Beyond the Board: Interview with Floha258

Hello everyone, and welcome back to a brand new Beyond the Board! We may have taken a slight break in June to recover from the excitement of Bingothon Summer 2021, but we are now back in full force with this exciting edition!

This time is a bit special, as the guest is none other than one of the Bingothon main organizers; Floha258! And in this Beyond the Board, he will be speaking about The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword as well as the Skyward Sword Randomizer! As you may tell, this is all to celebrate the release of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD, so if you just got started playing this game, we hope you are enjoying it!

As a quick little PSA, do remember that the Super Mario Sunshine 1v1 Lockout Bingo League Season 3 will be starting at the end of July, and as such, getting help with restreaming is most definitely appreciated! If you’re interested in joining the restream team, then do not hesitate to fill out this form.

With all that said, as usual you may find the video right below, as well as the FULL INTERVIEW right under it. Thank you everyone, and enjoy!

 

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The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

 

Pikastroff: Hello everyone and welcome back to this new edition of Beyond the Board! For this one we’ve got quite a few familiar faces in here because it’s just the two of us Bingothon organizers, so that’s interesting because usually we’re with external people. However, this is for good reason because today’s topic is quite interesting! So, how about you introduce yourself and the game you want to speak about today?

Floha258: Uh… Introducing myself? I don’t know, is that really necessary? I mean everybody knows me anyway! Hi, I am Floha. I do Bingothon stuff, including Beyond the Board stuff, you might have heard me a few times there!

Pikastroff: Maybe! [Laughs]

Floha258: It’s kind of a bit weird just being on the other side today. But yeah, about me actually, you know I do occasionally speedrun this kind of weird game that is called The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword and I think that is why I was invited here… I think I may be correct there!

Pikastroff: You are! Today you are here to talk about Skyward Sword, especially on the occasion of Skyward Sword HD’s release! So, why don’t you talk just very briefly about how you got into Skyward Sword speedrunning?

Floha258: Oooh god! That is a very interesting story… Oh god, where do I start? So, this kind of goes hand in hand with how I got into speedrunning in itself. So basically I think it was like in 2015, 2016, I basically just watched this german YouTuber who was doing Twitch streams. Then he basically raided someone who was doing a speedrun and I thought that was kind of cool! By this I got to meet other speedrunners. Someone that I saw was a certain thiefbug – that’s his name, yes… I’m trying to think while talking, this is going greatly! And he was actually doing a speedrun of Majora’s Mask, yes that is correct.

After that I basically met a whole bunch of other people and I kind of met a few friendly faces and I tried to get into speedrunning Ocarina of Time myself. Needless to say, that kind of didn’t work out so well because I was kind of lazy and I don’t know, it never worked out. I probably didn’t put any effort into it.

Then, I saw another streamer who is called IndyKenobi. He was doing a Skyward Sword speedrun and I thought ‘hey, that actually looks kinda cool, so maybe I could try that myself and maybe that will work out for once!’… And lo and behold, I got a few very bad times but I did this speedrun!

Pikastroff: Nice, and then… Ever since then, the story has begun! So tell me then, especially considering you said, you know, that Ocarina of Time didn’t work out and in the end Skyward Sword really is what prevailed, so in that sense, what is your favourite aspect of Skyward Sword speedrunning and why?

Floha258: Oooh, god… You’re asking questions! Do I even have any favourite aspects of running this game? I feel like everything in this game is just painful!

Pikastroff: [Laughs] Yes, best way to attract people to play your game, just say everything is painful!

Floha258: Yeah, I mean it makes sense! I mean, it’s kind of attractive that at least when I first started learning it the game was kind of easy to learn. It was just very lengthy but it was very easy to learn. So yeah, that’s what got me attracted into it in the first place.

Nowadays, it’s probably a bit harder to learn… Not super hard, but yeah, you need to get a lot of the technical details down just to have a basic understanding of what the fuck is actually kind of happening in here!

