Summers Games Done Quick has come and gone, carrying with it a sense of accomplishment, community, and an even high bar to clear for future speedrunning events. Each marathon seems to be hitting new heights, both in viewership and in the amount of money raised for charity. This SGDQ a new record was set at $2,122,529.20 raised for Doctors Without Borders. For those that have doubted the value of games, showing them this result will likely make them reconsider.

It is truly amazing to see this enthusiastic part of the gaming world has the ability to come together to lay out not only their runs, but often their souls in the name of doing good for a bigger cause. These speedrunners come from all walks of life with many receiving help from their various communities to make it to the event. A lot goes into Summer Games Done Quick, but a lot is gained, especially personal growth.

While it is impossible to catch every single run, race, or moment the folks at Games Done Quick are adamant about archiving the marathon. There’s no way we could point out the tons of amazing performances, but we did want to mention a few of our favorites.

Super Mario Maker 3v3 Blind Level Team Race

It’s no surprise that the Super Mario Maker race turned into a festival of Mario action. There was a ton of excitement at Awesome Games Done Quick earlier this year with the Super Mario World race and the rom hack run of Super Dram World 2, and the race at SGDQ was just as fun to watch. The race included six phenomenal Mario Maker players, with many of them having top spots on speedruns, broken into two teams. Team Stay Hydrated had CarlSagan, GrandPOObear, and Jaku. Team Jebaited consisted of FailStream, GlitchCat7, and Cliffy.

At the end there was an incredibly close race to finish a mad dash and for a while, it looked like Glitchcat7 (who made his first GDQ appearance with Cool Spot on the SNES for this marathon) was going to cap it on his first run, however CarlSagan ended up nailing the level, allowing Team Stay Hydrated to take home the belt.

Pokemon Blue/Yellow 2 Games 1 Controller by MeGotsThis

Rocking a completely different type of game, there was an interesting speedrun of Pokemon Blue and Pokemon Yellow that were both played on a single controller. This creates some wild juggling between two different screens, where MeGotsThis used his knowledge of stalled frames in battles and knowing which tiles could be used to help push along the other character. There is a ton of precise routing that takes on a new form when playing both games at once.

Pokemon speedruns can be an interesting affair, especially on the first games where knowing how to force the game into specific encounters and speeding up text with a glitch. This one in particular was one for the ages that had a lot of ups and downs.

Strider Race of NME vs Elipsis vs Mr Magnificent

There was a moment in AGDQ 2018 where players were taught how to speedrun Strider on the NES in about a half an hour. Those players took what they learned in that tutorial, spent the last six months grinding out times and met at SGDQ to race each other. Each of these runners used their newfound skills to the test, with NME beating out the pack with a 4 minutes and 10 seconds run, followed by Elipsis who was only 14 seconds behind. Unfortunately Mr Magnificent died early on and went for a reset, ending him with a run at 6 minutes and 34 seconds.

Again, it cannot be stressed enough that these runners were all new to Strider on NES, with Mr Magnificent not having any runs at all prior to Strider. They all did a great job hitting tricks and defaulting to backup strategies when necessary. All in all, it was an awesome race and served as a fascinating experiment that hopefully will continue in future Games Done Quick marathons.

Celeste Race by TGH vs yoshipro

We already covered just how close of a race Celeste was, but we just had to mention it once more. Both of these runners have sat at the top of their leaderboard for a while and putting that into a marathon setting makes for anyone’s game. TGH was able to stay on top and shared some words of thanks at the conclusion. Much like Celeste, this was a heartfelt race that could be felt from home.

Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 ReMix (KH1FM) by mistmaster1

Kingdom Hearts is a series that threw together two properties that no one saw happening beforehand, Final Fantasy and Disney. It was weird at first, but many gamers quickly fell in love with this action RPG. The speedrunner for this title, MistMaster1 does something absolutely incredible, taking on the game at the highest setting and equipping an ability that prevents level ups, meaning the entire game is played with a level 1 character. This truly creates unique scenarios and presents a unique approach to the speedrun.

There were some incredibly tense moments throughout, as Sora can fall in just a couple attacks. However, the runner was able to pull it off with few problems and came very close to a deathless run. As a bonus, they also had Bizkit047 step in to take out Sephiroth, the most challenging boss in the game, at level 1 on Proud Mode. For those who spent hours just trying to best Sephiroth on normal, this was an incredible feat.

The archives really are a treasure for Games Done Quick and there were tons more amazing moments spread throughout the event that we could not possibly talk about them all. Congratulations to everyone involved with Summer Games Done Quick! It would be crazy if the donation total continues to grow and we can only wistfully wait for the next marathon.

Featured image by SlashGear