When something is titled “The World’s Hardest Game,” it certainly has a lot to
live up to.
On December 15th, 2007, a 16-year-old developer named Stevie Critoph, who went by the online
alias Snubby, released a very special game to his website, snubbyland.com.
At the age of 12, he started making short flash games and cartoons, uploading much of
his work to both Newgrounds and Snubby Land to share his creative passion with the world.
His games were simple and his animations were crude, but there was certainly something special
brewing at Snubby Land creative media.
In late 2007, Snubby spent several months piecing together a project that would be very
different from anything that he had created before.
He wanted to make a flash game so difficult that calling it “The World’s Hardest Game”
wouldn’t be seen as a joke.
The objective was simple.
For 30 levels, one needed to maneuver a red square from one green zone to another, dodging
the blue, purple, and red enemies, while collecting all the yellow coins along the way.
Upon death, the player got sent back to either the beginning of the level or the last checkpoint
with all collected coins wiped away.
The game wasn’t too difficult at the start, allowing most people to quickly clear the
first few levels, but soon after, players would realize exactly what kind of monster
they were up against.
By and large, the levels only get harder as the game progresses, and the game must essentially
be completed in one sitting, as it does not save people’s progress; closing or reloading
the browser tab means starting everything over from the beginning.
If someone gave up trying to complete the last level, they would have to slog through
the first 29 levels again just to get another shot at it.
Upon completing each level, the game taunts the player with a new, snarky message, seeking
to eat away at their confidence, and as the death counter in the top right creeps higher
and higher, the immense frustration felt after failing a level just before the end is only
compounded.
The game truly pulls no punches.
Upon release, it truly may have been the most difficult, but still completable, flash game
ever created.
So, that raises the question: Who was the first player to conquer “The World’s Hardest
Game?”
Upon the game’s release, Snubby Land was a website of pretty modest size.
There were about 50 registered members who had contributed around 1,000 posts to the
forums, around 400 of which had come from Snubby himself, and about 250 that had come
from someone named mexifry895, the website’s second most-active contributor.
He would be the first to leave a comment about the game on the 22nd of December, one week
after its release, venting his frustration with level 10, a definite choke point that
is noticeably harder than all the previous levels.
The next day, someone named Ziggy claimed to make it to level 15.
Mexifry gave more updates about his progress, and after struggling with level 22, Snubby
jumped in to lend a hand:
“Just time it right.
Move between the boxes.
You move at the exact same speed as the enemies so just wait for the opening and go through.”
- Snubby
He got stuck on level 23 for three days, and after finally clearing it, he swiftly labeled
level 24 as being “impossible.”
It appeared as though the rest of the game was going to be a complete slog, but, by comparison,
it ended up being pretty smooth sailing.
On December 28th, with a final attempt session that lasted about 4 hours and recorded 689
deaths, mexifry895 became the first victor of The World’s Hardest Game.
However, the leaderboard showed that the developer was still quite a bit ahead when it came to
skill.
Mexifry urged Snubby to post the game on Newgrounds so it could get more attention; the game was
a clear hit with the few people that had the opportunity to try it out, and it certainly
had the potential to become a smashing success.
By March of 2008, the game had around 10 different victors, and someone named terrence had managed
to beat the game in just 15 deaths, 4 less than Snubby’s best.
An obvious question began to loom; was it possible for someone to conquer this titan
without dying a single time?
On March 21st, the game was published to its sponsoring website, armorgames.com, where
it was finally accessible to a broader audience.
In just 3 days, the game reached 60,000 plays, and it quickly began spreading to other prominent
websites like Newgrounds and Addicting Games.
By the end of the year, that play count was over 3,000,000.
The game’s easy-to-pick-up but tough-as-nails nature was able to swiftly hook countless
players who wanted to see how difficult The World’s “Hardest” Game truly was.
However, what happens when you mix a game that 99.9% of players give up trying to beat
with a platform that makes it trivially easy for people to access all of a game’s assets
and source code?
People hacking popular flash games and slapping them on shady websites wasn’t exactly a
new concept back in 2008, but there is no question that The World’s Hardest Game had
it worse than anything that had come before it.
Players were able to vent their frustration with the game’s difficulty by skipping straight
to the end of each level completely unharmed.
Countless people effortlessly skipped to the end and uploaded a score of “0 deaths”
to the game’s official leaderboard.
Indeed, within a week of the game being shared with the general public, the leaderboard was
completely ruined.
If someone wanted to prove that they got a 0 death completion of the game, they were
going to need to get it on video.
As I do with pretty much every single one of my videos nowadays, I spent hours searching
YouTube to try and find the earliest recordings that I could of full completions of The World’s
Hardest Game.
To probably nobody’s surprise, I found a boatload of early videos claiming to complete
the game in “0 deaths,” but were just recordings of that weird hacked version with
smiley faces drawn on all of the green areas.
Gotta love old YouTube.