Pikastroff: Yeah, Skyward Sword speedruns have gotten [more complicated]… Back In Time in of itself has been pretty much there from the beginning because it was discovered in Twilight Princess but then, there was a couple years ago with RBMs (editor’s note: Reverse BiT Magic; BiT: Back in Time), that fucked everything!

Floha258: Yeah, basically. And recently… Well, I say recent even though it’s been almost a year ago actually… The discovery of Early Boss Rush just kind of exploded the game even more. I still remember when sub 5 was the big thing! Today we’re looking at a world record that is under 1:25, so yeah (editor’s note: at the time of writing, the current world record for Skyward Sword Any% is 1:21:49 by sva).

Pikastroff: Yeah that game just got completely busted open. And speaking of that you know… I mean, that doesn’t lead it into the conversation at all but I need to make the transition! How then did you get into Skyward Sword bingos?

Floha258: Hmm… Interesting question! Good question! How did I get into bingos? I think I saw some kind of bingo, I can’t even remember what it was… I think I saw it in another game, sort of like Super Mario 64 or Ocarina of Time again. I then saw there was a Skyward Sword bingo but there was like nobody who ever actually did that and after I had done like my first completed run I decided to do Skyward Sword bingo. Needless to say that didn’t go so well but you know, I kind of found a partner to do that with and we kind of tried to revive the bingo scene and it actually wasn’t that bad! We got a few people interested again. We actually had a 6 people race once, that was kind of fun. A lot of people have moved from the game since then, so yeah. I’d love to get something like that going again sometime.

Pikastroff: So in that case, what is it that makes Skyward Sword bingos fun and challenging?

Floha258: That is a good question because well, we’re kind of looking at it again from two different perspectives. There’s like the pre-RBM one where that was like, I don’t know, everything was pretty linear. I mean it still is today, it’s kind of linear, but basically before the game opens up you have to do the first two dungeons, always. The ways of how we do that is kind of differently from how we used to do it but it’s still basically the same thing. You HAVE to complete the first two dungeons to unlock the third region which is Lanayru. From there on, the game opens up massively. But before that there isn’t that much to do. That time gives you enough time to think about ‘what do I want to?’, ‘what are some interesting rows?’, ‘what are some rows I totally do NOT want to do?’ – *cough cough* RUPEE FARMING *cough cough* – because rupee farming sucks!

Pikastroff: So in that sense, what would you then say is the aspect that’s the most engaging, is it the routing or the execution? I’m especially curious by the routing aspect because as you said there’s quite a lot of it that starts off quite linearly, so… It can be used as an opportunity to think about your route. But at the same time, does it perhaps tend to lead into quite similar beginnings for everyone? What do you think about that, and… I feel like I am straying from the original question, but… do you know what I mean?

Floha258: Yeah, definitely it leads to similar routes in the beginning for everyone. I don’t think you get around to do Earth Temple, which is the second dungeon in the game, or at least not in many cards. There may be a few here and there that may allow you to not do Earth Temple, but you probably always have to do it. I mean the routing is kind of fun, just trying to think of ‘ok, here are the goals I want to do, but what are the prerequisites for this goal? When does this goal open up?’. 

For example, as I was saying about rupee farming, which is a thing which sucks. But what you need to consider is you need extra wallets for rupee farming. For example there is 1900 rupees… I think it’s 1900, I can’t actually remember how much it is… So you start off with a 300 rupees pouch. From there on you buy 3 pouch extensions which give you an additional 300 rupees of space. So you can buy those 3, that gives you an additional 900 rupees, so you’re at 1200. Then, there’s also wallet upgrades which are separate from the wallet extensions, that you get from Batreaux who is the sidequest guy you have to collect a lot of gratitude crystals for, with which you can then return to him to get the rewards for it. There you get the wallet upgrades. And yeah from there you get the 500 rupees one rather easily, then you’re at like… Let me do the maths… At 1400 rupees, yes that is correct. Then I think, let me lie, the next one is at 1000 rupees, so then you can get to 1900 rupees. 

