1) What is your name? Where do you live?
Eric Stratmann. CT USA
2) How did you first hear of/get into timeattack videos?
Read the above posts and take a guess :)
3) What about timeattack videos captivates you? What makes it worth spending many many hours creating them?
What makes me like them is seeing how far the game can be pushed. I want to know what the perfect play is. Well, it's not just video games where I am interested in this, but that's not important (*waits for mankind to discover the perfect chess and go games*) It seems like perfection is a concept that everyone can like, so actually seeing it is amazing. Of course, sometimes the stunts and glitches are really freaking cool. Thinking of an ingenius way to get something done, or seeing it done, is great.
4) What is the process you use to start, plan, and complete a timeattack video?
First, is picking a game. While this may seem completly obvious, it is not. Any game can be time attacked, yet many of them will be boring even if played flawlessly. Some, even with slow motion and rerecords, are just to hard to do near perfectly (no I'm not talking about solar jetman >_>). Once I have decided on a game, I play through it once in real time, with some save states. Upon finishing it, I go read all of the faqs that I can on the game (or just the bigger ones for more popular games). With these in mind, I go and play the game again. I make sure I use everything I know from the faq, and try to think of things that even they did not think about. Once I have decided what to do, I go ahead and make the video. (funny how the most important part is the least detailed)
5) Which timeattack video that you've created are you most proud of? Why?
I've only created four so far, but from what I have made, my most favorite is my Umihara Kawase run with warps. The game has complicated rope physics that allow you to crazy (and hard) manuveurs. The part that I enjoyed though was the competition with Blechy, where my final movie ended up beating his by less than two seconds.
6) There seems to be some criticism/antagonism directed at the creators of timeattack videos. How do you explain this? Does this represent competing philosophies about how video games should be played?
Well, the way that I figure it, we are ruining something, but nothing important. I do admit that this makes speedruns (non-emu assisted runs) less entertaining if you only consider the final product. However, I don't feel this is the point of them. I see the speedruns more as showing the accomplishment of man, because playing the game like they do is just incredible. Seeing them leaves me in awe of the player. However, the run is not perfect. Some people don't see it this way though. They think that since these movies are better played than speedruns, it is unfair to them because we have an unfair advantage.
7) Do you consider yourself a film maker?
Eh, by defenition, yes, but in reality, no.
