Beyond the Board: Interview with 7thAce and twinkachu

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Pikastroff: Hello everyone and welcome back to this new edition of Beyond the Board where we sit down with runners in the bingo communities and see how these games are! 

Well, this Beyond the Board is actually quite special because usually there’s only one person but here that just got DOUBLED – I wanted to do something with double bingo but that did not work but I tried…

twinkachu: There was an attempt!

Pikastroff: Yeah, there was an attempt! But yes, here we are! We’ve got 7thAce and twinkachu here from the Jet Set Radio Future community, so how would you guys like to introduce yourselves?

7thAce: Hi, I am 7thAce, I do a lot of the bingo playing, also I am involved with being a modder slash nerd of JSRF who reverse-engineers the game and occasionally – and by occasionally I mean twice a year – does an actual speedrun of the game! [Laughs]

I do a bunch of stuff in Jet Set Radio Future but I love the bingos!

twinkachu: I am twinkachu, I am also an Any% runner in theory but I haven’t done an Any% run in a while. I am a big fan of bingo and I run the JSRF community’s bingo tournament!

Pikastroff: Alright, awesome! So how have you guys gotten into JSRF speedrunning? Mainly general speedrunning background, not bingo background.

7thAce: I started speedrunning in 2013 with Portal – Inbounds. By just some community members of that, of the time, including Azorae and whatnot… I played some other games, and eventually picked up Jet Set Radio Future in 2017 after remembering the ridiculously good soundtrack that it has, and then going and YouTubing up some speedruns for it and then following onto Twitch streamers, into… “Oh my god, 4 and a half years later I am still playing this game from 2002, what am I doing with my life?!”, but also it’s been a fantastic thing, so… 

twinkachu: I am new-er to the speedrunning scene. About a year ago an IRL friend of mine got really into running the game and so I kind of watched him learn the game on streams and stuff. And then, I saw 7thAce and another member of our community actually preparing for Bingothon and I thought “oooh, this is really cool!”.

I actually came to bingo before I came to speedrunning, weirdly enough! Through there, I got more and more involved in the community and started running the game.

Pikastroff: Oooh, you don’t get to hear about people going to bingo first everyday! [Laughs]

twinkachu: I know! What a weird story!

Pikastroff: There’s definitely a lot of stuff I’ll need to ask about that later, so I’ll make a mental note of that – that’s actually very interesting!

In general, what are the aspects of Jet Set Radio Future that are your favourites in a speedrunning sense? And why do you feel that way?

7thAce: For me as I think one review of it put it, it’s the freedom of movement. Jet Set Radio Future is an open-world game for the most part, and in the way that we play in bingo it is that in its truest sense. It is really, really fun to move around the areas that they have designed specifically for good movement in optimal ways. It is genuinely the most satisfying part of the game and I highly recommend it. There’s a near-unlimited cap for how much cool stuff you can do in the game.

twinkachu: Yeah, also it’s just got a movement system that’s really, really satisfying to get a good hold on. Like, when you play casually it’s kind of awkward and you’re like “eeeeh, what am I doing?!” and then when speedrunning, as you get a better grasp of how the movement works and start to do really cool movement tricks, it’s such a satisfying experience.

Pikastroff: Yeah, I could tell just from a viewer perspective, just the movement in general in this game is absolutely incredible. And I think we can all agree that movement when you’re speedrunning is just very, VERY important and it being fun is really good!

So now, we’re getting to the BIG question – how did you get into bingos? I suppose we already know for twinkachu since that’s how you got started in the first place, but what about you 7thAce?

7thAce: So, a person that you may *wink wink* know, pandadotrar, created Jet Set Radio Future bingos originally back in late 2018, I believe it was in the October kind of range. Originally it was based off just a new game where you complete goals and whatnot, starting from the new game screen and playing it more in a speedrun sense. Then the savefile modders of the time who were me and Demo (editor’s note: His actual username is ycarcomed) created a savefile where everything was available to be played instantly and there are no story events around the levels but everything could still be done. That led us to our current iteration of bingo where it plays more in an open-world sense. And that really has taken off in the community as just being the preferred way to play, really the *only* way to play – nobody plays new game bingos.

And so, that really was the start of Jet Set Radio Future bingos and I played against panda in one of the early Bingothons – I think it was Summer 2019 I believe, I know he submitted to 2018, I’ve got to pull up the double bingo one as well, but we eventually did the competitive bingo game mode that we have in our current iteration for Summer 2019. Then we‘ve ran it again at [Summer] 2020 and [Summer] 2021!

So, that’s kind of the origins of Jet Set Radio Future bingo, and I’ve been there since the start!

twinkachu: pog!

7thAce: pog!

Pikastroff: pog! [Laughs]

It’s definitely good that you mention the savefile mods, that especially kind of helps removing those kinds of barriers you might have with the story progression and whatnot. That really opens up the bingo right from the get-go, which is really something that comes up often, like- AAAH, I’m getting ahead of myself I need to come back to the question! [Laughs]

twinkachu: We’re excited! [Laughs]

7thAce: We’re all so excited, I get it all the same, we’re excited to talk about it and everything!

But yeah I agree with you, if you make basically “Any% with goals” which as far as Jet Set Radio Future is concerned is what everybody had for years to decades leading up to our savefile modification of the game… You could play the game from start to finish and do different things and collect different amounts of stuff or get different goals, and bingo was really the first alternative game mode that came around for Jet Set Radio Future where you could play the game in an entirely new way. 

I think one of the biggest parts of it is that it is truly a competitive gamemode rather than just trying to play the game faster than your competitors. I think that’s really what allowed it to take off.

twinkachu: Yeah, it stands out from traditional speedruns because you’re using different and knowledge entirely rather than just doing Any% with some extra steps.

Pikastroff: It’s interesting the way you guys mention the idea that bingo used to be basically just a normal speedrun with extra steps! That’s an interesting way to think about it, in terms of bingos that tend to be more limited, and as such that really shows the importance of having those save files that have been modified, to free-up the game really.

I’ll try to come back to that because normally this is a topic we discuss later, I am getting too excited about this! [Laughs]

So, I’ll be asking, what is it that you think makes Jet Set Radio Future bingos fun? You already mentioned that movement is something that makes the game really fun to run in general but when it comes to the bingos themselves, what is it that really makes it fun for you?

twinkachu: One of the things that stands out about bingo to me is the pacing. It’s so much faster paced than an Any% run. Our Any% world record is somewhere in the hour and a half-ish range, a 1v1 bingo game takes like half an hour, a 2v2 takes even less. You’re always doing something, you’re always trying to think 4 steps ahead. It’s chaotic in the most entertaining way possible.