But that is kind of late, I think that is the 30 gratitude crystals reward so that means you kind of have to do like 6 side quests because they’re [the gratitude crystals] normally in 5 packs if you get them from quests. So you need to either do 6 quests or get additional single ones, but then again, you need items to get those! Yeah, that is kind of a thing in here, you need to think a lot about the prerequisites that you need for these goals, etc.

Pikastroff: So actually since you’re speaking of prerequisites, which is actually a pretty common theme here in the Beyond the Boards, it always comes up…

Floha258: Oh my, it’s almost like bingos have a common theme! [Laughs]

Pikastroff: Exactly! Who would have thought? [Laughs]

Then I’m especially thinking, for instance, you know you’ve got different types of prerequisites. You can have prerequisites based off, you know, getting certain amounts of stuff, you can have story prerequisites and whatnot, all those kinds of things. And I’m thinking, how do things such as Back in Time, RBMs and stuff like that affect prerequisites, and in general, how much knowledge does… Ok, actually let me backtrack, maybe not necessarily ‘how much knowledge of Back in Time does one need to have’ but rather, in general how much does Back in Time affect bingos, if that makes sense?

Floha258: Hmm… A lot! A lot, definitely. There are some goals which are normally quite late in the game. For example there are goals like ‘get the bottle in Fire Sanctuary’. Fire Sanctuary is the 6th dungeon in the game. Normally you would get to Fire Sanctuary within… I don’t know, in a casual playthrough, probably not before 4 hours I think. If we’re like strictly thinking of casual playthroughs it’s probably even later depending on your knowledge of the game. It may very well take up to like 5 or even 10 hours. So if you don’t want to sit there for forever, you definitely have to know your tricks and how to get stuff out of the way. 

For example to get to this dungeon what you need to do is, you need to get this item which is the Fireshield Earrings, which you get usually from the [Eldin] Trial. So, to do that, we need to RBM the trial… 

So I’ve talked a lot about RBM but never really explained it. Without going into too much technical details here… Maybe this is not the best time to explain but whatever I’m going to do it anyway! You can’t stop me! It’s basically a very powerful glitch that lets us do a lot of things out of order. So basically it allows us to interact with the environment in a different way… Let’s say it like that! Yeah, I think that’s probably a very bad explanation, but who cares. If you want more details, I don’t know… Don’t ask me!

Pikastroff: Isn’t there Gym’s video? It actually provides a full technical explanation on how it works.

Floha258: Yeah, that probably provides a good enough explanation. It’s got a lot of stuff to do with memory and scene flags and stuff, but I think that’s probably too much for this Beyond the Board! So yeah, let’s just say it allows us to interact with it differently…

So, back to my example! We need to RBM the Trial Gate to get the Fireshield Earrings. Then we’ve got the Fireshield Earrings, normally we need bottles; bottles are rather easy to obtain, that’s not the problem. However what we also need is Clawshot! Clawshot is something we get by doing the Lanayru Trial! So, here’s the thing where you actually have a choice now. You can RBM the flames [that are blocking the way to Fire Sanctuary] away with a very shitty RBM, or you can RBM the Lanayru Trial [to then obtain the Clawshot] which also works. So yeah, you kind of have the choice, do you want the Clawshot, so you just do Lanayru Trial, RBM that, or you can do the shitty flame RBM.

Pikastroff: So then that’s what leads you to the bottle [in Fire Sanctuary]?

Floha258: Yeah. No, well that leads us to… No well actually the flame RBM isn’t that shitty, what’s shitty is the great flame RBM and you can’t really skip that without everything so you have to do that… So basically, hmm… you do all of this stuff to enter Fire Sanctuary which is the second to last dungeon in the game and yeah, there you can actually get the bottle then. You can I think get it glitchless… Can you get it glitchless? I don’t know, I’ll have to think about that and I don’t really want to think right now… Thinking is hard!

Pikastroff: Yes. [Laughs]

What I was thinking about was that Back in Time can help break down the linearity of the game, doesn’t it?

Floha258: Yeah, definitely. However as I said you basically still have to do the first two dungeons in the game because well, there’s no way to get into Lanayru without beating Earth Temple, once again the second dungeon and third region. Basically you have to complete the dungeon, get the Tablet, place the Tablet, then you get access to the third region. There’s no way to get around this, you have to do it. You cannot entirely skip these dungeons. They’re essential.

