Words can not express how happy and grateful I am at this moment. I spent a lot and a lot of time doing those playtrhoughs and I knew I had a good time but I still cant believe I ACTUALLY WON 😭 Thank you so so much for letting me be part of this project and thank you to everyone who watched the video and/or participated in it. I had the time of my life, the community was amazing and I cant wait to go for the next race as well. Thank you Scott, thanks everyone, this was amazing.

That feeling when you are in the lead but crit the Sandslash, waste some turns, lose the speed tie against Alakazam and get crit.

Congratulations to Matt, Otto, and Ike for such awesome finishes! GG’s all around!

This race was a lot of fun to participate in . Can't wait to do more future ones. A year in the making. Let's see what this video got

Is anyone else not surprised Speedrunner chose to help rather than keep it to himself? The guy is gem.

Scott, this is the kind of video that you shouldn't force yourself to complete production of. Take your time with it. This one is proof that they'll be worth the wait.

Thanks so much for hosting the race, and for this humungous video, seriously impressive stuff!! I can't wait to take part in the next one! :)

So I literally squeaked so loudly with joy upon seeing the different mushroom arts for the parasects that my roommate checked in on me.

I can't believe I made it into the video, let alone get so much screen time! Absolutely amazing to see you put in so many hours just for bringing the community together! It was an absolute blast to participate and here's to more in the future! Thanks for doing your thing, Scott!

1:52:27 "You know what would make this more accurate? MAKE A MACHINE PREPARE THE INFO" Well, that was certainly a freaking fenomenal plan ngl

Thank you so much to Scott for working so hard to help all of us participate in this race and the ungodly amount of work it took to make this. Shout out to the discord also for helping me out so much. This video is so beautiful to me, I can't imagine anything replacing the love I now have for Parasect... -excePT SMEARGLE LETS GO SMEARGLE I LOVE SMEARGLE I'M SO HYPED

For how upset you were about the production process, honestly, I think this was your best video. Going over the variety of strategies(I think my favorite was Speedrunner trying to outsmart the Raticates, it didn't win things for him in the long run but its a cool idea), exploring the evolving community aspect, the way Ike the Killer rocketed ahead of the competition at the end, it was all a really fun narrative to watch. Mad respect to the damageless/bide/sea shanty runs too. Here's hoping the next race is even better and less taxing on your mental health, but I can at least tell you that the final product came out great.

This was 100% worth the wait. What a wild ride.

Man the old overlay is so nostalgic. Though it’s really incredible how in a year you improved it so much

I know it was subtle, but I appreciated the music change around 21:00. Your editing team has gotten so good, and if they haven’t gotten a pizza party in a while, it’s time :D

1:08:15 Congratulations to Joe Bidin', the winning Parasect of the Bide-only sub-division of this race.

The VanMan playthtough is basically the Micky mouse meme, "It's a surprise tool that will help us out later", with all the exp calculations lmao

That thumbnail is absolutely hilarious, I can't wait to watch it!

The storyline with Ike was hilarious. This whole video was incredible, and I'm glad it finally made it. Great work Scott! I hope I have time to do a few Smeargle videos, but that is not a lot of time ^_^;; (Though with your increased popularity, with 4 weeks I bet a TON of people would submit runs and that's probably just too much)

These past 2 hours were the best part of my day😊, I really liked doing that race ,and you can learn a lot by watching all of the routes of each and every participant. Thanks, Scott,for making this video,and thanks for hosting another race that I'm hyped to try out . By the way thanks for the shout out , I really appreciate it.😊

The art in the map was absolutely beautiful.

I love the variety of approaches to this race. This video may have been a nightmare to edit and compile, but IMHO definitely worth it. Super entertaining!

So glad that i found your Channel 1 year ago. Watching every video since. ❤

I'm still watching the video and the Bide runs and the potential for "Chansey %" cracked me up! XD On a more serious note, those Bide runs were brutal. Major kudos for those runners for having far more patience than many of us could ever even attempt to muster.

Scott: Adair with a level 11 parasect. Me: Kind sir, that is clearly a duck.

Only got to finish this video a week late, but I just want to comment on the fact that’s Scott miraculously found another way to make a typing mistake in Koga’s Venomoth fight at 28:01. It made zero difference to the run, but I cackled nonetheless. Great job to all involved, and thanks Scott for putting this together for the community!

This was an awesome watch. Congrats on compiling this chaos into such a great video Scott.

This was an awesome watch/listen on a busy day. Thanks for the work you do!

Amazing video! Definitely worth waiting a year for. I really liked the narrative and editing, it told a great story and I was very excited by the end of the video. Congratulations to everyone on the great race!

This is an awesome video and definitely worth the wait! More races please!

