which I'm afraid to pick up another game at all. But I can say Crash 2 100% is still on my mind since I never quite got to where I wanted with that. I have had this thought in the back of my mind that I want to start working on Spyro: Season of Ice 100%, but who knows if that'll ever happen.
Q: Nick, you went from an uncomfortable beginning to holding the World Record for Sprashfecta. Can you tell us a bit about that journey?
A: That was essentially a perfect storm. I was at a very nice point in my life where I had a large amount of free time. When I started, I was finishing college and just had two part time jobs. After college, I worked both jobs, but it was only about 30ish hours a week. That, combined with some easier classes for my last semesters, gave me a lot of time to work with the games.
As far as the actual journey, I can say I had a lot of fun along the way. While I only played the six games for the majority of that period, I never really felt bored or burnt out. Streaming and the communities helped a lot with that. I met a ton of awesome people who helped me along the way and pushed me to get faster. Every day was sort of new and exciting. I'm the type of person to usually keep low expectations for things, which helped out with starting new games as I didn't get too frustrated. By the last couple of Crash games that I learned, I definitely developed a lot more confidence in myself. I started to approach things differently and definitely experimented with the harder tricks at the end more so than the beginning. I'd say it also helped me just become a more confident person overall as well, which is probably one of my favorite takeaways so far.
Q: What is your favorite game in Sprash and your least favorite game in Sprash? How are they similar?
A: My favorite is probably Spyro: Year of the Dragon. It's the longest game that I run, but it can also be incredibly comfy for me. The game has a lot of variety with the different characters you can play and each was unique and not too unreasonable in my opinion. Agent 9 was probably my favorite part of the game. Just strafe pumping and shooting around everywhere is a ton of fun and feels good to get a good grasp on the technique.
My least favorite is Crash Bandicoot: Warped. I have a love-hate relationship with that game. I enjoy it, but never as much as the others. The amount of vehicles in the game is similar to Spyro: YotD, but they are a lot more frustrating. The game has its share of bad glitches and instability. It kind of comes off as a little bit boring at times since you have to revisit nearly every level in 105%. I think that got tiring for me.
As far as similarity, they're both the longest categories I run in the respective trilogies and have a good amount of variety within different characters in them. I feel like they both aren't incredibly popular for speedgames even though they're fun; Spyro: YotD for its length and Crash Bandicoot: Warped for its reputation as being hard and/or unfair.
Q: I've always been curious: can you explain your deal with clowns?
A: (laughing) Okay, so there's a couple parts to the whole clown thing. I used to always call things clowny when they went weird. If someone asked me how my runs went, that was usually my response: clowny. Clowny was pretty close to being my catchphrase for a while People always got a kick out of it, so it stuck around. I also call myself names when I mess up, and since then, I've tried to get creative with it. I've probably called myself idiotboy and clown a good number of times, so eventually they blended into clownboy. Eventually, I associated it with my avatar, and then of course it had to become an emote.
Q: Who's another non-Sprash speedrunner that you admire and why?
A: I've always liked Ennopp112. He's ran Majora's Mask for a long time now. I like how he is consistent in what he plays and I like his sense of humor. He has a unique, almost deadpan, way of delivering jokes or funny lines that adds to what he says. I always knew what I was getting myself into when I watched him. He interacted with chat a good amount, saying hi to people if they said it or holding conversations, but it was never over the top and you could tell his focus was on the game. The piano playing was always nice too. The consistency aspect is something I've tried to mimic, but it's a bit different with six unique games. In my head, it works well enough because they're all related.
Q: How do you think our generation of gamers will incorporate video games (and speedrunning) into middle and old age? Where do you see speedrunning going in the future?
A: I feel like there will be some falling off as people age. People grow up and take on more responsibilities and have less time for this kind of stuff. That being said though, I don't see it totally leaving any of our lives. Video games and speedrunning draw people back pretty often. A lot of people will claim to quit or take breaks only to come back and pick up where they left off. I could see that being true for a full lifespan. Nostalgia is a strong feeling, whether it's the form of nostalgia for the old games that you used to play or even for the nostalgia of the feeling you have when you are speedrunning. I feel like there will be a continuation of it as people age, but I don't see people going as hard as they used to. One other thing is speedrunning, and video games in general, has brought a lot of people together. People, myself included, have met a lot of new friends, even meeting them in person and keeping in touch. I could see a lot of those friendships persisting through peoples' lives, which is a really cool thought.
I feel like speedrunning will only continue to grow. Marathons and events help bring in new people to all kinds of games. As I said before, nostalgia is pretty strong. A lot of current speedrunners run a game that was a big part of their childhood. As more people grow up, I'm sure many games that are currently new will have that same effect on the next generation of speedrunners.
Q: Lastly, is there anybody who you'd like to shout out or plug their stream?
A: www.twitch.tv/iateyourpie/subscribe
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A: (laughing) Really though, I would have such an extensive list I don't know if I could just single anyone else out. Everyone from the Sprash community is fantastic as well as a bunch of others I've made friends with from countless other communities.
Thanks, Nick.
God.
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