There was a lot of garbage to sift through, but I was able to find what I believe to be
the first full playthrough of the game uploaded to YouTube, a 24 death completion performed
by someone named HatredCopt3r on August 2nd, 2008.
Because of time limit restrictions that existed on YouTube back in the day, Copt3r had to
speed up their completion to get it uploaded, cranking it to “2x speed” as indicated
by the title.
However, upon analyzing the video, it became pretty clear that it was actually sped up
by a factor of 1.5, making the completion a lot faster than some may have thought.
Though Copt3r hadn’t completed the game in the least amount of deaths accurately recorded,
they did unintentionally claim the record for the fastest completion with video evidence,
a time clocking in at 13:13.
The next day, they were able to cut their deaths personal best in half, completing the
game with just 12: one in level 12, one in 19, one in 23, one in 25, two in 26, one in 28,
two in 29, and two in 30.
This run was also sped up 1.5x, and slowing it back down to the proper speed yields a
final time of 12:23, a new world record.
Copt3r’s completions of the game were certainly impressive, but it was obvious that there
was still some room to improve, both death-wise and time-wise.
Thankfully, on October 18th, 2008, the game would finally get the completion that it deserved,
as someone named Hachimen became the first to record a 0 death completion of the World’s
Hardest Game.
Surpassing millions of other players, Hachimen had become the master of the World’s Hardest
Game, completing the game with 0 deaths 10 months after its release.
If you have ever seen a video of this game on YouTube before, you have almost certainly
watched either this playthrough or another one that we will get to shortly, as it currently
holds the record for the most viewed video of the game with over 17 million well-deserved
views.
Hachimen eased into each level with composure, executing mostly pre-determined movements
with surgical precision without going too overboard.
Time was somewhat of the essence, but speed was not the ultimate goal; keeping that death
counter unchanged was all that Hachimen needed to do to qualify the playthrough as perfection.
If someone wanted to prove that they were the new champion of The World’s Hardest
Game, simply completing the game with 0 deaths was no longer going to cut it.
Hachimen’s completion just happened to clock in at 8 minutes and 37 seconds.
Now, it was time to see how much faster the game could get.
In July of 2008, Snubby released the next installment in the WHG series, The World’s
Hardest Game 2, featuring 50 total levels, some new mechanics, a heightened level of
difficulty, and music that was composed by none other than the first installment’s
first victor, mexifry895.
The game is so challenging that, to this day, nobody has managed to complete it in 0 deaths,
with the current Glitchless world record of 12:28 by Danicker still having 7 of them.
While both the sequel and the original continued to receive massive amounts of attention going
into 2009, it seemed like nobody was able to top Hachimen’s record of 8:37.
People may have thought that there wasn’t much left to accomplish with the game if the
death floor of 0 had already been reached, since people didn’t really care about how
fast they were able to complete the game.
However, on September 28th, 2009, someone named Shiroma would prove everyone wrong,
as he uploaded a 0 death completion of the game that clocked in two seconds faster than
Hachimen’s record: 8:35.
Shiroma just started as an average World’s Hardest Game player, initially giving up trying
to beat the game after struggling immensely.
However, he was eventually able to complete the game in 450 deaths, whereafter, he started
beating it over and over again to see how much better he could get at it.
Each level got easier and easier, and eventually, he was able to piece together his own 0 death
completion.
With no built-in goal left to accomplish, he decided to try speedrunning the game.
He found the video of Hachimen’s 0 death completion and used it as a reference for
how he could more efficiently complete the game.
After some practice and attempts, he was eventually able to produce the 8:35 as his first run.
Expectedly, it was very similar to Hachimen’s 8:37, and though they took somewhat different
approaches in a lot of the levels, the overall theme of taking extra time to increase the
odds of success was readily apparent.
The best example of this is probably the long wait at the start of level 23 to get a more
favorable cycle on the spinner.
By including a timer with the video and labeling the completion as a “speedrun” in the
title, it was clear that Shiroma wanted to fully prioritize how fast he could complete
“The World’s Hardest Game”.
He had gotten another 0 death completion and the world record, but he was certainly not
yet done with the game.
For two months, Shiroma sought to improve his approach to each and every level until
it was as fast as it could possibly be.
Practicing the later levels was arduous, as there was no way for him to navigate to a
specific level; if he wanted to get another stab at something, he had to go back to the
main menu and play through every single level that came before it.
But he didn’t let that deter him.
He wanted the next world record to be a huge step up, not just another 1-2 second improvement.
Finally, on November 30th, 2009, he had pieced together the completion that he was looking
for.
Starting around level 9, the gameplay was noticeably better.
Instead of waiting before each rapidly moving obstacle, Shiroma nearly bulldozed through
the entire level without slowing down.
In level 12, he skipped an entire cycle at the start, eventually equating to a level
completion that was nearly twice as fast.
At the start of level 14, there was absolutely no waiting, Shiroma just dug right in.
