A new Spelunky world record by Kinnijup is a lightning-fast 3:30:25-. It is genuinely shocking that someone can go from the beginning of the game through Hell in this amount of time.
Crucially, Kinnijup isn’t just playing normal Spelunky. This record is for a Hell% run, which means that the runner needs to make it through the “bonus” level of the game, Hell. That means additional, blisteringly difficult screens and a boss. For contrast, Kinnijup also holds the “regular” Any% world record, which is a full two minutes faster at 1:37:251.
The key difference between the Any% and Hell% runs is that the latter basically forces a runner to play an entire sub-game of item gathering. For a normal run, you’re just trying to make your way to the end of the game as fast as possible, which is hard enough. You basically need to gather a daisy chain of objects in each of the game’s levels, and you need to do it at maximum speed.
To be clear, the vast majority of players have never completed the game’s Hell levels at all. Of all the users on Steam, only 2.9% have the achievement for completing Hell.
Kinnijup’s ability to read the levels of Spelunky are certainly miles beyond my own, and I really enjoy just seeing a collected, laser-focused run through the game. It also doesn’t appear that Kinnijup is going to be unseated anytime soon since the number two slot is a full 14 seconds behind.