7thAce: Yeah, I agree with that. As a player it’s incredibly fast-paced and quick second-to-second decisions matter a lot, which I find very enjoyable coming from a competitive background of games.

So really as twinkachu said the pacing of it is incredibly quick and it makes it really exciting to both watch and to play.

twinkachu: Everything feels very high stakes, but like in a fun way!

Pikastroff: I see! Going from that, I think that basically already answers my next question because now would be the time where I would ask “do you think that what makes JSRF bingos more engaging would be routing or execution?”, but it’s very clear that the routing is definitely very much exciting since as you say it seems to consist with so many second-second decisions, so definitely the routing is exciting. Especially when considering the bingo save files, it’s even more so an open world.

So, what do you think then of the execution aspects of playing bingo for JSRF?

7thAce: So there’s a lot of different goals in Jet Set Radio Future. As far as our bingo board is concerned I believe we have about 140 different goals, I think it’s 142 different goals that can come up on any board of 25. So you do have to have a large breadth of information and skills to be able to do things.

So the execution requirements come down to three general categories, one being pure inherent movement, getting from point A to point B either across a level or across multiple levels very quickly, or to one of the collectibles which are Graffiti Souls in the game which are a majority of the goals. 

There is the unlocking, or knowing the maps to being able to utilize your movement effectively. Certain objectives will require you to complete a task, a relatively simple task, before being able to collect them, but a lot of times this can be completed in different ways and a combination of multiple collectibles in a certain level leads you to a different optimal route every single time you go through. There are up to 8 different ones in each level so any combination of those 8 existing or not creates a different kind of problem in each level, so there’s never really two times that you’re going to do the exact same thing everywhere.

And then third is the longer goals that we’ll eventually talk about later, which are full-level clear routes essentially, Graffiti Routes. Those require a whole different set of information that requires knowing the entire level from front to back, where all 50 objectives are – or on average, about 50, and being able to do them optimally because again, *seconds matter* so very often in Jet Set Radio Future bingos.

Those are the facets of execution that make it so exciting. You can take routing and make it really neat and everything, talking about decisions, but watching people go through with so many different styles and strategies to getting through individual levels is really really cool!

twinkachu: So, the movement and execution kind of work together. You need both to be a good bingo player. You can have all the strats in the world but if you’re not playing well, then you’re not gonna get anywhere!

Pikastroff: I see! It can definitely be… how to say it… It’s the big challenge, it’s the thing with bingo in general, the fact that it’s a way to really test both your ability to actually do things while also testing your ability to connect the dots, really. From what I hear it seems like JSRF seems especially strong at making you do that so that definitely makes it interesting.

Therefore I think that kind of leads into my next question, since we’re speaking of the idea of being able to do things in order to accomplish the goals you’ve set out to, are there any tricks or glitches that are not often seen in normal speedruns of JSRF that are useful in bingos? Or vice-versa – and if so, which would they be and why? Is the use different or just the same? I feel like I’m getting lost in the question there, would you like me to repeat? [Laughs]

twinkachu: [Laughs] This is probably one of my favourite things about JSRF bingo actually, because there are so many possibilities for routes you can take through areas. Any movement trick we’ve ever discovered has the potential to be viable. Bingo really rewards just knowing a ton of super random and otherwise completely useless movement tricks in a bunch of the levels.

I’m struggling to think of examples but there are so many of them!

7thAce: There’s Kigobaka, previously the fence jump, there’s the Stall Launch in Kibo (editor’s note: short for Kibogaoka Hill, one of the locations of the game)… We’ve discovered by accident a new trick in June that has immediately become viable for bingo specifically and *possibly* Any% but not really. There’s just so much that’s capable in bingo.

twinkachu: I feel like everytime someone sends a video of like “hey here’s this weird movement I found” it’s like “hey, here’s how we can use it in bingo!” [Laughs]

7thAce: There’s a specific one in the Sewers that I like where you do a Hand Plant to get extra height so you can skip a part of the level. The Sewers, notorious for anybody who’s played Jet Set Radio Future, is an extremely vertical level and it’s extremely punishing if you fall. A lot of people do not have good memories of playing the Sewers their first time through, but the bingo experts of the area are really good at being able to mitigate a ton of the obnoxious platforming that can exist, and all of a sudden take this level and turn it into a really really fun experience. That’s my personal favourite of tricks that can be done.

twinkachu: Yeah, there are a couple levels like Sewers that you don’t explore at all in the Any% route and so there are a bunch of tricks that maybe show up in the hundo route, which is less popular in our community, which is relevant in bingo. Any of the routes, whether it’s any of the categories, and you have the IL routing, like literally anything has the potential to be useful.

Pikastroff: Hmm. Alright, yeah I really like that! There’s just so much flexibility with the fact that basically everything that is found can have some sort of use. I guess that’s kind of part of the nature of bingos you know because oftentimes you have, as you said yourself, tricks where in normal speedruns people might not necessarily find it useful but there’s a use that can be found for bingo.

7thAce: I kind of like to think of it: Any% takes you through a narrow line straight through the game, and a lot of runners – even very experienced runners – when something goes wrong and they have to deviate, you can see them start to struggle. A lot of times, bingo really opens you up just beyond the line, into this larger space that the game occupies. And it leaves a really cool kind of experience for a lot of people.

Pikastroff: As someone who used to only run [The Legend of Zelda:] Breath of the Wild Any% for hundreds of hours and struggled a lot when I did Breath of the Wild bingos, I can ABSOLUTELY confirm the idea of struggling as soon as you get out of your comfort zone that a normal speedrun will provide you! [Laughs]

That’s definitely true because you suddenly realize that there are tricks you don’t know, there are aspects of the game you just kind of ‘shut off’ when you only do a single category such as Any%… So yeah, it’s definitely relevant in that regard!

With all that said, there’s definitely something I’m definitely curious to hear more from you. We’ve seen in previous Bingothons that the counting system for the bingo points is a bit special. So, would you care to explain how it works to everyone in here?

7thAce: Yeah, no problem. Being from the start of bingo I helped create this “monstrosity”!

So every square is worth one point to start. But because Jet Set Radio Future has either quick collectible goals or ridiculously long ‘clear everything’ goals and very little in between, we went ahead and changed the point system such that the long goals are worth 3 points per square, or sometimes we’ll say 2-bonus because it’s easier to count that way because of how Bingosync displays scores and whatnot. So our collectibles, character unlocks and graffiti souls are all worth 1 point, and our graffiti routes which are full-level clears of 50 or more things count as 3 points.

It creates this interesting dynamic where suddenly certain objectives become more or less available in the early part of a bingo game versus the later half, and it plays with the strategy. You can play more graffiti-heavy and try and get extra points through that if you feel confident in that or you can try and gather a lot of graffiti souls which is more of a board control, accumulate a lot of points, maybe grab some bingos along with it.

