Summer Games Done Quick is over, but the crazy speedruns and insane moves will live on forever.
I haven't watched all the runs yet, but some of my absolute favorites are the Zelda games, which take some serious skill and precision to master like this. It's amazing how these speedrunners know every single trick and step, from the quickest route through each dungeon to the number of frames it takes Link to start dashing.
Here are six awesome runs, all from the SGDQ speedrunning marathon last week.
Above: Andy runs The Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past, complete with a crazy pixelation glitch at around 36:00 that turns the next few minutes into one hell of an acid trip. This was my favorite run of the week. So many little tricks and great glitches.
Above: Zandergoth beats A Link Between Worlds—which came out a few months ago—in just under two hours. It's insane how many glitches they've found in the game already, and there's something kind of weird and surreal about watching someone speedrun such a modern game, especially right after LTTP.
Above: Bananas destroys Oracle of Seasons, using the magnet gloves and pegasus seeds to do some remarkable things. (Try not to read the chat, which gets pretty gross here.)
Above: Leon Powalski bumps and leaps his way through Link's Awakening, one of the most underrated Zelda games, and perhaps the only one that lets you steal from shopkeepers. One of the coolest things about these top-down 2D Zelda games is how easy it is to manipulate gaps and pits.
Above: Skater82297 and Cosmo race through Ocarina of Time, a game so glitchy that you can skip basically the whole thing.
Above: Well, OK, this one isn't all that quick, but if you've got a bunch of spare time, you can watch TLOZSR and Testrunner beat Skyward Sword in less than six hours. This run is particularly impressive because of the sheer amount of stuff they have to remember how to do.
If you want to catch up on any of the other SGDQ runs, check out this Reddit threadfor a list of Twitch timestamps.