A recent assault on the 100% speedrun record for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time culminated two days ago with the first ever run completed in under four hours.
The milestone and world record belong to speedrunner zfg111, who snipped the wire at 3:58:45 in this run (above) on Aug. 1.
“Sub-four, cool,” zfg111 says nonchalantly, following the finishing cinematic that, according to the rules, ends the speedrun time (“first frame of the final blow cutscene of defeating Ganon”).
zfg111’s record breaking effort is the best in a three-week span where he and five other runners renewed their attack on the 100% world record (speedrun.com lists 16 100% runs on Ocarina of Time in all in the past 22 days). Ocarina of Time is speedrun.com’s fifth-most run game, so this is a significant record in a top-flight event.
Redditor Miloticz, on the r/speedrun subreddit, noted that it has been more than five years since the first sub-five hour run was notched (4:57:36 by sva).
How low can it go? is the ongoing question of speedrunning (or any speed competition, really). Since the renewed interest in Ocarina of Time three weeks ago, elite runners have taken 14 minutes off the world record from a year ago, 12 minutes of that coming in the past two months.
But zfg111’s time is nearly 10 minutes better than second place (Marco, at 4:07:23). In fact, zfg111 has held the world record since March 19, 2015, and in the past month has gone 4:05:28 on June 20; 4:03:24 on July 21; and 4:01:05 on July 27, before his sub-four hour game two days ago. So his rivals have some catching up to do.
Correction: An earlier version of this story missed an earlier run by zfg111; that means he’s held the 100% speedrun world record since March 19, 2015. There were also substantial errors in the world record progression described in an earlier version. This post has been edited to correct them.