In addition, because this is a lockout competitive mode, to encourage interaction between the players that are playing the game, we reward bingos with 3 additional points. What this does is it makes really exciting moments in games where you can see a 3 or 4 in a row building, and you can either work to block the 3 or 4 in a row which creates a convergence of the players to go to the same location which creates really cool spectator moments, or you can have them break off and try and get a counter bingo to gather those additional points as well. We think just by watching it, it’s creating a lot of really really exciting, powerful moments when playing the game that really create some of the best moments in JSRF bingos, watching people compete for the same squares because they’re so important. I think that the scoring system that we use in Jet Set Radio Future, 1 point for a normal square, 3 for a graffiti, bonus 3 for bingos, is really really cool.

twinkachu: Yeah, the bonus points make it incredibly stressful to play but way more entertaining to watch, and more fun to play because it’s more stressful! Higher stakes! [Laughs]

Pikastroff: Raise your stakes sky-high, yeah! [Laughs] That’s just really a way to take the stakes that you already get in a lockout format and basically crank it up to 11, which I really like because that’s really the appeal of lockout in the first place! You were mentioning for example the spectacle for the audience that’s watching, as well as for the runners themselves… You were mentioning the communication between the runners, also that’s a very good point… At this point you, from what I’ve seen and what I hear now, that’s probably one of the most engaging formats for bingo where you have to communicate, you have to strategize really heavily, it does so in a way that’s engaging for both runners and viewers. I think that’s what makes it really exciting!

So with that said, you’ve been talking about the goals and how points are distributed, as well as the types of goals you’ve got. So in that case that leads to my next question which is, what is it for you that constitutes a fun and engaging goal in the context of JSRF against one that you think might need some rebalancing for example?

7thAce: Well, we have done some of that rebalancing automatically with the format as mentioned, but you know, there are certain goals that are just completely un-viable at the start of games because they’re just not worth enough points. Some of the longest graffiti routes in the game take upwards of 9 minutes, and in a 1v1 sense that is roughly a third to a quarter of your game depending on how fast it goes, and that’s when it’s done perfectly. A 9 minute route done perfectly is ridiculously hard to do in a lot of senses.

We’ve considered trying to toggle those around to make them become a little bit more important, or you know just things here and there but overall that’s just kind of part of the learning curve, learning what is viable earlier versus later and when it’s correct to go for something longer earlier in the run. There aren’t too many things that would be looked at I think because it’s just kind of part of the run at this point.

twinkachu: Yeah, it plays into the strategy. With the more interactive board, part of the strategy is trying to force your opponents into having to do some of these harder goals, like “oh if I threaten a bingo in this row, I force my opponent into having to do this really terrible objective while I can go do something else that will earn me more points”.

Pikastroff: Hmm. That’s evil, I like it! [Laughs]

But yeah that definitely makes sense to me, especially regarding the idea that there are goals that will only be attainable as you get to the end. You just really have to adapt in the end. But now with that said, what are your favourite goals since we are talking about goals now?

twinkachu: One of my favourite goals that shows up in bingo is one of the graffiti routes. Highway Zero is the shortest graffiti route in the game but it’s also one of the furthest from the start. So when you see it on the board, because it’s worth the extra points for being a graffiti you see people rushing to it a lot. It’s kind of become part of the meta for bingo games, like sometimes you want to rush that but sometimes your opponent will know that it’s a square that’s rushed early so then they’ll do something else to earn more points and not contest it. I don’t know, it creates really interesting strategy decisions because it’s such a quick 3 points to grab. I don’t know how long it takes for this, something like a minute and a half…

7thAce: Yeah, it’s a minute and 45 seconds, when done perfectly. There’s only one section of it that can even be considered difficult. Everything else is extremely linear. Half the maps in Jet Set Radio Future are perfect circles or loops that are conducive to racing around levels, and the other half are more open, square areas that have a more free-form route to it, and so this Highway Zero is a specifically linear level that you just go through and it’s done and it’s really really fast. Even though that exists, the priority on it early leads to really interesting scenarios as twinkachu was saying.

twinkachu: Yeah, so like sometimes it’s worth it to rush that right away and get the points but if there’s another area on the board that’s kind of stacked and your opponent chooses to go there instead, you basically forfeit everything there, so you have to balance it depending on what else is there on the board.

7thAce: My personal favourite one is… not quite an entire meme but it will matter one day I promise *trademark* is Skyscraper Graffiti! On the other hand, this is the longest route in the game and I’ve played that route specifically probably about 200 times, just playing it in other game modes as well. And one day, it will be the difference between me and losing, and it will make me happy that I’ve done it 200 times! But until then, I’ll just have to keep waiting… [wheezes]

Pikastroff: One day! *Trademark*

7thAce: Soon! *Trademark* [Laughs]

Pikastroff: Now, can I flip this and ask what is your absolute worst goal, the kind of one where you will try to force them to do that goal, such as how twinkachu was describing earlier? What goal would that be then for you? [Laughs]

7thAce: I think we have the same answer, even if we haven’t prepared it!

7thAce and twinkachu in unison: It’s Sewers Special!

twinkachu: Yup! [laughs]

7thAce: So Sewers Special… As we were saying before, Sewers is an incredibly vertical level and it requires a convoluted back-and-forth winding path to get up a lot of the time when done normally. You can even do some skips but it still takes a long time, and that’s assuming those difficult skips are gotten first try, and if not, you’re losing a minute! At the very top you have to do a sequence that will unlock a single graffiti soul-

twinkachu: It’s the only place in the level you can unlock this thing! All the way at the top!

7thAce: Yeah, most levels have multiple, this one does not. [nervously laughs] And then, you have to fall halfway back down and then climb the FAMOUS 100-meter room which takes another 2 minutes, done perfectly! That means the whole route itself for Sewers Special takes *at best* 4 minutes for a single point, and nobody likes it!

twinkachu: The 100-meter room has also become a meme in of itself because it’s this GIANT vertical room that you just wallride in a circle for 2 minutes straight to get to the top! It’s a cool mechanic, and then you realize that you have to do it for 2 minutes straight! [laughs]

7thAce: Yeah, there are obstacles in the way that can make you fall. It’s very stressful, we’ve had several bingo games come down to that square and that’s when it’s exciting, but I’ll tell you that’s one of the last ones done partially out of preference and partially out of strategy.

twinkachu: Yeah, I feel like we have that being the square that it comes down to more often than other squares just because it gets left till last so often! [laughs]

Pikastroff: Oh yeah, these kinds of goals that basically take a lot of time for little reward, yeah I can understand why you want it to burn in hell! [laughs] But they’re there, you just have to deal with it!

