Today marks Hollow Knight's 8th birthday, a fitting time to go on a journey through the game's lifetime, and explore the development of the game's most popular speedrun; Any% No Major Glitches. Through the dedication and passion of dozens of speedrunners, the category developed tremendously from its infancy, turning into an extremely optimised speedrun with countless fascinating skips and strategies. So, let's go back, 8 entire years. This is the World Record History of Hollow Knight Speedruns... This project has been in the making for almost two months. I hope you all enjoy it. BONUS VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BZ4K-sc_Rs Commentary track of the first ever performed run of Hollow Knight by Spleen! also join my Discord! https://discord.com/invite/eAbmKXw4nP also i stream on Twitch! https://www.twitch.tv/bluesr bsky https://bsky.app/profile/bluesr.bsky.social CHAPTERS: 0:00:00 - Introduction 0:02:00 - Early History 0:09:10 - Two Major Finds 0:17:38 - The (Almost) Barebones Route 0:28:55 - The Run Gets Much Harder 0:37:14 - Two Updates, Three Discoveries, Two Runners 0:55:00 - A New Generation 0:59:38 - The God Gamer 1:10:05 - Pest 1:20:51 - Catching Up to Pest 1:29:33 - The Race to 31 1:42:42 - A King Skates In 1:57:00 - A new route? (Epilogue) 2:00:51 - Epilogue of the Epilogue CREDITS: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ov4jTnPgi3VLDnqMVdr2oDx3hXRK6MnWikZ5ggosMZI/edit?tab=t.0 Music Used in this video: The Hollow Knight OST - @ComposerLarkin The TOHU OST - @ComposerLarkin Hollow Knight Piano Collections @ComposerLarkin The Celeste Soundtrack - @LenaRaine Undertale OST - Toby Fox A Short Hike OST @mguitars Portal 2 OST Balatro OST - LouisF Cult of the Lamb OST - @RiverBoyBeats Risk of Rain 2 OST - @AstronautDown Home - We're Finally Landing Thumbnail by Bluequills (@bluequills ) Additional editing help from @AverageImposter and @PyeFive Chart sprites created by @Fly-Sky-High Massive shoutout to Eridan for their work in compiling the community's history. Check out their spreadsheet if you're interested! https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tGiKda_nTw_r5s7ZnPXJeQYOYxyDASEDp6gE2sGgMus/edit?gid=1263869062#gid=1263869062
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WOOOOOOOOo let's gooo!
Thanks so much for making this, brings back great memories and got me pretty emotional. Shoutouts to my fellow boomer runners who I did srl races with back in the day, you know who you are. Honored to have a small place in this run's history. Everyone who has contributed to this run over the years have turned it into something truly special, thank you all.
awesome video, that 32:15 was the biggest achievement of my entire life at the time. glad more people will know about it
Not mentioning that Gwonkee and Skate for a while went by Lepfan and Lepfoe on the leaderboards is criminal, broke into hysterics when I noticed it
112% history next? :^) No but seriously, great work on the video! Being there from almost the very start it's nice to look back and see how far we've come
"I started speedrunning Hollow Knight at age 13 in 2020" Death take me 💀
Hey everyone! I'm thrilled to hear you're all enjoying this one. Thanks for all the kind comments! It was super fun to make and really challenge myself with a more ambitious project like this, and i'm pretty happy with the results :D If this video at all made you interested in keeping up with or even learning the Hollow Knight speedrun, GO FOR IT! A good place to start would be to join the Speedrunning community discord, where there's tons of resources, knowledge and support to be gained from the wonderful Hollow Knight Speedrunning community. I'll plop a link to it here! Speedrun Community Discord: /invite/3JtHPsBjHD
I find it hilarious that something as abstract and crazy as the explosion pogo was discovered before the greenpath fireball skip
Great video! Really does bring back good memories of being a part of this community, and super interesting to see everything that's happened since! I wish you all, new and old runners, the very best <3
fireborn glaze begins at 18:26
The “look down at the floor mysteriously” trigger to trick a game because of a glitch is the funniest time save I’ve ever seen.
Risk of Rain 2's "...con lentitud poderosa" was a great choice for Skate's rise to dominance. Like you said, it was clear for a while that Skate's PBs were behind his potential, and he constantly got robbed despite putting more time into the game than maybe any other runner at the time. The song's brooding buildup into its overwhelming drop really mirrored the intense flood of his runs once he broke the 31 mental barrier. It was clear from the moment he got record that we were leagues behind him, and even after that he just kept dumpstering his own records. And y'all as someone that's seen the heights of execution in this game I really can't communicate how insanely good skate's 31:24 is. SO ahead of its time and daunting to run against. Really cemented him as one of the all-time greats. But yea, just narratively that was probably my favorite bit, well done. This was a really fun watch :) got to learn a lot about the stuff from before my time. Shoutouts Gwonkee for teaching me everything that made me a top runner, and Paum and Nerf for the rivalries and for pushing me down to 32 and beyond. This community has taught me so much about support and improvement and friendships, and has introduced me to some of the most important people in my life. No idea where I'd be without it. Thanks for your contributions Blue <3 passion projects like these are part of what make this game so persistently iconic.
The namedrops of now famous content creators are so legendary
Thk 2, Skate King 3 S tier video blue great job
Great video Blue, really cool to look back on the early days of HK speedrunning and see some names from the past. Fun Fact: at 52:45, I was actually the one that discovered that healing made the gate go down at the same time as the toll. I DM'd fireborn about it, and after that Skurry went to go mess around with it and discovered that looking down was even faster than that. (:
1:27:06 watcher split being called “fuck you” 😭
The Fireborn glazing is CRAZY!!! (as it should be)
2:00:05 "Lep19 has just recently returned and started to do attempts with it but it remains to be seen what will come of it"| Foreshadowing to Lep breaking the world record like 6 hours after this video released
18:59 the use of “Broken Vessel” for the reveal of fireb0rn? Literal chills. This video is already incredible and I’m not even 20 minutes in
team cherrry is waiting for us to get sub 30 to launch silksong