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Summer is watching people beat games ridiculously fast for charity
Video game speedruns are always impressive feats of memorization, skill and flawless gameplay -- but twice a year they're also a conduit for altruism. Next week is one of those times. Starting on July 26th, Summer Games Done Quick will kick off seven full days of Twitch-streamed speedrunning. The goal? Raise as much cash as possible for Doctors Without Borders and have a ridiculously good time.
The best and fastest: Highlights from Awesome Games Done Quick 2015
The annual Awesome Games Done Quick marathon is one of the biggest charity events in gaming, with this year's show raising more than $1 million in charitable donations for the Prevent Cancer Foundation over a grueling week-long campaign. During the course of the event, gamers from across the globe gathered to complete classic and modern games at lightning speed, producing amazing playthroughs and earning thousands of viewer donations from the collective atmosphere and camaraderie. This year's event was the most financially successful to date, and we've already covered highlights like this ultra-quick Pokemon Blue playthrough and an unlikely Mischief Makers marriage proposal. With more than 100 hours of speedruns to sift through, however, it may be tough to find the best of the best. With that in mind, here are our favorite runs from AGDQ 2015, with links to the original Twitch archives provided by this Reddit thread. You've got a lot to catch up on if you missed out on this year's event, so let's dive right in.
Pokemon Blue speedrunner uses 'shortcut,' is super effective
Are you going through Awesome Games Done Quick withdrawal like we are? Those that missed some of the speedrunning marathon's fast-paced antics have two options: Attempt to mash through a game of their choice as fast as possible or catch up on the action with archived videos. Frankly, we're taking the easier approach, opting for this fascinating 21-minute speedrun of Pokemon Blue. Performed by "Werster," this run avoids save-file-corrupting tactics, instead taking advantage of glitches that manipulate the number of items in the speedrunner's inventory. Thanks to the item manipulation glitch, he reached Pokemon Blue's final scene in mere minutes after triggering a few events early in the game. Awesome Games Done Quick wrapped up this past weekend, raising over $1.1 million for the Prevent Cancer Foundation. The marathon offered plenty of entertaining moments to Twitch viewers, including a marriage proposal. [Image: Nintendo]
Awesome Games Done Quick concludes with more than $1 million raised
The Awesome Games Done Quick marathon, where speedrunners solicit donations for charity while blazing through video games as fast as they can (only pausing to get engaged) has concluded. This year, the event has raised more than $1 million for the Prevent Cancer Foundation, with donations still being accepted and a themed Humble Bundle still available for purchase (though at time of publication, that bundle will only be available for a few more hours). The Games Done Quick Twitter account announced the good news early Sunday morning, quoting a figure of "over $1.1 million," but that number has since climbed to nearly $1.3 million (as of this writing). For comparison, the Awesome Games Done Quick 2013 marathon raised $1,031,189. We said it then and we'll say it again: good job, internet. [Image: Awesome Games Done Quick]
Speedrunners get engaged on Awesome Games Done Quick
They met on Twitch, so getting engaged on Twitch is wonderfully romantic. While blasting through a cutscene in the Nintendo 64 game Mischief Makers, Awesome Games Done Quick speedrunner Jackafur took a moment to thank his friends for their support over the years, and then he turned his attention to Kittyrawr, his girlfriend seated right next to him. He said he would love her forever, pulled out a ring, got on one knee and popped the question – and she said yes, all live on Twitch. Onions, guys. Onions. Awesome Games Done Quick has so far raised more than $500,000 for the Prevent Cancer Foundation, and last year the group raised more than $1 million for Prevent Cancer. They're streaming through January 10 – watch it live right here. [Image: Awesome Games Done Quick]
Joystiq Streams: Badass British Sonic the Hedgehog 2 Speedrun
What are you looking at, you blue freak? Wagging your finger at us like you're all that. Think we're impressed that you hang out with a fox with two tails? Well... we are! That's super cool! But the fact that your eyes sort of connect into a single giant eye is gross! And why are you blue? That is not a natural color for hedgehogs, man. Get that checked out. How about we check it out for you! We'll check it out so fast, you won't even know what happened. We'll take what's arguably your most beloved game, Sonic, and we'll beat it in two hours or die trying. Okay, fine, no one's going to die. But Sinan Kubba (@SinanKubba), Joystiq's ferocious UK editor, is still going to try and defeat Sonic the Hedgehog 2 in roughly two hours starting at 3:00PM EST on Joystiq.com/Twitch. Joystiq.com/Twitch broadcasts every Tuesday and Thursday at 4:00PM EST, come rain or shine, but we stream all the time. If you want to make sure you catch us when we go live, follow us on Twitch.
