Interview of Radix for the TASVideos Documentary
This interview was answered by Radix, former head of SpeedDemosArchive and early Quake speedrunner, in April 2014 over e-mail. The interviewer is our own Simo "Svimmer" Vihinen. Links and formatting were added later.
See also the full article, written up by Svimmer with his comments.
Where did you first run into TASing?
That depends on how you define it. Way back in the late 90s, Quake runners often
used a simple rocket jump script to do a few actions with a single button press. I
theorized at the time that you could just write a script to do the whole map for you, if it weren't for all that pesky random stuff. I didn't give it much thought after that until the Morimoto video in 2003.
What were your initial reactions to it?
I didn't like that it was portrayed as a legitimate play through. I had no problem with the concept though.
What was the general atmosphere like? How were others reacting to the TASes they had seen, also why?
At the time there was just the one. I think about half the people I knew at the time shared my opinion, but I'm just making that number up.
Has that atmosphere changed (amongst non-TASers)? Also, why do you think it happened?
Sure. Now it's a separate thing that people can respect, and nobody is trying to pass it off as a real playthrough anymore. It probably gets a whole different set of people interested in it, because real time running isn't for everybody, it needs fast reflexes that a TAS doesn't.
How have your own reflections changed? Why?
Personally I thought the TAS Bot at AGDQ 2014 was freaking amazing. To do some kind of buffer overflow and reprogram Super Mario World on the real hardware just blew me away. I'm not going to start downloading TASes to watch, but that's mostly because I've got a huge back log of games to play and watch.
So the article that made me wanna contact you had the following quotation: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1528811/gamers-divided-over-tool-assisted-speed-runs.jhtml "My basic thought is 'don't like them, haven't made them, don't watch them,' " said Nolan Pflug, who oversees Speed Demos Archive, a Web site that houses traditional runs. Is this a statement that you would rephrase any today? You kinda already answered this already, I know... Would it be more like 'like them, haven't made them, don't watch them' now?
I don't know as I'd go so far as to say I'd like them, but I accept them as part of the community of speed runs now.
Do you have any other favourites (you mentioned the SMW one) from amongst the TASes that you have seen.
I've seen so few. The ones at AGDQ are probably the majority of all I've seen. Of
those, SMW was my favorite for the technical aspects of reprogramming a game, but
MK64 was my favorite for showing off all the crazy skips in the game.
Did you ever use strategies or tricks in real-time running that you know originated from TASes? Can you name some games or runs that did that or TASes that did the opposite?
It's been years since I did runs, and I mostly did GameCube runs which didn't have any way to tas back when I did. I know that at the time though, GBA runs were already getting benefit from tas only tricks influencing regular plays.
If there's anything else at all that you remember, a little story or anything, that we could include in the interview, feel free to write everything you can! I can see that you might really not have anything seeing as how distanced TASes seem to be for you.
I remember years ago seeing a link to a TAS of someone who used the same input for Mega Man X and X2 at the same time, and then made the video of the play back side by side. At the time I just thought "how strange, why do that", but years later, the idea intrigues me and I wonder if it was ever done again? I guess because "2 person 1 controller" became a thing at AGDQ and it reminded me of it, though it's the sort of the opposite situation.