In the modern history of A Hat in Time speedrunning, few names are tied so tightly to long full game categories as Zoro64. A German runner who moved from classic Nintendo platformers into the world of indie 3D collectathons, he built his reputation on pushing All Time Pieces and high completion routes to world record level, while also maintaining top tier times in Any percent and co op categories.
Speedrunning is often defined by short showcase categories and headline world records, but there is another layer of the scene where players grind multi hour runs that require consistency, routing knowledge, and stamina. In A Hat in Time, that layer is visible in Base Levels, All DLC, 110 percent, and co op categories. Zoro64 chose that space as home and in doing so helped define what strong times in those routes look like.
From Super Mario 64 to A Hat in Time
Like many runners who later settled into A Hat in Time, Zoro64’s first appearances on leaderboards came in classic Nintendo platformers. On Super Mario 64 he recorded a set of Nintendo 64 runs that included 1 Star, 16 Star with Lobby Backwards Long Jump allowed, and a 70 Star route, landing in the middle of a very crowded field with times such as 15 minutes 48 seconds in 16 Star and 50 minutes in 70 Star.
Those submissions placed him far from the front page of a legendary leaderboard, but they show an early comfort with precise movement, long form routing, and a willingness to learn advanced tricks. Within a few years his focus shifted. Instead of chasing incremental gains in a decades old Nintendo title, he moved toward a newer game that rewarded both movement and detailed knowledge of unlock conditions, DLC, and route planning. That game was A Hat in Time.
By the time his A Hat in Time results began to stack up, Zoro64 had become almost entirely associated with that title on Speedrun.com. Sixty of his seventy verified full game times are tied to A Hat in Time, compared with ten for Super Mario 64, and his most recent personal bests and records all sit in Hat’s full game and co op categories.
Any Percent and the Move toward the Front of the Pack
To understand how his legacy formed, it helps to start with Any percent. On PC, the A Hat in Time community splits Any percent into Lagless and Lag Abuse categories, reflecting how much benefit runners can gain from deliberately forcing lower frame rates.
In the Lagless Any percent category, Zoro64 pushed his time down to 34 minutes 13 seconds on the modern Fixed timer version with DLC 2 and community approved mods, a personal best that currently sits in the top three on the main leaderboard. In Lag Abuse Any percent he reached a 33 minute 32 second run that stands in the top three as well, showing that his skill transferred even when the game’s physics behave differently under heavy frame manipulation.
Those times did not claim the overall world record, but they established him as one of the primary Any percent threats in the A Hat in Time community. In July 2025, a slightly earlier Lagless Any percent personal best of 34 minutes 38 seconds was highlighted as one of the week’s best times in The Gold Split, a weekly speedrunning newsletter that tracks standout runs across many games. That kind of outside recognition placed his name in front of runners who might never have opened the A Hat in Time leaderboards directly.
World Records in All Time Pieces
Any percent gave Zoro64 visibility, but the heart of his legacy lies in full collection categories. All Time Pieces routes require runners to collect every time piece in the game under specific rulesets, often across several hours of play. Within that space he became one of the main record holders for Base Levels categories that focus on the original campaign without every piece of downloadable content.
In All Time Pieces Base Levels with Lag Abuse on PC, using the Fixed timer and DLC 2 mod configuration, Zoro64 holds the world record with a time of 1 hour 9 minutes 20.670 seconds, set roughly a year ago and still first on the leaderboard. The SpeedStats project, which tracks relative difficulty and quality of world records across many games, ranks that run among its thousand strongest records, further confirming that the time is not just first place but also deeply optimized compared to the rest of the field.
Zoro64 did not limit himself to one configuration. On the same game he pushed All Time Pieces Base Levels under Lagless rules to the front of the board as well, recording a 1 hour 12 minutes 47 seconds time that sits in first place on his personal record list. Where earlier Base Levels runners on default patches were still well above an hour and a quarter, his approach on newer DLC 2 setups helped reset expectations for what a strong full game time should look like.
Important context for these categories comes from the broader A Hat in Time routing community. Guides written by runners such as Doka, kaxymonoxy, and others detail the evolving Base Levels routes and efficient ways to handle Nyakuza Metro and the other DLC additions. Zoro64’s records sit on top of that collective work, but his ability to execute a complete run with relatively few major mistakes and to manage the risk of long segments where a single failure can lose minutes is what turned those routes into world records.
