Steven Zwartjes

Steven Zwartjes photographed with Jonathan Sifleet during a meeting in London (08 October 2006)

Steven Zwartjes (born August 4th 1979) is one of the most famous Nintendo 64 speedrunners from his era, being crowned champions on numerous games such as GoldenEye 007, Mario Kart 64, Star Fox 64, and other games.

He was active from 1997 to ~2003 and achieved numerous World Records and Untieds across multiple games.

Zwartjes first started speedrunning GoldenEye 007 probably in early 1998 (in between March and May), submitting his times on René Elsässer's "REX's GoldenEye World Rankings"

Later that year in ~May 1998 he also joined Glen McDiarmid's rankings and got one of his earliest known untieds, Surface 2 Agent 0:57

Steven Zwartjes Vs Sterling Neblett (1998)

Zwartjes is the earliest known speedruner to have been crowned as the GoldenEye 007 champion, it is unkown if anyone was ranked 1st before he joined the rankings because we don't know when he joined exactly.

By the summer of 1998 Sterling Neblett, an american, player was catching up on Zwartjes while he was on a break from GoldenEye.

According to Sterling, Zwartjes lost the #1 spot in ~June 1998, he would come back later in the year in ~August - September, and would play the game intensively to get back to 1st place, and as seen in this rankings snapshot, by September 12th 1998 Zwartjes was back and far ahead at 1st place, sitting at 37 World Records held simultaniously, including 23 Untieds, Sterling only being at 22 (13).

Sterling would again answer by achieving numerous World Records and Untieds and passing Zwartjes again in ~November 1998.

Zwartjes continued to play GoldenEye after that but didn't remained as active for the next few months.

Quiet era (1999)

Sterling's domination on GoldenEye would be too much for Zwartjes to keep up with, and he would even fall down from 2nd to 4th place by the end of 1999. But he was still active and achieved a few World Records during that period, including a few Liscence to Kill Untied World Records.

Zwartjes come back (2000 - 2001)

Regarding the lack of proof and when asked by Tim Greneby why Zwartjes was not recording his speedruns on VHS, he aswered that a tap was stuck in his VCR.

All of Zwartjes claim did not come without proof, in January 2002 Matthijs ten Ham would release some files containing endscreen pictures from Steven, including the Untied when set Bunker 1 00A 1:29, Aztec 00A 4:32 and the World Record Archives 00A 1:01, it's unknown what else was in the file since the file has been lost, but according to other players who consulted them, they were all outaded times from ~1998.

Aztec Agent 1:31 scandal (2002)

In late February 2002, Zwartjes allegedly achieved an Aztec Agent 1:33, claiming that he had finally managed to make the guards open the glass door on Aztec.

At the time, there was no known strategy to open the glass and save time on Aztec, and the world record on agent was a 1:56 set by Wouter Jansen. This 1:33 would have been a 23 second untied when set.

This was first publicly announced on April 19th 2002 in a post made by Eise Smit on the GoldenEye forums, claiming that Zwartjes had managed to achieve the Aztec skip and had a 1:33 on Agent and 2:03 on 00A one and a half month ago.

Due to Zwartjes' prestigious reputation in the Speedrunning community back then, the majority of people did believe that he achieved the time using a new strategy.

After being first made public knowledge in April 2002, it's only in between July - August 2002 that not a 1:33, but a 1:31 would be posted on the rankings, along with the Aztec 00A 2:03 from February.

Discussion regarding the legitimacy of the time would only happen much later in May 2003 with most people still believing Zwartjes' 1:31 was real but also agreeing on the fact that he needed to provide a video of the time or at least an endscreen picture of it, other Eliters like former Champion Randy Buikema were convinced from the start that the time was fake, on the other side, people who trusted him and especially the ones who had witnessed him play live would argue that the 1:31 was indeed real, for example Eise Smit who had met Zwartjes multiple times claimed that Zwartjes did show him the glass trick (likely using the invisibility cheat, which was a well known trick at the time), but when he asked Zwartjes to come over to show his 1:31 endscreen, Steven showed up with no cartrige, claiming that he had forgotten it, in the following years, nobody except for Zwartjes would see the 1:31 endscreen either live or photographed, as Zwartjes would later give his GoldenEye cart to his brother.

In a forum post made on the Mario Kart 64 forums made in June 2005, Zwartjes would claim that at the time he experimented with guard behaviour on Aztec and achieved 1:31 after 2 sessions of 5 hours of attempts. This was followed by one of very few descriptions of the strategy given by Zwartjes.

After watching an Aztec Agent 1:36 video (either Bryan Bosshardt's or Brandon Sanford's) Steven claimed that the guard lured to the glass were not the same as the one he used on his 1:31, claiming that he used a guard closer to the glass.

There is no known way of opening the glass using a single guard, this explaination implies that he only lured a single guard to the glass to get it opened, something that is not normally possible.

At the end of the post Steven also claimed that there was "another trick" that saved a few seconds that he did not see in the 1:36 video, but never explained what it was.

Here is a condensed and re-worded version from the original post where Steven explain the Aztec Agent 1:31 strategy :

"You start out to strafe towards door kill guy while strafing open door get his AR33. Go through, make some noise 2 guys appear keep strafing though and kill both, get their ammo, important.

Now walk the "bridge" and at that time release strafe and start shooting loads on the next door they will open it most of the time, when it's open when you arrive kill all (keep your strafe though) and make lots of noise.

Guy at mainframe door opens the door and walks towards you, kill him, you should kill all guys in this room while keeping a left strafe first then right strafe for the last guy on the left. This should be done to keep the ideal line towards the mainframe door.

All guys gone except the one behind the mainframe door. Strafe to him, show yourself and by doing this let the door rise. He should be slow and open it some later again back up and get in the place next to the glassdoor.

Shoot a few bullets on the door where guy comes out (don't hit him). The bullets make an indication for the computer to the place you have been the last (while shooting).

The place you shoot last is the place where the enemy will try to find you if he did not have eye contact with you and follows the noise.

The moment the door is about to go down (this is about right after you took your shot) hide quickly in the spot near the mainframe. The guard walks to the glassdoor and should open it immediately.

this is where it gets fucked up because there is only guard who is willing to do it instead of the 3 guards in the strat u guys all use thus chances are absurdly low for it to happen, but if u have patience it will happen.

The rest you all know.

Steven Zwartjes"

In October 2016 Zwartjes

On June 3rd 2018 Zwartjes posted on youtube a video showing scrolling proof of his Mario Kart 64 speedruns

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