Sprint Shoes

An item, ability, or spell that enables the player character to move faster, possibly to the point of Super Speed. It can be anything from a device that allows the player to walk at an accelerated pace to an animal that can be ridden around—though, of course, some incarnations make more sense than others. This can be one of the most useful items in the game due to the fact that most game characters run at the pace of an arthritic slug, and certainly no players are going to complain at being given the ability to complete the latest Fetch Quest or Chain of Deals in a quicker fashion. Occasionally, it may be key to beating a Timed Mission that would otherwise be impossible.

This is generally the item's explicit purpose, but other times it may be an unintended side effect of something else. Players will invariably exploit this while conducting a Speed Run.

Essentially a Nitro Boost Warp Whistle.

Compare Run, Don't Walk. Also see Fast Forward Mechanic for when you move faster through time.

Examples of Sprint Shoes include:

Video Game Examples

Action Games

  • Toejam and Earl has special sneakers that allow you to run really fast and beep like the Road Runner. To sweeten the deal, you start every game with four of these in your inventory.
    • There are also the rocket skates, but the difficulty in controlling them (and the possibility of inadvertently activating them if you're opening presents at random) makes it feel a lot more like a Power-Up Letdown.
  • Zombies Ate My Neighbors could also be considered the Trope Namer, since there is an item called Sprint Shoes in the game. Naturally, they allow Zeke or Julie to run at full tilt for a short time. This is especially useful in getting to victims before a monster does.


Action Adventure Games

  • In The Goonies II, Mikey can find Running Shoes and Spring Shoes. Running Shoes increase his movement speed to not-glacial, while the Spring Shoes increase his jumping ability dramatically. Notably, the effects cannot be combined.
  • Scrolls in Legacy of the Wizard. You can use as many as you can find.
  • The Bunny Hood in The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask. A modified version of the Song of Time allowed you to extend the power to everybody else as well, for those time when you don't feel like waiting for NPCs to catch up.
    • The fastest way to get around on land in Majora's Mask was as a rolling Goron. Though that was difficult to steer.
    • In The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and The Wind Waker, Link covers much more ground by rolling or back flipping than by running.
      • In Phantom Hourglass, rolling multiple times makes Link dizzy.
    • The 2D games had Pegasus Boots or temporary Pegasus Seeds.
    • Let us not forget Epona, Link's Cool Horse.
  • In Deadly Towers, Hyper Boots will increase your speed, but not while walking in any non-diagonal direction.


Fighting Games & Beat 'Em Ups

  • The Bunny Hood from The Legend of Zelda also makes an appearance as a usable item in Super Smash Bros. Melee and Brawl, where it increases jumping ability as well as speed. Ironically, due to the game's gimmick of forfeiting players who fall off-screen, both the official website and in-game trophy room describe it as an occasional Power-Up Letdown in terms of maneuverability if worn by the fastest characters.


