AWESOME GAMES DONE QUICK 2024

ah, GDQ season. we're back! and we definitely weren't gone too long, right?

astute HYPERFIXT readers (which is all of you, because you have good taste if you're on this webpage) might notice i, uh, kind of skipped doing Summer Games Done Quick 2023. not on purpose or out of any sense of malice towards the marathon; it was an excellent time, full of amazing speedruns that i really cherish. the thing about SGDQ 2023, though, is that it was long. one way or another, time losses and technical difficulties stacked up, and by the time the marathon was wrapping up with Super Metroid once more, it was 6am with the sun cresting through my windows. the vibes weren't bad, per se, but they were perhaps exhausted. certain choices around incentive pacing and the unfortunate necessity to run the event roughly a month early definitely contributed to that feeling, too.

i did try to go back and see if i could panic-write my way through a whole article right before AGDQ 2024, but for multiple reasons, i think it's for the best that i didn't, actually. for starters, these lists are best written while basking in the glow of a recently completed marathon; i have a hard time tapping into my enthusiasm and getting into the same headspace if i'm going back and rewatching the VODs. what really sticks out to me, though, is how much AGDQ 2024 feels like a fresh start for the whole organization. summer events have gotten back to in-person venues for a few years now, but for the first time in four years, AGDQ has found itself a physical home, up north in Pittsburgh. new innovations in streaming tech have opened up a lot of new doors for how to run a week-long live event over the internet. 2023 was full of amazing games that reeled in all sorts of fresh new faces in the world of speedrunning. even if it never really went away, it was said multiple times on-screen that "GDQ is back", and... yeah, it really felt like it.

it has been oft-stated by misinformed viewers that Games Done Quick should 'just run two set-ups' as though it's easy to juggle between a SNES and a Sega Saturn with minimal downtime, but for the first time in the event's history, they actually had the tech and manpower to do just that. the end result was a resounding success on levels even the staff didn't seem to expect; AGDQ 2024 not only ended at a timely, reasonable 1am local time, but it remained so ahead of schedule for the entire week that multiple runs were pulled off the back-up list and brought to the main stage just so they didn't end too early. it was an absolutely resounding comeback from previous events and i think it was really reflected in the enthusiasm both on-site and online.

the marathon also felt more lively and varied than ever. people speedran with dogs, with drums, in every genre and console and set-up and category under the sun. some people might not have been huge on the newly introduced interstitial 'Checkpoint' segments, and sure, i might be a little confused about adef going full Bill Nye on us on Thursday night, but not only were those buffers a huge help in keeping the schedule tight, it also led to some pretty great bits such as Pokémon Guess Who. there's always room for improvement, sure, but i think the mainstay GDQ staff have also found a really nice groove and chemistry as an on-screen ensemble.

if we want to go all numbers nerd on the event, it wound up cresting $2.5 million, which some people will almost certainly try to dissect because it's not a new record, but you know what? not only is that still an insane amount of money directed towards cancer prevention, but i also feel like everyone involved had a better time doing it. i talked about this a bit around this same time last year, but i think there've been some major growing pains ever since the pandemic in terms of the best way to run these events and maximize the donation total. it's easy to fall down an endless spiral of making the big number go up, and obviously i wish these events all the best in raising massive funds for good causes, but i think it's equally important that these marathons run in a way that feels good for everyone, whether it's the viewer or the producer. good vibes beget more good vibes, and the vibes this time were fantastic.

enough prattling on, though - it's been like, at least seven months since i put video games on a list! as always, standard operating procedure is ten runs, listed chronologically, although i'm also throwing in all sorts of bonus goodies because quite frankly, this event was the best Games Done Quick i've ever watched and there's too much ground to cover.