The normal videos are like Scott's Thoughts: The series. Videos like this are like full feature length movies. Great stuff, even if the video doesn't perform (although it's had a good start so probably will perform), the net positive effect on the channel and community is immeasurable. Great work Scott, you're a living legend.

What an incredible video, you had my full attention the whole time and now that the premiere is over I am SHOCKED that it's 2 hours long! It didn't feel like half of that, it flew by! Massive kudos to all the participants, and congrats to all of the top 5!

Scott this race was a lot of fun and seeing all the behind the scenes planning was really cool. you put so much time and effort into showcasing these runs and it shows. well done and an early congrats on 60k subscribers!

You did such a great job putting this all together! Perfect balancing of showcasing a bit of everyone's approach and blending it all into a really fun watch as an entire video. I can't imagine the work that went into it but congratulations to everyone involved! Excited for the smeargle run but hope it's more smooth from a production point of view!

I have seen every single one of your videos and this one is the best of them all. Bravo.

This was fantastic. 😊 Thanks for hosting this event, and thanks for the video. I can’t imagine the difficulty in trying to put together this summary video.

Just finished the smeargle race and came back to this one I really like these. I know they’re a lot of work but I’d love to see these more. As always keep up the great work!

Thank you so much for giving us this great race, and the wait was worth all of it!

This has the same energy as a turtle race lol. I love Parasect though so I'm excited!

Aw took me 4 days to get thru the whole video hopefully everyone had a good time doing the smeargle race! Love these videos!!

I first got into watching your stuff from the Smeargle Race! By that reasoning, you really did evolve this format in an incredible way! Awesome content, the effort you put into these videos is extremely obvious and appreciated!

This was so good! Like actually worth the wait x1000. Awesome job once again and thank you for everything that you do.

That polygon vid was how i found your channel and I'm very happy i did

Scott, thank you for pushing through and getting this done. This may be my favorite video you've ever made. Not only was it extremely well put together and you told an awesome story, the community aspect of it as well is just something you don't see very often and is super special. Thank you for all you do, you are one of my favorite channels and I think probably the only one that I actually watch every single video you put out. Can't wait to see how the smeargle runs turn out!

The wait was worth it, incredible video. Keep up the great work!

I'd like to say congrats to everyone who participated! I wish I had the time and the skill to jump into something like this! You guys are all awesome! And Scott, just remember to have fun! That's the most important thing about this. You need to be able to look back at it and remember how much fun this was and how you got to know so many people while doing it! Not many KZfaqrs are willing to do something like this, and it's part of what makes you one of my favorite people to watch! Maybe sometime I'll get in on this, even though I know I won't even be in the top 10. It'll be a lot of fun learning the game in so much more detail. I've already learned a lot from you, and it's changed how I play the games I've been playing since they came out.

Wow this is the first race I've watched and it was amazing, Scott you did an amazing job putting this whole thing together and then presenting it to us in such a compelling way - I can't wait for the next one

I cannot wait for this. Parasect is so great, and I can't wait to see a huge video about it! It did as good as I was hoping it would! It's a great day!

Great video, Scott. I’m glad to see this video finally released, it was a lot of fun to watch!

What a cool video. Hope we get more of these!!

How good:) well worth the wait! Looking forward to the next race

What a fabulous video. I definitely want to join a race someday! I need to go ahead and get set up. Sadly... Got a little too much work this weekend! But I'll be looking forward to the video. Everyone did amazing!!

This is my favorite video from you, truly a 11/10 video, absolutely incredibly put-together. I know it must have been hell, but my god the finished product is glorious.

Crazy how much work You have put into the overlay. Totally forgot what the older overlay looked like and how much I like seeing all the changes to stats happen live

Team Matt checking in. Haven't watched yet but predicting my boy finishes in second or first

The map explaining the hard fights at minute 38 was sweet!!

Thanks for this amazing Video Scott. I dont think you need to worry about the quality of your videos. :) As a viewer you can truely feel the dedication for the franchise and all the hard work you put into every single video. There is so much love for every detail which bring your videos to another level overall. And then you go another step further and create and host such amazing events for the community. You bring so much joy to so many people including me and i really really wanted to thank you for that!

Amazing video! Thanks for all you do Scott!

This was so good, best ep in a while! Keep up the good work!

Masterpiece video. The community you have brought together is amazing. Bravo

I was thinking about maybe joining the next race, but I don't have the time for it, especially with something like that. Maybe next time, but man, you've sure got your work put out for you. Anyway, congratz to everyone who participated in this one!

Gym leader Matt actually got me into watching solo playthroughs. I’m glad he did well. Thanks for hosting such a cool community race!!!

Scott, the love and care you do with those games are amazing. Thanks a lot for the race and commentary

Loved the story in this video. Way to self-improve, Scott. Looking forward to the smergle run: so many possible strategies. Its going to be fun to watch.

