Speedrunning has become a popular method of showing off some serious video game skills, knowledge, and typically a willingness to exploit the game itself for just a little faster completion. Speedruns can have all sorts of rules which will result in a baffling display of skill and fans wondering how someone thought to try these things in the first place.
A misconception though is a speedrun is all about speed. While that is a major factor, some speedruns are set up for how fast a particular is done, such as completing a game without taking damage, with as few items as possible, or other personal challenges that make the casual player a little unnerved seeing it happen. Some are even No Glitch runs, which will prevent the speedrunner from utilizing time-saving glitches in order to complete.
10 Breath Of The Wild Speedier Than The Game Can Load
Breath of the Wild has made serious waves with its massive, beautiful world full of things to do and see. One of which is to hit the ground running and blast through the game faster than it can load, clipping into areas and launching through the sky at a breakneck pace. The timing has to be precise in order to beat the loading of the map so they can clip in to key areas without going through the plot, only picking fights with key groups of enemies in order to get the right collection of weapons, and some good aim when shooting themselves across the map with trees and well-placed shots.
The current no holds barred speed record for Breath of the Wild goes to Player_5, clocking in at 25 minutes 23 seconds. The most baffling part is watching Link maul the final battles while still only being in the same outfit he woke up in less than half an hour prior.
9 Twilight Princess Lowest Percent Stares At Rupees For Hours
In order to do a lowest percent speedrun in Twilight Princess, players are going to be staring at a screen a lot. This method requires the use of a Rupee Slide, a term typically referred as a Pickup Slide by the speedrunning community, and takes advantage of a glitch most people wouldn't have even noticed.
Link is missing one frame in his idle animation which makes it so that he very slightly shifts at every cycle. Holding up a Rupee and having him stare at it in just the right direction will slowly slide him through obstacles, and in order to perform a lowest percent speed run, that means 13 hours of staring at money for him to clip through one door in particular. There are so few players to even bother with this type of run, but the computer says that it's possible to do better, so someone's going to try. The current record goes to SwiftIke while raising money for the Epilepsy Foundation, clocking in at 21 hours, 26 minutes, and 49 seconds.
8 The Diablo II Pascifist Run Is Weirdly Possible
Sometimes players are more concerned about if they can do something versus if they should do something. Diablo II is not a game to try and avoid fights in, but it can be done made clear by the initial record holder and still current champion, blazer-flamewing clocking in at 6 hours, 32 minutes, and 26 seconds.
That's not to say that damage wasn't done to enemies while in this run, it just means that they did not actually attack a single opponent throughout the entire run. The character has to be equipped with thorn-covered armor so that whenever an enemy attacks, they take damage. The hardest part is one of the ranged bosses, Lord De Seis. Being at level 30 with Cold Mastery, 6 points in Chilling Armor, and a +2 staff will do damage quickly and consistently enough without the player needing to be aggressive enough to count as a breaking the run, and prevents De Seis from ever casting Bestow.
7 DOOM Eternal No Major Glitch On Ultra-Nightmare Mode Is Really Fast
Doom Eternal picked the perfect time to release last year, right about the time most new players were about to be stuck inside doing little to nothing for months at a time. Some players decided to do speedruns, and some even decided to figure out how fast they could get through with no major glitches being utilized.
The gamer Raitro has an impressive No Major Glitch coming in at 1 hour, 22 minutes, and 10 seconds on Ultra-Nightmare mode, which is in and of itself a true display of skill, and skill alone. They cannot utilize any zipping, clipping, grabbing, rail bosting, IDKFA Glitch, Barrel Boosting with time slowing, Midair Infinite Dashing, Infinite Crucible, Special Fish, Pet Caco, Extended Black Screen, or Slope Boosting. Just beat it and beat it fast.
6 The Bloodborne No Clip Any Percent Is Only Seconds Apart From Each Other
Bloodborne is a game that is not for the faint of heart. It is difficult and heavy, with tons of curveballs. So to know that people have gone out of their way to speedrun this gem is fascinating. In order to qualify for a no clip, any percent run they cannot clip through objects via an enemy's grab attack. It's based on the in-game timer, so that's the only thing to beat. Run through the game as fast as possible, beating as many or as few bosses as the player sees fit and just hone their skills until they beat it as quickly as possble.