In level 17, he saved about 5 seconds by skipping a cycle at the end.
And in level 23, he didn’t wait for an easier cycle; Shiroma cut the completion time for
yet another level in half.
The strategy for the end of level 24 was much improved, the inaccuracies in level 26 were
cleaned up, level 27 had a much faster approach, the lines taken in level 28 were far more
optimal, level 29 was played with absolutely no fear, and level 30 was optimal as always.
The final time?
6:41.
Shiroma had improved his record by nearly two whole minutes.
With this run, Shiroma proved that there was nobody else who was even close to his skill
level with the game.
He cut through each level like butter, performing movements that probably looked impossible
to anyone viewing back in 2009.
If he quit now, it would almost certainly be years before anybody could hope to topple
his record.
However, he still had more to do.
On December 11th, 2009, Shiroma claimed the next record in his conquest to completely
dominate The World’s Hardest Game.
Looking at the run, there was not a single facet that could be pointed out as being suboptimal.
The new path taken in level 24 was just ridiculous, and all of the strategies used in his 6:41
had seemingly been executed to perfection.
Up to this point, Shiroma was only uploading his runs to the Japanese video-sharing site
Niconico, where they saw some moderate success.
However, this time, he decided to upload his achievement to YouTube so he could share it
with a wider audience, a decision that would eventually pay off.
It was a steady performer at first, but after a few years of simmering, the view count just
started soaring, reaching over 15 million views and counting.
So yes, this is the other highly-viewed World’s Hardest Game video that was alluded to earlier,
nearly matched with Hachimen’s 17 million view completion.
It’s pretty amazing that two of the most viewed speedruns ever performed were of a
flash game made by a 16-year-old in his spare time; the internet truly does work in some
pretty incredible ways.
On a personal note, Shiroma’s 6:29 was the very first speedrun I ever remember watching
back in the early 2010s, and I recall just sitting there in complete disbelief.
This was a game where I was taking hundreds of deaths to get past just the first chunk
of levels, and this guy was able to complete the whole thing in six and a half minutes
without dying a single time.
This is the run that initially built my curiosity when it came to speedrunning, as I learned
that the simple flash games that I enjoyed playing had so much potential just waiting
to be unlocked.
Without this run, I don’t know if I’d be in the same spot in the speedrunning community
that I am today.
It seemed like Shiroma had finally perfected his craft, but he knew there was still one
level in particular that needed to be improved.
The target?
Level 18.
In all of his previous records, the strategy had always been the same.
Clear three rows of coins going to the right, clear one row going back to the left, and
clear the remaining three moving right again towards the goal.
Even if all the rows were able to be cleared in two trips across the level instead of three,
a final movement to the right would still be required to reach the goal, meaning that
the strat couldn’t be done any more optimally.
However, on January 11th, 2010, he got to show off a brand new method that effectively
cut the number of trips down to one.
Being nearly tied with his 6:29 going into level 18, he left 8 seconds ahead.
Shiroma figured out that by buffering up and right at the start of level 19, the player
would just not hit any of the enemies, allowing him to complete it without ever slowing down.
Combined with slightly more optimal movement in the last 10 levels, Shiroma grew his lead
to 12 seconds and scored himself a 6:17.
Now, this had to be it.
2nd place was 2 minutes and 20 seconds behind him.
Each level looked like it had been perfected.
What else could possibly be done to push the time any lower?
14 more seconds erased.
Shiroma had somehow figured out yet another assortment of new strategies all on his own,
each one being some sort of cycle skip.
In level 3, instead of waiting after collecting the coin as intended, Shiroma was able to
barely maneuver back to the goal in the same cycle, barely dodging the enemies on both
the way in and on the way out.
In level 17, he figured out that it was barely possible to move ahead of the enemy by buffering
down and right at the start of the level, which doesn’t equate to any timesave because
of how the cycles work out later in the level but does make for a pretty funny swag strat.
In level 25, he completely cut out all of the waiting by buffering down at the start
and barely squeezing through the spinner a cycle early.
Finally, in 27, he figured out that it was possible to reach the goal from the top corner
with the bar still in front of it, skipping having to wait for it to move back up.
With tighter execution in some of the other levels, Shiroma set a new record of 6:03 on
March 31st, 2010.
This was finally the run that he had been looking for.
2 minutes and 34 seconds ahead of 2nd place, he finally decided to take a rest atop his
throne.
He had completely dismantled “The World’s Hardest Game” almost entirely on his own,
pushing the game to heights that were inconceivable for many back in 2010.
Back then, it seemed obvious that this record was going to stand for a long while, but would
it truly be able to stand the test of time?
7 years passed by, and nobody had even come close.
It was the real deal; Shiroma’s record was truly almost a decade ahead of its time.
There were multiple 0 death completions uploaded to YouTube during this span, but in terms
of speed, Pzula’s 7:09, performed on March 21st, 2017, was the closest anyone had gotten,
a run which unfortunately appears to have been lost to time.