This was a truly insane project - i want to congratulate you for completing this monstrosity of a video And... i didn't plan on participating because I'm currently sick. But... the premise of Smeargle is just amazing

Loved this vid! Haven't been able to catch up on your content as much as I'd like recently just bc I've been very busy this summer with college classes and lots of life transitions, but it was nice seeing one of my favorite gen 1 mons lorewise getting to shine! Anyways, I think the reason why Ike was as successful as they were for the less attempts probably ironically has to do with the amount of attempts per day. Your motor skills, memory, and reaction time should all increase by taking breaks and getting more time to rest which saves time with menuing, routing, and movement, so I can definitely see why the quality of attempts increased when doing it less often. I was also very impressed with how many different strats arose, Parasect's movepool and general offensively oriented direction for a solo challenge enabled that no doubt which is pretty cool to see for a pokemon that otherwise is bad in competitive in its arguably best gen in that way to date.

Thanks for getting this done, Scott. Really enjoyed this vid! As a fellow procrastinator, I know how hard and how draining it is when you have something you know you want/need to get done but aren’t able to get to it for so long. Well done to everyone!

Magnum opus honestly. A really amazing video. I want to say that Ike really seemed to embody something I learned from my own attempts at speedrunning and from watching other speedrunners. Always finish your runs. I think it's easy to get wrapped up in the idea that you can only accept the best splits and the best time, but speedrunning is about overall results. You can take a worse split early on if you know you have time to save later. Constantly resetting may mean that you actually give up the possibility of making a really good time. (Also you now know why there's now an RPG manipulation in the RBY speedrun to make Mt. Moon consistent. Mt. Moon is hell, and when things get tight, it was basically run deciding) This was really cool and I really enjoyed the extent to which it seemed like the community was willing to help each other out. That at least to me is the true value of speedrunning: it's not just about getting the record and the best time, but its about coming together as a community to brainstorm, theorize, route, test, and everything that goes into a good run.

this was really cool to watch! i'd absolutely be down to throw my hat in the ring next time. good job to everybody! GG

This is one hell of a video. Scott, you wonderful man, you've outdone yourself!

"Surely you cant be serious" "I am Serious... and please dont call me Shirley" -Airplane!

Congrats to ike and such a great community and loved the video Scott like always sure was worth the wait

This was fun to watch, everyone did awesome!

Excellent video! I love the 2 hour long documentaries about the race, it tells a fun story. I’m not sure how feasible this is, but if/when you start doing Gen 3 races I cast my vote that you do torkoal first, I’m a little biased but I would love to participate in that

this was amazing and really fun to watch. those meme runs were incredible haha

I haven't watched yet (just got off work) but I'm so excited to see this video finally out! I love what you do with this community and honestly you are the reason I've started following many of the other pokemon KZfaqrs in this community. Looking forward to another fantastic race!

Wow the work that must have gone into this. Thanks for the content!

well played and good run! And congrats to all involved! (and fully understand if this is the last race, the first didn't get so many views, and this one turned into production heck. But thanks for musseling through it as I FULLY enjoyed this one!)

Really loved that overworld explanation at 38 minutes. What an great improvement ❤

Amazing video Scott, must’ve taken ages to make everything come together!! You really go above and beyond, thank you for that!

OK. I finally managed to watch the whole video (I managed to watch the preliminary run at work and the competition when I got home) and I'm really impressed with everything! I think you said it best when you said the real point of all of this was to foster this wonderful community of people who have a love for a nearly 30(!)-year-old game (Christ, I'm getting old...) that still resonates with is to this very day. I remember you mentioned that JRose 11 and BigLeagueMDB (yes, I do still use that nickname he used in his Gen 6 playthrough XD) were big influences. I think it's safe to say that the modern landscape of challenge speedruns would never have even lifted off the ground had these two not plied their craft in creating entertaining videos involving our favorite Pokémon games. However, I think it's only fair to remark on how important *YOUR* contributions to this community have been. I think I mentioned this in another video way back when you were discussing how poorly the Porygon race video performed. In my opinion, while it might not have brought the desired numbers, I consider that video - that whole event leading up to and after the race - the quintessential watershed moment for you and this community. I didn't know who either VanMan or Speedrunner were at the time, but that race introduced me to 2 more incredible runners. After that, I would stumble upon other runners as well, whether they were ones I was familiar with like Andrew Davis and Gym Leader Matt, or others like SteveMPlays. While I have no doubt this community would have formed in some way eventually, it would not have expanded and evolved (heh) anywhere near as rapidly as it did had it not been for that Porygon race. I want to take a brief moment to say this: Thank you. Thank you for all that you do for this wonderful community! Actually, I do need to add something on here now, too: your team *ABSOLUTELY* deserves praise here as well. Without you guys, these videos wouldn't grace KZfaq with the love, care and polish that they deserve. Thank you! You guys are also the best! And now on to the runners themselves! Ike, congratulations on the win, dude! You absolutely *CRUSHED* it, especially at the end there! I'm sure you're overjoyed beyond words! You absolutely earned this win! Gym Leader Matt, you came really close, and I'm really glad to see that you ended with a wicked good time as well! Sit back, relax and grab yourself a sodie pop, you earned it, (TOMBSTONER) BROTHER! In fact, *EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOU* who submitted runs (competitive or meme) deserve a massive pat on the back! You guys really made this video come to life and I hope I'll see your exploits in the next challenge. Arceus help us, running Smeargle in Gen 1 is going to be a trip! Will runners have a Pokémon with the skill and fortitude of four Italian artists that would serve as the source for the names of four Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? Will they have a Pokémon with different talents combining elements of Rembrandt, Caravaggio and Van Gogh? Or will they have a Pokémon that thinks more outside the box like Duchamp or Escher? Find out next time on *Dragon Ball Z!* Er, um, I mean, *Scott's Thoughts!*