7thAce: Yeah, that’s part of the strategy, it only takes a couple minutes in the end and games are pretty quick, it’s not like you’re gonna be suffering for minutes on end, so…

twinkachu: And also like if there’s a ton of other stuff in Sewers it’s not always a terrible idea, if you’re unlocking other stuff while you’re there.

7thAce: Right. Individually it’s bad, but if you can get it together, if you can get it with something else you can have a pretty good experience with it and make it a good play.

Pikastroff: That’s an interesting point, the idea that you can turn it around depending on how your game has been and how well you can take a bad situation and turn it on its head.

7thAce: Yeah, I think that’s a cool part of Jet Set Radio Future bingo, the configuration of the board is really really unique every time around and it becomes a skill in of itself to be able to identify what kinds of zones, what kinds of areas should be prioritized, and how dynamic the JSRF board is is what keeps people coming back over and over to play a different game every single time.

twinkachu: Even the worst goals sometimes have their moments and win you a game.

Pikastroff: You know, this whole thing is kind of making me think of a quick question that popped in my mind. Do you think it’s actually a good thing to intentionally have ‘bad goals’ on your card rather than constantly work to only have good goals? I’m thinking for instance of the aspects of strategy you talked about earlier, as well as what you just talked about now, and the flexibility that can still be achieved even with goals that can be initially seen as bad. I’m just thinking, because you know, the first instinct when you’re thinking of creating a bingo card would be to just try and remove as many bad goals as possible, but now I’m just thinking of the idea; should some of the ‘bad goals’ be left in? Does that make sense?

7thAce: Yeah, I get what you’re saying and I think part of it is the lockout plus competitive format, with incentivising bingos and such in the Jet Set Radio Future bingo itself that makes it a little bit better.

I do not have experience with just 13 square lockout games so please correct me if I’m wrong but a lot of times no matter what, if you’re playing first-to-13 lockout style where there’s no extra points around there somewhere, it often will just get left unplayed or begrudgingly done at some point for the final square. But I think because the board is so dynamic and there are different scoring values and different incentives for scoring bingos and things like that I think having those moments where the ‘bad goals’ shine as the correct decision of what to do to maximize your score is one of the shining moments of the whole thing, making the bad goals good when most people would not think of it. 

I think that’s one of my favourite things as well, it’s just making the bad good in very specific circumstances. I think in Jet Set Radio Future and any kind of dynamic format where you have more incentives other than just number of squares, I think having goals of different difficulty or time are extremely good.

Pikastroff: Is there anything you would like to add to that, twinkachu?

twinkachu: I also feel like it just wouldn’t be the same if it wasn’t like, all of the Souls in the game are on the table as options, like it just wouldn’t be the same experience if it was like “oh we don’t do that one because we don’t like it”. I feel like the possibility of having the bad goals is also just part of the game at this point.

7thAce: Additionally as we said there’s 142 different goals in our standard form of bingo, and there’s only 25 on a board at any one time, so you’re only expected to get any individual goal every 5 to 6 games. So it’s rare that something comes up over and over again and ruins your whole career.

twinkachu: Yeah, it happens but…

Pikastroff: Yeah that’s interesting! It’s interesting to think about how the point system or just the nature of the card can really give more value to bad goals, or at least goals that people generally don’t like doing. And plus, it helps you get out of your comfort zone so that’s always a plus I’d say in that regard!

As a little parenthesis for now I’m kind of internally laughing because this discussion about doing bad goals and having that value for bad goals is pretty much the exact opposite of the discussion we were having with Floha last month with Skyward Sword! Although the context was different, as here this is with lockout with special points and there it was for single bingo in that case obviously it’s very different, but the conclusion we discussed with Floha was “BAD GOALS, AVOID! GOOD GOALS, GO TO”. But to be fair, I will say that’s a very effective strategy when you’re doing single bingo, it’s just not the same thing!

twinkachu: Yeah, they’re very different games with very different bingos.

Pikastroff: Exactly! I was just thinking about it internally, about the opposition. It shows how wide bingo is, it’s not a single kind of experience. It can really vary a lot depending on both the game as you mentioned yourself and the bingo type as well. There are so many bingo types out there, I mean we’ve mainly been talking about lockout, with your special points, but there’s also the classic single, double, from my experience there’s also stuff like row control, draft… 

I don’t know what types of bingos you guys are aware of but there’s definitely so much stuff. Do you have any other types of bingos you guys are aware of that I haven’t mentioned?

7thAce: We’ve seen the row control bingo, I think it was at the previous Bingothon which I think was really interesting, where 3 squares in a row gives it to you, or something like that? I thought that was really interesting.

twinkachu: I thought draft was an interesting concept. I don’t think that would work with JSRF because the draft period would have to be like a minute and a half!

7thAce: We actually have written our own bingo client at this point, to try and be able to customize whatever we want, so we’ve done games that are other than the 5-by-5 bingo boards. The author of it, DigitalDuck, made HexBingo, which we’ve yet to try out but it sounds utterly ridiculous, and also has a Settlers of Catan mode where you start in opposite corners and can only move on adjacent squares; which I think was also at Bingothon, or something like that (editor’s note: this seems to be a description of a mode that is called Invasion)?

twinkachu: Yeah, we have lots of gimmicky versions! [laughs]

7thAce: They haven’t really caught on in any major way because they too have their flaws but we do really like our classic bingo style! We do try some other stuff every once in a while!

Pikastroff: Yeah, it’s gonna be interesting to see what kinds of things could be done in the future!

7thAce: I’ll tell you the future of bingo currently for Jet Set Radio Future. We did 1v1 bingos for a long time, twinkachu started the 2v2 Bingo League specifically so experienced bingo runners could teach new people which ended up being a great success, a lot of people learnt a bunch and had a good time with it. 

One thing we’re working on actively is a multiplayer mod, or a co-op mod for Jet Set Radio Future on the Xbox where you can play in the same gamestate as another player.

twinkachu: Our modders are wizards! [laughs]

7thAce: Through some extensive amounts of modding, we’re able to send character position and game status over the internet – for a non-internet game by the way, this is local only as far as it was created in 2002! So we send the gamestate and the player data across to another player and you know, we can play the game on that. We’ve done it exactly once but we’ve done a 2v2 Co-op bingo where both teams have their own gamestates that they play through, so they can work on individual goals together rather than being independent as current bingos state. It is a ridiculous achievement and I think it’s going to catch on because it opens up the world to even more strategy and I think that’s really really cool!

twinkachu: Yeah, the strategy in that was insane! You can have your teammate unlock graffiti souls for you, you can work together to get a graffiti route which cuts the time those take pretty significantly, it was insane, we have to try it out more but it’s got potential!