However, thanks to this passage of time, Pzula had access to the coolmath version of the
game, released in 2013, which had a built-in level selector, allowing him to practice the
game much more efficiently than Shiroma ever could.
For two weeks, Pzula poured in attempts, inching closer to the record.
By the 15th of April, he had a 6:10, just seven seconds away.
He got onto a run that started off a bit slower than Shiroma, but after implementing a more
optimal route in level 8, he was able to pull a bit ahead.
Pzula saved a bit more time after implementing a new death defying strategy in the middle
of level 10.
The lead expanded further after he cut straight towards the goal after collecting the last
coin in level 16 instead of moving around the enemy.
In level 18, Pzula used a slightly different path that was a bit easier but about the same
speed, and in level 21, he narrowly avoided death between these two enemies to collect
the coin a bit faster.
He took a cleaner path through level 24, and had a 4 second lead going into level 26, putting
him on pace for the first sub 6 in the game’s history.
And then… the lead was wiped away.
Pzula exited the level a second behind.
However, he had one final trick up his sleeve.
Going through the middle of level 27 was certainly a lot more difficult, but it could cut out
a lot of waiting and unnecessary movement up to the coin.
Pzula executed the new route almost flawlessly and pulled two and a half seconds ahead of
Shiroma.
He matched Shiroma’s death defying movement in level 28, and took a more optimal path
in 29, which grew the lead back to 4 seconds.
Pzula, once again, had the potential to break what was almost certainly the game’s final
minute barrier.
All he had to do was hug the wall to the finish.
And then…
Staring death in the face, he decided not to risk it and moved around the enemy, claiming
a new record of 6 minutes flat.
After 2572 days, Shiroma’s record had finally been beaten.
Unfortunately, for Pzula, a deathless run and a sub 6 were going to have to wait.
After taking a short break, Pzula went back to doing attempts with some new strategies
under his belt.
He got onto a run that had a strong first 5 levels but lost around 2 seconds in level
6 from a quick death.
However, he pulled right back even after implementing a new approach in level 7.
But, hold on.
How was he able to just phase through the enemies while moving around at the bottom
of the level?
If you’ve ever played this game before, you may know about a weird glitch in level
7 where you can seemingly stay invincible if you just stay at the same y level that
the game starts you out at.
If you move up or down, even a little bit, the enemies can hit you once again.
You still have to collect the coins, meaning that you can’t just cheese the entire level
by holding down the right button, but it is still a pretty fun thing to mess around with.
The position Pzula gets to by tapping up once from the bottom of the level just so happens
to be another one of these seemingly “random” invincibility zones.
So, here’s the flaw with the game’s collision detection that allows this to happen:
The player has five hit detection points arranged in a cross pattern, one in the middle of each
edge, and one in the center.
While coin collision is determined with a simple bounding box check, for the game to
count an interaction with an enemy as a hit, the enemy must overlap one of these 5 test
points.
This means that the player can move quite a bit inside an enemy from the corner without
taking a hit, while going in from the edge spells instant doom, facets that were likely
intended by the developer.
However, this system starts to break down because of flaws that exist in Flash Player
itself.
As it turns out, for a hit to be registered, an enemy must essentially overlap the same
one of these five points for two frames in a row, a phenomenon that is very similar to
how spike glitch in Red Ball works.
In flash player, point to pixel checks are judged based on whatever the previously rendered
frame was.
Let’s say we are in a scenario where an enemy moves into the player’s right contact
point.
The game first checks if the point is within the bounding box of the enemy, as this check
is orders of magnitude faster than performing a full point to pixel check on every single
frame regardless of how far apart the player and enemy are.
Since the point is inside the bounding box, the game goes ahead and performs the full
point to pixel check with the enemy.
However, because the previously rendered frame still looks like this, the check fails, as
no pixels from the rendered enemy are overlapping the point.
On the next frame, the enemy moves off of the player’s right contact point.
The game first performs the bounding box check, but it expectedly fails.
Therefore, the game doesn't run the full point to pixel check on the previously rendered
frame that would have found the two to be overlapping.
Gotta love those janky built-in Flash Player functions.
Essentially, the only zones where an enemy can be lethal are ones where it overlaps itself
for two consecutive frames.
Because the enemies in level 7 are moving so fast, the regions of enemy overlap are
small, meaning that as long as all five of the character's collision points are not in
these areas, it cannot be hit.
Extrapolating that to provide a better visual for level 7, as long as the character stays
completely within these zones, it is safe.
Unfortunately, because of how unusual this looked and how ubiquitous noclipped “completions”
of the game were on YouTube, Pzula had plenty of people in the comments calling him a “hacker”
and a “cheater,” a trend that unfortunately would not die out with this video.
Pzula got a bit behind going into level 20, but he had fortunately figured out a way to
save a boatload of time in the level.
