History WebVideo / SummoningSalt

[[caption-width-right:200:Summoning Salt's channel icon.]]

* {{Speedrun}}: The topic of every video is the history of speedrunning in video games; additionally, the very first videos on the channel feature Summoning Salt's own ''VideoGame/PunchOut'' speedruns. [[invoked]]

* SitcomArchNemesis: Has a tongue-in-cheek rivalry with WebVideo/{{Bismuth}}, a fellow speedrun and gaming challenge documentary maker.

* ClusterFBomb: In "The History of Mega Man 2 World Records", speedrunner ellonija [[https://youtu.be/xNKlE5pS88E?t=2154 belts out multiple F-bombs in rapid succession]] after defeating the [[Main/ThatOneBoss Boobeam Trap]] in one of his runs, one likely reason why the video suddenly became age-restricted on [=YouTube=].

* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: When it comes down to cheaters: none. There are none regarding those who tried to cheat their way to the top, simply because they don't even deserve a modicum of attention beyond being something less of a footnote whenever they are barely mentioned.

** A recurring theme in many episodes. One of the few things Summoning Salt treats with a hint of sarcasm is hearing the runner boasting [[TemptingFate "This record is unbeatable!"]]. No matter how perfect a run seems to be, no matter how long it takes, someone will ''always'' beat that seemingly impossible time eventually. Summoning Salt also makes a point that this isn't a bad thing, much on the contrary, this is what drives people to work so hard to get new records, improve their times, or discover new tricks to make a run even faster.

** Besides the ''Punch-Out!!'' videos, Salt also makes a cameo in ''"VideoGame/MarioKartWii:'' The Ultra Shortcut Revolution", showing up in the [=TASer=] Malleo's chat to offer encouragement as he attempts to prove the Rainbow Road Ultra Shortcut can be completed with just one mushroom.
** PlayedForLaughs in ''The Hidden Shortcuts of VideoGame/MarioKartDoubleDash'' where it turns out that the runner Goomba was inspired to crack the code on Double Dash's checkpoint system after watching the above mentioned video on VideoGame/MarioKartWii and Salt refers to it as "[[SelfDeprecation some random guys video]]".

* ExpospeakGag: In "The History of ''VideoGame/SuperMarioBros2'' World Records", the recurring bus analogy for explaining frame rules is slightly changed to refer to a "4 Wheeled Vehicle of Transportation" instead.

** Any mention of framerules will inevitably cause Salt to launch into an explanation using the analogy of "imagine there's a bus that arrives every X frames to take you to the next level". In the ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaI'' video, he uses a train instead, possibly because it's not a Mario game, or possibly because even he was getting sick of the bus analogy by this point. By the time of the ''VideoGame/SuperMarioBros2'' video, he's just started calling it "a particular 4-wheeled vehicle of transportation" and never mentions it by name. In "''VideoGame/SuperMarioBros'': The Human Limit", he just inserts a clip of Darbian (who came up with the analogy in the first place) explaining it instead.

** [=FatPotatoSeal=] manages to get a run of ''Super Punch Out!!'' that's just about as close to perfection as one can get in such a luck-based game, with the absolute best possible luck on every fight except one (and that one was close) going into the final fight. Salt goes through the whole run keeping a running tally of the increasingly steeper odds to get so much good luck in a row, ending up with total odds of 1 in 2.6 ''million'' for the game to even give an opportunity this strong, to say nothing of making no mistakes going through it. All [=FatPotatoSeal=] needed to do to clinch a potentially unbeatable world record... was nail the hardest mechanical execution in the game while under ''unprecedented'' levels of pressure. He did not, totally fumbling the fight worse than a normal mistake just to add insult to injury, and achieving a choke that Salt himself describes as "heartbreaking".

** In "''VideoGame/MarioKart64'': The Quest for World Record Perfection", it's mentioned that Moo Moo Farm is the hardest track in the game to speedrun due to being the only one with a random element to it: moles pop out of holes at random, and the fastest path is over them, so you have to hope that their pattern doesn't get in your way.

** PlayedForLaughs in ''The Hidden Shortcuts of VideoGame/MarioKartDoubleDash'' where it turns out that the runner Goomba was inspired to crack the code on Double Dash's checkpoint system after watching the above mentioned VideoGame/MarioKartWii and Salt refers to it as "[[SelfDeprecation some random guys video]]".

** PlayedForLaughs in ''The Hidden Shortcuts of VideoGame/MarioKartDoubleDash'' where it turns out that the runner Goomba was inspired to crack the code on Double Dash's checkpoint system after watching the above mentioned VideoGame/MarioKartWii.

* AwesomeButImpractical: "The Hidden Shortcuts of ''VideoGame/MarioKartDoubleDash''" ends by explaining the Wario Colosseum shortcut, which is very difficult to pull off for only a tiny time save. In fact, at the time of the video's release, only one runner, Mathii, had ever managed to use the trick to save any time, and even then, only by a hundredth of a second; for everyone else, this "shortcut" actually takes longer than just driving normally.

