Tag Archives: SpeedRunners

Technology

How To Watch AGDQ 2022 Online And When Does It Start?

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Image: AGDQ

And just like that, somehow it’s been a whole year since the last Awesome Games Done Quick. The speedrunning event, back for its 13th year, starts today. After a terrible 2021, relax and enjoy some fun, impressive, and wild speedruns for the next week. It might just be the best way to kick off 2022. And all of this is for charity, too!

The weeklong speedrunning marathon kicked off earlier today. And like last year, all donations will go to the Prevent Cancer Foundation. As always, viewers can donate to bid on things like what difficulty levels players must speedrun their games on as well as choosing character names and other in-game decisions that might come up.

You can watch the AGDQ live stream via the event’s official website and it will also be streamed on Twitch. If you don’t want to watch the whole thing or don’t have time to, you can check out AGDQ 2022’s full online schedule and plan out some time to catch specific runs. Here’s the full schedule at GDQ’s official site.

And here are some runs I’m looking forward to watching either live or after the fact via the event’s YouTube page.

Jan 9 – Deathloop run by CreeperHntr scheduled for 2:40 p.m. EST:

I always like watching speedrunners take on brand new games and see how fast the community has broken open a game since release. Plus Deathloop seems like a fun game to speedrun.

Jan 11 – Ratchet & Clank (2002) run by deltadoid scheduled for 2:45 p.m. EST: 

Old Ratchet & Clank games have a long and wild history of speedrunners figuring out new ways to skip large sections of the game, sometimes via very strange and tricky methods. So watching an expert take a stab at an R&C run live is exciting stuff.

Jan 13 – Half-Life 2 run by Maltemller set for 9:55 a.m. EST: 

I’m not a speedrunner. Not at all. But there was a time, when I was younger, that I tried speedrunning Half-Life 2. I had played it so much, I figured I’d be able to set a record or something. I never did, but watching others destroy the game using the weird physics of Half-Life 2 is always a blast and reminds me of what could have been…

Jan 15 – Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice blindfolded run by Mitchriz set for 3:50 p.m. EST:

Excuse me what?

If you want to learn more about any of the speedruns and the rules of the category they’re being played in, you can check out this submission list by the speedrunners themselves. And for any speedruns you might miss out on and want to catch up on, videos are posted on the GDQ YouTube channel.



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Technology

Metal Gear Solid streamer stumbles upon game-changing glitch, speedrunners lose their minds

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A Metal Gear Solid streamer has discovered a game-changing time skip glitch and speedrunners are absolutely losing their heads.

Here’s how it all started. Streamer Boba was casually playing the original 1998 Metal Gear Solid when she reached a locked door at the top of a staircase. Bad guys quickly close in on her as she backs into the door, shots are fired, and then, *poof*. Suddenly, she’s on the other side of the locked door having incidentally skipped past a bunch of gameplay and into the next part of the game. Boba celebrates with an impromptu performance of her ‘I Am The Best At Video Games’ tune.

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Less than 24 hours later and there’s a new claim to the world record for fastest MGS playthrough thanks to Boba’s glitch, which the speedrunning community has lovingly dubbed ‘the Boba Skip’. The trick seems to work by standing at a specific area in front of this particular locked door (it hasn’t been tested successfully in other locations) and letting the guards shoot you right on through. All in all, you can expect to shave about 2.5 minutes off your playtime if you pull it off.

At the time of writing, the Boba Skip is the top post on the /speedrun subreddit, and for good reason. Even to a casual viewer, it’s fascinating that a 23-year-old game can still surprise a community that’s been looking for something just like this for years. It makes you wonder how many other classic games are hiding game-changing secrets still waiting to be discovered.

Find out where Metal Gear Solid ranked on our list of the best PS1 games.



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Technology

Mario Kart Speedrunners Are Racing To Blow Themselves Up With Blue Shells

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Gif: Nintendo / Skilloz / Kotaku

Do you know you can hit yourself with a Blue Shell in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe? Speedrunners do, and they’re going all out to blow themselves up with the first place-targeting item as quickly as possible.

Skilloz, the current world record-holder for the hilariously named “Blue Yourself” category, uploaded a video yesterday (h/t Polygon) showing that it’s possible to go from the beginning of the race to spinning out in a Blue Shell blast in just under 38 seconds. If you’re a fan of Baby Daisy—there’s got to be at least one of you out there—you might want to look away.

Here’s how Skilloz did it, according to the man himself:

The items you get depend how far away you are from first place. Knowing this, I sandbag at the start to get a good chance of getting a Star. Then I rush to the next set of items and I’m at the point where getting Triple Mushrooms is also a pretty decent chance. These aren’t too terribly difficult to get if you’re able to correctly position yourself.

The toughest part is getting the Blue Shell. There’s no real way to manipulate it. You can only get a Blue Shell if you’re at least 2000 units behind first place. Since that’s the closest you can be, it’s about a 5% chance of receiving a Blue Shell. You can also only get a Blue Shell once 30 seconds have passed in game.

So when I hesitate in front of those item boxes, I’m waiting on those two things: the first-place CPU to get at least 2000 units ahead of me and 30 seconds of in-game time [to pass]. A member in our community, GsFlint, found that these two conditions can basically line up with each other at the same [time] in Mario Circuit.

My favorite speedruns are those that see players take a small, preferably ridiculous part of a game and get very serious about learning how to do it fast. It’s hard to say how low folks will be able to get “Blue Yourself” times in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, but you can bet I’ll be watching with bated breath.

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