After collecting the first coin, it was just barely possible to squeeze behind this enemy
without waiting for the next cycle, leading to about 7 seconds of time save, mostly thanks
to the cycles later in the level lining up more favorably as a result.
Going into level 21, Pzula was easily on pace for a sub 6.
He maintained the same 5 and a half second lead going into level 26, and after completing
the level without dying, he was now over 10 seconds ahead.
This run was on pace to skip an entire ten second barrier, having the potential for a
5:49.
Unfortunately, in level 28, disaster struck.
One death right at the start, and one death in the middle of the second section.
That lead shrunk to just 4.4 seconds.
Thankfully, the rest of the run was smooth sailing, and Pzula slipped under the last
enemy in level 30 to claim a new record of 5:55, the first sub 6 in the game’s history.
Pzula decided to take yet another break after attaining this milestone, but that didn’t
mean the game as a whole was cooling off.
Competition on the leaderboard was stronger than ever, as Pzula had inspired runners like
hsblue to push their times lower and lower.
Finally, on February 28th, 2018, Pzula came back with a 5:46, with almost all of the timesave
coming from him cleaning up all three of his deaths.
Indeed, Pzula had finally managed to complete his first ever deathless run of the game.
Like had been the case with Shiroma’s 6:03, there was once again a run in 1st place that
was nearly “perfect” for all of the strategies known at the time, with him only lacking the
enemy weave in level 10 that he had pulled off in his 6 flat.
This one had the potential to stand for quite a while.
However, third place runner hsblue would soon discover something that could blow the game
wide open once again.
On March 7th, hsblue uploaded a new PB of 6:15 that had a pretty strange anomaly in
level 17.
He was able to partially clip into this wall while moving down towards the exit.
So, how on earth does that work?
Essentially, the game uses the same edge points to check for collisions with walls that it
does to check for collisions with enemies.
Expectedly, this means that it's possible to clip slightly into the corner of each wall,
since none of the collision points are being hit.
If the player moves into a position that puts one of the collision points out of bounds,
the game will move the player at 3 pixels per frame, the game’s normal speed cap for
movement, in the opposite direction until it is back in bounds.
However, if the player starts holding the direction key opposite this force, they will
be able to stay inside of the wall, as the two opposing 3 pixel per frame velocities
will cancel out.
This is exactly what happened in hsblue’s run; on this frame he was holding down and
left, which caused him to clip slightly inside of the wall, and on this frame, he switched
from holding left to holding right, allowing him to stay inside of it as he moved down.
In this scenario, this maneuver was frame perfect, though he had done it by complete
accident, and it didn’t really accomplish anything.
However, the implications of this unusual mechanic soon became obvious.
On August 22nd, hsblue was able to implement wall clipping in a useful fashion, as he claimed
a perfect level 1 time of 3.867 seconds, a run which has now been tied by 21 other people.
In the run, hsblue first clips into this corner by holding down and right, frame perfectly
releases the down button to stay inside the wall, and then frame perfectly hits the up
button to keep the player inside the wall while moving to the right.
On this frame, the player moves three pixels to the right as usual but now also moves up
three pixels, as the top collision point is no longer being activated.
The game then detects that the player’s left collision point is touching a wall, so
it moves the player 3 more pixels toward the right to force it out.
Because of wall clipping, hsblue moves 3 pixels up and 6 pixels to the right in a single frame,
double the game’s intended speed cap, which, in this instance, saves a single frame from
two frame perfect inputs!
Alright, so wall clipping wasn’t exactly a revolutionary new strategy yet, but with
enough time to simmer, there was hope that someone would actually figure out how to save
some decent time with it.
However, while people were still searching for more applications for this new technique,
Pzula decided to come back and completely shock the community.
August 28, 2018.
Pzula streams world record attempts of The World’s Hardest Game to a large audience
of 0 viewers.
His splits show that his current PB is a 5:31, 15 seconds faster than his leaderboard world
record, though he never decided to upload the run.
He is laser-focused on his mission of completing the game in less than 5 minutes and 30 seconds.
He is playing on a version of the game that he has modified to include an in-game timer
for each level and the whole run.
With built-in timing, resetting, and level navigation functionality, this mod has been
instrumental in helping him discover and practice the multitude of new strategies that he is
seeking to implement.
In level 3, he uses a position-based setup to save a single frame.
In level 5, he does more moving and less waiting, as he allows one of the enemies to clip him
on the corner.
He hits a much faster cycle while collecting the last coin in level 7, and in level 10…
he hits all three possible weaves.
He sneaks under this enemy elevator in level 12 to save a bit of waiting.
He bulldozes through level 13 without stopping a single time.
He takes a significantly faster route in level 16 that involves a death defying third coin
grab to save a hefty chunk of time.
He collects all of the coins in the first two thirds of level 18 without stopping a
single time, swiftly passing through the enemies as they move up and down.
He cuts through these enemies in level 22 without stopping and completes level 24 without
letting go of the right key until the very end, utilizing a new route that he discovered.
