Favorite GDQ runs

If you’re a fan of speedrunning, you may have hard of the biggest speedrunning event out there, Games Done Quick (GDQ). GDQ is a week-long event that goes for 24 hours showing off some of the best speedrunning talent. Besides great speedrunning, GDQ also showcase some non-speedrunning games to show off something cool from a video game community.

Although the list of GDQ runs that I have enjoyed watching is much longer then this, these are the GDQ runs that I still have memories about. They are unique in some way making them memorable.

Here is the list of my favorite GDQ runs. Enjoy.

Kaizo Super Mario World relay race - SGDQ 2019 #

Kaizo Mario is brand new Mario games being created by the community using reverse engineered tools made by the community. Any Kaizo Mario game is already impressive to watch but this GDQ video was extra special because the Kaizo community made this game from scratch just for SGDQ 2019. The community added new enemies, new game items, new physics, and new sprites to Super Mario World just for this GDQ event.

This means that all of the runners in the relay race have never seen this Kaizo game before or even many of the game items or physics added. This is fun to watch because these experts in Mario are learning the game on-the-fly making every jump a surprise to everyone.

Also, I watched this one live in person and the full crowd in that room had tons of fun energy in it.

Ocarina of Time TAS - SGDQ 2022 #

This is arguably the most technically impressive thing that has ever been presented at GDQ. If you have nostalgia over Ocarina of Time or if you enjoy seeing things that are technologically impressive, this is a must watch. I still get goosebumps even just talking about this video. This is the video that you share with your friends who do not enjoy speedruns because it’s that impressive.

The TAS community did what I thought was not even possible with video games. That is all I will say to prevent spoilers. Give it your attention and enjoy.

StepMania/NotITG by SpootyBiscuit - AGDQ 2022 #

If you enjoy Dance Dance Revolution or you want to see some amazing human talent, this run is impressive.

StepMania is a community game that allows anyone to make DDR style maps to play. That alone is cool, but NotITG is a mod on top of StepMania that makes the difficulty even more challenging. I imagine that there are not many people in the world that have the ability to play NotITG. Not only are the NotITG maps really cool to on video, but watching the talent of SpootyBiscuit accomplish what looks to be is impossible is really fun.

Twitch Plays Super Scribblenauts - AGDQ2019 #

You may have heard of the concept of Twitch Plays which is where an online chat room plays a video game together. This is a version of that and is quite fun. According to the hosts of the run, they hooked up a mechanical robot with a Nintendo DS stylus that is able to take a string of text and it types the words into the DS’s on-screen keyboard.

Because the Scribblenauts game is fun on it’s own, this video takes advantage of that and involves the infamous Twitch chat.

Link to the Past + Super Metroid Combo Randomizer by Andy and Ivan SGDQ2019 #

Wait, what game is Link to the Past + Super Metroid Combo? If you have ever played either of these 2 games, you know that each of them have lots of doors in them. Well, the rom hacking community have been able to reverse engineer both of these video games and modify the games in many ways. They decided it would be fun to combine both of these games together into one game where when you go through a door in Link to the Past, you enter a random door in Super Metroid and vice-versa. You jump between each game every door that you enter. Your goal is to beat both games!

To add to this, this modified game that combines two video games into one also has it’s items randomized in it. So in order for you to beat both games, it requires lots of exploring and memorizing where items are through what doors.

Fun fact, retro video game fans know about the small file size and other constraints that old video game consoles like the Super Nintendo have. Impressively, the rom hacking community who was able to combine these two video games together into one have gotten this modified game to install and execute on an original SNES cartridge playing on an original/unmodified SNES console!