Coop Records with Kurilious
Another major thread in Zoro64’s profile is co op play. A Hat in Time allows two player full game runs where both players share progress and route responsibilities. Co op categories multiply the complexity of an already dense game, since movement and combat must remain tight while both runners stay synchronized over hours of play.
Zoro64’s full game history shows multiple co op records alongside fellow runner Kurilious. Together they hold first place in Co op Lagless All Time Pieces All DLC on PC with a time of 2 hours 1 minute 1.710 seconds, as well as first place in Co op Lagless 110 percent All DLC with a marathon length time of 8 hours 40 minutes 16.330 seconds. Both records were set nine months ago on Fixed timer versions with the CDLC 1 configuration.
These runs do more than add two names to a leaderboard. Co op categories often serve as stress tests for routes, revealing where safety strats save more time than they lose and how reliable each trick really is when two players are involved. The fact that Zoro64 and Kurilious were able to complete eight hour plus 110 percent co op routes while still landing top times shows a level of consistency and planning that goes beyond individual execution.
Tournament Play and Community Presence
Outside formal world records, Zoro64 appears in community tournaments and race nights that give a different kind of historical footprint. In 2024 he participated in the HatCommunity Any percent tournament, with recorded matches such as a winners round set against HatLagg that were streamed on the community’s channel.
Race formats compress the long practice hours of a runner into a handful of attempts, sometimes on restreams watched by players from other games who do not normally follow A Hat in Time. Even when the goal is simply to survive a best of series, these broadcasts preserve snapshots of how runners played in a given year, what strats were considered standard, and how they reacted under pressure. For historians of the game’s scene, tournament VODs that feature Zoro64 and his peers will be as important as isolated record videos.
Beyond race events, Zoro64 maintains a small but focused presence on streaming platforms. His Twitch channel and linked YouTube account primarily showcase A Hat in Time personal best attempts, record highlights, and occasional forays into other platformers. While little is publicly documented about his life away from the game, these channels serve as primary sources for his approach to practice, his demeanor during long grinds, and the crowd of regular viewers who followed his progress.
Style, Routing Philosophy, and Influence
Looking across his category choices and times, a consistent picture emerges. Zoro64 gravitates toward categories that reward deep familiarity with the entire game. All Time Pieces, All DLC, and 110 percent routes require a knowledge of every world and mission, how to unlock them efficiently, and where to deploy higher risk tricks for significant time saves. His decision to invest so heavily into Base Levels and full DLC categories instead of chasing purely short Any percent records helped maintain interest in these longer formats during a period when many communities trend toward shorter routes.
His presence in the co op record tables also reinforces an image of a runner who values collaboration. Co op All Time Pieces and 110 percent records are rarely solo projects with a brief partner cameo; they require two runners who are willing to practice together, coordinate schedules, and develop shared strats. The fact that multiple of those co op categories list Zoro64 and Kurilious with first place times suggests a stable partnership built over months of attempts.
At the same time, his strong Any percent Lagless and Lag Abuse times keep him in contact with the more visible side of the leaderboard, forcing specialists in those categories to account for a player whose main focus lies elsewhere. When The Gold Split highlighted his Any percent Lagless run alongside records in much larger games, it signaled that his efforts had reached a level of broader recognition that extended beyond the immediate Hat community.
Place in Speedrun History
Within the larger history of speedrunning, Zoro64 is not a household name like the earliest Super Mario 64 or Super Metroid pioneers. His career sits instead in the middle scale that defines much of modern speedrunning culture, where focused specialists carve out world records and top times in specific games and categories and help keep those scenes alive. In the story of A Hat in Time, however, his role is more prominent.
As long as All Time Pieces, Base Levels, and full DLC routes remain active on the leaderboards, his 1 hour 9 minute Base Levels Lag Abuse record, his co op records with Kurilious, and his near front page Any percent times will stand as benchmarks for the next generation of runners to chase. For an historian of speedrunning, that is precisely the sort of legacy that deserves to be recorded: not only the biggest names at the very top of global attention, but also the specialists whose dedication defines what “fast” looks like inside a single game’s community.