First Person Shooters

  • The "Sports Boost" tonic in BioShock (series) increases your speed.
  • Call of Duty - Modern Warfare and its sequel features this trope in multiplayer - your speed is based on what your primary weapon is for whatever class you select. (For instance, starting with a SMG gives you the fastest speed while a Riot Shield gives you the slowest speed.) Note that it's not affected by what weapon you're currently carrying, but whatever weapon you started with. Thus, you can ditch your MP5 for an M60 and still maintain breakneck speed.
    • Modern Warfare 2 adds a few speed-based features to classes - people with "Marathon" can run indefinitely (instead of having to slow down after a few seconds of running at top speed), and people with "Lightweight" get a 10% (now 7% speed boost.
  • Running with the knife out in Counter-Strike makes you faster. You run fastest with the knife and slowest with the M249, with pistols and SMGs on the fast end and rifles on the slow end.
    • Similarly, it's rumored that running with your weapon holstered makes you go faster in the Medal of Honor games.
    • This is definitely true for the FPS F.E.A.R.. Your movement speed is affected by how cumbersome the weapon you're currently carrying is.
    • In Resident Evil 4, a third-person shooter, you run faster while wielding grenades... or eggs.
  • The Steroids in Duke Nukem 3D.
  • Halo: Reach introduces a sprint ability as one of several armor abilities. It's one of the less spectacular ones, but can be useful in a lot of different situations.
  • Left 4 Dead 2 has the Adrenaline Shot, an item that gives a small temporary health and speed boost. The item lets you run just fast enough to outrun anything but a Witch (even if your health is in the red!) and common infected can't slow you down if they hit you. You can also run through water instead of wading through it, eliminate melee shoving fatigue, and perform many actions (reviving teammates, activating a device, etc.) in literally half the time.
  • One of the armor upgrades available in Mass Effect 2 is the stimulator conduits - armored greaves incorporating beryllium-tungsten braces and micro-servos to support and enhance natural muscle movement. Equipping them modestly increases Shepard's running speed.
  • In Team Fortress 2, equipping the Pyro with the Degreaser, Powerjack, and Attendant gives you a speed boost. The Heavy Weapons Guy gets the Gloves of Running Urgently, which give a speed boost when wielded at the cost of 6 health per second, and the Demoman's Chargin' Targe allows you to charge forward once every 10 or so seconds, which can be used as either a mobility boost or an attack buff (or both).
    • The Heavy also has the Buffalo Steak Sandvich, which boosts his speed even more than the Gloves when eaten, at the cost of only being able to use melee, and dealing and taking minicrits. Valve had to patch the game so that it wouldn't stack with the gloves' speed boost, mainly because it was a bit unfair for Heavies to be able to rush to the capture points as fast as Scouts.


Hack and Slashers

  • The "Stinger" move from Devil May Cry, which sends Dante a distance forward in the process, would qualify, as would some of the variants found in his other weapons. The third title introduced dash moves, while the fourth finally allows the player character to sprint properly after a bit of sustained jogging - and buying the appropriate skill.
  • Diablo II has quite a few things that qualify as this. The assassin has Burst of Speed. The barbarian has the Increased Speed passive as well as Frenzy. The druid gets a minor boost when in werewolf form. The paladin can use Charge for quick movement, or he can just switch to the Vigor aura and basically give his whole party the Bunny Hood effect. Characters lacking these, and many who DO, usually have some equipment that gives a speed boost.
  • Dynasty Warriors has two types: Equipment and a temporary boost item dropped by enemies. Horses allow you to move quickly and weapons or equipment with the Speed attribute allow you to both move and attack faster. Some characters become extremely twitchy with the right gear.
  • While No More Heroes starts out with Travis already owning a very cool motorcycle to get around in, he also has the ability to learn to dash short distances.


Maze Games

  • In The Tower of Druaga, Gilgamesh can obtain winged Jet Boots on the second level to move twice as fast.