Pikastroff: Alright, so next up… What would you say constitutes a fun and engaging goal versus one that you think needs some rebalancing?

Floha258: Hmm… fun and engaging… I don’t know, do we have something like that?

Pikastroff: I suppose this is a fancy way of saying ‘what’s your favourite goal and why is it your favourite goal?’.

Floha258: Yeah, I need to think for a second because well, good goals I think are probably always something that I like doing… Wow! [Laughs]

Pikastroff: I’ll put that quote on your wall! [Laughs]

Floha258: Thank you! Hmm, yeah I think personally I like doing bamboo cutting, bamboo cutting is always fun and yeah, what else is there… Let me think… What goals do we have… Well, fully clearing Earth Temple is kind of nice but then again it’s Earth Temple, and Earth Temple kind of sucks so maybe not. I don’t know, full clearing Skyview Temple… Oh yeah, speaking of Skyview Temple there’s also 2 unused small keys, that’s also a very fun goal because it requires you to have a… *BiT* of BiT knowledge!

… get what I mean? Ahah I’m funny!

Pikastroff: … shut up. [Laughs]

Floha258: But yeah, it requires some BiT knowledge to actually go around these doors, but you still have to collect the keys so that’s kind of fun actually. As I already said previously, what I absolutely do not like is rupee farming, because rupee farming SUCKS!

Pikastroff: In general, anything that’s related to farming is just a big no-no.

Floha258: That sounds about right. Or also if you have to like defeat the Imprisoned or stuff like that, that’s always dumb… Basically anything that requires you to beat the third dungeon, Lanayru Mining Facility, is kind of of a dumb goal in my opinion.

Pikastroff: So then would you say that there are aspects of routing that people usually don’t think about, or any mistake in the thought process that people may have when they try to tackle a bingo card?

Floha258: Uh…. Have you seen ANY of the previous bingos at Bingothon? [Laughs] This is basically a common theme, of people forgetting what they need to do or like having misconceptions in what they need to do! Have you seen ANY of the previous Skyward Sword bingos at Bingothon?! It’s literally almost every freaking time that someone forgets what they need to do or that someone has a misconception… EVERY! DAMN! TIME!

Pikastroff: Do you think I understand what the hell is going on in those bingos when I watch them? It’s like oh, stuff is moving, stuff is going on! [Laughs]

Floha258: Yes, it’s moving, that sounds about right! We’re moving but we don’t know how or where we’re moving! But, we’re moving!

Pikastroff: Roads? Where we’re going we don’t need roads!

Floha258: Yeah, that sounds about right!

Pikastroff: Yeah, so I think the lesson to take out of that is… Try to know what you’re doing! Which makes a lot of sense [laughs].

Floha258: Yeah, that sounds good, not gonna lie!

Pikastroff: Don’t forget what you’re doing!

Floha258: That also sounds good. Not like that would ever happen to me, totally! Never! Never would ever happen to me!

Pikastroff: Then the question is, how do you know what you’re doing? I think that’s a better question to ask [laughs].

Floha258: Uuuuuuuuuuuuuh… Ask that to somebody else, not me!

Pikastroff: Alright, we’ll have to ask the Bingo Gods because let’s be honest, no one ever knows what they’re doing, they pretend.

Floha258: That definitely sounds about right.

Pikastroff: Alright, so you just got a very good bingo lesson in here! Just pretend to know what you’re doing and you’ll be just fine!

Floha258: Yeah, that definitely sounds about right, not gonna lie!

Pikastroff: Alright alright. Ok so speaking of knowing what you’re doing… When you’re looking at a card, you see your goals and you see the rows, the columns… What kind of factors make you think ‘I want to go for THAT row or THAT column!’, and which kinds of factors make you go ‘no, I’m NOT going for that one!’?