Pikastroff: Wow, talk about wizardry there! [laughs] It’s basically transforming a single-player game into an online format… I can see how that can change up how bingos can be played. So you said they’re just on trials basically with that so far?

7thAce: Yeah, we’re still in beta of the version… Our local modder has put out like 12 or 13 different versions of it and we keep testing it through the whole game experience because there’s a lot of different things that can go wrong or go right. It’s only since recently that we can actually complete the game through it. Additionally people are practicing for the season 2 of our bingo tournament which starts up within the next week or two (editor’s note: this was at the time of the interview. As of moment of publishing this article, the tournament is on at jsrfbingo on Twitch), so the interest in doing experimental stuff is less high right now and more of just direct practice for our current format. It is being looked at not for the immediate future but in the near future it might become the way we play.

twinkachu: Yeah, I’m excited to see what happens with that!

Pikastroff: Yeah, it already seems exciting on a bingo basis, but it’s also exciting on a modding basis as well! Just to be able to do that kind of feat in the first place is incredible.

7thAce: Oh, it’s ridiculous! Jet Set Radio Future has some of the most incredible mods for an Xbox-locked game. It kind of blows my mind that we have such a good modding community for how relatively small Jet Set Radio Future is. I’m not gonna get on that too far because I can talk about modding forever because I helped write some of them! [laughs]

Pikastroff: Yeah, when you get passionate about something you can talk about it and that’s very good that way! [laughs] I think the key takeaway from this is to basically keep an eye on mod developments because that could basically change how bingos are played for Jet Set Radio Future.

7thAce: Yeah, one of the things on the doc as well is an auto score-marker, syncing the Bingosync or our custom client API to the gamestate itself so it will automatically mark squares for players so there is no human input errors. That’s a possibility that is a genuine thing and that kind of stuff is just so cool!

twinkachu: Yeah, especially when your bingo game is as fast-paced as ours, sniping happens all of the time and so taking any margin of error out of that is exciting!

Pikastroff: Yeah, that’s definitely exciting, so we need to keep an eye forward for how mods develop then and how that affects bingos!

Wow, I have no idea how to transition to my next question so I guess there won’t be any proper transition so this will be a complete whiplash on the subject. My next question is about the mentality behind routing, because I mean we’ve talked a lot about routing and execution, so something that I am curious to know more about is, in terms of the mentality behind routing and specifically aspects of it that people might not usually think of, especially for beginners. Do they have for example any mistakes in the thought process specifically behind routing that can damage a beginner’s progress? Does that question make sense?

7thAce: Yes, I gotcha! So, I created a video a month or two ago of the 5 facets of JSRF bingo which are the knowledge, the movement, single-level routing, multi-level routing and then even wider is bingo strategy as a whole. It takes all 5 of those to be good at Jet Set Radio Future bingo, and no single player is the best at more than one or two of those.

Crabbi is by far our best movement player in the community, holding individual level world records, many of them over the years. But some other players come along and are better at maybe taking a wider approach to the game, trying to manipulate the bingo board in such a way that makes it interesting. 

So, there are a lot of different facets and it starts off a lot with new players with just finding what goals are easy and getting them done early or something like that, and that’s a good starting point. But very quickly, after maybe a competitive start with good players in their teams, you’ll see they tend to fall off because the good players then have a better followup strategy of where to go next and how to both manipulate their position in the open world as well as the squares that they complete on the board to create advantageous positions in the whole game. I think that’s where a lot of that comes from, new players will do specifically what’s easy and what will get points now as opposed to setting themselves up for bigger and wider advantages as the game progresses, but that’s such a large concept that there’s no way to entirely know what is objectively correct. You can only look at it in retrospect and try and learn.

twinkachu: The other thing that I kind of noticed with newer players is that lots of them just gravitate towards the ‘easy areas’ rather than areas that have a lot of stuff in them. New players are intimidated by the areas they’re less familiar with and so they’ll commit to doing, like, the first level you do in Any% even if it only has one or two goals rather than rushing out to some of the harder sides of the board to get more things.

7thAce: Yup, those are the ones that are only vaguely touched in Any% for one specific story event and then they’re left. They’re barely ever even looked at in the Any% route, but they’re a big part of bingo.

twinkachu: Yeah, if you only have Any% experience there are a bunch of levels that you just have no knowledge of how to navigate them at all, which is a struggle for new players for sure.

7thAce: Yeah, learning everything is very important, but I think this is one of the biggest routing-style pitfalls that can come up for newer players.

Pikastroff: Yeah that definitely comes back to what we were saying earlier about the idea of the narrow line you mentioned earlier, which is how you experience the game when only going through Any%, something along those lines, versus when playing bingo. It’s obviously a very difficult experience for a beginner to go through that process of widening it out, but it’s interesting to see how for instance when you’re still stuck in that linear line at the beginning… It’s hard to get out of there and do these goals that may be a better investment in the end. 

I was also thinking of those 5 aspects you mentioned earlier. You said usually runners are only ever really good at one or two of them?

7thAce: For the most part, yeah. Other than knowledge, which is the core part that everybody knows, everybody has to know everything and you just have to assume that everybody knows where everything is and how to get everywhere, but the others, they’re up in the air.

Pikastroff: I see. Yeah, because I was thinking that supposing you have a team game, like a 2v2 game, that’s where for instance you could have interesting compositions where you could combine players depending on their knowledge and where their skills are, in particular with these 5 aspects. That could lead to interesting results in terms of the games that can lead to. That’s just a stray thought I was having about that. I suppose that the individuality of the runners is something interesting to think about.

7thAce: I completely agree with you, and my favourite part of my favourite game of all time is exactly that!

twinkachu: Yeah, it’s a really interesting dimension of 2v2, to see like ok this player really shines doing these kinds of goals and this player really excels in those kinds of areas, and so how can they use that to their advantage to just obliterate their opponent?

Pikastroff: Alright, awesome! So I’m gonna move on to the next question… I don’t know how much this would apply considering the difference of your system now that I look at it more, because usually something that I would ask is what kind of factors make you think ‘ok, this is the kind of row I want to go for’ or ‘this is NOT what I want to go for’, but I suppose the question would be more… Hmm… I’m trying to think of a way to make it sound like it makes sense…

7thAce: I gotcha! I understand partially because I have the questions and can read it as well so MAYBE I’ve got it, but it’s basically ‘how do you determine what you’re doing’?

