This is kinda a repeat of this thread from 09, but I think ormo should at least have some srs bsns talk about replays every once in a while instead of shitposting in the nuclear rainbow thread all the time.


Sometimes its really hard to say why you liked a replay, and to the degree to which you liked it.
In the #ormo irc, we've said a few times how we think giving replays a "rating" out of 10 is pointless, because its so hard to know what criteria you're judging by, and it mostly comes down to preference.
Some people prefer to be wowed by pure technical ability. Some of Jaker's records have a solid case for being the best replay ever.

Myself though, the thing that really makes me love a replay is uniqueness. It doesn't have to be an outlandish idea that no one's had before, in fact, if done incorrectly that kind of replay could come across as gimmicky. For me, its not in the ideas, but the execution. Technical execution is one thing, but to make stylistic choices to make the replay your own is what really drives it home for me. Some players combine technicality and style (War_Hero, NutHug, Largekilla), and I think those guys are the ones who have the best case for being the greatest ever. There's no greater feat for a replaymaker than for you to be able to distinguish them without even having to look at the name, just the movement. If you can be that distinctive, on top of a strong technical execution, I believe that's what creates the greatest replays, and what distinguishes the amazeballs favorites of the community from the perpetual wallowers of the "yeah he's pretty good" tier

What do you guys think? What makes a replay/replaymaker stand out as fantastic?

I consider a replay to be great when the maker thinks out of the box and actually try to do something no one else is capable of doing. No matter how absurd the idea is, the replaymaker would move heaven and earth to bring his idea to perfection and claim the replay as a huge accomplishment.
A lot of people don't understand that we need this kind of mindset to actually be outstanding.


Dramat-ism aside, I determine great replays by imagining the effort and time put into it and knowing that no one else can possibly do better.

Intricate details.
If you're going to go that extra mile to get a subtle skeet dm that no one notices, or doing something that is remarked on as an accident or a mistake, then hell yes. Those people who innovate already done moves to make them different and to take everything a step further without people noticing that they've done it. Try to become a great replaymaker lies not in how many amazing 6dm booms you can shit out in a day, but in the small details that no one looks for.
Perfection, but not on a grand scheme; taking what you call your own style and perfecting and making it an art. Like larfen said, when it becomes what you do that distinguishes you and not what your name is, when you can be recognized for the small details you pay attention to, that's when you're great.

xdd larfen foretold the future he described me as intricate l0l

i judge replays by 2 scales. execution and idea. idea refers to what you are doing, execution refers to how well you are doing it.

i can only evaluate execution if the idea is somewhat clear, since objectives and goals are not universal and etc. (for example i could make my goal to make a replay where i fall to the ground and break my neck while looking stiff an symmetrical. i would contract the hips and hit my head on the ground, breaking it. the execution would be a 10/10 perfect score in that case or something very high atleast).

the biggest problem for judging replay (for me atleast) stems from this. i always have to speculate what the idea of the replay is, unless it is clear or the replay is trying to immitate something (eg: Binklawz).

i give somewhat 50/50 importance to both the idea and the execution if they are both equally as good. i usually give more importance to the idea the worse or the better it is. for example, if someone made the replay that i hypothesized above (breaking your neck like a dumbass) then i would obviously nitpick that it is not a good idea at all, because it ruins the replay. if they made a replay with an insanely good or creative idea, i would praise it and give it a lot more importance than the execution (not complete importance though, like 75% idea and 25% execution at max). if someone made a replay with a so-and-so idea that does not "define" the replay, but that doesn't ruin it either, i would care little about the idea and try to talk more about the execution.

so the function for my criteria would be something like y=(x - 50)^2, domain [0,100], being y=importance given to the idea and x=idea quality in percentage (0-100%)


execution, i usually judge that one pretty straight forward. when looking at execution i usually try to see if the idea is achieved (objective), and if the idea is achieved in a way that looks good (subjective).

if an idea is not very good, then i will not really care if you managed to achieve the idea (in a way, quality of the idea=how much i care about if you achieved it or not). but in that case, i will care more if you achieved it in a way that looks nice. of course, that criteria is completely subjective in function of my taste, which is another problem for judging replays accurately. some days i will be in the mood for something different than usual, etc..

i don't know what makes a replay great. therefore a great replay is a replay that shows me something i didn't know/i didn't know was possible.

