A few months ago, I spoke to some of the major figures in The Simpsons speedrunning community about how the various Simpsons games have been kept alive, why Hit & Run desperately needs to make a comeback, and why Simpsons Skateboarding definitely doesn't. One of the speedrunners, HoonGoons, told me - entirely unprompted - that Up, the platforming adaptation of the 2009 Pixar movie, was the worst game ever to speedrun. "Do not play Up. Do not run Up. It is the worst experience you will ever have. I did it just as a meme but it's so mind numbingly boring."
Naturally, I had to investigate. This was specifically the Heavy Iron version of the game, which is on Wii, PS3, and Xbox 360. Only five people have completed a speedrun for the Wii version, with only three on the PS3/Xbox 360 combined list, compared to hundreds on the various lists for The Simpsons Game or The Simpsons: Hit & Run. HoonGoons is the only person on both lists. But what is it that makes Up so terrible?
"Definitely because of how the game is made. It's linear, the levels all have tall invisible walls around them, the mechanics the characters have aren't that great either. All skips me and Nova [HoonGoons' co-op partner] thought of were just that, only thoughts. There were countless things in the way that didn't wanna make them more than just theoretical."
HoonGoons is currently third for the Wii version and top for the PS3/Xbox 360 version. They're also top for the Wii co-op version, partnered with Suprnova, who also goes by Sex. Suprnova is fourth in the Wii solo category too, and they offer further insight into the topic, explaining why Up is particularly unsuited for speedrunning, despite being very similar to lots of other games perfect for it. "There is a lot of criteria for what makes a game 'good' or 'bad' to speedrun," they tell me. "Speedgames, the word usually used to describe a game that is ran, don’t necessarily have to be fun casually to be a good speedgame, and a bad speedgame can still be fun casually. Up is not a bad game; it has decent level design, fine gameplay, and interesting mechanics. Up is, however, a bad speedgame. Speedgames require consistency, little to no downtime, exciting gameplay both as a viewer and a player, and the ability to simply go fast, among other things. Up fails at most, if not all of this criteria. The tricks and AI are unreliable, cutscenes and pseudo-autoscroller sections grind pacing to a halt, and it has a core gameplay mechanic that directly slows down the entire game’s speed. Is Up the worst game to speedrun? Not a chance. That’s too highly contested of a title for Up to claim as its own. There’s an infinite amount of games that are magnitudes worse than Up. Up is by no means, however, a good speedgame."
Second spot in the Up Wii charts belongs to TheRayReviewer. They seem less sold on the idea that Up is a good game that's just bad to speedrun. "What makes Up a boring speedrun is that nothing about it stands out from any speed game," they say. "It’s repetitive with the multiple dog fights, it’s wide-out third person gameplay is like the Lego games but not that interesting compared to those games, and nothing about it changes throughout its run time except for the two plane fights at the literal beginning and end."
Interestingly, when I began this report, TRR was top of the list, but has since been eclipsed by a newcomer, 97Timbs. 97Timbs has previous entries in two Simpsons games speedrun lists, and set the record only a month after my Simpsons report was published, which contained HoonGoons' dire warning to never speedrun Up. I've been unable to contact 97Timbs, but I can only assume they decided to break the Up world record out of sheer masochism.
To fans of the speedrunning community, hearing that Heavy Iron was Up's developer might come as a surprise - the studio is known for entertaining platformers that lend themselves well to speedrunning. So what went wrong here? "Heavy Iron Studios is known for making [SpongeBob Squarepants:] Battle for Bikini Bottom, one of the most popular speedrunning games currently," HoonGoons says. "That game has a much different approach compared to Up. Open world platforming gameplay compared to linear sometimes platforming, but mainly dragging your ass gameplay, doesn't mesh well. Heavy Iron is known for making linear games, and it has been that way since after BFBB. The SpongeBob Movie game is linear but it is open world. The Incredibles, [The Incredibles:] Rise of the Underminer, Wall-E, SpongeBob's Truth or Square, and Family Guy: Back to the Multiverse are all linear in the sense that there is only one goal and that is to get to the end of the level and move onto the next. Up follows that principle. Now, normally this isn't bad for speedrunning, as the games I have listed all have skips to go and take that time down. Up has nothing. It won't let you have anything groundbreaking."
However, TheRayReviewer thinks Up may have a rival in the 'worst speedrun game' stakes. "If there’s a speedrun I’d personally think is worse than Up, it’d probably be Happy Feet 2 for DS," they tell me. "It’s an incredibly boring 2D platformer that’s even less tolerable than Up. There’s some strategy compared to Up but that doesn’t matter when the game itself is so stock and basic. At least Up changes its gameplay somewhat throughout its two hour run time. Happy Feet 2 doesn’t really do that at all, you’re Mumble for the entire game, walking slowly and going to the left until you find the blue ice sculpture to break, rinse and repeat except for the bosses."
While HoonGoons ran Up for the meme of it all, Suprnova's reasoning is even more interesting - half of it was to have fun, and half of it was to make other people suffer. "I don’t take speedrunning as seriously as others," Suprnova admits. "I will speedrun basically anything for the sole reason that I find it funny to do so. The entire reason that I did a run of Up in the first place was because I wanted to beat the world record, which was at the time held by my friend HoonGoons. I found it incredibly amusing to subject other people to the same traumatic experience that I had running Up, just because they want to take the world record from me. It’s also worth mentioning that doing a co-op run of Up with a friend actually makes Up a genuinely fun game to run. Co-op speedruns are few and far between as co-op games just aren’t around anymore, and the experience of doing co-op speedruns is something I find very enjoyable."
As of right now, not one person has speedran a 100% run for Heavy Iron's Up. Despite the fact the Any% leaderboard is full of runs that take one hour and change, you could spend a leisurely 17 hours working your way to 100% and climb to the top of the leaderboard easily. Speaking to people who have braved the Any%, it's clear why nobody has opted to take the 100% crown. All in all, TheRayReviewer is a little kinder to Up than HoonGoons, calling it "tolerable". but that changes when the topic comes to a 100% run. "100% on Up would be an absolute nightmare," they say. "Collecting all the coins, levelling up your characters, and collecting bugs is so repetitive that it would probably be a four to five hour run. So yeah, not doing that."
It's safe to say Suprnova will not be trying anytime soon either. "A 100% speedrun of Up would require a lot of collectibles and grinding," they explain. "It requires you to collect 6000 total badge points - by comparison, we only collect 2700 badge points in a typical Any% run, ≈375 total bugs, a memento collectible from each level, and three level artifacts from each level. The only unique thing a 100% speedrun would add to the run is an additional 50 minutes and a loss of sanity. My behaviour of running terrible speedgames may be masochistic, but I’m not strong enough for something like that."