Pikastroff: Yeah! Basically how the hell do you know what you’re doing basically! [laughs]

7thAce: Yeah, so basically at the start of every game we have a one-minute strategizing time, and we found that greatly improved games because games are blitz-fast off the start and seconds matter. The first 60 seconds can sometimes just make or break a game. Before we implemented it, it led to really strange scenarios where people were trying to read the board and then stood around doing nothing because it’s too hard to move to an area and read the board and find everything immediately.

So we start with a one-minute strategizing period where teams – I say teams but it can be a team of one – will strategize where they want to do their opening. Where do you want to go FIRST? And then make your opening play, what rows look good? We have an auto-balancing system on our boards so individual rows or columns aren’t too stacked most of the time, that’s built into the generating algorithm that we use so you can’t get 3 graffities on one row and none on another… most of the time, it’s got some variants that keep the game interesting.

So you’ve got the opening and once that opening happens you take whatever squares that exist and come up with your midgame plan. Based on how the beginning has gone, do you try and threaten for a bingo, do you try and grab some squares, do you try and win with a graffiti route or something or do you try and pin your opponent into a bad decision? This is where the greatest routing decisions come into play, it’s in this mid game state. And those are all up in the air, subjective questions, there’s rarely objectively correct answers, there’s only varying degrees of success.

Once those midgame plans either work or don’t work you run towards the endgame where there are only maybe 5 squares-ish, 5 or less squares on the board, and then you count up your points and say “ok, based on this game state, what of these 5 squares do I need to win? Do I need 2 of them and one of the graffiti routes which often gets held till the end since they are longer? Or do I just need to block a bingo and get another square?”. You have to do the maths to figure out exactly what you need to win.

The way I conceptualize the bingo game is into the opening, the midgame and the endgame where you count your points and see what you HAVE to do to win.

twinkachu: Yeah, I know other kinds of bingos really incentivize picking a row and just committing to that bingo right away. In JSRF in order to do that you’d need a really, really specific kind of board generation and also for the other team to not notice the bingo at all. If you commit to a bingo right away it rarely goes to plan.

7thAce: There’s a lot of having the interruption of the other team, which creates really interactive game states that you have to try and predict several steps ahead. “If we get this square, then they’ll go and try and block us here, so we can try and get a new bingo in a completely different area”. All of these are very quick decisions that have to be made in the matter of tens of seconds.

Pikastroff: You know the more I hear about the complexity of JSRF bingos the more it makes me even more invested in wanting to basically rewatching the old Bingothon runs there were and trying and see if I can observe all those things you’ve talked about. The complexity really has been pushed to 11 compared to a lot of other bingos! I’d definitely be interested to see again considering what I’ve just learnt by listening to you in the past hour- wow, we’re at one hour! [laughs]

7thAce and twinkachu in unison: Woooo!

Pikastroff: GG, one hour! [laughs]

twinkachu: JSRF bingos are kind of like an extreme sport, like I’ll watch other bingos and everyone’s just chill having a good time, whereas the chaos, the stakes…

 

7thAce: Yeah, the speed that permeates JSRF bingo makes it complex! But still on the surface level, especially when we have commentators involved which we have for all of our official tournaments *trademark* matches… They help break it down into really understandable concepts and they are doing great jobs. 

I think the complexity behind-the-scenes but still keeping it simple for people, like the areas are visually distinctive from each other due to good game design and things like that, really help making JSRF a really eSport, competitive mode-friendly both to play and to watch.

twinkachu: Yeah, I think it says a lot about the kind of bingo we play that we NEED to have commentators for people to understand what’s going on! [laughs]

Pikastroff: There’s always that kind of debate people will have about whether bingos are more casual or competitive, people will have different opinions on that. For me I’d say it can be both, there’s definitely some bingos that are a lot more casual and they’re absolutely fun to play and now this particular bingo is an example of how competitive bingo can be, and how far it can go. You know, it’s almost a shame that it’s such a niche because if more people can see how well that has been developed, that could really develop into something really great I feel.

7thAce: Absolutely.

twinkachu: Yeah, it’s got potential.

Pikastroff: With all that said I’ll move on to the next question… Well, not that one which is a leftover from the Skyward Sword Beyond the Board with Floha about randomizers! [laughs]

7thAce: Well actually we do have a randomizer but we don’t use it for bingo because it’s terrible! Have you seen how complex it is?! Imagine then with everything thrown around in random areas, it’s horrible! It’s so bad! [laughs] 

twinkachu: There’s a component in the randomizer where the tape, which is this collectible you have to pick up in order to collect the graffiti souls in an area, those correlate to different areas, and like THAT is randomized! So you have no idea what you can even do for the first half hour!

7thAce: Yeah, we’d have to specifically make a randomizer for bingo rather than take the randomizer we have and put it in the bingo. The whole thing is just a mess! [laughs]

Pikastroff: That definitely sounds a bit ridiculous! Something we were discussing with Floha last time was how playing a rando and bingo at the same time is hard mode for bingo, like you already take something by definition already has an aspect of randomization with the bingo card and then on top of that you add the randomization in the game itself! It definitely works for certain games including Skyward Sword, in that particular case it’s still being developed but it’s something that seems to be working well. But from what I hear here… It doesn’t seem like that’s the case yet for JSRF! [laughs]

twinkachu: Yeah, in a game with no RNG in the movement and unlocking of things, adding a randomizer really throws everything off!

7thAce: Randomizer Any% is one of my personal favourite game modes so don’t get me wrong, the randomizer is super neat and cool in my opinion but in a bingo sense where I want to limit variability and work in the context of what we already know, having squares be different things every time as far as how to actually pick them up is just kind of ridiculous and it doesn’t make for a fun game. 

Maybe the magic formula hasn’t been found yet, it took a while for us to figure out the formula for making our open world bingo good so maybe it will just be a matter of time before we get a randomizer right, it could take some time.

Pikastroff: Alright, yeah, we’ll see in the future then if something FOR BINGOS specifically will work out, because yeah here I was talking about randomizers in the context of bingo, not randomizers in general. We’ll have to see!

Now we’ll be moving on to our next little section here… What would you say is the barrier for entry for people who are interested in picking up Jet Set Radio Future bingos, and have you got any advice for them?

twinkachu: So honestly the barrier for entry is a little massive, you have to know where all of the collectibles in the game are and how to unlock them and how to navigate all of the levels, which isn’t something Any% will teach you. Once you’ve got that and the basics of movement tech, you also have to have a grasp on how we play bingo, like the strategy and the meta behind it, and you pick that up as you play. Starting out is kind of an overwhelming experience! [laughs]

The way most people kind of start playing bingo is that they have some background Any% experience so they’re already familiar with the speedrun tech and the movement and the general layout of the world. From there they spend a couple days learning all of the Soul locations and all the unlocks, stuff like that. Then they just play a lot of bingo. The best way to learn is really just to play a lot.

