Speedrunning has found its place in video games even since the early beginnings of speedrunning in 1993. While many are not acquainted with the concept, it’s picking up massive speed (no pun intended) in the US, parts of Europe and Japan with dedicated events, speedrunning marathons, such as the Games Done Quick marathon and the European Speedrunner Assembly and the rise of speedrunning-themed sites like Speed Demos Archive and Speedrun.
So, what is speedrunning?
According to Giant Bomb, speedrunning (or in this case, speedrun), “A speedrun describes the action of a player attempting to complete a game in the fastest time possible. The rules of speedruns can vary but generally allow glitching and sequence breaking as long as the player does not cheat with external devices/tools or tampering with the game.”
Within speedrunning, there are six distinct types of speedrunning, each with its own set of objectives and goals
- 100% Run: This when you speedrun a game from beginning to end, collecting all the in-game items and completing all the tasks required. By doing so, this gets added to the game’s overall percentage but a player does have a say whether certain items don’t attribute to the game’s overall progress.
- any % Run: The opposite of 100% run where you complete the game from beginning to end, however trying to attain the best overall time completion rather than attain the overall progress. Timing starts from the moment the player begins the gameplay as he/she can decide which items will help achieve the best time.
- low% Run: This type of speedrun requires the player to complete the game in the fastest time but by collecting as little to none items and upgrades to achieve a low overall percentage
- Individual Level Run: If you’re a beginner and looking for a practice run, this type is the easier and less stressful of the bunch. Depending on which game you’ve selected, there are 100% and any % runs within the IL run.
- Challenge Run: Speedruns on its own is tough to complete and bring its own challenges. But in the challenge run, a player has to complete the game, but with special rules put in place. Certain games are better suited for this speedrun like The Legend of Zelda’s “Three Hearts” run and the Resident Evil 4″Knife-only” run.
- Segmented Run: Quite self-explanatory, segmented runs are speedruns that are completed in several pieces. Done over numerous attempts, this helps the player achieve the best possible run. This is ranked separately from single-segment run.
Gaming thus encourages players to do speedruns, especially titles which have ‘Time Attack’ or ‘Time Trial’ modes, encourages gamers to complete the game in the fastest time for any and low percentage runs. Racing titles have ‘ghost’ cars in these time trials to achieve the fastest lap while GoldenEye 007 awards players with cheat options when completing levels within a time frame.
On Xbox Live, there’s a large catalogue of games with leaderboards for challenges with the overall game and within levels upon completion. These online leaderboards encourage players to do more speedruns just to have their name on leaderboards for other players to see.
Have you participated in a speedrunning event? Or would you like to do one in the near future?Let us know in the comments section below or on our social media channels.