Floha258: So basically in every row or column, there’s one shitty goal. Basically you’re looking at the least bad of these shitty goals. That’s basically what determines everything. It’s an easy process of illum- elimination, not illumination! Well, you can also illuminate stuff, I don’t know if that is of any use in bingo! [Laughs]

So yeah, you have all the shitty goals and you look at all of them and you say, ‘there’s NO WAY IN HELL I am doing that’, ‘I hate this goal’, ‘this goal is kind of shitty but eh there’s worse’, so you go for that one.

Pikastroff: [Laughs] So then, what bingo type is the most fun to play, do you think? I guess as with every Bingothon… Is it single you usually do? I think it’s single.

Floha258: I mean, usually we end up doing singles for Skyward Sword because the game is kind of long and you know, with stuff like that there is always the question of how do we do stuff and everything revolving around it. Once you’ve got the world opened to you then it’s not like that anymore but the process to getting the world open to you and everything is basically what takes the most time.

Usually we’re just trying to do singles because it’s basically the simple variant.

 

Skyward Sword Randomizer

 

Pikastroff: Alright, now we’re going to enter a little special section here because we’re going to be talking about the Skyward Sword Randomizer!

So, just before we’re actually getting to the bingo questions, could you do a summary of how the randomizer works. I mean I assume it’s going to work like other randomizers, but just like a few second summary of how it works.

Floha258: Well, basically you play the game but no item is where it’s supposed to be.

Pikastroff: I was also thinking for instance, do you have anything unlocked from the start? For example, are the regions unlocked at the start?

Floha258: Well, it entirely depends on the settings. For bingo, we kind of have decided to start with all regions unlocked because it allows for a much more variable start. I think we also do start with a sword because it does allow us to do more stuff right from the beginning. But stuff you actually have to get which you normally have kind of unlocked from the start is for example the Adventure Pouch, which is definitely something that is needed for stuff like if you want potions or shields, stuff like that, or just a bottle which is always useful. The Adventure Pouch is certainly that you probably will need. Otherwise yeah of course all the B-Wheel items and stuff like that, it’s pretty much a normal randomizer.

Pikastroff: So something I’m curious about is the “adaptation” between the vanilla game bingo goals and the randomizer bingo goals. Are the goals the same or are they different?

Floha258: Uh, that’s a good question. I mean, all of what I’m saying in here is kind of like, I don’t know, we’re talking about a very huge work-in-progress bingo because basically the idea of how we made rando bingo was ‘ok, so we’ve got the rando, we’ve got Bingothon Summer 2021 coming up in 2 months, let’s do rando bingo!’. So basically, we had a bunch of lists of goals, most of them were probably copied from the vanilla version. Then we had a shitty generator, then we improved it a little, then it was Bingothon.

So yeah, it’s a shitty generator which is a little less shitty but still shitty.

Pikastroff: Yeah, because something I’m just curious about when it comes to the balancing of goals… For instance, goals that may be easy in a vanilla game… For instance on the randomizer, are there any chances that this would all of a sudden become a difficult goal because of the nature of the randomizer? And if so, do you have any examples of that?

Floha258: Yeah, definitely. I mean, just the basic fact that everything is randomized, you never know where stuff is. So for example I think I had problems with 3 Medals during my race. 3 Medals is something that is not that hard to acquire in the base game, you just have to think of where you can easily access medals and that’s basically it. But in the rando, it is entirely different because those medals could be everywhere and well, there aren’t that many of them! There are like 12 or so in the entire game, and you have a total of 200+ checks. So since these are items that basically don’t do anything, you can kind of guess the chances you have to find a medal!

Pikastroff: Yeah that would make sense that any goal that are based on obtaining items all of a sudden can become a lot harder all of a sudden because by definition you don’t know where they are!

Now I’m going to flip that question and ask; are there any goals or any types of goals that actually becomes easier with the randomizer?

Floha258: Hmm, that’s a good question. Let me think.

I guess once again it depends on the item placement. If you get a late game item pretty early then sure, that kind of opens up a lot of stuff and makes stuff easier. But yeah I mean it all depends… I mean in rando, as opposed to vanilla where you have to do the first two dungeons to open all regions, in rando you already have all the regions open from the start which makes room for a much more open playground to play with, basically.