One thing we have found is that this 2v2 format works pretty well with where the community’s at now. We kind of have a smaller group of people who have a lot of bingo experience, and then a group of people who have no bingo experience but are interested in learning, so being able to play on a team with an experienced player who can kind of walk you through their strategy makes that starting-out a little less overwhelming. That is my advice, to run Any% and then have a good player carry you for a couple rounds! [laughs]

7thAce: Yeah, you’ve got that right. Like I said there’s a 142 goals in the game and very few of those are actually done in Any%, so just learning all of that is an intimidating task, especially when you’re watching it you’re like “I have NO IDEA where any of these are and every single player seems to know where everything is” but I didn’t know where they all were to start, we all found our own ways of earning it, it doesn’t take too long once you really get familiar with it.

twinkachu: Yeah, kind of learning how the unlocks work is way less intimidating than learning what every soul on the board is, so once you have a handle of how unlocks work, it’s easy enough to figure out how to do them in all of the areas, which makes that a little less terrifying!

7thAce: We’ve also created a lot of bingo resources over the years of doing it because it is a difficult to get into, so having these resources available to new players is a good thing.

twinkachu: [laughs] It means we get new bingo players instead of it just being the same 4 people!

Pikastroff: [laughs] Yeah, try to rope them in, into the bingo community!

7thAce: [chanting] JOIN US…

Pikastroff: [chanting] JOIN… JOIN… JOIN…

twinkachu: This is not a cult, I promise! [laughs]

Pikastroff: … is it, now?

[Silence… yup, it’s a cult]

Alright, now my next question, for which I think I already know how the answer’s gonna be since that was already a lot of what we discussed… Do you think that ‘normal speedrunners’ could benefit from doing bingos in some way in the context of Jet Set Radio Future, especially when it comes to runners that run categories that don’t explore the game to its fullest such as Any%? I’ll add to that, that’s where I am especially interested in twinkachu’s perspective since you’re someone who started out with bingos and not normal speedruns specifically? Ok, that’s basically two things in one here, so where do you want to start? [laughs]

7thAce: I’ll talk for one second and then let twinkachu take on their perspective… YES! Do something that’s not Any%, you will be better at this game, my goodness, it’s so much better overall, you can actually learn backups, find what you like in this game! Some people like Any%, some people do not and I think our resources that we have now are really cool at finding what you enjoy. Maybe if you don’t like bingo, you like the longer routes like Soul hunting or whatever, you can find a full game category that works for you while still playing bingo, and getting something out of bingo in the end. 

I’m not going to say you MUST play bingo, but there are advantages to at least trying it out.

twinkachu: Yeah, bingo gives you a good sampler of everything that all of the kinds of speedruns have to offer. You get to try out all of the areas and you get to try out all of the longer format things in the game like Soul hunting and graffiti… 

And also as 7thAce was saying earlier about how Any% takes you through a line, bingo helps you figure out what to do when you run into trouble. It helps you figure out backups and stuff that you just never encounter if you only run Any%.

Pikastroff: Alright, yes indeed, that seems to be the conclusion in general the idea that from bingos you can learn so many things that can then even be applied back to speedruns. Obviously there’s Any% but while I don’t know what are the categories for Jet Set Radio Future I would imagine that even if there are strats that you can learn in bingos that seemingly have nothing to do with Any%, I would assume you can still use them for other categories as well. As such that’s one aspect in which that’s useful and just from learning to solve problems and whatnot, all these kinds of things, and is fun… 

There we go, that last thing should be also sufficient enough! [laughs]

7thAce: Yeah, again twinkachu you started with bingos so what was it like to go to Any% after learning so much stuff from the game rather than the other way around?

Pikastroff: Yeah I feel like it being me being a lot more comfortable with doing alternative strats. A lot of new runners feel a lot of pressure, like “I have to do the PERFECT thing” or “I have to do the optimal route” and I was way more comfortable with doing like “yeah, this works, I’ll do this!” [laughs]

I kind of was drawn to bingo because I thought I would get tired of doing the same Any% run over and over, which in practice isn’t how it played out, but I don’t know. I feel like bingo just sent me into Any% with a really different mindset than most people start out speedrunning with. It’s ok to be bad, I’m just having fun learning things! [laughs]

Pikastroff: Yeah that makes sense, it really kind of drives you to try out things occasionally on your own! Of course that happens in normal speedruns as well, it’s not entirely inexistent but I can definitely see how in normal speedruns, some newer people especially might feel pressured into doing things perfectly. It can materialize itself in the fact that for example you know people might be inclined to only follow let’s say the world record strats or other top strats that they’ve seen. That basically can tunnelvision you into just not really being comfortable as soon as something DIFFERENT has to happen. While when you came with bingo, I suppose that just kind of flipped that around, then.

twinkachu: I am way more of the belief that it is way more valuable to know a lot of things about the game than like to start out by just grinding the hardest tricks for hours on end. Learning the basics of the game will just help you so much more for when you inevitably do try to learn the hard tricks.

7thAce: JSRF movement is by far the biggest timesave that exists. There’s no two ways to go about it. Movement in JSRF is the biggest timesave you can do more than any individual trick. You will unlock tricks eventually by being able to move well. 

Bingo being the way it is requires good movement to be good at bingo and people can do bingo for a long time, and as long as they remember the Any% route they find that they’ve improved in their Any% play even without playing it, and I say this with experience because I came back after 7 months and on my very first run attempt I PB’ed by 90 seconds!

Pikastroff: GG!

7thAce: Yeah, it was not a significant investment or anything, it’s just the fact that bingo and all the other game modes we have has gone ahead and made us better players in general.

twinkachu: Yeah, I primarily play bingo and the randomizer but every time I go back to Any% I don’t feel like I’ve gotten super rusty or lost anything, I can usually just get right back into it because I’m still familiar with all the movement.

Pikastroff: That makes sense then, yeah. By definition you won’t get rusty because all these ideas that you constantly used in those other contexts then are applied back.

7thAce: Yeah.

twinkachu: Yeah.

Pikastroff: Alright! So now my next question would be how do you think the community can further support bingos then? Especially considering you’ve got the tournament starting up really soon!

7thAce: Well… As far as the Jet Set Radio Future community is concerned, everybody knows about bingo so there’s not a whole lot we could do, I mean obviously they could learn and play it but we’ve got a ton of support already so I appreciate it.

twinkachu: Our community is relatively small and pretty tight-knit, so whatever is going on with bingo kind of reaches everyone who wants to hear about it. I don’t know, we’re in a pretty good place!