Maaaaan, dissing the Chestnaught line like that! Boo! Jokes aside though, throughout the video I was wondering how much work this must have been, compiling all the footage and planning out how to present it. I can absolutely see that leading to burnout, procrastination and questioning wether to do it anymore. But, the result is glorious. Parasect's been growing on me in recent years thanks to the TCG videogames (in the GBC games, it absolutely rocks) and yes, even some usage in my casual runs. So it's great to see a video on it. I also recently really got into Paraspectre videos, so that definitely helps too lol good channel.

this is truly an epic undertaking in pokemon solo challenges. the number of people you got together to play a solo race, the detail people went into to figure out the most competitive times. this is kind of the exact dynamic I see people talking about in speedrunning videos. you have the established players who've practiced a lot and know most of the strategies to save time, and then along comes a new player who nobody's heard of and they're annihilating the competition with just a few tweaks to the known route and really good execution. I hope you can find more enjoyment from these pokemon races and less stress from making the videos, if you continue to try out more of them.

This was so cool to watch ❤ Also, love the art of Parasect mushrooms, so cool with the different types of mushroom

Scott, you are my absolute favorite Poketuber. I never look forward to more content on KZfaq than your's. This was an incredible video! Watching the community come together to make this all happen literally gave me chills and brought tears to my eyes. Your passion for this game, your friends, your fiance and your community you've built is truly inspiring!! I can't wait to see more!! And congratulations to all of the contestants!!! ❤❤❤

Hats off to everyone to put in the time for this. Competitive for sure but a lot of respect in there

I'm pretty sure your Poregon race is what brought me to your channel initially. It's been nice seeing you improve as a storyteller and all the visuals getting better.

this is great! i hope to see more in the future if youre feeling up to them.

Great job to everyone involved: runners, artists, and editors alike. Looking forward to the 60k mythical run whenever that comes out. Hard to believe it's only been five months since the 50k.

This is one of the best videos on this channel, and i watched all of them. Scott you are a legend.

The illustrations of the different Parasect variants is just amazing! I always thought the anime and any comics missed a trick, by making all pokemon always look the same. Animals don‘t always look the same, they can vary, so pokemon should too (obviously that‘s not doable in a game, but in an anime it would have been). So, seeing you go with this approach for all the different Parasects is really nice! :-)

I really like this format! Hearing that it causes so much struggle is a little and I would totally understand if it´s cancelled for good. I hope the production for the next video will not be so exausting. Thank you Scott!

Huge congrats to all contestants, and what a great video. Despite it being so tough to get the video finished, I really appreciate all the work everyone put into making it such an enjoyable experience. Mental health is very important, so I hope you are able to find a balance between enjoying runs like these, and taking care of yourself. That said, I am so hyped for the Smeargle race, I loved the gen 2 mons in gen 1 so far. I learn so much every time I watch solo runs, and I love them all so much, especially Pokemon Yellow runs, as it was my first, and favourite Pokemon game. Great work everybody, and I love that a community is building around this.

All this stuff you made, all worth the whole year's waiting!!!

This video was a lot of fun, and definitely left me wanting to participate in future contests. Alas, this weekend I'm pretty much booked out, but hopefully the Smeargle contest won't be the final one you run and I'll be able to join in down the track

This is great, i didnt know you interact with so many of my other favorite content creators

Can't believe it's finally happening! 🎉🎉 whoop whoop!

This was very cool! Congrats to everyone.

I enjoyed watching this event video. I like how you edited it together to fit like a story, instead of just rattling off a list of events. That actually is a strength of yours for Pokemon running that fits well with a community event- telling it as a story and not just an event recap list.

Yes! Finally! I'm glad to see this video. The anticipation and all the talk for this. Thanks, Scott! Congrats, @ikethekiller5236!