Watch these awesome games played very well, very quickly, for charity
Let's say you aren't into gadgets or consumer electronics and would rather spend the coming week watching video games. Well, you can do that too and maybe help advance cancer research at the same time thanks to the latest edition of Awesome Games Done Quick. It follows the same format as before (folks speeding through games as fast as possible), too. No real surprises there. What's on tap? Diddy Kong Racing, Banjo Kazooie and Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze and that's just today! You know what to do here: make a donation, support cancer research and watch some highly-skilled gamers run through your favorite titles as fast as humanly possible -- we've even embedded a live player after the break. Get to it!
Glitched Sonic Boom speedrun clocks in at under an hour
It took speedrunners less than 24 hours to crack open Sega's Wii U action game Sonic Boom and produce an hour-long playthrough thanks to a game-breaking glitch discovered yesterday. The current world record, achieved during Twitch streamer Parax0's fourth-ever playthrough of the game, clocks in at 51 minutes. Following Sonic Boom's launch on Tuesday, fellow Sonic series speedrunner DarkspinesSonic discovered that players can chain special attacks by pausing the game in between button inputs. Since Knuckles' special attack launches him into the air, this quirk allows players to take flight and bypass the majority of the game's content by skipping cutscenes, breaking level boundaries, and entering areas long before they should become accessible. The glitch also triggers curious scenes like the one pictured above, and sometimes renders level geometry invisible. It also crashes the game occasionally, so try it at your own risk. It makes for a very entertaining playthrough, however. Nice work, Knuckles. [Image: Sega]
Shovel Knight record speedrun clocks in at under 50 minutes
Shovel Knight from Yacht Club Games only came out in June, but several individuals have already moved past being satisfied with the game's core experience and have started challenging themselves to beat it as fast as they can; individuals like BustahWuff, who earlier this week set a Shovel Knight speedrun record at 48 minutes and 35 seconds. The record-setting attempt was an "any %" run, and thus did not require BustahWuff to collect every item hidden in the 2D platformer. BustahWuff was also not aiming for a low percentage of completion, nor was he using cheats or glitches in a major way (unlike, for example, how a backwards long jump can shave minutes off a Super Mario 64 speedrun). You can check out the run for yourself after the break. Congrats, BustahWuff!
Watch Ocarina of Time get crushed in 18 minutes, Metroid Prime in 55
In an age where seemingly everyone stresses about how long their games are versus how much they cost, it seems like some people just can't plow through them fast enough. Take Cosmo Wright's insane run through The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, for example. Using glitches, he managed to clear the entire game in just 18 minutes and 10 seconds, setting a new world record. You can watch the whole thing in its entirety above, and you can do it in the span of your average lunch break. Meanwhile, speedrunner T3 set a world record in another beloved Nintendo game, Metroid Prime. He sent Samus through the GameCube classic in just 55 minutes of in-game time. Check out T3's run after the break. [Image: Nintendo]
Germany wins again, this time it's a world record Spelunky run
Spelunky has once again been mastered, with a new world record speedrun set over the weekend. YouTube user Pibonacci waltzed through the devious action game with a final time of 1:55:343. The previously established world record for any percentage game completion was clocked at two minutes and one second, Eurogamer reports. "What a day for Germany, I guess," Pibonacci said after passing through the game's final door, in a run that occurred soon after his homeland took home the FIFA World Cup. The German YouTuber's phenomenal run was due in part to a few lucky breaks, including the good fortune to nab a few key items early in his run. His masterful use of the deadly teleporter, which when misused can lead to immediate death, was integral to his quick finish. You can watch Pibonacci's outstanding feat after the break. [Image: Derek Yu]
Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes in four minutes...GO!