He goes to the right first in level 26, which makes the cycles line up better for the rest
of the level.
The best possible time is 5:28.
All he needs to do is complete the last 4 levels without dying, just like he has done
countless times before.
5:29. There it was.
Shiroma’s 6:29, the most influential World’s Hardest Game speedrun ever performed, had
just been toppled by over a minute.
Again, the game had a world record where almost every single detail went exactly according
to plan.
The video received a good amount of traction, and many viewers and fellow runners offered
their congratulations in the comments.
However, there was also expectedly a tsunami of detractors that instantly called the run
cheated once they saw Pzula getting hit by the enemies in level 7 without dying.
I guess some people just aren’t able to fathom that a Flash game programmed by a 16-year-old
back in 2007 may not have every single bolt tightened to spec.
Regardless, this impressive show of dominance placed Pzula 31 seconds ahead of 2nd place,
meaning that this one certainly had the chance to stand for a while.
However, it didn’t end up staying on top for as long as most people may have expected,
as a new runner named Aaron would quickly make himself known.
Joining the community in September of 2018 with a youtube channel called “The_IL_Guy
runs,” Aaron made his first mark with, well, Individual Level speedruns.
He beat or tied the world record in every level aside from 3, 18, and 30, a very impressive
feat.
However, on November 18th, 2018, he dropped something even more substantial, a 2nd place
full-game personal best of 5:46.
The_IL_Guy was no longer just The_IL_Guy.
He was now The_FG_Guy as well.
Aaron kept grinding, improving his PB to a 5:39, then a 5:38, then a 5:30, and finally,
a new world record of 5:26.
In the run, Aaron took the other available path in level 9 because it turned out that
it was actually slightly faster.
In level 18, he used Pzula’s no stop strategy the whole way through, and in level 21, he
maneuvered around the enemies after collecting the third coin instead of getting sandwiched
in between them.
He used a faster return route in level 27, and he pulled off a frame perfect collision
cheese in level 29 to squeeze through these enemies early.
He didn’t do the quick exit in level 7 or the risky third coin grab in level 16, but
all of the other crazy stuff that he implemented allowed him to beat Pzula’s monumental record
by three seconds.
It’s worth reiterating that essentially none of these strategies could have been found
and perfected without the help of Pzula’s speedrun mod.
Back when Shiroma pulled off his 6:03, the game didn’t even have a level selector;
it was pretty much impossible to practice anything outside of just doing runs over and
over again.
Things had come quite a long way, and Aaron’s implementation of this ridiculous strategy
in 29 to save a fraction of a second was pretty emblematic of that.
For over a year now, hsblue had slowly been climbing up the leaderboard, inching closer
and closer to the world record, something that he very much desired.
Just when he felt like he could finally chase it down, Aaron leaped into the 1st place spot.
However, he wasn’t going to let that deter him.
He came back and started setting massive Personal Bests, first a 5:45, then a 5:42, then a 5:29,
then a 5:27, and then a 5:26, tying Aaron’s record to the second, but actually clocking
in just 4 frames slower.
Still, this run did have some impressive new tech, namely a double coin grab at the end
of level 6, and a much faster cycle in level 8 that required a frame perfect wall clip
to avoid hitting the enemy.
Finally, wall clipping had a substantial use in full game runs!
Hsblue omitted the third weave in level 10 and took a safer approach in level 16 that
didn’t lose any time, but he was still very much on pace for a sizable new world record.
Unfortunately, disaster struck in level 18, and he had to revert to Pzula’s old method
of completing the level, which lost him about three seconds.
Regardless, he pressed on; no matter how long it took him, he was going to keep playing
until he got the record outright.
Unfortunately for him, that very same day, Aaron moved the goal posts once again.
Aaron uploaded a video that began with him resetting at the start of level 1.
Yes, he was actually going for the double frame-perfect IL wall boost to save a single
frame, something which he thankfully hit on the next attempt.
He didn’t go for the wall clip in level 8 because he couldn’t find the right window
size to get it to work, oh, I guess I forgot to mention that every wall clip in the game
is dependent on the game’s window size, thanks flash, but he did hit a corner cut
in level 10 to save a cycle, also hitting all three of the weaves.
In level 12 he got past the final enemy obstacle a cycle early, but in level 30, he sadly missed
collecting this coin on his first go, and he got to the end too late to be able to slide
under the last enemy; it was as if the ghost of Pzula’s 6 flat had come to haunt him.
Aaron lost around a second, ending with a 5:24 instead of a 5:23.
However, since he still improved the record and wasn’t on the verge of a milestone,
this mistake probably didn’t matter that much.
Hsblue’s attempt counter continued to rack up.
There was no time better than the present for him to go for the world record.
Aaron would likely continue to push his times further and further, making hsblue’s goal
more and more difficult to attain with each improvement.