for many people, Games Done Quick is all about watching some of the biggest titles in gaming get broken down and mastered, whether it's their favorite childhood game or the hottest new release of the year. of course, i love that kind of thing as much as anyone else - and day 1 of the schedule was full of such classics like Super Monkey Ball, F-Zero, or Ultimate Doom - but it's often the weird, niche, out-of-nowhere runs that tend to be the most memorable of the marathon to me. from the moment i happened to catch it just past midnight, i knew TimeShift belonged in those hallowed halls of Peak Mid Gaming. Shockwve has been on my radar ever since his hilariously polarized luck in Gunfire Reborn back at SGDQ 2023, and this surprisingly personal passion project of his is easily one of my favorite runs of the marathon. TimeShift feels so deeply emblematic of the post-Halo FPS rush of the mid-2000s, but its titular mechanics give it a surprisingly deep level of skill and execution as a speedgame. if you like games with the general vibe of a SyFy original, or seeing two of GDQ's most talented commentators maneuver their way through curveball after curveball, then this is absolutely the run for you.

this run has a dog in it. the doggy plays Gyromite! he's such a good boy! that's all.

no, but really, is there any way to talk about AGDQ 2024 without talking about this run? it was such a massive beacon of light for the whole event to the point where i was shocked that it got scheduled on a cozy Tuesday afternoon rather than like, prime-time on Friday. JSR_ is an incredibly talented runner in his own right with tons of impressive NES runs under his belt, but truly, what more can i say? Peanut Butter is the smartest, goodest boy to ever run Gyromite. none of the things that go wrong in this run are even the dog's fault. it was thrown around on stream that Gyromite is the type of game that probably wouldn't make it on the schedule without the appeal of a new angle, and yeah, absolutely, but what a fantastic angle to find.

Hades already has all the perfect ingredients to be a GDQ staple for me; it's a game i'm personally familiar with and extremely fond of, it's got all that thrilling rogue-like unpredictability that makes for a great race, it's flashy and exciting with a high skill ceiling that puts keen execution front and center. it's always a treat when it's on the schedule and casually raises, oh, i dunno, $30,000 for charity based on petting Cerberus alone. no matter what, i was excited to see it back on the big stage, but then, oh my god, the two people racing it are married? they're wives and they met through Hades speedrunning? they're so in-sync that they can pull off a borderline flawless run while sharing a controller? literally maybe the most romantic thing i can think of. mushy feelings aside, these two runs provide such an incredible view into how optimized Hades speedrunning has become, with excellent commentary to walk you through the branching paths arcalena and trash_lapras take to make their three escapes. these two manage to cut down Theseus so fast that i'd be mad if i wasn't so preoccupied with how adorable this whole thing is.

look, i will always be Awful Block's strongest soldier. weird, janky games deserve a spotlight just as much as anything else, and i'm incredibly particular about the narrow tightrope between "genuinely charmingly bad" and "the developer was so in on the joke that it stops being endearing". i pulled the all-nighter once again this AGDQ, and while it had some major highlights such as Sneak King or Fort Boyard: The Challenge, i think the game that most deeply embodied the proper hysterical vibes of Awful Block happened well beforehand on Tuesday night. speedruns of horror games already disarm the genre of a lot of its spooky power, but combine the absurdity of the Granny trilogy's escalating vehicular escapes and the comedy potential of commentators going in completely blind, and you have yourself one of the funniest things i've ever seen on a GDQ stage. there's not a lot of particularly deep tech to a Granny run, but sometimes, it's about the vibes. or about beaning grandpa in the head with rocks. it can be about that too.

i'm not quite sure how this one is going to hit going on the big special list, because as you can probably already see from the thumbnail, CarcinogenSDA pulls it off. through months of immaculate planning and practice, he manages to clear Resident Evil 2 Remake without taking any damage. a big part of the appeal to me was stumbling onto this run; Resident Evil isn't a franchise i'm very familiar with, and speedruns of it tend to feel a little samey to an outsider like me. it was a huge vibe shift right after Granny, though, and i was curious enough to stick around until Carcinogen took a hit. and then he just... didn't. it was an hour and a half of some of the most tense gameplay i've ever seen, bouncing back and forth between exceedingly precise set-ups and frantic improvisation. maybe some of that tension won't hit the same for people catching up after the fact, but i still think the level of expertise will shine through, and if nothing else, you owe it to yourself to watch the greatest pop-off in AGDQ history at the very end of this absolute gauntlet of a run.