* TheFaceless: Unlike many other streamers, Salt does not show his face at all. This means he's never attended GDQ events despite being the world-record holder for ''VideoGame/PunchOut'' and his extremely engaging speaking style (the runner-up, zallard, usually represents the community instead).

** Matthias Rustemeyer came close to being this for ''an entire community'' when he came in and started demolishing ''Mario Kart 64'' records like they were nothing. The only thing stopping him from acheiving 32 out of 32 non-shortcut records was an entire alliance of the best ''Mario Kart 64'' speedrunners ''actively conspiring against him'' and even then he always got back to 31 out of 32 no matter how many records they took from him.

* RunningGag: Any mention of framerules will inevitably cause Salt to launch into an explanation using the analogy of "imagine there's a bus that arrives every X frames to take you to the next level". In the ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaI'' video, he uses a train instead, possibly because it's not a Mario game, or possibly because even he was getting sick of the bus analogy by this point. By the time of the ''VideoGame/SuperMarioBros2'' video, he's just started calling it "a particular 4-wheeled vehicle of transportation" and never mentions it by name. In "''VideoGame/SuperMarioBros'': The Human Limit", he just inserts a clip of Darbian (who came up with the analogy in the first place) explaining it instead.

** Pidgey was on pace to break the 22:10 barrier in ''VideoGame/NewSuperMarioBrosWii'', but only just barely. As he jumped for the switch that would trigger the ending cutscene, he put down his Wii Remote so he could stop his timer... which accidentally triggered the motion controls, and therefore the Propeller Suit that Mario was wearing, causing him to fly upwards and away from the switch mere frames before he would have pressed it. Needless to say, this destroyed any chance of him breaking the barrier, but there was still a possibility that he got a world record out of it. After re-timing the run with load times removed, it was discovered that he had missed the record by ''2 frames''. Fortunately, he managed to replicate this run a mere 11 days later, this time closing it out successfully and breaking the barrier.

** [=FatPotatoSeal=] manages to get a run of ''Super Punch Out!!'' that's just about as close to perfection as one can get in such a luck-based game, with best-case luck on every fight except one (and that one was close) going into the final fight. Salt goes through the whole run keeping a running tally of the increasingly steeper odds to get so much good luck in a row, ending up with total odds of 1 in 2.6 ''million'' for the game to even give an opportunity this strong, to say nothing of making no mistakes going through it. All [=FatPotatoSeal=] needed to do to clinch a potentially unbeatable world record... was nail the hardest mechanical execution in the game while under ''unprecedented'' levels of pressure. He did not, totally fumbling the fight worse than a normal mistake just to add insult to injury, and achieving a choke that Salt himself describes as "heartbreaking".

* UnPerson: Salt has a policy of not mentioning any record-holding speedrunner who is now known to have cheated by name, and often glosses over their records entirely in his coverage. This includes the famous 17:31 ''VideoGame/SuperMario64'' 16-star run from 2008, which was discovered in 2014 to have been spliced. This is explicitly brought up in his video about the 16-star records, where he notes that for 80% of the time from 2005 to 2014, the recognized world record was held by a cheater. So he makes a point of recognizing the (retroactive) ''legitimate'' record holder, but this creates a problem: video archiving was sparse enough already prior to the mid-2010s, and obviously videos by runners who believed they did ''not'' achieve the world record were far less likely to be archived than those who did.

