Speedrunning communities build up their share of stories. Legendary runs, heartbreaking chokes and new trick discoveries abound. Goldeneye 007 speedrunner RWhiteGoose has sat down to chronicle the tales behind one of Goldeneye’s best levels.
Ryan J. White is a Goldeneye runner ranked sixth in the world for time on leaderboards. In a new video, he outlines the history of speedruns on the game’s ‘Frigate’ level. Individual level records are tracked heavily by the larger community. Getting a record on Frigate is a challenging level because of how random it can be. The player must rescue hostages who take a variable amount of time to escape. White tracks the tactics players developed to tackle the level in exhaustive detail.
You can see the iterative changes throughout each run in the video. Runners decide to toss a tracking bug across the level to hit an objective early and learn to warp through level architecture. Every run has a new story including a heartbreaking tale of a world record lost by a single button press and a dastardly fake run that stood as a record for over a year and a half.
White’s enthusiasm for the game is clear throughout, his boisterous personality coloring each tale with an infectious energy.