Pikastroff: Yeah, the next point I was thinking about is that unlike the vanilla game, the randomizer really opens up the game quite a lot, or at least quite earlier than the vanilla game. So, for the routing, it’s just kind of different. I guess there’s less linearity and there’s all the open ended-ness from the randomized items and if you get, as you said, items from late game that could potentially open up goals that in the vanilla game you couldn’t do until you reached that late game…

Floha258: Yeah, it’s kind of entirely different from the base game. Like in the base game you’ll have, especially in the beginning, a lot of linearity. You have so much openness in rando in the beginning, and this openness becomes more streamlined as you play more and more, like you’ll start determining your path and stuff like that, so yeah it’s basically entirely different from how vanilla bingo plays out.

Pikastroff: I guess it can be a double edged sword though because if you’re stuck trying to complete a particular goal and you know, in vanilla it would be a fairly simple goal where you clearly know what to do but then you’re stuck because you can’t find the item you need to complete that goal and you’re stuck.

Floha258: Yeah, definitely. I think that was back I got my 2 medals pretty early in the bingo we did for Bingothon but the last medal was kind of impossible to find. It was hard, it took me a lot of time to find it.

Pikastroff: The next thing I was going to ask… I think I already know the answer considering the other answers you already provided, because I was going to ask; how do you balance bingo goals on a randomizer, because by definition with a randomizer there are so many things you can’t predict! Is it even possible to really have properly balanced bingo goals?

Floha258: You know, the answer to this question is fairly simple. And that answer is, simply, you don’t! There’s no way to like… I mean,  there’s some kind of way to balance goals, it’s kind of a bit dumb. So we just kind of have types and stuff and try to like go with that, and yeah.

Pikastroff: I guess that’s just the extra challenge that’s added with combining something like bingo and randomizer, because by definition when you combine those two you just… that’s basically the Hero Mode of bingo when you add the randomizer spice to it!

Floha258: Yeah I mean as for bingo there’s always some kind of randomization in bingo already with the seed generation for the card. But doing it additionally for randomizer, especially for such a huge game as Skyward Sword, as Skyward Sword is definitely very ‘heavy’, very RNG heavy, let’s say like it is…

Pikastroff: Yeah, both rando and bingo, and especially even more so bingo, rely a lot on the game knowledge from the player but when you combine these two, a lot of that knowledge I guess… I don’t want to say ‘becomes irrelevant’, but rather that it becomes very difficult to apply because of that so that makes it tricky! 

And that kind of leads into what my next question is, which is as you know, randomizer bingos are the Hero Mode of bingo… As such, how do you just – and I think I already know what your answer will be – how are you meant to keep track of it all? I don’t mean like the [rando] tracker or whatnot, I mean like MENTALLY, just everything that’s going on with routing the bingo card and also keeping up with the logic in the randomizer while routing… It’s many things to process in your head at the same time, which makes it challenging, so how do you go about that?

Floha258: Do you want the serious answer, or the meme answer?

Pikastroff: Why not both? [Laughs]

Floha258: Simply said, it’s a chaos, and you try to organize your chaos, just like at home! Which is simply… If I look around… [looks at his room] Yeah, there’s no way to clean this mess.

Yeah, it’s a lot to take in and you have the randomizer tracker which kind of outlines at least some stuff for you but a lot of knowledge is definitely important, or just knowing where you have to look up stuff, that’s also something that’s probably good to consider.

Pikastroff: Yeah, that’s true.

Floha258: I mean, if you’re not clever, just know where you have to look up stuff, that’s just better than not knowing anything at all.

Pikastroff: Life hack.

Floha258: Yeah, definitely. That’s definitely something you should consider, I think.

Pikastroff: Yup, sounds fair! [Laughs]

I can understand many people might not necessarily be too keen on that. I’m also thinking from the viewer perspective, it’s really hard to keep track of what’s going on in the rando bingo because… well, there’s just so much chaos going on and if you don’t know the game as a viewer, it’s really hard to follow. That applies to every game, really.

