Ever watched a guy beat a game you spent forty hours on in about six minutes? It’s soul-crushing. But honestly, it’s also one of the most fascinating corners of the internet. We’re talking about speedrunning video games, a subculture that has evolved from a niche hobby on forums into a massive global phenomenon that raises millions for charity. Most people think it's just about having fast thumbs. It isn't. It's about breaking reality.
Speedrunning is the art of completing a game from start to finish as fast as humanly—or sometimes inhumanly—possible. It sounds simple. It really isn't. You aren't just playing the game; you are deconstructing the code while it's running.
The Brutal Reality of the Frame Perfect Trick
There is a trick in Super Mario Bros. called the "Flagpole Glitch." If you hit the pole at just the right pixel, you don't do the little animation where Mario walks into the castle. You save a fraction of a second. To a casual player, that sounds like nothing. To someone speedrunning video games, it's the difference between a world record and a wasted afternoon.
Timing is everything. Most modern games run at 60 frames per second. That means you have 1/60th of a second to hit a button. If you're late? You fail. If you're early? You fail. Speedrunners do this for hours. Sometimes for years. Narcissa Wright, a legendary figure in the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time community, spent an unthinkable amount of time perfecting the "Wrong Warp." This is a glitch where you trick the game into loading the final credits sequence instead of the next room. It requires precise positioning that looks like a dance. It’s basically magic performed with a Nintendo 64 controller.
I think the most misunderstood part of this world is "RNG." Random Number Generation. You can play perfectly for two hours, but if the boss decides to use the "slow" attack instead of the "fast" one because of a dice roll hidden in the code, your run is dead. Reset. Start over. It takes a specific kind of mental fortitude to handle that level of frustration.
Breaking the Geometry: Clips and Skips
You ever walk into a wall in a game and just stay there? A speedrunner sees that wall as a suggestion.
Through techniques like "clipping," players can pass through solid objects. This often involves "sub-pixel positioning." In Metroid Dread, runners found ways to skip entire bosses by sliding into walls at specific angles. It’s not just about speed; it’s about knowledge. You have to know the map better than the people who programmed it.
- Any% Runs: You just want to see the credits. Use every glitch in the book.
- 100% Runs: You have to get every item, beat every boss, and still be fast. This is a marathon.
- Glitchless: The "pure" way to play. No breaking through walls allowed. Just raw skill.
Why People Actually Do This To Themselves
It’s about mastery. There’s a certain high you get when you execute a sequence perfectly. It's like being an Olympic athlete, but your stadium is a monitor and your shoes are a mechanical keyboard.
Look at the event Games Done Quick (GDQ). They’ve raised tens of millions of dollars for the Prevent Cancer Foundation and Doctors Without Borders. It’s a week-long marathon where runners show off their skills. It proves that speedrunning video games isn't just some lonely basement activity. It’s a community. When a runner hits a "frame-perfect" trick on a live stage in front of 100,000 viewers, the energy is electric.
But there’s a dark side. Burnout is real. Staring at the same three minutes of a game for ten hours a day can mess with your head. Many top runners have walked away because the pressure of "The Record" became too much. The gap between the world record and second place is often less than a second. Imagine losing a year of work because of a sneeze.
The Science of the "TAS"
If you see a video labeled "TAS," that stands for Tool-Assisted Speedrun. This isn't a human playing. It's a program.
A human can't hit 60 inputs per second perfectly. A computer can. TAS runs show us the "theoretical limit" of a game. They are beautiful, glitchy messes where the character moves so fast the camera can't keep up. It’s art. It helps human runners find new routes. If a computer can clip through a wall at a certain spot, a human will spend the next three months trying to figure out how to do it by hand.
Modern Challenges in Speedrunning
Games today are harder to break. Patching is the enemy. Back in the day, if a game had a bug, it stayed there forever on the cartridge. Now? Developers like FromSoftware or Nintendo can just release a Day 1 patch and fix the exploit you spent weeks learning.
This has created "down-patching." Runners will intentionally install older versions of games just so they can use the fun glitches. It’s a constant arms race between the people who make the games and the people who want to tear them apart.
How to Start Your Own Journey
You don’t need to be a god to start speedrunning video games. You just need a clock and a lot of patience.
First, pick a game you actually love. You’re going to be seeing it a lot. If you hate Sonic the Hedgehog, don't try to speedrun it just because it's popular. You'll quit in three days. Second, go to Speedrun.com. It’s the holy grail of data. Every game has a leaderboard and, more importantly, a forum.
Don't try the world record strategies immediately. You will fail. Start with "Beginner Routes." These are paths that are faster than normal play but don't require you to sell your soul to the RNG gods. Use a timer like LiveSplit. It lets you track your "splits"—the time it takes to get through specific sections.
Actionable Steps for New Runners
- Watch the World Record: Go to YouTube or Twitch. See what the current ceiling is. Don't be intimidated; be inspired.
- Join the Discord: Almost every game has a dedicated Discord server. Speedrunners are surprisingly helpful. They want their records to be beaten because it keeps the scene alive.
- Record Everything: You need proof. Use OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) to record your runs. If you get a record and don't have video, it didn't happen.
- The "Safety Save" Rule: When you're starting, save your game before hard tricks. You're practicing, not performing.
- Focus on Movement: Before you learn glitches, learn how to move efficiently. In most games, moving diagonally is slightly faster than moving straight. Little things add up.
The world of speedrunning is deep, weird, and incredibly rewarding. It turns a static piece of software into a living, breathing puzzle. Whether you're chasing a world record or just trying to beat your childhood best friend’s time, the goal is the same: push the limits.
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Start by picking one level. Just one. Try to beat it ten seconds faster than you did yesterday. That’s how it begins. You’ll find that once you start seeing the "matrix" behind the graphics, you’ll never look at a video game the same way again. The walls aren't solid anymore. They’re just challenges waiting to be bypassed.