YMMV / Summoning Salt

• Broken Base:
  • His refusal to take on games he lacks familiarity with. Some think it's fine since it means Salt will be more adept at what he's covering. Others think he is limiting himself because of a problem that could easily be solved by reaching out to speedrunning community leaders. After Barrier Skip, long regarded by many as the Holy Grail of not just The Wind Waker, but speedrunning itself, was solved, this only heated up, since Salt not playing much Zelda (other than the earliest Zelda games) means he won't address one of the biggest breakthroughs in speedrunning. Despite making videos about Mario and Pokémon for example, he has yet to make videos about Kirby for example, despite Kirby games primarily being in the same genre, made by the same company (though Kirby is co-owned by HAL Laboratory alongside Nintendo), and are on the same platforms as Mario. On the other hand, his tunnel vision and his relatively low output (about a half-dozen videos per year) have enabled many other content creators to get into what might otherwise be considered his niche and do quite well for themselves.
  • "Mario Kart 64: The Quest for World Record Perfection" focuses on Matthias attempting to get all 32 world records in Mario Kart 64, and numerous other speedrunners forming the "Anti-1.000 alliance" to keep that benchmark out of his hands, and the video tells a history of Matthias getting to 31/32 but unable to claim the final record before someone beats one of his previous ones, and he's never able to attain perfection. Some viewers felt the Anti alliance was a group of speedrunners "ganging up" on another runner who was trying to achieve something special and they kept pulling the rug out from under him out of jealousy and embarrassment. Others feel that Matthias' behavior during this time (cheeky use of emojis, being overly friendly with his rivals) show that he was a smug upstart who was trying to embarrass the rest of the community and make them jealous, as he kept proving that he could beat them over and over. For the record, Matthias and most of the members of the Anti alliance viewed each other as Worthy Opponents and there was respect among them, it was all done in the spirit of friendly competition, and some viewers feel that way too. And this is all without getting into the controversies that emerged over Dan Burbank (see Harsher in Hindsight below).
• Crowning Moment of Awesome: Every world record Summoning Salt has covered is usually beaten in the weeks afterward. The sole exception to this was one of his earliest videos, which tackled the "Punch-Out Blindfolded" world record. Over three years later, he decided to just do it himself.
• Crowning Music of Awesome: Summoning Salt has a pretty consistent library of go to tracks, but a few specific ones tend to pop up when something amazing is about to happen. Usually combined with a Hard-Work Montage.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: As much as this can be applied to a documentary series, Summoning Salt's watchers have especially gotten attached to the Punch-Out!! speedrunner Matt Turk, especially his surprise mention in the Contra video.
• Funny Moments:
  • The "frame rule" is an important concept in several games, so Summoning Salt often has to explain it. The most common analogy is like a bus that arrives and leaves every few frames (meaning that if, for example, something happens every 21 frames, you don't save any time whether you arrive 1 frame before it happens or 20 frames before). In "The History of Super Mario Bros. 2," he instead talks about a "4 Wheeled Vehicle of Transportation."
  • In "The History of Super Mario 64 16 Star," Summoning Salt mentions at one point that the world record was in good shape aside from one issue: at the time, it had been roughly two years since anyone with a silly username held the record. He proceeds to give examples of usernames he considers to be sufficiently goofy, such as "xx_420_blazit_xx" and "Shivering Erotic King Banana," before segueing into talking about new record holder Slipperynip without changing his tone at all.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Mario Kart 64: The Quest for World Record Perfection is kind of hard to watch nowadays. A lot of viewers got frustrated at the Anti 1.0 Alliance for continuously knocking down Matthias Rustemeyer under the guise of competition born out of "human nature" when many viewers instead saw it as them being jealous of his skills and trying to spite him. Then one of Matthias' rivals, Dan Burbank, took the 32/32 by unhoarding a bunch of world records.^note He did his world record times off-stream so people wouldn't try to challenge them, unlike Matthias, who submitted his times as soon as he got them. Dan later came out and revealed that as people had perceived with the Anti 1.0 Alliance before, he hoarded world record times so that he wouldn't have to worry about others trying to take his times from him because he just really wanted that champion title. This caused a massive uproar in the Mario Kart 64 speedrunning community, with many going so far as to accuse Dan of cheating just to spite Matthias, and calling for him to be banned. Matthias also felt incredibly betrayed and hurt to the point of retiring from the speedrunning scene, though he would return several months later and begin breaking records again.
• Memetic Badass: That man's name? Matt Turk.
• Memetic Mutation: "...it's as if a bus arrives every 21 frames." ^ExplanationMany games on the Nintendo Entertainment System, most notably Super Mario Bros., check to see if the player has completed a level every several frames as opposed to every single one, something speedrunners have dubbed the "frame rule" system. Top-level Super Mario Bros. runner darbian once compared it to waiting for a bus; if you get to the stop right before a bus is about to arrive you'll barely have to wait at all, whereas even if you got there just a little too late, you'll have to wait for the next one to come, and the amount of time you can save is dependent on which of these "buses" you catch. Since Salt wants to explain frame rules for any new viewers who aren't familiar with them he'll reference this analogy whenever the subject comes up in a video, which has led fans to treat it as his Once an Episode Catchphrase. This has also caused him to start varying it up in later videos, like comparing the doors in Castlevania to a train that arrives every 16 frames, or Birdo's eggs in Super Mario Bros. 2 to a "four-wheeled vehicle of transportation" that departs every 256.
• Sweet Dreams Fuel: Summoning Salt's soothing voice, and the Awesome Music featured in his videos, means that many viewers find him surprisingly relaxing to watch and listen to, despite how tense (though obviously quite low staked) the subject matter can be.

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