Floha258: Yeah, I guess that makes sense. I can’t really answer that question perfectly because well, I know the game and if I’m watching bingo then I’m mostly just looking at my own past runs, so I already kind of already know what’s into it but I guess for outsiders it’s definitely hard to understand what the heck is actually going on here.

Pikastroff: So what would think would be the most useful knowledge for them to acquire, if they’re interested in getting into it?

Floha258: Hmm, that is a good question, let me think. Probably some BiT stuff, definitely. There’s definitely some BiT stuff that you’ll certainly want to know. I can’t really think of anything off the top of my head that I would consider definitely worth it but just knowing how to apply newly acquired information, basically… Does that make sense?

Pikastroff: Yeah.

Floha258: Oh, I’m surprised!

Pikastroff: With this newly acquired information you have to actually apply it, adapting to it. You just kind of need to do that because it’s always going to be different every single time so you can’t just rely like in an actual speedrun just on the good old, same old stuff. You need to be able to take whatever you get and run with it.

Floha258: Yeah.

 

Final Section

 

Pikastroff: So, with all that said, now we’re back to the general Skyward Sword section.

What would you say is the barrier for entry for people who are interested in picking up Skyward Sword bingos?

Floha258: Hmm, that is a good question. I would say the barrier in itself is probably not very high, just go for it, just go get a board and try to complete a row. I’m not saying you’re going to be very successful at that, but that is definitely the best way to go for it because if you do it you’re going to realize what are the mistakes I made, and then you’re like ‘oh, wait, ok so that was kind of not so good, maybe I should do that differently next time’.

I’m not saying that I am THE resident bingo expert ™ for everything that is Skyward Sword related, I certainly am not but you know, if anyone wants to come around and do something I’ll be happy to help everyone. I love bingo.. Wow!

Pikastroff: Oh really?

Floha258: I’m a Bingothon organizer and I love bingos! Oh my, who would have thought?

Pikastroff: I couldn’t possibly imagine that.

Floha258: Yeah, I know right?

But yeah, it’s very fun and as I said the beginning probably won’t be very successful but hey, you’ll get there eventually, just keep at it!

Pikastroff: Indeed, indeed! Do you think normal speedrunners could benefit from doing bingos in some way?

Floha258: Hmm, that’s a good question… As much as I would like to say yes I am not sure if yes would be the correct answer.

Pikastroff: Why is that?

Floha258: I mean, maybe it could, if for some future route update… There were some kind of bingo-unique strats previously that were kind of useful but otherwise not really because the speedrun routes are usually so much fleshed out and optimized that there’s hardly any reason to go out of your comfort zone.

Pikastroff: For me I think I’ve got an idea, but it’s just my inexperienced opinion, I’m just throwing that out there. At least it would make sense as a way bingos would benefit. It is in that it would kind of help players potentially to maybe have a deeper understanding of Back in Time and RBMs for the reason that for example when you’re doing a speedrun, you don’t necessarily have to fully understand Back in Time or RBMs, you can just follow what the route says, and you know, you’ll be fine. But if you’re doing them in the context of a bingo where you’re doing things on the go, you’ll have to actually understand what you’re doing without just relying on the route memory because you are by definition not doing a standard run route. That’s just something I was thinking about since Back in Time can be quite complicated at times, but that’s just an idea I’m throwing out there.

Floha258: Yeah, kind of, although even for normal runners you definitely need to have some knowledge of Back in Time to know exactly what the heck you’re doing. I think I already said this in the beginning but you most certainly need some kind of basic knowledge to just understand what the heck is going on here, like why did this not work, what is going on, I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing here.

But maybe some way bingo could help is just basic movement. I mean, you’re playing the game and movement is always important, so there’s that. That’s about it.

Pikastroff: Alright. Looks like we’ll soon be reaching the end! Just before we get to the final couple of questions… Since we’re doing this to celebrate the release of Skyward Sword HD, I think I already know what you’re about to say because at least I already myself have an idea of how it will affect things, but how do you think that goals or bingos could potentially be affected in this remaster? Especially considering that for instance you can tell now that there’s not going to be any Back in Time for example.