MMORPGs

  • The MMORPG City of Heroes has "travel powers" (Super Speed, Super Jumping, Flight, and Teleportation) to this effect. They're considered so essential to getting around the city that it's a rare player indeed who doesn't acquire one as soon as it's available (or at all). Some power sets (best read: Kinetics, a buff set) also have various buff powers that can replicate Super Speed and Super Jumping for brief periods of time. Though this necessity has been somewhat alleviated by the addition of temporary travel powers in the form of jetpacks that can last a fairly significant portion of a character's career.
    • The two epic heroic archetypes, Warshades and Peacebringers, each get built in travel powers at level one.
    • On a more literal (if less functional) level, there were several costume recipe drops that let you build Rocket Boots, shoes with wings on the ankles, boots with hydraulic rams, and other purely-cosmetic footwear that were supposed to look like Sprint Shoes.
  • Mounts from World of Warcraft fulfill a similar role, as does the Druid's Travel Form, the Hunter's Aspect of the Cheetah power, and the Shaman's Ghost Wolf power.
    • Also, the Rogue's Sprint, which, when at a high enough level, actually moves faster than the basic mount speed.
    • The feral druid PVP set bonus imparts a 15% speed boost on top of the 30% speed boost from one of the basic talents. Throw in the Windwalk enchant and after a proc you'll walk about as fast as a mount (and never mind Dash, Stampeding Roar, or the Worgen racial for an even larger boost)
    • Warcraft also features the Engineering ability Nitro Boosts, allow you to transform any pair of footwear into Sprint Shoes for a short period. Of course, as with most Warcraft Engineering abilities, there is always a chance that they will simply explode instead.
  • EverQuest has the Journeyman's Boots, which allow the player to apply a run speed buff when equipped - very handy in a game where mounts are prohibitively expensive. The quest to get the boots is an utter pain in the ass, however, meaning the players who risk insanity trying to complete it usually do so for the bragging rights, rather than the reward itself. The Jboots return in EQ 2 as an iconic item reward for what is one of the most entertaining heritage quests in the game.
  • In Free Realms you can get these powers temporarily, but only when doing a time-based mission or fighting in dungeons. You can get a more permanent speed boost by completely leveling up a pet, but they're bought with real money.
  • PlanetSide has the Surge implant, which allows a character to burn Stamina to get a burst of speed. Holstering one's weapon makes them run faster, as well as wearing lighter armor (Standard is faster than Agile, Agile is faster than Reinforced, Reinforced is faster than MAX suits) or activating Run Mode on MAX armors.
  • Star Trek Online - in space missions, the player can set his ship to "Full Impulse" to travel at roughly twice the full speed otherwise. This has the rather dangerous side effect of draining power from other systems, so running into a battle zone at Full Impulse is generally not recommended. On ground missions, the player can run by simply hitting shift. Outside of combat, the running is a bit slower, but can be used for up to 30 seconds at a time with a short cooldown. In combat, the running is a bit faster, but only works for 5 seconds and has a similar length cooldown. Both of the aforementioned abilities, however, are available from the start - a straighter example would be the Slipstream Drive, which is available upon reaching Admiral. It doubles the travel speed in sector space, which is extremely handy.


Platformers

  • Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo Tooie feature the Sprint shoes, which speed up your the duo's walk speed tremendously. Also, walking around with Kazooie carrying Banjo is faster than Banjo walking about with Kazooie in his pack.
    • In Tooie the Sprint Shoes actually allow you to run on water as well, provided you don't stop at any point (you'll fall in).
  • The Castlevania games have had several different mechanisms for speedy movement; the current trend is to give the player something really fast, but not till late in the game. On the other hand, you usually start out with the ability to "backdash" out of harm's way. This leads to truly bizarre speed runs where the hero is facing backwards most of the time.
    • And sometimes jumping forward is slightly faster then going forward - especially if you got the double-jump ability.
  • Ironsword features the Seven League Boots, which are for this function.
    • The Seven League Boots are a classic Public Domain Artifact from English folk tales. They don't actually increase your speed, they increase your stride; as the name implies, they let you walk seven leagues in a single step.
      • Ouch.
      • Indeed: when Unseen University tried their hand at them, they imposed unfortunate groin strains on the unlucky student testing them out. They got them off him just in time, but he had to wear a special device for ages afterward (and ate standing up). The Mercenary from The Bartimaeus Trilogy also wears them.
  • Jazz Jackrabbit had a similar item.
  • Acquiring the Boots in La-Mulana increased the player's movement speed by 50%, which was necessary to climb slopes.
  • Mega Man X gains the ability to dash in his first game (it's built-in thereafter). Various other speed items are found throughout the franchise; one game even has an item that makes you climb ladders faster.
  • The Speed Booster in Metroid is one of the most powerful examples. Once up to full speed Samus becomes virtually invincible, destroying just about everything in her path as she plows through at breakneck speed. The player can also harness this energy to send Samus rocketing through the air in a straight line, again invincible and destroying everything in her path until she hits a solid wall. Super Metroid gave the latter ability a tradeoff by draining Samus' life in the process, but later games removed this restriction.
    • However, in Super Metroid, the shine spark ability had an effect of creating two damaging echoes perpendicular to Samus upon crashing that dealt a lot of damage. Later installments don't feature this, although Zero Mission lets the player spark in ball form.
  • Secret Agent has the shoes powerup, which allows you to run at lightning speed and, more importantly, jump for great distances. It's always critical to completing the level, so if it runs out before you do the important things you need to do with it, it's level restart time.
    • There is also an inversion - a rare "powerup" that looks like a 1/2 fraction and slows you down 50% for a while.
  • Many Sonic the Hedgehog games have the Power Sneakers, a monitor item with a single shoe floating inside it. Breaking the monitor that holds them grants a few seconds of extra speed.
  • Yoshi already provides increased running speed in Super Mario Galaxy 2, but he can also ingest hot peppers that allow him to run at super-speed for a short time, making it possible to run up slopes, onto walls, and across water.