THAT DOES NOT MEAN THAT A GREAT REPLAY NEEDS TO HAVE A COMPLETELY ORIGINAL IDEA THOUGH. for example you can make a replay where you kick off every single joint off of uke in a such a fashion so that it looks very elegant, and i would be like "wow this replay is great, i didnt know you could do that". if you've read David Hume's empiristic argument on the origin of knowledge, you know that he defends that there are no innate ideas (ideas that we are born with, necessarily true ideas that serve as paradigms. empirism defends that all knowledge comes from experience, your human senses). he explains the fact that we are able to imagine stuff that doesn't exist such as unicorns or mermaids by associating different ideas absorbed by life experiences. for example, i have seen a horse and i have seen wings, so i can associate both and imagine a pegasus. in that same way, i can imagine a replay that hasn't been made yet and that i am not sure is possible to create. i have seen a replay where every joint gets dismembered. i have seen someone kick joints off. i have seen someone look elegant. therefore, i can imagine a replay where someone kicks off every joint in an elegant way, even if such replay does not exist. because of that, i can imagine replays that do not exist but that i wish to see. and that is what a great replay is to me. a replay that breaks that barrier, that shows me something that i did not think was possible.

of course, this implies that i do not think that everything in toribash is possible. i used to be that "endless possibilities WOW" guy, but not anymore really. i take into account people's ability to dedicate time and effort into replays, which brings in a less accurate factor into the mix. it is not really possible to accurately determine if a replay is "great", but i try.

next time on tl;dr, dont lose our discussion on boomhit ethics and the ontology of openers

xlr84life: This is a good point. At the singleplayer cup last year or whatever it was called, I was consistently seeing the most fantastic replays I'd seen ever. People were seriously pushing the game to the next level, with the use of mods, hacking, and flat out solid toribash play to create stuff that was insanely good. NutHug, Isolations, and Jisse all put in work to bring replaymaking to a new realm, which has been relatively unexplored since that competition.
Maybe people need a good reason in order to put that much work into something? I remember when Isolations lost his replay, NutHug said that he basically left his replay unfinished because he didn't feel like he had to outdo Isolations anymore. But I can definitely see where you're coming from, I had seen some stuff from that event that I would've never thought possible before and they were executed so solidly as well. Definitely great replays, and the finals were Isolations and NutHug for a reason.

Dscigs: I like how this comment reflects what you aim for when you're making a replay, and I bet all our ideas do the same to an extent, because if you're not trying to make what you consider to be great, then what the fuck is wrong with you?


Well said

pusga: wow

you got a lot of ideas in this post. I like how you were saying that you need to first identify the idea that was trying to be achieved, and then judge how well the idea was executed.

And at the end, I like how you mentioned that the best replays are something that you didn't know was possible. Its a common mistake to assume that something has stagnated, whether it be scientific progress, or music, or even replays. People tend to think, "oh, everything's been done already, there's no progress left to be made." This is silly because just because you haven't thought of anything new doesn't mean everyone else hasn't either. Even though its silly, many people can fall into that line of thought anyway, myself included. So when someone breaks that thought and shows you something that you haven't even imagined, there's nothing else but to think of it as great.

I'm dead tired and will proceed on being so for a relatively extended period of time, so sorry for the poor contribution.

First: 10/10 thread Larfen. Master leadershipdude, this is what ORMO should be about.

Second: My mind works exactly like these paragraphs I'm quoting from pusga.