Pikastroff: I suppose the best thing I can do then is ask on which Twitch channel will the tournament be happening, because then I can just put the link and plug it here then to see if people are interested to check it out? [laughs]

twinkachu: You can catch all of the tournament stuff at twitch.tv/jsrfbingo and that’s where all of the stuff happens.

Pikastroff: Alright, awesome! In that case just as twinkachu said if you’re interested in checking out any JSRF bingo events including the Bingo League which at the moment we’re recording has yet to start but will start very soon but will be ongoing by the time this is out (editor’s note: and is currently ongoing at moment of publishing this), you can check it out on this channel!

7thAce: Additionally, all of our season 1 VODs are on twitch.tv/jsrf, without the bingo.

twinkachu: We migrated channels.

7thAce: … So we can make it for our specific purposes and whatnot! And additionally we’re looking to have Bingothon help us out with the finals of our event which should be… sometime in September? Early September if I am estimating correctly but it could be anytime.

twinkachu: Yeah, that sounds right.

7thAce: So we might have that on the Bingothon channel, which would be exciting, so thanks to the Bingothon people for helping us out with that!

twinkachu: As mentioned earlier, all of our matches are commentated  so they’re super accessible to watch even if you don’t know all the chaos that goes into JSRF!

Pikastroff: Yeah, you can definitely keep an eye out for this tournament! So if you’re watching or reading this right now, definitely see if you can check it out anytime soon, whether it be on jsrfbingo or indeed for the finals… Bingothon itself *wink wink*! We’ll see! [laughs]

With that said we’ll be entering the final section now. Before we get to the end, have you got any anecdotes you’d like to share?

twinkachu: 7thAce, you’ve got one! [laughs]

7thAce: Do I? I forgot what I said for it! [laughs]

twinkachu: … I don’t remember either! [laughs]

7thAce: Curses! I don’t know, a lot of our bingo anecdotes are very much context-dependent and it’s like “ahah, I can’t believe you went for x Souls that fast, what a crazy move” but it doesn’t make any sense to people listening to this!

twinkachu: Man, I can’t believe you found the clip and then you jammed it into a bingo route!

7thAce: #relatable, kids! [laughs]

I guess I’ll say some of my favourite moments while watching bingo are when people are competing in the same areas. I think it’s super cool watching really really exciting matches! 

And on the other hand… Please stop sniping my goals, Crabbi! [laughs]

twinkachu: [laughs] Getting sniped by Crabbi is a universal experience of playing bingo, if you have played bingo with Crabbi you have gotten sniped and you are mad about it! That’s just how it goes! [laughs]

7thAce: Crabbi is our best movement runner and he WILL beat you to what you’re doing by exactly one second sooner than you’re going to do it!

twinkachu: He will click the square and it will turn into Crabbi’s colour!

7thAce: And you think the game is broken, but no, it just be like that…

So yeah, as my anecdote, Crabbi has been my ‘rival’ to this game because he is so good and has been playing it for such a long time. We did a 1v1 for Bingothon I believe at some point…

twinkachu: Last year?

7thAce: It was either that or it was Hotfix… I don’t remember which… But we’ve done 1v1 bingos before and they’re always a treat so, I would recommend!

Pikastroff: Alright, I assume the anecdote is basically the same for you twinkachu?

twinkachu: Yeah, I have no anecdotes. [laughs]

Pikastroff: Alright, that definitely sounds good to me, the sniping! I like that! [laughs]

7thAce: Yeah, with JSRF being such a fast game, to a matter of seconds I mean, I have to resort to like pre-placing my mouse cursor over squares and things like that to make sure that I shave the milliseconds off of my clicks that I need to because the amount of times that it has mattered is genuinely painful!

twinkachu: Yeah, I think when we were preparing for the last tournament I was playing a lot of practice games with Crabbi and there was this week where I got sniped to Skyscraper Graffiti by him 3 separate times! By like ONE spray too, it was a super small margin… It was tragic! [laughs]

Pikastroff: Alright. Have you got any final words you’d like to say to the community and everyone?

7thAce: I’ll start with speaking mainly to the bingo community here… If you’re interested, check us out, we do submit to Bingothon fairly often, we have a lot of fun matches that we like to put on for people. We spend a lot of time preparing and making sure that everybody is good to go and we’ve got lots of prepared commentary so you can follow what’s going on and whatnot, so check out some of our old Bingothon VODs or again the ones on twitch.tv/jsrf and by the time you’re watching it, twitch.tv/jsrfbingo, so all those should be pretty exciting.

And for anybody interested, at the end of this you can hit us up… we don’t have a public link for the JSRF bingo Discord yet but it will probably exist eventually *trademark*, and our speedrunning hub at JSRFSpeedruns.com will get you started! (editor’s note: you may find the JSRF Speedrun.com page link here and the general speedrunning Discord here)

twinkachu: Yeah, if you’re interested in bingo, just track down our speedrunning community and someone will point you the right way! [laughs]

7thAce: Thank you by the way for having us to all the Bingothon people, we’ve been at a couple events and it’s always fun to do so I appreciate you having us included!

twinkachu: Yeah, we are always excited to share our disaster of a game mode with the people! [laughs]

Pikastroff: [laughs] The disaster! The sniping disaster, the fast sniping disaster of absolute death!

twinkachu: … of high stakes!

Pikastroff: Yeah, of high stakes! The Fast Sniping Disaster of High Stakes! Nice. [laughs]

Alright, if you’ve got nothing more to say then I want to say first off, thank you so much for being here, for this Beyond the Board! We’ve definitely had a lot of fun here, I really enjoyed it!

If you are watching now in video format, definitely do make sure to check out the FULL article which will contain the FULL interview because there’s definitely been a lot we covered that couldn’t possibly make it to the final video, so I urge you definitely do so, as well as for all the other Beyond the Board videos as well as there’s always a lot of interesting content in there, lemme tell you! [laughs]

Definitely make sure to give a follow to both 7thAce and twinkachu and to also give a follow to the jsrfbingo Twitch channel for the tournament that will be just about to start at the time of recording.

Thank you everyone, and we’ll be seeing you on the next Beyond the Board. Bye!

7thAce: Bye!

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And that is it for this month’s Beyond the Board! Well, “it”, that WAS our longest edition by far this time, but it definitely was a very interesting one nonetheless!

Something that was mentioned in this article is the possibility that we’ll be restreaming the finals for the Jet Set Radio Future Bingo League, and indeed it might just be! But beyond that, we also have other content on our Twitch channel, including the Super Mario Sunshine Bingo League (currently on its 3rd season), the Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild Bingo-Bongo Weeklies, and hopefully more soon! If you’re interested in helping us restreaming those, then do not hesitate to fill in this form to join the team!

Thank you, and see you later on another Beyond the Board!