what can i really say about Super Mario 64? it's probably one of the biggest speedgames in the history of the hobby, and certainly the first my mind goes to when trying to imagine The Default Speedrun. it's not weird for a person who's never watched a speedrun to know what a BLJ is, or to have a passing familiarity with a Scuttlebug jamboree. that same level of familiarity breeds a ton of innovation when it comes to the game's more recent GDQ appearances, though. whether it's randomizers or blindfolded runs, there's a lot of ways to spice this classic up, and 2024's showcase might be the craziest yet, with Super Mario 64's genre-defining controls mapped out to a whole-ass drum kit. one thing the staff highlighted when hyping this run up that i think bears repeating is that this isn't just a gimmick; CZR is a talented, practiced musician, and that shines through in every drum fill thrown in between stars. when the game is played in such an innovative way, it draws out a whole new aspect. speedrunning already demands mastery and precision, but this run truly emphasizes the rhythm and musicality of the inputs. you're not just seeing a cannonless Whomp's Fortress, or a BLJ, or a clean Bowser throw - you're hearing them as something akin to freestyle jazz in a way that elevates the whole experience. with how emotional and cathartic the credits sequence jam session (helpfully preserved in its own video to avoid DMCA issues) felt, it was easy to forget this was only the halfway point of the week, honestly.

so, why not follow up one 3D Mario classic with another? this one might benefit from a bit of context; see, SBLECTRIC was tapped to do this same run back at SGDQ 2022, but a memory card mishap famously spun out into an unexpectedly heartwarming detour. not this time, though. this is the longest run in this top ten list, but the runner and commentators all keep the energy up for that full three hours. in the 18-ish months since his last GDQ appearance, SB has become the world record holder in this category, and it shows, since this one-take no-resets run would still place fifth on the global leaderboards. though it was easy to be skeptical of "the Wafflers" and their ability to maintain concise, rapid-fire, informative commentary for a run of this scope, they honestly put on a hell of their own show on the couch, all while still conveying how impressive SB's mastery of this game is.

normally, Pokémon runs tend to be the kind of thing that just barely misses the list, whether it's because of their high length or the general way my taste in speedruns leans; i'm a sucker for flashy movement and crazy techniques, not math. the secret sauce that's always made Pokémon runs so enjoyable to catch live at GDQ events, though, is that the Pokémon community seems to be full of all of the funniest people at the marathon. those big long runs tend to leave plenty of time for layers of in-jokes to build up, and the games, by nature, lend themselves to lots of fun donations or interesting gimmicks. Pokémon Diamond being on this list isn't really a surprise at all, it's just one of the first in the series to compress all those great traits into something i can recommend casually without any caveat of "this is gonna be a BIG chunk of your day". as a true Generation 4 veteran, i had a sneaking suspicion i knew how that estimate end up so low thanks to some of Sinnoh's most memorable glitches, but honestly, the entire run is a really engaging mix of RPG optimization, wild levels of RNG manipulation, and my new favorite donation quiz show, "Pokémon or prescription medicine". the additional glitch showcase at the end really highlights how deep some of that game knowledge can go, too, and calls to mind past examples of arbitrary code execution being used to pay homage to marathon history.

one of the great joys of watching a GDQ marathon come together is the "that's gotta be in" game. the structure of the event lends itself to these kinds of things, to the point where recent events have had a whole second submission window specifically set aside for big releases that just barely miss the initial cutoff. 2023 was an amazing year for video games, so there were lots of these potential candidates throughout the entire marathon, but i think one of the best of the bunch has to be Super Mario Bros. Wonder. of course 2D Mario has a long rich history as a speedgame, and the latest (perhaps greatest?) entry lives up to those lofty expectations. it's easy to see the absurdity of a two-controller overworld skip in the first ten minutes and worry that the game's already been driven into the ground by a few short tricks, but i think the magic of this run is that all these skips tend to dodge the easy parts of the game; all killer, no filler, as it were. combine that with a couch that looks like a Mario speedrunner hall of fame and an amazing new runner securing an astounding new personal best, and you have a pretty perfect blend of what makes watching these games so great.