For 4 years, he had been playing The World’s Hardest Game, hoping that one day he could
have the record to himself.
All he needed to do was match his 5:26 without messing up level 18, and the title would be
his.
On May 31st, 2019, he got onto a run that started as planned.
He hit the wall clip in 8 but didn’t go for the clip or weave in level 10.
He didn’t do the fast ending for level 12 because there was simply no need, he was still
easily on pace without it.
He messed up the last coin grab in level 16, but it didn’t end up costing him very much.
He approached level 18, the same level that had essentially killed his world record chances
during his 5:26, but this time… disaster struck again.
He didn’t lose a full three seconds this time, but his world record prospects had still
been flushed down the drain.
However, there was still one hail mary strategy that could potentially save it.
TAS 23.
5:23.
Miraculously, he had done it.
It’s hard to overstate how much this run meant to hsblue.
He had put so much time and energy towards this grind, he had dreamed about having this
record for years, and now, he had it.
The first sentence of the run’s description puts it best: “If you put your heart and
mind to it, you can do anything” Funnily enough, without Aaron’s mistake in level
30 of his 5:24, essentially the last mistake that one can possibly make in a World’s
Hardest Game speedrun, hsblue wouldn’t have become the undisputed, full second champion
of the game with this run.
Whether he would have later claimed the record outright or not, I guess we’ll never know,
but it is funny to look back and see how perfectly the stars aligned for this moment.
Indeed, Hsblue seemed to have achieved his end goal with the game, but Aaron certainly
had not.
Aaron knew that there were still plenty of things that he could do to push the record
to a new 10-second barrier, 5:1x.
His 5:24 didn’t have the quick exit in level 7, wall clip in 8, TAS 23, and some other
individual level strategies that could potentially be implemented.
And of course, there was that pesky mistake in level 30 that had cost him an entire second.
The whole summer passed without anything new, but finally, he managed to piece together
something pretty incredible.
Levels 1-7 started out perfect, but he still couldn’t go for the wall clip in 8 because
he still couldn’t find the right window size to make it work.
So… what was going on?
At this point, pretty much every single World’s Hardest Game runner was using the official
standalone adobe flash player for their runs, as it was way more convenient, allowed for
better performance, and allowed the game to be played at any window size, including fullscreen.
However, Aarons’ platform of choice was…
Internet Explorer.
For whatever reason, a web browser that had been discontinued and replaced by Microsoft
because of how bad it was, actually ran the game better on his dusty old computer.
Aaron’s interesting platform of choice made it far more difficult for him to find a window
size where the 8 wall clip and the other strategies he was going for all worked, so he just decided
not to bother with it.
Despite this unfortunate handicap, Aaron knew that he could still shatter the game’s next
10 second barrier.
He pressed on, nailing the wall clip and weaves in level 10.
He essentially stayed perfect going into level 23, where he went for the TAS strat first
implemented by hsblue.
He got it.
Granted that he didn’t mess up level 30, the run was now on pace for a 5:20 flat, just
a bit shy of his goal.
However, he had a plan that could just barely nudge it over the edge.
He entered level 26, and proceeded to do this on the right side.
Another death-defying weave.
He was now on pace to break into a new 10 second barrier.
All he had to do was clutch the ending.
There it was.
5:19.633.
Plenty of geniuses in the YouTube comments completely ignored the pinned message explaining
the game’s collision mechanics… to call it out for being fake, but it was absolutely
real.
Aaron took a well-deserved break after this run, as it was unlikely that anyone would
even get close to challenging his throne, but he still knew in the back of his mind
that more could be done.
Going into 2020, it became apparent that there were more TAS or IL-only strategies that could
potentially be brought over to full game runs.
First, there was a wall clip in level 6 to collect the last coin without having to revolve
with the spinner, saving over a second.
Next, there was a frame-perfect turnaround here in level 7 that allows the player to
phase through this first enemy, saving around half a second.
Additionally, there was a cycle skip in level 12 that required a frame perfect elevator
entry, perfect character alignment to squeeze under these enemies, and absolutely no slowdown
for the rest of the level, allowing for a ridiculous two and a half seconds to be saved.
Finally there was a frame perfect entry in level 26 where the player can go under the
dots at the top right instead of going over them, ultimately saving around a second.
Of these 4, Aaron recognized that the strategies in 7 and 26 were the most realistic to implement.
And, at last, he had found a way to hit the wall clip in level 8, which meant that he
could save an additional two and a half seconds.
If everything went according to plan, a 5:14 was not out of the question.
Now, he just had to piece everything together.
What. A. Run.
Aside from a somewhat suboptimal level 26, Every single thing went exactly according
to plan, and the expected potential for these strategies was matched exactly.
This run is, absolutely, one of the greatest flash game speedruns ever performed.
The time and dedication that Aaron has put towards perfecting his craft is truly inspiring,
and there is very little chance of this record being beaten any time soon.
He stands in first by over 9 seconds, as hsblue still sits in a distant 2nd with his 5:23.
