Summer Games Done Quick returns for its eighth year with speedrunning performances across a number of classics, starting with Banjoe-Tooie.
SGDQ is one of my personal favorite ways to kick-off the season and is always a great distraction from the summer heat and quiet release schedule. Based out of the DoubleTree Hilton in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the event features speedrunners of all different games showing off their skills and deep knowledge of games ranging from the classics to the more obscure in an effort to raise money for Doctors Without Borders.
While the action started Sunday on the N64 with Rare’s platformer sequel at 1:00PM EST, today we’ve moved onto other classics like Cool Spot featuring the 7 Up mascot this morning followed later in the day by an epic romp through Disgaea 5 and several of the Mega Man games. Speedrunner Studio will finish Monday off with Rise of the Tomb Raider.
Here’s the full schedule for the rest of the week:
SGDQ 2018 will then continue around the clock for the rest of the week until it ends next Sunday morning with a speedrun of Final Fantasy VI. There’s lots to look forward to during that time, including new indie platformer favorite Celeste early Thursday and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time on Saturday, but what I’m probably most excited for is the big block of Metroid on Tuesday night culminating in a 100% map completion run of Super Metroid, a game which was conspicuously absent from the last marathon.
If you’re a newcomer to this whole speedrunning thing, the great part about SGDQ is that every playthrough includes interesting color commentary about the game in question and explanations of what the speedrunners are doing to take advantage of weird strategies and glitches to beat the games they’ve been tapped to play so quickly.
All of the runs will be broadcast live in the Twitchc stream above, but you can also check the YouTube archives for anything you might have missed.