Roguelikes

  • Ancient Domains of Mystery has the Seven League Boots which greatly decrease the time it takes to move, especially on the World Map (unless they're cursed, in which case they slow you down and good luck taking them off).
  • Nethack has several ways of becoming faster (some permanent, some not), including speed boots. As the game is turn based, this means you get an extra turn every so often.


RPGs

  • Rand from Breath of Fire 2 works as your Sprint Shoes with his World Map ability. He rolls up and you steer a quick-moving ball around. You are free from Random Encounters while using this, but the moment you crash into something (trees, a cliff, a town) you get an encounter. And there really are a lot of trees...
    • Also after Mina turns into a giant bird. While flying on the bird you moved even faster than dashing and could move anywhere with no random encounters. But alas, you can no longer use her after Habaruku pretending to be Father Hulk break the Gates unleashing demons preventing her from landing.
    • Thankfully, the GBA port added in a dash button to make up for the original's horrifically slow walking speed, which made dungeons a little less painful. Unfortunately, the egregiously high encounter rate kind of counteracts that.
  • Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter has a particularly painful version. Using D-Dash too much fills the D-counter and causes a Nonstandard Game Over. Thankfully using it in short bursts to charge through the Preexisting Encounters to avoid fighting them hardly increases it.
  • Chrono Cross has an interesting variation in the Time Shifter, which you receive automatically at the beginning of a New Game+. If you hold down R2, it literally fast-forwards everything- you, your enemies, dialogue, the environment, etc., both during and outside of battle (with the exception of pre-rendered cutscenes and, thankfully, the background music). It can also slow everything down in a similar manner, which is the easiest method of completing the feeding mini-game's hardest difficulty.
  • In Dark Cloud, there's an item called Dran's Feather (Dran being your hometown's winged protector) that allows the player to run much faster in dungeons. They break after excessive use, and it's very annoying if you don't have spares with you when it happens. In towns, one can "teleport" from a place to another by using the Georama view.
  • Deus Ex had a fast running nanoaugmentation, which not only allowed for swift running, but high and long jumps, surviving high falls, and crawling much faster than normal. It and regeneration are two of the most powerful augs in the game.
  • Completing both of the "race the Gold Goblins!" quests in .hack GU Vol. 3: Redemption rewards you with an accessory called "Demon Safe Shoes". It comes with two abilities—one boosts the character's movement speed by 25% (in both towns and battle areas), and the other stops enemies from noticing the party, which makes it possible for the party to Surprise Attack the enemy mob all the time, so long as an active member is equipped with it. Extremely useful in the Forest of Pain.
  • The great sabrecat in Dragon Quest VIII.
  • EarthBound features the Skip Sandwich item, which temporarily boosts the party's walking speed when eaten.
  • The DS remake of Final Fantasy III borrowed the famous B Button Run.
  • The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind has the "Boots of Blinding Speed" which give you a huge boost to your movement at the cost of not being able to see where you're going. They're still fun though - and if you're immune to harmful magic, you don't get blinded.
    • Cranking up the game's brightness in the video options is another option for removing the "blindness".
    • In Oblivion, horses aren't themselves much faster, but have a speed multiplier. Giving them a magical speed boost has some dangerous, yet hilarious results.
      • Oblivion also had the Boots of Springheel Jak. While these didn't directly influence your movement speed, they gave a considerable acrobatic boost that makes leaping around the fastest (unmounted) traveling means.
  • Named after the Sprint Shoes in Final Fantasy VI, which had to be equipped in order to run. Essentially, you trade one valuable relic slot for the ability to actually play the game at any decent pace.
    • At least you only have to equip the shoes on one member of the party to get the effect on the entire group. The few parts of the game where you control multiple parties do require extra sets of shoes of course.
    • The Anthology version of the game made the Circle button a Run button, preventing one from having to make the trade. Combining it with Sprint Shoes makes for very high speeds.
    • The Advance versions of this game and Final Fantasy V also make use of the trope. In the latter, all one needs is a Thief with the "Dash" ability and you can zip around any map or dungeon like crazy. This doesn't slow down the chance of Random Encounters, but it's still fun to watch.
    • The Final Fantasy series has had Chocobos available in many games which serve the same function as the Sabrecat example below—you move faster, but they also tend to eliminate random battles while being ridden (while the sabrecat of DQ8 only moves faster, but does not eliminate encounters). This counts for all Final Fantasy's from II to XII.
