From start to finish, one proficient Portal player sped through Valve's first-person teleporter in a total of 18 minutes and 5 seconds, not including load times. There's plenty of sneaky shortcuts and wall-climbing buggery being taken advantage of, but the merits of this ADD-filled speed run stand on their own.

The second half of the speed run is included after the jump. The final confrontation at the end of the second segment speeds up the already impressive, already posted sub-minute dispatching of GlaDOS.

Clippy goodness found by the gang at NeoGAF.

It's called Air and is simply a hacked Super Mario Bros. ROM. It makes no sense. At all.

Whenever I see one of these speedrun videos, I wonder if the developers of the game become deeply depressed at seeing their months of hellish slavery in thrall to Bethesda so skewered.

"Boohoohoo," one of them glubbers, "he only saw seven of the hundreds of revoltingly-rendered NPCs I so delicately designed and strategically placed!"

Me, I'm just glad now I never bothered to finish this game. That ending cinematic is just as pretentious and bland as the rest of the thing. Eliza "grandma hateypants" gauger

Thanks, Alan!

Over at Game Set Watch, we had our attention diverted from a series of posts we were going to do on why the Playstation 3 is not going to deliver on Ken Kutaragi's recent promise to be a fully functional time machine by this crazy speed-run of Ico for the Playstation 2. We had no idea you could swat the penumbric wraiths away from swarming about an ethereal princess so damn quickly.

As always, it's interesting to read the speed-runner's thoughts on what it takes to beat a game so implausibly fast. The runner actually thinks the EU version of the game could cut the run down from 1:45 to an hour flat, thanks to the two player mode that allows a second player to possess Yorga and break her free from her brain-dead, shamble-into-wall shenanigans. Florian Eckhardt

PS: Don't you just love that guy in the red shirt back there? "Hyuk! DURRRRR...."

Ico Speedrun [Speed Demos Archive]

Cave Story is one of the greatest games ever made. Period, then exclamation point, then my hobnail boot imploding the obnoxious face of the fool who disagrees. So charming, frantic, ethereal... the creator, Pixel, is one of those quiet, imminently modest geniuses that just melts your heart.

And then explodes it with adrenaline! Which is why we're posting this crazy speedrun of Cave Story's Hell level, which I've always found frankly unbeatable.

Haven't played Cave Story? What the hell are you waiting for? It's free! - Florian Eckhardt

From the implausible speed run department, this tool-assisted speed run of the LucasArts adventure Maniac Mansion, completed in well under 8 minutes. What will those wacky speed freaks speed run next?

Late last year, we posted a pretty crazy 5:30 speedrun of Super Mario Bros. We were wondering if anyone had managed to top that, so we did a search, and came up with this speed run of five minutes.

The craziest thing? The guy spends most of the time jumping Mario backwards. This must be some crazy speedrunning trick we know nothing about. He also manages to glitch his way through a few warp walls to shave off some time.

If you know a faster run, let us know about it!

Previously: Super Mario Speed Run Video

SNES Zelda: A Link to the Past in 3:48 [Google Video]

One of the aforementioned speedy bastards, Tom Batchelor: "One of the things that make We Love Katamari so good is that there are so many ways to play it. There are a lot of stages, like Campfire and Sumo, that are probably not meant to be speed-run, but that are very good for speed-running nonetheless."

We're always in awe of the twitch reflexes of these guys. It's like they live their entire lives in Bullet Time. Plus it's Katamari, which is endlessly watchable. We'll try not to fault them for not putting up their speed runs on You Tube, which would make browsing them a lot more enjoyable. But if you're a Katamari or speed run fan, check it out!

We Love Katamari, But Really Quickly [GameSetWatch]

Travel to Level 3: Bomb drop from Blue Octorok can be annoying as a start of a run because it can fail to work several times. I always went for the closest one, and tried to only kill it and get the bombs from it to save time fighting any other enemies.

Level 9 - Death Mountain: I thought it went well. The last Patra battle could have been quicker. I could have closed in on the first Patra I had to fight to take it out faster. Pretty darn good Wizzrobe fights. Best Ganon battle I've ever had.

Find the Clip Here [SpeedDemosArchieve] Thanks, ReverendTed!

At first, it seems as if the guy on the left has lost the race by level 1-1, but he somehow pulls ahead by the eighth world. Listen to the audience reaction: we haven't heard an audience go nuts like that since we saw Gene Simmons strangle a wild gorilla to death with his tongue at a 1993 Worcester K.I.S.S. concert.

The race to the ultimate Bowser is a real nail-biter — luckily, there appears to have been no ill-will between the contestants, and they seal the contest with a snuggle.

Super Mario Bros. Race

In December we linked to a video of a speed run through Super Mario Bros.. Gaming Steve links to Speed Demos Archive, a collection of incredibly speedy jaunts through video games. Someone raced through The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker in 6 hrs and 42 minutes. It took me that long to find the first whatevermacallit that you had to sail for hours around the world to find.

Run Mario, Run [Gaming Steve]
Super Mario Speed Run Video
Speed Demos Archive

Five minutes and 30 seconds. If you were Luke you could use that time to have sex with a beautiful women and smoke a pack of cigarettes or if you're the guy in the linked video you could beat Super Mario Brothers.

Triple Zing Score!

Mario Speed Runs [Google Video, thanks Alex]