Interview With Ace

By Drifting

So, when did you first play TimeSplitters?

The very first time I played TimeSplitters was on December 15th, 2002. It may seem a bit weird and nerdy to remember the exact date and.. well, it probably is. I was just playing Half-Life on the PS2 with some friends and suddenly my dad came into my room with a copy of TS2. I was blown away by its fast paced gameplay, the huge variety of weapons and all the hilarious characters. I had never played anything quite like it. I bought TS1 about six months later and I got TSFP on its release day. I started playing for high scores in May or June 2005. I already had all platinum medals before I found NGC, and it made me think that I was at least decent at the game. But compared to all the WR's I sucked so bad, haha! I never thought I could be that good, but I guess I was kinda wrong. Since then, I've played hundreds of hours on all three games. I kinda stopped playing seriously last year because I felt I didn't have a lot of more records I'd like to go for. Also, the activity on all three games dropped a lot, sadly.

How many world records do you hold in TS?

Counting all the "easy records" like the virus levels, I have about 45 world records. I've held more records than that, but they've been broken. Nothing that makes me angry since records are meant to be broken!

Which record would you say you are most proud of?

There are quite a few I'm proud of, but if I had to choose one of them I'd say my '1:54.8' for "But Where do the Batteries Go?" may be the one I'm most proud of, perhaps tied with '34.5' for "Men In Grey". Both levels were among the first I saw speedruns for and I have special geeky feeling for them. It's not necessarily my best records. Both of them are very popular levels in the elite, but I have other records I think are much stronger. I've gotten these times twice, so maybe that says something about how good they are (or how good I am, haha)!

Which record was the hardest to obtain?

Ouch, there are many of them! Getting under the minute barrier on Tomb Normal was a royal pain in the ass. It's about one billion enemies blocking your way and they all have a very happy trigger finger. I should also mention that getting my times down to where they are on Mansion (41.1), Chemical Plant (21.4), Chinese (50.6), Docks (43.5) and Cyberden (57.3) all on hard was difficult. A record that was extremely hard to obtain mainly because of sheer boredom was Brain Drain 1.1+ million points. That must've taken 10 hours, with some breaks. A nice example to how important patience is when doing this, haha.

What would you say your greatest TimeSplitters moment was?

It's gotta be my first untied world record ever! It was on Scotland the Brave, Hard difficulty, and the time was 4:44.8 or so if I remember correct. The record was in CP's hands with a time of 4:45.X, one of the best TS players, and I just decided that I, a noob no one knew, would take it away from him no matter how hard it would be. Only something a fool would do.. thus it suited me perfectly! It was my favorite level, and still is in TSFP. I got so many runs where I felt I had it, but no luck. Finally one day when I was playing I nailed "The" run and when I went to the stats screen I saw my first ever untied world record, and I yelled something like: Jävlar i helvete, fan va pissbra! A lot of joyfull cursing in Swedish. My record didn't last long and probably not more than a day after I got it, it was in his hands once again, argh! However, I later found out by showing a video to a fellow eliter, Failurewarning now admin at NGC, that I was using a very bad strat and after some practice I managed to get my record back... for about another day... aah good times! By founding some more time savers, and simply just getting better at the game over the years, my time is now down to 4:21.2.

Any advice for aspiring record holders?

Just like anything in life: if you wanna be good you have to be stubborn and don't be afraid to try out new things! Watch other peoples videos, but don't do a bad thing which is to just try and copy the run. Just because I/they/we do it in a certain way doesn't have to mean that it's the best way. Learn from it and experiment. Stuff that seems impossible at first gets easy after a while. I've seen it so many times on a bunch of records sites. Many of those people that say that "it's impossible" have ended up beating the crap out of the record. Remember that practice makes perfect!!

Any last thoughts?

I think this is the first time ever someone has interviewed me, and I hope I did a fairly good job answering all questions. It was fun! I'd like to thank my lovely Sarah, for being the worlds best girlfriend. Martin (Mutant1988) for being very supportive throughout my little TimeSplitters career. Alle and Josef, you guys are great! My dad for buying TS2 that cold winter day, so me and my friends could have some fun. Also, I'd like to thank Matthijs "Quochendov" Triep, Wouter "Sniper_W.D." Duckaert and Paul "Failurewarning" Burgum for helping me a lot with TS and in real life as well. Amazing guys! And of course I'd like to thank you Drifting for interviewing me, and TSMB for being the best forum on the net, and all the members there for their support and for watching my videos. Also Fitzy, CP and Silent Thunder for making so many videos. I learned a lot from them... and, ahh, and just about everyone else in the Elite. And I almost forgot FRD!!! I'm looking forward to beating the crap out of the levels in TS4. Take care! Eat plenty of meatballs!

Stefan "Ace" Persson