【Randy Spears Archives】

Every second matters when it comes to speedrunning through video games. And where seconds are Randy Spears Archivesconcerned, console choices and even language choices are vital to shaving off precious time.

Language matters to speedrunners because, sometimes, the difference means there's less text to scroll through. Sometimes the voice acting goes by a little quicker. Or sometimes the local version of the game happens to run smoother or has unique time-saving bugs.

One of the latest crazes in speedrunning exemplifies this perfectly.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild can be played in a bunch of different languages, and one speedrunner did a side-by-side speed comparison of them using one of the game's opening monologues. It turns out the German version goes by quickest:

The difference in time between the German version and English (the slowest version) is about 13 seconds, which is a large chunk of time to lose right at the start of the game. All the top Breath of the Wildspeedrunners know this, so many of them run the game in German even if they can't read the language.

SEE ALSO: The history of 'Mario Kart 64' world records, glitches and all

Speedrunners aren't in it to read every line of dialogue. Even if they don't know that "Neues Spiel" translates to "New Game," they've restarted so many times after bad starts that selecting it becomes an instinct.

Not all games run more quickly in German specifically, though. Check out this language comparison for Rayman 3, where the Spanish version wraps up the quickest while German comes second-to-last.

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One of the most popular games in speedrunning, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, famously used the Chinese version of the Nintendo 64 game for the "any percent" category -- speedruns where you do anything you can to get to the credits, usually skipping large parts of the game. The issue with that is you can't select Chinese when playing on a standard Ocarina of TimeNintendo 64 cartridge. You need the Chinese version of Ocarina of Time, and that's only playable on the Chinese version of the Nintendo 64: The iQue Player.

Up until Ocarina of Timewas available to play on the Wii's virtual console, serious "any percent" speedrunners of the 3D Zeldagame needed to purchase an iQue from China if they wanted to have a chance at breaking the world record. This is because the iQue's Chinese text is faster than other languages and the game has faster loading times.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

The iQue was developed in 2003, seven years after the release of the Nintendo 64, and remained the console of choice for Ocarina of Time"any percent" speedruns for a long time even after the game came out on the Wii virtual console in 2007.

Nowadays, though, the top 10 runners in Ocarina of Time's any percent category all got there using the Wii virtual console's Japanese version of the game. That version has a specific glitch not replicable in the iQue's version of the game, and the Japanese text runs faster than all the other virtual console languages.

Meanwhile, the 100 percent category for Ocarina of Timeis primarily played on the original Nintendo 64 in Japanese. Yep. Just because a version of a game works the best in one speedrunning category doesn't mean it will work best in others.

So, Breath of the Wild's fastest language is German, and the Wii U version of the game happens to have faster loading times than the Nintendo Switch (according to the scene's runners, the Wii U version saves about 30 seconds of time). So why are there currently two speedrunners in the top five for the "any percent" category playing non-German versions?

The Wii U is only playable in the region you buy it in

Region-locking. The Wii U is only playable in the region you buy it in (unless its jailbroken), partially thanks to the limitations of region-specific video formats. One format -- NTSC -- is used in the Americas and parts of East Asia. The other format -- PAL -- is used in Europe, Africa, most of Asia, and part of South America. The German language is not available on NTSC Wii U consoles, so instead of jailbreaking their console or buying a PAL console, some speedrunners will just stick to the next best language.

That's why Ikkitrix, who broke the Breath of the Wild"any percent" world record with a 45:30 time on Monday, played the game in French. He held the record for a little over a day until two German-version players took the title away, knocking Ikkitrix down to third while ChaoticAce took first.

Ikkitrix's personal best is nearly two minutes away from beating ChaoticAce's world record of 43:33. Investing the time or money into being able to play in German probably won't be worth it until Ikkitrix can better optimize his route and get within seconds of the world record.

Too bad the game doesn't run faster on the Switch, which doesn't have region locking. This whole thing would be a lot easier if it were.

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