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Metal Gear Solid speedrunning community in a frenzy after streamer accidentally discovers huge skip

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The Metal Gear Solid speedrunning community is currently in a frenzy after a streamer accidentally discovered a huge skip.

As spotted by TheGamer, streamer boba accidentally discovered a skip in the original, 23-year-old Metal Gear Solid game over the weekend that saves over two minutes of play.

The clip below shows the moment boba discovered the skip:

The glitch occurred in Communication Tower A. Under normal circumstances, players must climb the stairs all the way to the top of the tower (27 staircases!). However, during boba's playthrough, the guards managed to shoot Snake through a locked door halfway up the tower, triggering the next section of the game.

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What's exciting about this glitch is the amount of time it saves, as it lets you skip half the climb of the tower and the entire rappel section that follows. Speedrunners verified the glitch is repeatable, found it saves over two minutes of time, and quickly set out to break existing world records. They've even worked out that using a chaff grenade is a more reliable and quicker way to trigger the glitch.

"Looks like MGS1 speedruns is back on the menu boys," tweeted speedrunner Jaguar King.

The community has dubbed this gitch the "boba skip", although boba has suggested it be called "kevin". I think "boba skip" is more likely to stick.

Yesterday, Metal Gear Solid speedrunner NickRPGreen used the new strat to set the world's first sub-30 minute run of Metal Gear Solid (PC Any% Very Easy). This, NickRPGreen said, can be improved:

Cover image for YouTube videoMetal Gear Solid 1 Speedrun - PC Any% Very Easy - 29:54 (World's First Ever Sub-30)

"It's not perfect, I usually throw the bomb that Ocelot puts in your inventory immediately after rappel and subsequently forgot, so there is a death in here. Couple of other bits were a little sloppy and PAL key wasn't best RNG so there's some save there," NickRPGreen said in the video description.