Speedrunning: History and Where it Stands

Video games have, over the years, become an integral part of modern culture. With access to internet, downloading a game has become rather practical and much cheaper. Over the internet, many games are available for the small cost of nothing. But if we can learn one thing from our human behavior, it’s that we love efficiency. The invention of tools to make work faster, racing faster cars, even world these days just runs faster. That’s where speedrunning comes in. The basics of a speedrun are playing through a particular game or level with the aim of finishing it in the least possible amount of time.

Speedrunning can be broken down into many categories:

• Firstly, they are split by how much of them you plan to complete in a run. Any% runs are the most straightforward; reach and pass the final stage in as fast as you can. There are also 100% runs in which you have to fulfil all aspects of the level or game, which includes, for example, all coins, all side quests, etc. 100% runs are often much longer than and require hours of dedication and focus.

• The second way of dividing speedrunning is when runners take advantage of mistakes left in the game, known as glitches. Runners can decide to use glitches in glitched runs or can decide to play the game as intended in glitchless runs. There are also other subcategories such as tool-assisted runs and co-op runs.

Despite how popular it has become today, the origins of speedrunning are vague. The oldest instance of widely accessible video games would be in arcades, but we can’t really tell how far, or should I say, how fast people were willing to take those games. Some arcade games in fact, did not even have conclusive ends to them. We can assume that children of the time spent hours racing each other in attempts to beat games faster than the rest. However, as time went on, and through the introduction of game consoles, speedrunning started to gain traction among video game enthusiasts.

Going on from there, the first major resurgence in speedrunning happened upon the release of Doom, a first-person shooter on PC. The game involves the player battling their way through a horde of monsters. The main reason the game gained popularity with speedrunners was its naturally fast pace and the built-in ability to record gameplay, which set it apart from other games of the time.

During the peak of its popularity, the Doom speedrunning field was struck by a player who went by the name “Zero”. Although he wasn’t the most skilled player of the game, he outshined the runners at the time with his immense knowledge of the game. Using cheats, skips, glitches, and by avoiding enemies rather than trying to fight them as quickly as possible, he blew the previous records straight out of the water. But eventually, you begin to hit roadblocks; in games where you run through the same map or level, you can only exploit glitches and optimize your own movements for so long. This phenomenon of being unable to advance further in a game due to the lack of more viable cheats has been given the name “Zero’s Paradox” by the speedrunning community.

Around the mid-2000s, the first speedrun of an iconic game was uploaded, Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (OoT). Unlike Doom, OoT provides a massive array of glitches and cheats to exploit. That is why the run went from over 5 hours back in the day to only 7 minutes today. OoT had to fight through many instances of Zero’s Paradox to get to where it is now.

And that brings us to today. Speedrunning in its current form is dominated by Minecraft, a range of games from the Super Mario series, and other indie games that have picked up followings recently. Speedrunning has also opened the gate to charity foundations through a non-profit organization by the name of Games Done Quick (GDQ). GDQ organizes events that support many charities in the USA.

And what about you, reader? Now that you’ve read about them, do you think you’d ever try a speedrun?