Third: I was going to go on about my idea of what makes a replay a "great replay" but I re-read pusga's post and this hit me hard god damn... As cliché-cringy as it inevitably sounds (can't phrase it in any other way right now), that is so sad and true.


Fourth (such a stupid way to write a response but too late to change it now): Ideas are what make a replay great. Replays with great ideas are what make a replay-maker great. (I'm omitting "in my opinion" on this paragraph and so forth because it's obviously implied since I'm not that kind of douche)

Of course that in a competition execution is to be valued, and quite a bit so. Though at an ORMO level I feel that execution is expected to be flawless anyway, and that doesn't make every replay that we make "great" (well, at least when you normalize expectations to the general organization members).

Some of Dafe's (iirc, it was a lifetime ago from my current point of view) replays were remarkably simple in execution but still wow'd me completely when I was playing a ton, because of those weird and so out-of-the-box ideas.

It's also why I voted against Jingles on the final rounds he was in, during the last cup (no offense obviously Jingles, you're top top top notch), since I felt he sometimes lacked a brilliant idea to top his stuff off. Also that's why it's a great idea to have an heterogeneous judge panel, which was fortunately the case there.


I'll try to make more points following this train of thought some time later as this goes on, but as a concluding remark: this is a great thread

Does it stand out or doesn't it

If a tricking replay is 90% corks and a twist, cool.
Everybody can do corks and no matter how smoothly or amazing the cork is, you aren't achieving anything somebody else can't.
It's just another corking replay at that point, I enjoy madmans because it is much harder to make a generic madman than a generic tricking replay or manip.
Though I am guilty of plenty of my on critiques.
So many ideas and movements have been done that it does just come down to it standing out, toribash replay making has turned into more of an inventive community and not so much a community with a skill or creativity cap.

To keep this thread going a bit, I'll ask what are you favourite replays ever?
And if possible attach it here.
I only joined in late 2012 so I probably missed tonnes of great replays.
What do you guys think are the most unforgetable replays?

Notnoob - Reaping or sleeping because of excellent sense of movement and being overall just very clever
Deejay - Waning because of great use of grab and fun dms
Larfen - Don stepped outside because ultimate manip
and pulse because pulsewinseverythinglol

also PUNCHER MUNCHER = replay that never got any attention at all. skeet at the end kills it

pusga has some good choices, I especially like the notnoob and pulse replays. Definitely near flawless stuff there. Pulse double especially, because he's one of those replaymakers who can really make you question how the fuck its even possible to do the stuff he's doing. Insanely skilled guy. I like how you can see the influence on pusga from the deejayy replay. Also happy I made the list, although that replay isn't one of my personal favorites but I'll take it.

Here are mine (this is biased towards older stuff that inspired me when I was learning):

War_Hero's Dafe kick - War_Hero is literally my favorite replaymaker ever, and while this doesn't exemplify his style, I think its one of the most beautiful kicks ever made. The simplicity of it makes it all the more memorable to me.

Mosier's Manipunchikickulation - Held the title of "best manipulation ever" to many, including me, for years. Particular notes of interest to me are the movement of the left leg in the opener, and the duck under the legs before the dms start. Smooth and definitely a huge influence on my style.

NutHug's "4-player" headpass - I don't know what to say about this other than to just watch it. Think of how mind-blowing something like this was in 2009. Big payoff at the end too, when you realize that DQ was on the whole time. Nograb too.

Rutz's splitcap - One of the most stylish things I've ever seen. The transition and little tiptoe after the decap wows me every time. Has a small misstep (imo) at around frame 200, but I won't let that get in the way of the creative movement shown in the rest of the replay.

Oracle - Beatiful Lies - The most unfortunately glitched replay in TB history. It's really hard for me to pick my favorite Oracle replay, and I would say he hasn't aged as well as some of the other replaymakers I listed here, but his stuff will always hold a special place in my heart.

Bonus Ora replay because I love him that much

I just realized literally all of these replays are from 2009, which I guess makes sense since that's when I was still learning and most impressionable