!!These are the tropes for Summoning Salt's [=TVTropes=] page:
* TheAce: Some speedrunners are mentioned to be far above any other player in their respective game. Their record might stand for an amazingly long time, or they may hold the top spot in many categories at the same time, but either way, they're shown to have earned the respect of their speedrunning community (as well as Summoning Salt's).
** In ''VideoGame/SuperMetroid'' the player known as "hotarubi" used to hold the world record by a large margin. At the time his run was first posted his level of play was so above his competition many claimed he was cheating and his video was held for verification for weeks. Others thought he could only be beaten by doing a segmented run[[note]]Playing separate parts of the game instead of doing it in one sitting and merging them together.[[/note]] instead of a single-segment run. It took many years until people finally caught up to his skill and beat his run.
** Matt Turk for ''Mike Tyson's Punch-Out''. He once held the world record for ''every single fight in the game'', and an entire video was dedicated to how it took the combined efforts of some of the best players in the world to beat or tie his times one by one over the course of five years. To quote the video itself: "Matt Turk's skill level was way, ''way'' beyond any other player in the world. And there was pretty much no hope in anybody else beating some of [his times]." And if that wasn't enough, while he was in the middle of setting all these records, he apparently decided to take a quick break and set a ''VideoGame/{{Contra}}'' world record as well, just for the hell of it. His reputation is such that, when Salt pranked viewers with the BaitAndSwitch during the ''VideoGame/SuperMario64'' 16-Star video (see below), many of the comments admit to being suckered in by the prank, because they fully believed that Turk could just randomly show up one day and set a milestone record on a whim for a game he doesn't even run normally.
** Matthias Rustemeyer, the subject of "''VideoGame/MarioKart64'': The Quest for World Record Perfection". Matthias holds most of the non-shortcut world records[[note]]There are 16 tracks in the game, and four world record categories for each track: fastest single lap with shortcuts, fastest 3 laps with shortcuts, fastest single lap without shortcuts, and fastest 3 laps without shortcuts; with a "shortcut" being defined as any way to skip portions of the track that was not intended by the developers. Therefore, there are 32 non-shortcut records and 54 records altogether, since 5 tracks currently don't have any known shortcuts and therefore don't have shortcut records.[[/note]], and the video chronicles his attempts at holding ''every single non-shortcut record at the same time''. Several high-level runners had to band together to form an alliance dedicated to stopping him from achieving 32/32, and they just ''barely'' managed to snatch one record away from him a short time before he got what would otherwise have been his last missing record. ''Eight times''. Needless to say, no other ''[=MK64=]'' player comes close to being as dominant at the game as Matthias to the point where some commenter's found it ''more impressive'' that he was able to constantly achieve 31/32 world records whilst having active competition than if he achieved all of the records with little competition.
** ''VideoGame/NinjaGaiden'':
*** "ohon" was, in Summoning Salt's words, "ahead of the efforts of the entire Western [Ninja Gaiden speedrunning] community". When the American record was just over 12 and a half minutes, Japanese runner ohon was almost a minute faster with a sub-12 minute run. And then when it was revealed the run was on an emulator - and, to an extent, that American speedrunner Arcus was only two seconds behind his years-old record - he recorded a run on console [[UpToEleven that beat said run by almost ten seconds]]. Additionally, said first run was even faster than previously mentioned Ace hotarubi's attempts.
*** The "speedrunning cowboy" Arcus went on to break ohon's aforementioned ''Ninja Gaiden'' record in 2016 and took his place as the game's new dominant runner. The second half of the video is dedicated entirely to his grind to push his record even lower, as no one else came close to matching his skill or dedication. For context, he managed to breach the 11:40 barrier in 2017, a feat that as of the video's publication in 2020, had yet to be accomplished by anyone else.
----> ''"For three years straight, [ohon's] 11:48 stood as more than just a world record; it symbolized near-perfection in the speedrunning community. But it had finally been broken, and now it was Arcus's turn on the top. And to put it bluntly, what Arcus did next made that 11:48 pale in comparison."''

** Depending on whom you interpret the protagonist of "Mario Kart 64: The Quest for World Record Perfection" to be. [[spoiler:Matthias Rustemeyer attempts on ''eight'' occasions to win all 32 ''Mario Kart 64'' speed records, managing to hold 31 out of 32 each time before another player manages to beat him on another course, forcing him back on the defensive. Given his tenacity it's hard not to start rooting for him, and the video clearly builds to a climax where he is ''finally'' ultimately successful... until it doesn't, and he isn't. Then it ends.]]

* UnPerson: Salt has a policy of not mentioning any record-holding speedrunner who is now known to have cheated by name, and often glosses over their records entirely in his coverage. This includes the famous 17:31 ''VideoGame/SuperMario64'' 16-star run by [=ShadowOfMyles=] from 2008, which was discovered in 2014 to have been spliced. This is explicitly brought up in his video about the 16-star records, where he notes that for 80% of the time from 2005 to 2014, the recognized world record was held by a cheater. So he makes a point of recognizing the (retroactive) ''legitimate'' record holder, but this creates a problem: video archiving was sparse enough already prior to the mid-2010s, and obviously videos by runners who believed they did ''not'' achieve the world record were far less likely to be archived than those who did.

%%* FriendlyRivalry: Matthias Rustemeyer versus the rest of the ''VideoGame/MarioKart64'' speedrunning scene. It's clear from the forum posts shown in "[[https://youtu.be/D6cpa-TvKn8 The Quest for World Record Perfection]]" that there's no animosity between them and Matthias is a popular, well-respected, and friendly member of the community. Of course, none of that made their battles over the time trial world records any less fierce.

* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: When it comes down to cheaters: none. There is none regarding those who tried to cheat their way to the top, simply because they don't even deserve a modicum of attention beyond being something less of a footnote whenever they are barely mentioned.

* AlwaysSomeoneBetter: A recurring theme in many episodes. One of the few things Summoning Salt treats with a hint of sarcasm is hearing the runner boasting [[TemptingFate "This record is unbeatable!"]]. No matter how perfect a run seems to be, no matter how long it takes, someone will ''always'' beat that seemingly impossible time eventually. Summoning Salt also makes a point that this isn't a bad thing, much on the contrary, this is what drives people to work so hard to get new records, improve their times, or discover new tricks to make a run even faster.

* ShaggyDogStory: Depending on whom you interpret the protagonist of "Mario Kart 64: The Quest for World Record Perfection" to be. [[spoiler:Matthias Rustemeyer attempts on ''eight'' occasions to win all 32 ''Mario Kart 64'' speed records, managing to hold 31 out of 32 each time before another player manages to beat him on another course, forcing him back on the defensive. Given his tenacity it's hard not to start rooting for him, and the video clearly builds to a climax where he is ''finally'' ultimately successful... until it doesn't, and he isn't. Then it ends.]]