As you may have guessed, this run, a true cornerstone of flash game speedrunning, was
performed on Internet Explorer.
You really can’t make this stuff up.
Aaron may come back again, but as it stands, he is the undisputed champion of the World’s
Hardest Game.
However, that doesn’t mean it’s bound to stay that way forever.
In December of 2007, a high school student released a game that completely changed the
internet.
The game challenged players to not just overcome it, but to truly conquer it by achieving a
completion with the fewest number of deaths possible.
After a player finally managed to achieve a perfect score of 0 deaths, many shifted
their attention towards a new challenge, seeing how fast they could complete the game.
When Aaron set his current world record of 5:14, many believed that the human limit for
the game was around a 5:12, as the TAS 12 cycle was deemed to be too difficult to implement
into runs.
However, with Aaron recently building much greater consistency with the strategy in practice,
many now believe that a sub 5:10 could potentially be attained one day.
The most recent full-game TAS is a 4:57.467 authored by Steev0, which pulls off ridiculous
wall clip and hitbox abuse strategies in almost every single level.
Published back in April of 2019, this is the video that truly brought the game into the
era of frame-perfect optimization, making Steev0 responsible for almost all of the strategies
that are used in top-level World’s Hardest Game speedruns today.
Expectedly, this TAS is a bit outdated, with there being many levels where small improvements
could be made, but it’s still funny to see that humans have been able to at least match
this TAS in 25/30 of the levels, actually pulling ahead by a frame in four of those.
The human SOB currently sits at a 4:59.600, the majority of the difference coming from
level 20, where the TAS saves a hefty 55 frames by hitting a cycle that is deemed humanly
unviable.
There are simply way too many frame perfect inputs required, nearly triple digits, for
a sub 5 to ever have a chance of being pulled off in a full game run, but man, it is pretty
amazing to think about how far things could theoretically go.
But looking back, it’s crazy to see how far the World’s Hardest Game has come in
the past 15 years.
Nowadays, it is the third most played game of all time on both addicting games and armor
games, having a combined 95 million plays on those two websites alone.
After releasing the second game in the series, Snubby spent three years making a game called
Straight Bullyism, a highly ambitious RPG with tons of animated cutscenes that is hard
to believe was made entirely by a single developer.
Eventually, he came back to The World’s Hardest Game series, releasing TWHG 3 in January
2014 and TWHG 4 in June 2016.
With the death of flash on the web looming in the late 2010s, he was sponsored by Coolmath
Games to port the first installment to HTML5 so that it could continue to be enjoyed by
future generations, with almost all of the levels being reworked in some way.
The remaining 3 installments were ported by coolmath themselves to a much lesser degree
of quality; 2 is impossible to beat thanks to there being game-breaking glitches in multiple
levels and 4 was never fully finished and got scrapped before it was ever released.
The original versions of the first two installments run great on the flash emulator Ruffle, so
they have continued to have life on other websites as well.
As Snubby moved further into adulthood, he eventually started going by Stephen instead
of Stevie, which is why his name is different on all of the newer installments and ports.
His web game development days seem to be behind him, with him pulling the plug on Snubby Land
and all of his other websites, but the legacy that he has left behind on the internet is
nothing short of incredible.
He created one of the most popular and memorable series of games ever released on the web,
with the first game in particular truly being a lightning-in-a-bottle creation.
Its formula inspired people to keep playing the game over and over again until they could
truly master it, and their efforts to push the game closer and closer to its limit have
been viewed in awe by tens of millions of people.
Each record holder shaped the game in their own unique way: HatredCopt3r helped lay the
foundation for low-death completions, Hachimen was the first to verifiably achieve the game’s
definition of perfection, Shiroma unlocked the game’s boundless potential, Pzula revolutionized
the game with his practice mod and innovative discoveries, hsblue broke the game wide open
with wall clipping, while also showcasing the power of never giving up, and Aaron pushed
the game near its absolute limit through his massive, shocking records that always seemed
to come out of nowhere.
Over 15 years, this game went from being beaten, to being “perfected”, to being completely
dismantled and dominated.
Speedrunners are the ones who realized that to truly conquer The World’s Hardest Game,
it was necessary to completely redefine what “perfection” meant.
Thanks for watching.
Enormous thank you to Aaron, Pzula, Danicker, Fraims, hsblue, iBall, and Shiroma for making
this project possible.
I’m sorry that this one took quite a while to put together, but I hope that it was worth
the wait.
It’s hard to believe that we are this close to a hundred thousand subscribers, and I can’t
thank you all enough for the support.
If you enjoyed watching this video and want to be a part of reaching that milestone, then
consider subscribing.
Also, definitely go watch all of Aaron’s 5:14, linked in the description, and thanks
to all my supporters on Patreon, which you can join for just $1 per video.
I hope you all have a great rest of your day, and I’ll see you all… again in less than
three months, I promise.