The Absurdity Of Celeste Speedrunning

Speedrunner IsaacTay has recently achieved a groundbreaking 25:59.070, the first ever run to break the 26 minute barrier and an overall incredibly run. In this video I go over exactly how he does it and all the techniques he used.

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[Isaactayy]

Thanks for covering my run, really enjoyed the video! Also shoutout to the whole Celeste speedrun community, could not have done it without all the labbers, supporters and all the other incredible runners that pushed this game forward.

[emmajoy]

I think my favorite aspect of Celeste speedrunning is the beautiful relationship it has with the intended mechanics of the game; most of the speedrun tech was even programmed intentionally. Like, save for a few death skips, speedrunning Celeste is far less about exploiting errors and more about getting really, really good at the core play style of Celeste.

[sespe_]

19:26 "IF MY GIRL AND ISAAC ARE DROWNING CATCH ME AT MY GIRLS FUNERAL CHANTING TWENTY FIVE FIFTY NINE"

[Zicrus]

2:01 What you show is actually wave dashes, not hyper dashes. I know they accomplish pretty much the same thing in most cases, but they are slightly different.

[tenthirtyseven-v]

I remember when I tried speedrunning this game, 3 months of playtime and I was more than proud of getting under 1 hour. Little would I know that it would be piss poor lol.

Crazy how talented these guys are, mad props.

[plixona]

(3/17/23)
This started when I was in a conversation in the Celeste discord, where some people were talking about some inconsistencies in this video. I then took it upon myself to point out every one (for some goddamn reason). I was never trying to be toxic at all, but looking back on it it does seem very passive aggressive and generally just annoying. This definitely shouldn’t have been a comment I should have made, I just did it because why not and like thats not a good reason. Because I’m not an asshole i tried to highlight the video at the end but in turn that came off as even more passive aggressive, which is not a good thing
I still think that this comment is helpful, but half of these aren’t even things wrong with the video, but just scouring for anything wrong I could find. I’ll leave the actual comment down below, but just know that I’m not very proud of it anymore lmao


Some nitpicks

0:04 - its 25m, 59s, 070ms, not 26m
2:05 - the video shows wavedashing, not hypers
2:23 - thats a cornerboost
2:27 - thats a cornerkick, not a cornerboost
3:49 - its not really that much of a problem, theres still a significant delay between you and badeline. Only case i could see is the room before the long drop.
4:28 - People go for tas awake all the time; also you showed a message from 2018 which at that time i assume tas awake was much harder and people didnt know as much about the game as we do now
4:43 - Isaac, not Issac
4:53 - he went for tas awake then failed it
5:58 - aaa its not sludge its dust bunnies
7:40 - a tiny bit misleading, it is pixel perfect yes but only in some cases
8:43 - the reverse extended super is a extended demohyper, not super
9:00 - wind does matter a lot in runs at least personally, there are some cases where wind can screw you over, and you still have to take wind in account for everything you do
9:06 - thats not pixel perfect, its relatively lenient and is used in mid level runs as well.
9:09 - he doesnt avoid the hitbox - in fact he goes inside of it. if you go the same direction the spikes face in, they dont kill you. this is also used in Huge Mess of Resort
10:26 - i dont know what pixel perfect walljump you are refering to here, but nothing past the cornerboost is
10:57 - those are wavedashes, not hypers
12:30 - thats a wallbounce, not a wallboost
12:49 - thats several cornerboosts, not a "spiked staircase climb"
12:58 - thats a seeker, not a corrupter
14:09 - while technically true, spinners only cut off 1 or 2 pixels (im not exactly sure?). The reason this works is because wallbounces have leniency pixels which allow you to wallbounce off of a wall even if you arent directly on it.
14:22 - you also ultra here
14:53 - Reprieve Multiboost isnt necessarily a tech by itself, multiboosts are. this one just happens to occur in reprieve, and is also the only one usually found in the main any% run
15:05 - he did these strats in his former pb, so i don't get the point of this comment?
15:46 - in the block boosted ultra you showed here theres no hyper
16:29 - thats just a regular cornerboost, theres no superdash coming into play
17:46 - ASS is much, much easier than 2nd blockless
19:30 - again just a misedit, its 25 minutes
19:35 - fun fact secure got the wr 25:55 on like 1/10 i think? not really your fault here but just wanted to mention it

i dont want to try to dogpile on you (people have already made similar comments) i just want to point out some nitpicks with the video. Great video, i did enjoy it

[purpleshutin]

I'm doing a presentation assignment for school about speed running, and when I was looking up speed runs for my video, I decided to use Celeste as one of the games. I was honestly blown away at how fast these people go, I showed my friend, who's played the game before, the bit I was using, and he was just as blown away as me.

[Michaela_ZC]

I could never speedrun Celeste, because I’d never be able to skip the cutscenes. They’re just too good

[RosaBlackBaccaras]

I personally wish this game was more well known.

[amokami]

how do you manage to mislabel almost every tech 😭

[Zyckro]

Awesome video! I think your editing style is quite refined. It's clear you know what you are doing.

[BigHeisenberg]

It’s actually really cool how you not only covered a really advanced run, but you also explained every mechanic for your viewers to understand what’s happening

[Detteraleon]

you found at least 14 errors in the video, ranging from calling wave dashes hyper dashes several times, to at 8:42 you 1) called an extended super reversed for some reason and 2)called a wave dash a hyper to at bumper boosts being hard for some reason(edit: found another one, at 9:10 he does not avoid the spikes, spikes have no hitbox if you are moving away from them)(edit 2: still an amazing video but i am very annoyed)

[Add_Infinitum]

"Sleepy_Dan_ Celestial bogosort, press random buttons until a fast run happens" I think that's called machine learning

[MrGermanpiano]

Really well done. The execution in terms of explanation and visualisation is wonderful. Keep up the good work.

[nadavgerzon]

bro i blincked and missed an ENTIRE SECTION hes crazy good

[USB-CEnthusiast]

My belief is that the Mirror Temple B side theme is so good that speedrunners lose time just to listen to it lol

[kransin]

I’m a big fan of your spelunky 2 content but I really love Celeste and this video did an amazing job breaking down some of the speedrunning tech!

[quel]

I'm working my way into Celeste speedruns (my PB is still 50min and I'm incapable of doing many of the skips, but I'm proud of it), and videos like these are what keeps my motivation. Great explanation!

[xxxxx]

I just started playing Celeste for the first time last week. Playing it super casual. This game is incredible and I understand why people speed run it. This is also the first game I have ever played and anytime I get stuck executing something I think "how would a speed runner do this" and I usually get the jumps down within a try or 2 once I try and "speed run" the section. Very strange but also really fun.