Oof, I think I overdid it playing New Comfy last weekend and now my hand is sore. Specifically my right hand, which I blame in part on orka's level creation style. The tricks in NC are very densely packed, and many of them involve item manipulation - heck, it's like 50% of the way to being a shell hack at times. Something about platforming with items causes me to tense up my right hand, since I end up mashing down Y and B as if my life depended on it. Anyway, it's nothing major, but it sort of feels like I should take a day or two off to recover.
Thing is, though, I don't really want to do that...because I just started a runback of Waterworld! (itshappening.gif) It's been at the back of my mind for the last 8 months, and since I wasn't quite sure what to play, I decided to finally go back to it to see if it lived up to my memories. I got through 6 exits last night and, honestly, it kind of does! Not every section is a winner, and the frequent tight timers you often have to deal with can be a bit much, but it's still a creative, fun and absolutely gorgeous hack. It also exercises a whole lot of (metaphorical) muscles that most kaizo doesn't, which is kind of cool. And when it comes to literal muscles, any extra stress the swimming causes is mitigated by the fact that you can LET GO OF Y ANY TIME YOU'RE IN THE WATER. Seriously, 90% of my kaizo hand pain comes from holding down Y or B too forcefully, and in the water you rarely do either!
Anyway, I'm not fully committed to speedrunning it yet, but I'm getting closer and closer. I'm on track to finish the runback in less than 4 hours, which means a third attempt could potentially fit in a single stream. The leaderboard for Waterworld is pretty bare, too, and I'm sure that I can beat at least one of the times on it - free 2nd place! I'm not as confident about beating the 1st place run, however. Not_Vinicius currently holds the record in the category that interests me (100%/fast retry) with a time of 26:19. That doesn't seem all that quick for a run with only 14 exits, but that last level is a doozy, and the difficulty will be a step up from anything I've run before. Anyway, I've pretty much talked myself into doing it while writing this post, and I'm also a little scared of actually starting Super Sonic Saves the World World, so I think maybe this is the plan? We'll see if anything in the remaining 8 exits changes my mind.