    • Final Fantasy XI has these out the nose. From renting or breeding Chocobos to ride on, to the White Mage Teleport and Recall spells and Black Mage Retrace and Warp spells, to the Bard's 'Mazurka' songs, Dancer's 'Chocobo Jig', and Thief's 'Flee'. There's even pieces of armor that increase your movement speed as well. Of course, some pieces of armor invert it as well (One of the most illogical being a high-level tier of armor that grants Haste (increased attack speed)... but decreases movement speed as well.
  • Gothic has the running jump, which propels you faster than a straight-up run. Interestingly, once you learn the Acrobatics skill, it becomes harder to pull off, since your standing jump becomes easier to trigger accidentally and has a longer recovery time.
    • Gothic 3 also has sprint mode.
  • Lunar DS had a B button run. Why is this important? Because in Lunar DS, running hurt you, dang it. It's quite possible to run yourself to one hitpoint and get insta-killed by random enemies.
  • Paper Mario featured the party member Lakilester, whose outerworld purpose was to carry Mario on a cloud over hazards. However, you actually moved much faster this way than walking.
    • There was also the speedy spin badge, which allowed you to twirl around the map at a much faster pace than even Lakilester would allow.
    • Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door had a kid Yoshi. Riding around on him was faster than walking.
    • Super Paper Mario both had Carrie who worked similar to Lakilester in the Paper Mario example, and Dashell, who let you go ridiculously fast when running. He wasn't much in the way of time saving though, you had to go down a hundred level dungeon and beat the Bonus Boss to get him.
  • Every 2D Pokémon game gives you various means to travel between towns more quickly:
    • The player acquires a Bicycle at some point after gaining two badges, which can be used in any outdoor area to travel several times faster than walking.
    • The Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald games allowed the player to choose from two bikes: the "Acro Bike", and the (aptly-named) "Mach Bike", both of which could traverse specific obstacles.
    • The first two generations of the series could be connected to Pokemon Stadium and even played on the N64. Beating Pokemon Stadium's challenges unlocked a "fast forward" option allowing the player to walk at double or triple the normal speed (which could still be combined with the bicycle for even faster travel).
    • Starting with the third generation, the player receives "Running Shoes" nearly from the beginning that allow them to move at twice the usual speed, even in areas where the bike isn't allowed.
      • As an extension of this, Ruby is issued a pair as a birthday gift by his father (one of the few things he takes with him when he runs away). Even though he's not in that good a shape (especially not compared to Sapphire), activating the shoes accelerates him to Super Speed levels. Hilarity Ensues whenever this happens.
    • In HeartGold and SoulSilver, running or cycling actually increases the Random Encounter rate, because the extra noise flushes out wild pokemon. (Not that it's a bad thing when you're hunting for elusive pokemon on a time limit....)
  • Sailor Moon: Another Story allowed the player to run (read: cover twice as much distance while apparently still walking) by holding one button (I think it was B/Yellow) and to sprint (four times as fast, which is twice as fast as the cars in the city) by holding L or R. The catch was that this would inevitably mean your next Random Encounter would happen that much quicker as well.
  • Star Ocean the Second Story has Bunny Shoes, which makes your characters zippy in battle but otherwise doesn't effect your speed.
  • The speed line of Jedi forces in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.
    • While we're in it, "Force Speed" is actually used in many Star Wars video games and Expanded Universe works, and (according to the link) in two movies.
    • Jedi Outcast turned Force Speed into Bullet Time in the single-player game. Although more useful for actual fighting, it was worthless for getting somewhere faster—as in multiplayer, you did get an overall speed boost, but you rarely had anywhere to go.
    • In Jedi Academy, the Force Speed slows time down AND makes you faster.
  • The Suikoden series' version is known as the Godspeed Rune, whose name has an interesting history of mistranslation...
    • and everyone tries to recruit Viki ASAP due to her ability to teleport players anywhere (which is especially good for III where you can't just walk to another town because of the overworld map system).
  • In Tales of Symphonia, you can equip characters with EX gems that do various things. If you equip a "personal" gem to Lloyd, you move significantly faster in "dungeons and towns" (read: anything that's not the overworld map). And on the overworld map, you can activate "long-range" mode if you've found the appropriate map, and later on you get flying vehicles which are much faster, can go anywhere, and subject you to no enemies.
    • Lloyd's personal skill is even more similar to the FFVI Sprint Shoes by the fact that, in order to have it equipped, you must give up a Exsphere slot that could otherwise be used for something else. And it is rather jarring to start a new game and not have that skill anymore.
    • Unlike the Sprint Shoes though, Lloyd's Personal skill can react with his other three possible skills to create new ones that may or may not be useful to you.
  • Somehow, in The Witcher running with your silver sword out in fast or group style will make you run faster. Additionally, running with any weapon out will make you move full speed when intoxicated.