look, let me level with you; Baldur's Gate 3 was my latest great obsession right before AGDQ, with something like 130 hours poured in and every intention to do a second playthrough in the near-future. it's an amazing accomplishment in the medium and while i'm still sitting around wondering if i can capture its appeal in a way that's worthwhile to put on this very website, i can absolutely show off another amazing facet of it, which is what happens when you push all its robust systems to their limit in the pursuit of speed. in just 30 minutes, this run packs in so many unbelievable moments that left me equal parts impressed and breathless with laughter, to the point where i don't even want to give them away for anyone who's blissfully unaware. if you need to be sold on this in any capacity, i'll just say that before the run can even begin, you're already dealing with a Wizard who's been minmaxed into Strength to "jump like the Incredible Hulk", and this is probably one of the more mundane aspects of the route once you get into the wonderful, terrible things you can accomplish with dead bodies in this game. also, shout-outs to maeeeeee, who started speedrunning within the last half-year and has set multiple world records in Baldur's Gate 3 already, including on-site in the GDQ practice room. truly, an inspiration to me, someone who always fantasizes about maybe getting into speedrunning by the time the week is over.

HONORABLE MENTIONS

even with the addition of trying to point people towards other runs that might suit their tastes, AGDQ 2024 was so jam-packed with bangers that a few still haven't had an opportunity to come up naturally throughout the course of writing this. i think a major memorable highlight for a lot of people were the weird, niche back-up games that managed to see their main stage debuts thanks to how tightly managed the pace was. i already shouted out Aragami earlier, but you should also definitely check out Whiplash, the fever dream inheritor to the Gex legacy. another late-stage favorite wound up being Elden Ring with its narrow bid war victory; i don't have the type of brain that makes me want to play From Software games, but it's always a treat to see them broken apart so thoroughly, especially with Elden Ring's key strategy of "teleport so far the floor vanishes, try to make sure the boss falls faster than you".

i think the most honorable and most mentionable of all games, though, is The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. this is a game i absolutely loved playing through casually, and given the heights that Breath of the Wild speedrunning hit, it was absolutely one of my most anticipated runs of the event. it has A+ commentary and absolutely fascinating execution that i would definitely say makes it a must-watch. what keeps it from the top ten list, then? well... good question. call it a gut feeling. maybe it's just a high saturation of speedrunning and/or Zelda content on the modern internet, but i think the any% route is pretty tried and true already. it's an amazing watch, but it's also just a pinch short for my tastes - i can see the potential to bust this game wide open in way more ways bubbling under the surface. i guess what i'm really saying is that, yes, you should absolutely watch this run, but i'm really hoping it's just a delicious appetizer for perhaps an 'all dungeons' main course at SGDQ? watch this space.

and, as always, i highly recommend you go look at the schedule and see if there's something i completely forgot to mention that jumps out at you. i am but one person, with personal tastes and biases and the occasional need to sleep. even if you think i nailed it, go check the schedule anyways, because they actually redesigned the whole page and it's prettier and more information-dense and more useful than ever and i just want an excuse to shout out the amazing work they did on that thing, honestly.

GDQ is back. it never went away, and i never fell out of love with it, but i think from the impeccable technical execution of the marathon to the breadth of amazing speedruns on display, everyone involved has absolutely earned the right to say GDQ is back, wholeheartedly, with pride. AGDQ 2024 is one of those all-timer events that i think will serve as the one to match and surpass for years to come, and i truly look forward to seeing these cornerstones of my year thrive off of new ideas and talents. normally, after a GDQ, i feel a bit of post-con blues, but seeing what they pulled off just has me giddy and excited for what's to come. SGDQ 2024's dates have been announced, and it's back in the dog days of summer, starting June 30th and running right through the middle of Special Patriotism Day Weekend. hopefully, we'll be right back here then to talk about another amazing marathon.