Great video by Summoning Salt

The “revolution in speedrunning coming out of nowhere / new contributor” angle reminds me a lot of the Mario Kart DS time trial scene where an 11 year old known as “Taiga” suddenly appeared with incredible times for a whole bunch of tracks.

It progressed from a camera pointed at a 3DS screen, recording the replay, to the “hands video” when the legitimacy of the runs was questioned, to members of the community sending his family an R4 so he could upload his save data online.

Then as people were checking the save data, they would flip through the pages for his PBs on the various tracks, and find world records that he had never recorded or posted about. As of today, Taiga holds 31 single-track world records and is rank 1 average finish on the prolonged rocket boost MKDS leaderboard. Truly a legend, unbelievably consistent and good at the game, while being younger than the game itself.