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It's a new year which means another Games Done Quick marathon.  Awesome Games Done Quick is coming up this weekend, Jan 8-15.  For anyone not aware, AGDQ is a marathon gaming event where some of the best speedrunners in the world gather together to raise money for the Prevent Cancer Foundation by beating games as fast as possible.  Many of the runs have donation incentives or bid wars such as the ever present Save/Kill the Animals for Super Metroid.  There are also a large number of prize drawings during certain blocks of games.

 

Schedule

 

Twitch Stream


Donation Page

 

Donation Tracker

 

Official YouTube Channel

 

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My personal playlist of fun runs

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Some runs I'm looking forward to

 

Mario Paint Gnat Attack Level 3 by DoDeChehedron - This just sounds amusing

 

Battle Clash Any% by SCXCR - Battle Clash is an SNES game that requires the use of the Super Scope so I'm really interested to see this done

 

Doom (2016) Any% by Blood_Thunder - Always interested in seeing recent titles get demolished

 

Gremlins 2 Any% by Endy - I have fond memories of this game as a kid

 

Batman Forever Any% Co-op by PJ and Klaige - The only run being done by my favorite runner PJ

 

Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire Any% by glasnonck - Another game I remember fondly

 

Donkey Kong Country Trilogy Relay by various runners - A DKC relay race.  Relay races at these events tend to be pretty exciting

 

TASBot - It's TASBot. 

 

Super Metroid 100% by various runners - Wouldn't be a GDQ without a Super Metroid race.  I like the 100% races because you get to see stuff that you normally wouldn't in a speedrun

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Miles is also doing another Metroid Prime 2: Echoes run! don't know if he did a low% run in the past, but should definitely be fun to see that game again.

 

I saw they're also doing a coop run of Borderlands 2 co-op in an estimated 2 hours, so I'm real curious to see what that looks like. Also looking forward to new Doom being run!

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Disappointed there'll be no Mario Maker race this year, the previous two were big highlights for me.

 

Looking forward to new Doom for sure, TASBot and any of the races.

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Definitely looking forward to DOOM.

Interested in FEAR Extraction Point, but that happens in the middle of the night, so I'll have to catch the archive.

I'm curious about The Turing Test. Although it's a Portal-esque puzzle game, it doesn't really have mechanics that would allow the crazy movement and out-of-bounds things that Portal runs use. I just hope it's more than being able to complete the puzzles quickly.

Salt & Sanctuary, because, like the Souls games, I want to see how someone can speed through a game that I found incredibly rough and unforgiving.

Half-Life: Blue Shift, because what?

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These things (along with SGDQ) pretty much provide entertainment for the entire year for me.

 

 

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Ooh DOOM should be very cool. I saw a dude who routed any% nightmare inside of 90 minutes within the week it came out, so that's going to be absolutely fascinating.

 

Looks like they have an interesting Ori run potentially set up based on Bid War. I'm also curious to see Salt and Sanctuary because I bounced off that game so hard.

 

e: oh SNAP this is happening in the same place that SmashCon was in the summer. This is close enough I'm entertaining thoughts of going for a day.

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50 minutes ago, thepaulhoey said:

Disappointed there'll be no Mario Maker race this year, the previous two were big highlights for me.

 

Looking forward to new Doom for sure, TASBot and any of the races.

 

Agreed.  I was hoping that Mario Maker would become a GDQ staple.  As much as I like seeing classic games run, because of their age and the fact that they've been torn apart so thoroughly by the community there isn't much in the way of "new" stuff to see.  Mario Maker has so much potential for this event, especially in the hands of such high level players.

 

7 minutes ago, dium said:

These things (along with SGDQ) pretty much provide entertainment for the entire year for me.

 

Same for me.  Like I do every GDQ, I will eventually put together a curated playlist of runs once they're archived on YouTube.  I'll be sure to link it here.

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That Shadows of the Empire run will be really entertaining, I'm sure. I had a hell of a time trying to beat that game as a kid; it's just throwing curveballs at you all the time. I remember it fondly, despite the teeth-gnashing frustration of the junkyard train, or the speeder bikes (or, indeed, any and all of the boss fights)

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24 minutes ago, Badfinger said:

 

e: oh SNAP this is happening in the same place that SmashCon was in the summer. This is close enough I'm entertaining thoughts of going for a day.

