Last week, another fine Games Done Quick event went down in the books, and as always, there were plenty of highlights: Swordless Zelda! More high-speed Tetris TGM! Races upon races with photo finishes! We watched, we stared in awe at amazing gaming skill, and we collectively raised $1.2 million dollars for Doctors Without Borders – a new record for the SGDQ events. But, as always, there are a lot of fantastic runs scheduled during an event that goes on for seven straight days that people with jobs and sleep schedules have to miss, particularly of games that might not be headliners like the Megamans and Marios and Metroids of the world. I’ve gone through and picked out some of my favorite runs from the event that you may have overlooked. Grab a drink, sit down, and watch some awesome folks play through some obscure (and a few not-as-obscure) games with amazing speed!
Dungeon Magic/Light Bringer
https://youtu.be/1MmRRzInrok?t=7m59s
A run of a fairly obscure (but quite good) isometric beat-em-up from Taito. These sorts of games are a bit of a challenge to keep interesting, but iast does a good job explaining things, and the game is unique enough to be noteworthy by itself.
Half Minute Hero
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaDozqUunEc
Impressive run of a game that’s a personal favorite of mine. Essentia puts in a lot of good work with RPG speedruns, and this one’s no different.
Ecco: Tides of Time
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZ_uJjiPAac
Highly impressive run of a notoriously difficult game with some really neat speed and movement tech involved. Solid commentary, as well, though I wish Blueglass on the couch was a bit more chatty! (and that the video didn’t cut off a minute before the run finished, for that matter.)
TRAG
Not something I expected a speedrun for, but nonetheless extremely entertaining. CavemanDCJ always amuses with his runs of obscure stuff. PRETEEN POLARIS
Star Wars NES
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKq8eAx1RSY
Sadly, not Namco’s amazing Famicom adaptation, but still a very neat run for one of the less-remembered Star Wars games. Also: Speedrunning filk. Seriously.
Bionic Commando Re-Armed 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eORFUXET_ig
This easily gets my vote for most entertaining run of the event. Commentary’s great, the play on display is great, the game is… not so great (though PJ goes to bat for it, good on him!), and there’s one little thing… well, more like one LOUD thing that turns this into the funniest run of the event.
Chester Cheetah: Wild Wild Quest
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ny9Q91b5oO8
Rather than a awful games block, SGDQ opted for a “silly games” block, which is well worth watching in full. The runner of this game fully embraces the spirit of ridiculousness, and I love him for it. (And yeah, this game is pretty awful.)
Roundabout
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVn5WLohKUM
skeletons
Kirby Tilt N Tumble
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Csnrs9i3ALc
How do you speedrun a portable gyrometer game that requires a screen output? You run it on a Gamecube with a GB Player… and then you tilt the entire Gamecube. Now that’s dedication!
Disney Extreme Skate Adventure
I still have a hard time believing that Disney (well, more like Lion King, Tarzan, and Toy Story) Extreme Skate Adventure is a game that actually exists. But here it is, in all of its… “glory.” You just kind of watch it in stupefied disbelief.
Ghouls n Ghosts
Not only is this a speedrun of a very, very notoriously difficult game, it also has fantastic commentary by the runner and his companions that details everything that’s happening. Another must-watch.
Maltida Castilla
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBo6WesM4uQ
This run’s been showcased elsewhere, but very few people caught it when it aired live. This is a fun and lively race between two friends of a very cool-looking GnG-inspired indie game I hadn’t seen before. A superbly entertaining performance, and a great way to give this title some exposure.
Gauntlet (PC)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_AF57YdRh8&t=8m46s
Skilled runners with entertaining commentary can make otherwise kinda-dull games very entertaining, and PJ and MURPHAGATOR! do just that with the mediocre Gauntlet reboot. This game gets broken in numerous amusing ways, with the runners enjoying things the whole way through.
Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSJUzoqp2i8
The one Mario run from SGDQ you probably didn’t catch since it was on super early in the morning, but very well worth viewing now! It seems like a fairly typical RPG speedrun for a while… until things get really, really messed up.
Spica Adventure
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2toM-h07g4
Short and sweet run of a modern Taito arcade platformer. Not much to say that won’t be covered in the six minutes twenty-one seconds it lasts!
Castle of Illusion HD
Great playthrough of an overlooked modern remake with lots of good commentary.
Gargoyle’s Quest
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdIagtk4KI0
One of the best Game Boy games out there gets showcased in fine form. We’ll forgive unusualcook for not getting the fabled Bridge Skip because the rest is pretty great.
Oregon Trail
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1eYK1T5Tb4&t=15m26s
Can we run to Oregon as fast as possible without dying from dysentery? Let’s find out!
Prince of Persia: Sands of Time
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UReXcmjksA
A great showcase of how much a good attitude can add to a live gameplay showcase. Almost everything possible goes wrong for poor Henneko, yet he takes it in stride and puts on a delightful show. Yeah, he went over estimate, but who cares? This was one of the highlights of the event.
I just wanted to give my +1 on the Ecco the Dolphin II run. I was really looking forward to it anyway since it’s one of my favorite games, but it was such a great run of the game. (It was fun watching him hit the particularly tricky maneuvers, too!)
I’ve been passing it around to my friends as an example of a well-done speedrun, with informative and insightful commentary – sometimes things happen so quick in speedruns it’s like “whoa, what just happened there”, but there was none of that in the Ecco II run. I agree that it’s a shame the video misses out the very end, though; I was looking through to the next video the account uploaded – Gunstar Heroes – and the end of the credits was caught there, at least. An upside is that passing the video to my friends means they won’t be spoilt for the very end of the game, I guess.
I love seeing people’s picks of GDQ events, and I look forward to going through the rest of these and watching the ones I missed out on seeing streamed!
Thanks for the round up post! I missed most of it when it aired, so it was a lot of fun to go over these gems that I might have skipped otherwise.