The Metal Gear Solid 5 prologue known as Ground Zeroes is a short (if massively replayable) game, made even shorter in the hands of Reddit user Mimalmo, who completes the mission with a sterling S rank in just under four minutes. [Image: Konami]
Record speedrun trumps Super Mario Bros. in under 5 minutes
Speedrunner "Blubbler" has set a new world record completion time for Nintendo's 1985 platformer Super Mario Bros, beating the previous best recorded time by less than a second. The world record run, seen above, shows Mario speeding through a handful of levels before warping to the final world and toppling Bowser with few pauses in between. Blubbler's final time is four minutes and 57.69 seconds, beating the previous record of four minutes and 58.09 seconds While Blubbler used an emulator rather than original NES hardware to achieve the record, no cheats were used during this playthrough. If some of Blubbler's methods left you scratching your head (the vine trick at the two-minute mark and the frame-perfect wall jump at 4:30, in particular), note that all of the tricks used in this world record run are quirks present in the original unmodified game. [Video: Blubber / Nintendo]
Summer Games Done Quick speedruns raise $700k for charity
Sometimes it's good to know that the more superhuman among us choose to use their powers for good; SpeedDemosArchive announced via Twitter that the talented players behind the Summer Games Done Quick gaming marathon raised $713,338.96 for the Doctors Without Borders charity last week. In Games Done Quick marathons, gamers speed their way through games as fast as they can or sometimes with extra conditions like being blindfolded for the entertainment of a live audience, which donates money as they see fit throughout the event. This year marks a combined total of more than $2.75 million raised for charities since the Games Done Quick marathons began. [Thanks, David!] [Image: Games Done Quick]
Watch 168 hours of great games played live, really fast, right here
You can't complete Super Mario 64 in under 10 minutes. Okay, it's technically possible, but you almost assuredly cannot. That's okay! We can't either, but groups like Games Done Quick make it so we can watch the best of the best without any of the hard work. Of course, it's not just Super Mario 64; as the group's name implies, they play all types of games, and they play them quickly. Maybe you've heard of this practice before? It's called "speedrunning," and the result of said practice is, naturally, "speedruns." We're gonna just be straight up here: we heart speedruns. They're the best. And twice each year, Games Done Quick has a week-long blowout where they stream live speedruns of awesome games all day, every day. But why? For charity! This summer, it's Doctors Without Borders. As such, we're dropping this pin in Engadget for you to watch the stream all week. Lest you forget, we'll remind you daily on social media that the madness is still going. Head below and see for yourself!
Summer Games Done Quick charity speedrun marathon kicks off Sunday
Speed Demos Archive, an online collective and host for video game speedruns, announced that its next streamed charity marathon will begin this Sunday and extend through June 29, in partnership with SpeedRunsLive and Twitch. Next week's Summer Games Done Quick marathon will raise money for the Doctors Without Borders charity, with viewer donations going toward a number of featured incentives, challenges, and prize raffles. The organization's January event Awesome Games Done Quick raised more than $1 million for the Prevent Cancer Foundation, attracting over 100,000 simultaneous viewers during peak hours. Featured games include The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, Octodad: Dadliest Catch, and a grueling seven-hour trek through Final Fantasy 6. A full schedule is available here. [Image: Speed Demos Archive]
Video: An impressively unimpressive completion of Super Mario Bros.