 

I'm not sure you'll be able to do that.  While the event is open to the public, registration is closed and there is no on-site registration.  I don't think you can just walk in.

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I just hope there isn't too many massive glitch runs, some of them are really rather boring. I think there was a Dishonored(or maybe Bioshock) one last time I was looking forward to, but most levels used a glitch to go out of bounds then walk to the exit.

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there's a balancing act with the glitch runs, where the weirder and more game-breaking the glitch is the more interesting it is to watch... up until a point, where suddenly the glitch makes the run terribly boring.

 

I also tend to appreciate glitched runs substantially more when I'm familiar with the game at least a little bit. I need some context as to what is being skipped, what would've been in front of the curtain in the first place.

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You can kind of get an idea of how much a run will be glitched by the estimated time.  If a long game has a short estimate, you can probably guess it'll be glitch heavy.  For example, Fallout: New Vegas Any% has an estimate of 30 minutes.  With a time like that you can expect liberal use of exploits.

 

In general I agree that glitchfest runs aren't as entertaining.  You need a lot of familiarity with the game to really appreciate what's being skipped.  And while it's not an entirely fair thing to say, I feel like glitched runs require less skill.  Part of what I really enjoy in speedrunning is the incredible level of ability on display.  I don't mean to imply that runners who use glitches aren't skilled, but that skill is hard to see when you don't play a big chunk of the game.

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I'd agree for the most part. The skill of standing right between two textures or doing frame perfect walking forward out of bounds or freezing a menu to make a finite item infinite is more or less "invisible" skill that has to be experienced to fully appreciate. The glitch runs I appreciate most are the goofy stuff in between when there are 5 minutes to kill like the Mario Warp glitch trick or literally loading the ending of the game into memory by standing in the right block in Super Metroid.

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I'm looking over the list, wow, they're going to run Jazz Jackrabbit? Dark Messiah of Might & Magic? DAIKATANA? Also Hyper Light Drifter!

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I'm excited for the Valdis Story and Hyper Light Drifter runs myself!

My daughter meanwhile is super excited about the Spongebob: Battle for Bikini Bottom speedrun.

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Not Another Needle Game (on the 13th) is a good watch for anyone who likes precision platformers. It's not my absolute favorite IWBTG fangame, but it ranks pretty highly and Stinky's an entertaining guy.

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I would kind of love to see a full play of HLD rather than a speed run. There is obviously SO MUCH stuff I haven't seen even though I beat that game with more than the minimum necessary.

 

The speed run will also be fascinating, but there are so many mysteries.

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I only managed to catch a few partial runs so far.  I've seen Ocarina of Time enough that I wasn't that excited about it, but this time was more interesting than I expected.  Borderlands 2 was pretty hilarious with how they exploited the game's mechanics to turn one player into an aimbot and the other into the Flash.  I missed the glitch exhibition, I'll have to go back and watch that.  The Mega Man race was ok, nothing I haven't really seen before.  I watched a bit of MSG2 and DMC but neither of those games really interest me.

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The Borderlands 2 glitch exhibition was neat because it was showing off things that were just crazy and didn't have any speedrunning purpose at all. The Shovel Knight race was great because a couple unlucky deaths from both racers kept things close almost the whole time. I think the final times were only 6 seconds apart. It looks like the GDQ YouTube channel is doing a pretty good job of getting footage up quickly. The only things I'm interested in today I've missed because they happened in the early hours, so I can hopefully spend this evening watching those archives.

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A fair few videos have gone up on the YouTube channel already. I watched the Psychonauts one - I already saw a guy doing it with the DF team watching, but it's cool to see it again here with more explanations and some new exploits.

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Yeah the official channel is good about getting stuff up quickly, albeit in a somewhat raw format.  They usually come back a few weeks later and upload cleaner versions which include a link in the description to the run's starting time.  I've started putting together my playlist of runs I think are good and will post the link after the event is over.

 

One bit of warning regarding the uploaded runs.  Try to watch them from the official channel (link in the top post).  They discourage third parties uploading videos to prevent monetization of videos from a free charity event without the runner's permission.

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So, early in the Blaster Master race, after runner shiningdragoon (on the right) defeated an early boss, skavenger216 (on the left) entered the boss room to discover... 

 

 

(this should start at around 28:52)

 

I do so love when a weird new glitch is discovered during a GDQ stream. It's fun to see skavenger's complete incredulity. 

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