A fairly interesting past couple of weeks. After playing the level on and off since mid March, I've finally slayed Clemens' (last?) untied. I should've gotten the slay much earlier, but I kept choking the mine throw over and over on every WR pacer I had. Surprisingly this felt a lot easier and more relaxed to play for than 0:25 old strat, which I'd attribute to more time for the hands to relax when doing the weird pause buffering strategy instead of climbing up the drain after the mine pickup in full speed. Good one to get, and with that I passed Boss in all time PD WR count with 222 WRs! No plans to play any other PD levels in the near future, but we'll see if that changes. I've been enjoying some Control 00A lately and feel like 4:01 is overdue.

Another highlight was the Matchplay tournament; the first serious one I participated in since its inception in 2020. The last day with four back to back matches with Marc and Clemens was intense and mentally draining but extremely satisfying. I enjoyed it so much that I'll try to participate next year. I wrote my full experience writeup and suggestions for the next year on the forums here, and I'll also shill my "Isran Cup randomizer" while I'm at it (which still needs a description, but the jist of it is you have random objectives, cheats, etc., while following the "one level per player" format during a regular match).

And speaking of, if all goes well, Calle and I will be doing a live Matchplay in Sweden during ESA! We submitted an exhibition run last weekend, where I got some of the most insane times during a match (Fac 45, Silo 101, B2 21). We don't have a date yet, but if the submission is accepted, we'll be doing the run sometime between August 4th and 7th LIVE at the venue. Calle & I will probably hang out; anyone in the Malmo vicinity is also welcome to hang out!

I'm not dead! I've been busy with some side projects and "real life" lately, so I haven't been playing much. I realized recently that I'm only one Perfect Dark world record away from passing Bryan Bosshardt in all time WR count, so I might boot up the game soon and go for a random world record. We shall see...

BUT, inspired by Goose's Hidden Geography Lesson in Perfect Dark video, I decided to vibecode create a world map listing all (or at least, most) fictional GoldenEye and Perfect Dark main locations and some lore behind them. Check the page out over here. You can toggle the locations for each game, draw distances, view the real life equivalent inspired locations on Google Maps, and learn some cool details. Of course, if you have anything interesting to add, or think something should be corrected (some locations I've speculated based on my research), let me know via comment here or the form on the right panel of the page! Just note that the page is probably not optimized or even viewable on a phone.

Oh, and new PD challenge added to the challenges page called 'Outside Job' if you enjoy that kind of thing!

Title shameless stolen from an epic YouTube comment in Goose's "1:10:00 has been broken video!" What a crazy week; I originally intended to play Aztec 00 Agent for a 1:29 to break the barrier (to no avail, great level as always!) before this wacky R-lean strategy dropped out of nowhere and I knew I had to jump on the goldrush quick because of the bounties at stake why not try to regain an untied sweep on Train for the first time since 2010? I was incredibly late to the party in getting my first warp, with my frustration encapsulated in this fairly embarrassing comment on the day the strat was announced that I will share for all to see:

Eventually I figured out I was doing the leans wrong. Once I had that sorted out I warped 5+ times in a row, got keen, and knew it was just a matter of, or perhaps race against, time. Unfortunately I had one of the busiest work weeks of my life, with a 15 hour day on Friday. Nonetheless I did an 8 hour stream on Saturday where I was able to clutch out an incredibly fast warp on a fairly fast start. Because that was my first "THIS IS IT" run with this strategy, I had no idea what to expect. I was shook by how unexpected the warp was and knew I had an untied in the bag, but seeing 0:50 was almost as astonishing as seeing the 1:01 endscreen back in 2007. Achieving it live also meant I could be a nice little post-run commentary. ;) Happy to have gotten that one live after getting my previous two untieds offstream (Train SA 1:21 & Bunker 2 SA 0:37).

Shoutouts to Calle and Henrik for optimizing the strats and grinding respectively, and Onslatt for actualizing an absurd strat 28 years after the game's release. Even though I'm sad one of the greatest skill tests in the level has been completely killed, this is natural progression of the game and it's a significant breakthrough (up to 7s cut on an Agent level!) that gets us closer to the mythical 1:08:59, something I will talk about in a future blog post. The last 3+ second skip on Agent was back in 2010 when Clemens discovered a new Aztec Agent strategy, so this is a pretty gigantic deal.

Will I continue for lower? Probably. Back to back 0:49s on Train and Jungle would look epic, and that would put me 2 seconds away from sub 19 total Agent time. I think I'll probably take a short break from the level for now though, and perhaps return to it after New Year. What could the other two seconds be? I'm not sure, but there's now more incentive to play levels I put on the backburner. Archives Agent 0:15 perhaps? Statue Agent 2:18? Perhaps even something actually insane... we shall see...

But I should really get back to Surface 1 Secret Agent 1:46. This is the second time I've been distracted from that grind to play for something else, and we can't let it creep up the all-time LSU rankings!