The Legend of Kryssstal

(Note: If I misspell something in the game, my bad. I don't know how to spell all the stuff, just say it.)

(2nd Note: This kinda started off as a random note spot to save for a few people, but then I started going all narrative mode cause I kinda do that in a lot of my blog posts, my bad.)
(3rd Note: Na, too lazy to proofread. It's not that serious. Sorry)

Heh.

I'm sitting here right now watching Kryssstal, arguably the best A Link to the Past player ever, do a speedrun right now. She's got the current (unofficial) world record right now of... eh I don't know the number, but I know it's under 1h30m, and I want to say it's low 20s. Not sure.

It's interesting to me because not only do I hang around the speedrunning community (more specifically SpeedRunsLive, although I am kool with some SpeedDemoArchives folk), but I specifically hang around the the aLttP community. Kryssstal is folklore. She (yes she) has a ridiculous fanbase and following for rarely ever showing her gameplay. I mean, she's gotten over 500 followers on Twitch.tv and, at the time of this post, has literally NEVER streamed on there.

But this run so far is pretty intense. Right now she's in the Palace of Darkness and we've seen all sorts of different strategies. A harder take on Aramos, almost 2 cycled Lamolos, a ridiculous switch room in Hera, and do I even need to mention the double spear guard room in Arghanim's Tower? That LITERALLY looked like a snippet of Gunslinger Dante from Devil May Cry 3.

Although she's playing on emulator (which, imo helps her more than hurts) her execution is flawless. She's nailed both of her bomb jumps so far, yes both. She did a toss bomb jump in Hera, and she actually DID the Darkness bombjump. And with the crazy pointblank attacks she's been landing, it's obvious that she's drilled the everlasting daylights out of each and every room thus far.

The only thing that really hasn't been working in Kryssstal's favor so far has been luck. Here, after slaying Blind in Thieves' Town, she up +23.5 seconds on her split mainly because of minigame known as Arghanim. She got quite a lot of Blue Balls. The "Hellway" of Thieves' Town wasn't very friendly, either. Even with all this, she's still stringing together an extremely impressive run. (I mean, it's enough that I'm trying to BS a blog post as I watch. ^_^. ) But with all that being said, I blinked and Mothula got slayed. It was somewhat rough, but again, not her fault. She did everything she was supposed to, but some "bad RNG life", as one would put it, slowed her up a bit.

One thing that's not slowing her down at all is her execution. And I'm not specifically impressed by what all she is hitting but more-so of what she's not missing. I have a theory of execution that's foreign to crazy to even the higher-ups of the Fighting Game Community and the Smash Communities, so maybe it's just me to note that she hasn't missed a single key dash to this point. Maybe it's me to note that she hasn't had a single bad dash, and the few minor flubs she's had, she'd been fast enough to react before anything really happens and adjust it. She's just extremely on point in everything she does. Clearly showing she's either an execution monster or she's been playing for a long time (hint: it's the latter).

Speaking of fixing stuff, her reactions are very sharp as well. There have been quite a few times where she's been in tricky spots for one reason or another. The average person would have panicked at something simple like a tomato hopping headstrong at them. A higher up may thought to bring out the sword to safely bat it away, but Kryssstal's currently so calm that she's got the heads up to read patterns and step around stuff like that, saving the precious frames she herself harps on time and time again. (... or maybe that's somebody else who does the frame complaining. ._.)

Ice Palace? No problem. She danced through the crystal caves, slamming the bomb down as if she was doing the Hera bombjump, and proceeded to display the power of tap-dashing into Kholdstare to keep all 3 pinned down and dropping them before (I think) 3 ice blocks could rain down from the ceiling.

Impressive.

And another point of impressiveness is her knowledge~~

... oh dear.. she died. ;_; She died on the Swamp boss (WHICH BTW, THIS THING ISN'T A SWAMP, IT'S A FRIGGIN LAKE, FLOODGATE, SOMETHING... and we're doing a salty runback? Wait, no she's loading her savestate and practicing something)

But her knowledge. It's easy to say "Kryssstal is very wise about the world of aLttP", but the subtle parts of her (speed)running patterns really interest me. She's dashed across many fine pixel lines thus far in this race, practically walking on water as she grabbed the flipper, and there've been quite a few times where she's activated a trigger of some kind when she was literally a character length or more away. Those kinds of things not only take solid timing to hit buttons on the right frame, but also just knowing where they exist and when you can go for it.

The end of this run leading to the tragic end of our hero surprisingly displays yet another important
trait that makes her as amazing as people've made her out to be. Bravery. The end of that run started going sour, a stray hit here and there, slight bobbles in the menu, and slight miscues in the strategies started creeping up. Could have been focus dropping, could have just been "in the cards", but with all this, instead of pulling back and going for easier options, she actually hung a few gutsy moves out there to try to regain her momentum. In a race, you'd call that plain foolish because the reward is probably alot less than the risk but, for what was on the line right now, it was a very respectable and admirable trait to showcase. Did it pay off? Sadly it did not, but that shows that she's willing to to go to any lengths necessary to create a formidable run. Even if death becomes a possibility.

And sadly, death not only was possible, but it turned into probably and then present as Kryssstal fell face first into the depths of the Swa~~ the Parking Lot. But even if she come out of her laboratory only to stumble in front of all of us onlookers, it wasn't without before showing that she is indeed the Legend that people are striving for. Many of the avid players present constantly "WTF"'d and "...wat O_O"'d at her many marvels and feats. So many that those who missed out will hear the news of this rare event and scour her archives to find that footage that was left behind.

To take record of the showcase that was placed on many monitors.

To witness,

The Legend of Kryssstal.