The Magic of Speedruns

by Finn, Grade 7

Speedrun (noun): An instance of beating a video game, or level of game, as fast as possible. Being a rising sub-genre/community creation of iconic games or soon to be iconic games because of their incredible run tricks, speedrunning has been rapidly rising in popularity, with loads of major streamers and YouTubers trying their hand at speedruns. But why are these so popular? And why are these so interesting? Those are the questions that I’m going to be answering today while showing you the magic of speedruns.

The art of speedrunning was formed in the 1990s and early 2000s through various online forums and leaderboards, with people often discussing challenges and how to beat games as fast as possible like Doom. Slowly, this idea gained popularity, forming in-person events to try to beat games as fast as possible and eventually skyrocketed with the rising popularity of streaming platforms like Twitch, giving you the experience and reactions of a speedrun in real time, and it felt magical, to see your favorite streamer beat their personal best or even a world record in the game they’ve been practicing and playing so hard for, and that achievement feels amazing, even if you aren’t the runner.

Now, in the current year or 2020, speedrunning is at an all time high, with popular streamers trying their hands at popular games like Super Mario 64 or even more recently Minecraft. And with platforms like Twitch, entire chats are there to support and watch the runner try their hardest. It’s gotten to the point where Guinness World Records had to acknowledge speedrunning, even giving out rewards for world records on games like Super Mario Bros. or Super Mario 64. But, Twitch and other streaming platforms aren’t the only ones who are contributing to the popularity of speedrunning, but it’s YouTube that’s also pushing speedruns into the spotlight. More specifically Summoning Salt.

For those of you who don’t know, Summoning Salt is a YouTuber making documentaries on various games like the original Pokémon games or even individual Mario kart tracks. And he does it in such an attention grabbing way, always keeping you on the edge of your seat to see if that one guy playing as Toad can shave milliseconds off a Donkey Kong track just for one record by doing a series of frame perfect movements and button presses. And it’s inspiring and engaging, making you want to form your own path and your own legacy in one game or a Mario Kart track. Summoning Salt has even created a whole genre of these documentaries, with some people twisting them into their own unique ideas, which is where the final contributing/magical factor of speedruns come in: memes.

Memes have been a contributing factor to Internet trends for a while now, and the same can be said for speedruns. One of the first examples of this is when the Family Guy into speedrun took off (Which obviously isn’t real.), forming multiple memes of people faking discovering new glitches and skips, which has even formed its own parody Summoning Salt video of the different categories and history. It feels nice knowing that your hobby is known, recognized, and appreciated, especially now speedrunning is one of those hobbies.

Speedruns have always inspired me to get better at games, and I hope it does to other people too. Seeing people do the hardest tricks by little imperfections in the game just to shave off even milliseconds feels like an event, and speedrunning is as a whole. So thank you speedrunning, I hope you continue to inspire thousands of people around the world.