Floha258: That is a very good question, and I think the simple answer is going to be ‘we don’t know’. A bingo probably won’t be made anytime soon for Skyward Sword HD because it would likely just going to end up like how the vanilla bingo was before RBMs were discovered. There’s just not much we can say right now. It’s going to depend if the HD remake has got any kind of unique groundbreaking stuff. I don’t know what changes there could be, maybe they just added a whole new feature they haven’t talked to us about, although I doubt that but you know, you never know. We’ll have to see what comes out with the HD remake and how stuff goes.

Pikastroff: Have you got any anecdotes you’d like to share?

Floha258: Uh, any anecdotes, that’s a good question. I mean, I certainly love bingo and there is a lot to share about bingo. You know I made a lot of friends through bingo and yeah if it wasn’t for me playing bingo I don’t know if Bingothon would exist in the current form it is. I don’t know if that is an anecdote worth sharing, but I mean it’s certainly something worth to think about.

Pikastroff: I mean you probably wouldn’t be doing Bingothon if you didn’t like bingos.

Floha258: Yeah, that’s definitely something. Me playing bingos, especially with others, always ends up in kind of a mess because something always happens, and yeah [laughs]. It’s pretty common that someone just forgets like ‘wait, shit, there was something I needed to do!’ and then everything is going downhill from there. Even though I’m pretty sure I lose all my bingo matches, it’s still massive fun. 

Pikastroff: You’re kind of on it already but then, have you got any final words you’d like to say then?

Floha258: Uuuh, final words… play bingo! It’s fun. Smiley face 🙂

Pikastroff: Smiley face, there we go! Those words are said by a lot of bingo players I noticed, just play bingo! That’s probably because it’s niche, that’s why.

Floha258: Yeah, it’s niche, it’s cool and yeah at least the bingos I’ve encountered were pretty cool. I mean, maybe there are some kind of bingos out there that’s not cool though I kind of doubt that. You’ll have to show me the proof of that existence.

Pikastroff: Yeah. Exactly.

Floha258: I’m going to doubt that until you show me proof of that existence!

Pikastroff: Have you got any more words?

Floha258: Nah, I think I’ve said pretty much everything, I’m talking my mouth dry now! I wanted to drink for like half an hour or something like that.

Pikastroff: You have the right to stay hydrated as well!

Floha258: [Laughs] Oh cool, that’s pretty thoughtful of you, giving me that right!

Pikastroff: Either way, with all of that said, well that’s it for me and if that’s it for you, well then I hope everybody here enjoyed this edition of Beyond the Board! Do make sure to give Floha a follow as well as join the Skyward Sword Discord if you’re interested in joining that community…

Floha258: Or the Rando Discord, which is a separate Discord, but that’s probably also just linked somewhere in the normal speedrunning Discord or something like that.

Pikastroff: Good point, good point! And whether you’re about to play vanilla Skyward Sword, Skyward Sword Randomizer or Skyward Sword HD, enjoy playing those games and with that said, thank you and we’ll see you on the next Beyond the Board! Bye!

Floha258: Bye!

 

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And that is it for this month’s Beyond the Board! We hope you enjoyed it.

Do of course make sure to give Floha258 a follow on his Twitch channel, his Twitter as well as his YouTube channel. If you are interested in picking up The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword bingos, do make sure to join the Skyward Sword Speedrunning Discord, and as Floha himself advised, don’t hesitate to join the SSR Discord as well.

Do remember that with events such as the Super Mario Sunshine 1v1 Lockout Bingo League Season 3 starting at the end of July and more events coming soon, we always are looking for new restreamers to join the team to help out! If you are interested, you may fill this form. Likewise, if you are interested in being featured in a Beyond the Board, don’t hesitate to contact either Pikastroff#4262 or Floha258#1968 on Discord, or to drop an email at bingothon@gmail.com to send the request!

Thank you everyone, and we’ll see you on the next Beyond the Board!