Sports Games

  • Backyard Hockey has a pair of shoes you can pick up to move faster.
  • In the Game Boy Color version of Mario Tennis, you can unlock Light Shoes, which let you run faster but reduce your traction.


Survival Horror

  • Dead Rising has skateboards and a certain blend of drinks which boosts your movement temporarily.
  • The Propulsion Boots and the hoverbike from the freeware game Notrium.


Third Person Shooters

  • The Metroid Prime subseries replaced the Speed Booster upgrade with one more manageable in 3D, the Boost Ball. It's weaker, but still gets you around fast and damages enemies.


Turn-Based Strategy

  • Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and its sequel has shoes called...well what the trope name is. Sprint Shoes boosts your units' Move stat by 1. The upgraded version, the Ninja Tabi, lets you move up 2 extra spaces. In A2, there is a clan ability that boosts Move for the party by 1 and 2 and it does stack with the Sprint Shoes/Ninja Tabi. The Green Mage in A2 can learn Leap, which temporarily boosts a unit's Move by 1. Since the highest base stat for Move is 4, combine this with a Ninja Tabi, the clan ability ability Move +2, AND using the Green Mage's Leap ability, you can almost cover half the map by moving 9 spaces!


Non-Video-Game Examples

Anime and Manga

Tabletop Games

  • Several spells in Dungeons & Dragons fulfill this purpose, including haste, expeditious retreat, and overland flight.

Web Comics

Web Original

Western Animation

  • Kim Possible featured an episode where Kim dons a pair of speed shoes in order to battle some super-fast robots. It not only makes her faster, but lets her break the laws of physics. (Not that realistic physics is a prime concern for the show).
  • Wile E. Coyote orders a pair of sprint shoes from Acme in one short. Of course they backfire and cause him to run off a cliff.
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