YouTube user NotEntirelySure has achieved the lowest possible score in a beginning-to-end, warp-assisted playthrough of Nintendo's 8-bit Super Mario Bros, finishing the game with an impressively unimpressive 500 points. The recent run beats NotEntirelySure's previous anti-record of 600 points. A low-score playthrough of Super Mario Bros. involves avoiding almost everything that isn't a platform, as stomped enemies and collected coins award points. The run also requires the player to remain in Mario's default small state throughout -- collecting Super Mushrooms and Fire Flowers add points to a player's score, and is thus forbidden. Other logistical issues make a low-scoring run even more difficult than one might think. Players are given points for every tick remaining on the game's timer after completing a stage, meaning that NotEntirelySure had to wait until the last possible second to grab the flagpole at the end of each level. A specific jump in world 8-1 (seen at 4:00) also proves troublesome, requiring the player to make a low hop followed by a pixel-perfect, frame-specific wall-jump in order to avoid collecting coins suspended above a bottomless pit without dying. Note that NotEntirelySure used an emulator to record the feat, meaning that it's difficult to verify if tools or cheats were used during the playthrough. An unintended death lends some credibility to the recording, however, and it's difficult to imagine anyone having the patience to wait for the timer to drain in every level without the aid of an emulator speed-up key. Congrats, NotEntirelySure! [Image/Video: NotEntirelySure]
Speedrunners make Super Mario World reprogram itself to play Pong, Snake
A programming loophole in the Super NES platformer Super Mario World has given speedrunners the ability to build and execute arbitrary code during gameplay, leading to the creation of fully playable minigames built on top of existing cartridge assets. An in-game hack takes advantage of a convoluted glitch that was previously exploited in order to finish the game in an impossibly quick span of time using software emulators. Starting at the 1:40 mark in the video above, the hack is deployed, and new code is written using an array of eight emulated Super NES controllers -- no keyboard input or explicit programming language is used to create these new minigames. The discovery follows up on a similar hack for Pokemon Yellow that allows players to overwrite the game's code using only the Game Boy's controller input. Fans have since used tool-assisted speedrun tech in order to produce in-game art and other unexpected results. If the videos above left you confused and maybe even a little frightened, that's normal; the Super Mario World hack made its debut during last week's Awesome Games Done Quick charity marathon to a crowd of stunned onlookers. Have speedrunners gone too far this time? Is there anything we can do to stop them?
Awesome Games Done Quick tops $1 million in last 24 hours
Awesome Games Done Quick, a charity marathon of video game speedruns that donates money raised to the Prevent Cancer nonprofit group, concluded its weeklong streaming session yesterday on what you might call "a high note:" a $100,000 surge during the group's final game pushed the donated total to more than $1 million - $1,007,136 to be specific. Some other stats, according to the AGDQ website (which is still being updated and refreshed): There were 27,171 donations, spread across 17,902 donors. These numbers would make the average donation amount $37, which is kind of crazy when you think about it - for roughly the price of a season of Breaking Bad per person, AGDQ raised more than $1 million for cancer research. Good job, Internet. [Thanks, Jonathan!]
Awesome Games Done Quick 2014 raising money for cancer research
You could probably trip your way into watching speedruns on the Internet at this point, but finding a week-long marathon of them in the name of charity? That's not an everyday thing! Awesome Games Done Quick has begun its crazy, fourth-annual set full of speedruns, which will take place from now until January 11. Donations will benefit the Prevent Cancer Foundation, a nonprofit group that invests in cancer research and education. If you need an incentive beyond helping others, donations that meet or exceed the minimum bids listed for prizes will automatically enter you into raffles for all kinds of gaming-related things. You can also contribute to bids to make bonus games or unique events appear on the stream. Want to see a Small Mario Run of Super Mario World or a torturous, Very Hard run of F-Zero GX? Donate to make it happen! [Thanks, Ken!]