The leaders are all seconds apart, but every second matters when it comes to speedrunning. The current record holder is Ahady at 28 minutes, 31 seconds and is the only one in the top 10 to have been playing on a PS5 instead of a 4.
5 The No Hit Dark Souls Trilogy Can Be Done Back-To-Back
No Hit Dark Souls runs are relatively popular as far as speedrunning goes due to the fact that the games are extremely difficult. They are massively impressive displays that makes for some long internal conversations about how much time it took to get to that point in life that someone out there can play any of the Dark Souls games without taking damage. That's it. Beat the game without taking a single point of damage, which means tons of hours poured into building up personal skill.
The Happy Hob made waves with their excruciatingly long back-to-back-to-back No Hit speedrun of the entire Dark Souls trilogy, clocking in at 9 hours, 29 minutes, and 24 seconds.
4 Grounded Glitchless Last Of Us For When The Heavy Plot Needs Blasted Through
The Last of Us is popular in recent years, and for good reason. The game is emotionally charged and breathtaking to boot, but that doesn't mean that speedrunners haven't gotten past it with a desire to blast through as soon as possible.
Some even refuse the perks of a New Game + or the utilization of glitches starting over completely from scratch on the difficult Grounded difficulty and blast through the game at a remarkable 2 hours, 48 minutes, and 58 seconds like current record holder AnthonyCaliber. The rules are simple. Boot up a new game, not a New Game +, calculate time by real-time not in-game, no use of previous save file upgrades, no Out of Bounds glitches, no enemy encounter skips, and be on Grounded difficulty.
3 Super Mario Bros. Measured With Fractions Due To Being So Precise
Even classic games such as Nintendo's iconic Super Mario Bros. is not excluded from speedrunning. It's even one of the games that really introduced the world to the concept of beating a game as fast as possible, so it's no shock that it has come down to a fraction of a second when measuring the games.
The current record-holder is Niftski at 4 minutes, 54 seconds, and 948 milliseconds on an emulator, with the second place holder, Miniland, coming in at 4 minutes 54 seconds and 981 milliseconds on a real NES system. The rules are simple. Just beat the game using any means necessary as fast as humanly possible. Typically that means breaking through the ceiling during core levels to make it to warps and blast Mario through the game by simply skipping the majority of it.
2 Deciding In Pokémon Yellow To Turn On The Counter Or Not
Pokémon Yellow can literally be beaten before the player gets their Pikachu, and well before the internal timer has even started clocking in time. It utilizes a glitch that must be completed perfectly in order to access this speed run. Perfectly timed reset and save glitches, switching invisible Pokémon, throwing out items, and then walking out the door to an immediate entry into the Hall of Fame before the game has registered even a minute.
For those who actually want to go through the game and beat it that way, the current "Any Percent, No Save Corruption" record belongs to Stocchi at 12 minutes 41 seconds. Just be prepared for a lot of fast clicking and some good glitch usage. Save corruption is not allowed in this run, but any other glitch is. Only certain emulators are allowed due to many having improper framerates or emulation. Using any type of save states or speedup is also banned, and any emulator will need to be proven within the speed run itself to ensure that the runner isn't cheating with a sub-par emulator.
1 It Is Possible To 101% Donkey Kong 64
Donkey Kong 64 can be broken into granting over 100% completion and requires the Game Totals screen to contain 201 Golden Bananas, 40 Banana Medals, 20 Banana Fairies, 10 Battle Crowns, 8 Keys, Nintendo Coin, Rareware Coin, a 101% movie has to play, and the file select screen afterward needs to say 101%.
It sounds terrifyingly impossible, but it has been obtained by a number of people with the fastest completion belonging to Connor75 on their WiiUVC and coming in at 5 hours, 10 minutes, and 47 seconds. This smashes FalconXFalcon's previous record at 5 hours, 17 minutes, and 31 seconds which they had previously held undisputed for three entire years.