- 著者
-
James Newman
- 出版者
- Japanese Association for Digital Humanities
- 雑誌
- Journal of the Japanese Association for Digital Humanities (ISSN:21887276)
- 巻号頁・発行日
- vol.4, no.1, pp.7-36, 2019-08-30 (Released:2019-08-29)
- 参考文献数
- 52
- 被引用文献数
-
2
This article focuses on Nintendo’s influential and much-celebrated 1998 videogame
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (hereafter OoT). In particular, it explores
the often unexpectedly creative and wholly transformative ways in the game is
played by ‘speedrunners.’ Seeking to race through the game as quickly as
possible, speedrunners play in a distinctive way that combines mastery of
performance execution with a deep knowledge of the game’s operation and how its
systems may be exploited. Speedrunning performances are creative because they
involve astonishingly detailed investigations of the minutiae of game behaviors.
They are transformative because they disrupt and even invert much-vaunted
aspects of the game as sequences that slow down progress are circumvented. As
such, what would otherwise class as crucial moments in the storyline, key
character development and even locales, are not only raced through but are
actively skipped. Compared with the game’s narrative, the connectivity of its
spaces, and the complex but clearly mapped passage of time as set out in
Nintendo’s officially-endorsed ‘Strategy Guides’ (see Buchanan et al 1998;
Hollinger et al 1998; Loe and Guess 1998), the OoT speedrun constructs an
altogether different game with vastly altered priorities. And so, the offer to,
‘Join legendary hero Link as he journeys across Hyrule, and even through time,
to thwart the plans of Ganondorf.’ (Nintendo 2017), is recast as a breakneck
dash to the closing credits sequence evading and avoiding all but the essential
moments of gameplay.