A Chat With Mega Man Master Speedrunner Mark Clazie
By Alex McCumbers ·
In celebration of three decades of Mega Man, we reached out to speedrunning expert and Mega Man enthusiast Mark "strizer86" Clazie to talk about the competitive Mega Man scene.
With Mega Man celebrating its 30 year anniversary across a vast library of all sorts of games, I pursued the opportunity to sit down and chat with my good friend Mark Clazie (aka Strizer86). Mark a speedrunner with some serious Mega Man skills. He has run almost every Mega Man game out there, most recently diving into the Mega Man Zero GBA series. These days, Mark has been working on running entire series at a time. That includes the original Mega Man series, plus Mega Man & Bass, the Mega Man Zero series and the Mega Man X series. The most strenuous of these runs is what’s called the “Triple M”, in which a player runs all three of those series in one go!
Needless to say, Mark is familiar with the Blue Bomber inside and out, and with such a milestone for the franchise crossed, it seemed like to perfect time to pick Mark’s mind on where he is in his speedrunning career with Mega Man, as well as what the future holds.
Twin Galaxies: Mark what are you thoughts on the Mega Man franchise as a whole? What drives you to return to these titles again and again?
Mark Clazie: I think it’s just the overall structure of the game. I mean I obviously really enjoy the repetitiveness of them. I really enjoy the format and I'm really kind of stuck in the 2D time frame. Not that I don’t enjoy 3D games, but I just love 2D games and the Mega Man style and format with the boss weaknesses. It all wraps it up in a nice little bow for me.
TG: Tell me about your Mega Man marathon speedruns. What goals have you set for yourself and how has that come together so far?
Clazie: So the goal is a sub 24 hours for the Triple M, which is the Classic, X, and Zero series, making for 23 games in total. It was done as a race back in August and I didn’t get to participate; I hadn’t even beaten the Mega Man Zero games at that point - they’re kind of notoriously difficult. Trying to beat all four of those blind at the end of 20 hours or more just didn’t really sit well with me, so I just set a personal goal to do the Triple M by the end of the year.
The Mega Man Leaderboard website is the place to get all the most up to date leaderboards. The Triple M is an official category and there are a few that have finished it. There’s even a mandatory 10 minute break built into that run between each series.
TG: What Mega Man would you like to learn the run for?
Clazie: There are very few Mega Man games I haven’t dabbled in, just because of all the prep work for the Triple M. I like Mega Man Legends, but I’m not sure I like it in that way. I think what I would like to do is pick out specific titles I’ve done briefly for the Triple M and spend more time with those, something like Mega Man X4, maybe a little more time with the Zero games.
TG: What are your goals as a speedrunner?
Clazie: Next year, I would like to focus more on some Metroid games. I think it would be a lot of fun; I really enjoy those games and I would like to spend more time with them. Surprisingly with the Retro Races, I fell in love a bit with Super Mario Bros. 3 and now having an Everdrive and the ability to make save states on console, I might spend more time trying to better my run.
TG: What about as a streamer?
Clazie: I think the next obvious goal is finding out a way to get Twitch Partnership. I think that will come with regular viewership and being more a part of the communities out there and getting more involved with giving back.
I don’t think Twitch is something necessarily that just scales with time alone; I think there’s more to it than just putting in the extra hours to make that next big step. I don’t know if that answer is always changing or what the next big thing is. I’m not one to jump on trends, I would rather just do my thing and playing the variety and runs that I enjoy. I think it’s all about finding a way to make it work and make it work for me.
I’ve also thought about dialing back the marathon style runs, because they are such a large consumption of time. Taking on the Triple M has resulted in me spending a lot of time learning all of those runs, which makes for a larger commitment overall. So I think in the future I’ll go back to focusing on individual games.
Other than that, I would like to further the speedrunning section at Frag For Cancer and become more involved in that. I have no issue giving up the marathon style there if we have enough interest from other runners. I think next year my goal there is filling the two days with a whole bunch of people that are essentially not me.
I think that it would be cool to sit back, help commentate, and run the whole charity speedrun event. I love giving out prizes and seeing people’s reactions, their willingness to donate to a good cause.
Not only is Mark an expert at Mega Man, but he also does a unique sort of speedrun with Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, one of the best Castlevania games and a true gem on the GBA. Mark has developed a lightning fast way to 100% the game, including all of the souls. He does this with manipulations, button inputs and actions that guarantee the acquisition of a monster’s soul. For those who have attempted this casually, getting every soul is quite the time-consuming feat. He has the run around 45 minutes, which is ironic because the thought of a 100% Soma run was tossed around as a joke, an impossibility. Yet, here it is, with room to improve.
The run was created after messing around with Aria of Sorrow during Castlevania Month on his Twitch Channel, which is something he would like to do again.
“I’ve had a few requests to do another Castlevania Month,” Mark said. “I ended up finishing 19 games in October of 2016. I could’ve beaten more, but that’s when I started playing with the 100% Soma run in Aria of Sorrow and that took over the end of that Castlevania Month”.
It was all for laughs until things started to click into place.
“I was working on a few manipulations and shaved off a lot more time than I thought I would. That really made me realize how serious this run could be.”
Mark even made some guides online on how to go about the run, welcoming any challengers to attempt his record. As of now there has only been one other competitor, at least who have posted on the speedrun leaderboards.
Speedrunning has always been an interesting section of gaming, but Mark takes things to the extreme and makes it a regular feature of his Twitch channel. While he may not have the world record on every title, his sheer variety is enough to keep viewers and himself entertained.
You can find Mark at his Strizer86 handle on Twitch and Youtube, as well as Twitter. Also don’t miss getting a look at his extremely long list of speedruns and accomplishments!