Speedrunners are available all kinds, centered on all genres of gaming. However there’s a large contingent of them who give attention to older Nintendo video games and different classic titles you may’ve seen within the oft-opened cupboard of an leisure system throughout the 80s and 90s, saved alongside VHS gamers and stacks of tapes.
That’s the vibe speedrunner/speedrunning historian Summoning Salt goes for along with his new undertaking: A collection of VHS tapes containing a few of his high YouTube movies.
Maybe finest referred to as a high speedrunning recordholder for the 1987 Nintendo recreation Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!, Summoning Salt can also be a constant uploader of documentary-style movies that chronicle the historical past of speedrunning in sure video games, in addition to fellow speedrunners’ rises to success. He’s been making stated documentaries since 2017, and now has over 2 million subscribers on YouTube.Subscribe to get the most recent creator newsSubscribe
He introduced the VHS undertaking in a June 19 video that additionally featured him revealing his face for the primary time in his eight-year YouTube profession. (He normally seems by way of voiceover.) He says that’s not going to be a daily factor; him showing on digicam was simply to advertise the inaugural installment of the VHS collection.
The primary VHS is a remaster of his 2023 YouTube video The Historical past of Halo 2 World Data, edited to 4:3 so it’s playable on an old-school TV. It comes packaged similar to the VHS tapes of yesteryear: customized shiny field artwork on a cardboard sleeve with a completely usable teal-colored tape inside.
The runtime? 59 minutes, because of somewhat further content material that “[shows] off what’s occurred to the world file for the reason that authentic launch,” Summoning Salt stated. “The one place to observe that’s on this tape.”
Why do VHS, almost 20 years after it went out of common use? Summoning Salt has a easy rationalization: “I really like bodily media, and I really like the nostalgia of VHS. That is one thing I’ve needed to do for a very long time.”
“I wish to an entire bunch of those going ahead, with all my traditional movies getting a launch,” he added.
However that’ll solely occur if this preliminary VHS is successful. Summoning Salt is promoting them for $34.99 every (the equal of about twenty bucks when Halo 2 got here out in 2004, and about $13.50 in 1990, when VHSes had been actually popping). That pre-production sale interval solely lasts two weeks, till July 3, after which viewers must wait between two and three months whereas the tapes are made and shipped to them. If that appears like a very long time, bear in mind in the event you noticed Jurassic Park in theaters in 1993, again when theater-exclusive home windows had been nonetheless a factor, you’d have to attend six months or extra for it to come back to residence video.
You possibly can try Summoning Salt’s undertaking on his web site. We right here at Tubefilter at all times have an eye fixed out for fascinating creator endeavors, and this one is a singular technique to have a good time the simmering nostalgia that’s baked into speedrunning’s bones. We dig it.
