Summer Games Done Quick 2014

[your name here]

Summer Games Done Quick is a week long video game speedrun charity marathon benefitting Doctors Without Borders. It starts Sunday June 22 (today!)at 11AM PST, and ends Sunday, June 29. There will also be a bonus stream after the fact, which starts whenever and ends whenever.

 

Links:

Homepage

Twitch page

Schedule (this is automatically converted to your local time, which is nice)

Donate (your donations are sent directly to Doctors without Borders, the organizers don't see a dime)

Tracker

 

There are raffle prizes (here), but nobody cares about those, what actually matters is the bid wars (here). When you donate, you can put your money towards various bid wars, including choosing which games get played, and naming a character in a game a specific thing. Names are generally highly bid on, and require a group effort to win. So, if, for example, we had enough interested to have a final fantasy 6 character named "wizard" or "baboo" or something, we'd all need to decide upon one collectively to funnel all of our money towards. As a speedrunner and idle thumbs reader, nothing would make me happier than to see some stupid idle thumbs in-joke make it into the marathon.

[Ozzie]

Hm, looking at the list, I guess I'm only interested in speedruns of games I know rather well, which spaces I know and know how to traverse. Very few of the games on the list I played.

I never played the first Earthworm Jim, I would have loved to see a speedrun of the second one. The same with Heretic.

Otherwise, I'm curious about the Psychonauts speedrun and especially looking forward to the solo coop speedrun of Portal 2. Sounds intriguing! I never finished the coop campaign, though.

[tegan]

These guys are fantastic and I try to watch a sizeable portion of their work every year. Can't wait to see them wreck Super Monkey Ball 2.

[your name here]

It's finally started, with Super Mario 3D to begin with.

[TheLastBaron]

Yeah I've been looking forward to this for a while.  None of my favorite runners are going to be there (most of them were at AGDDQ not that long ago), but I like seeing new people and new games.

[tegan]

Anyone not watching this is really missing out. Some highlights so far:

 

• one guy playing two-player Lost Vikings using two controllers velcroed back-to-back
• Octodad racing
• nonstop egg puns for the entire duration of the Billy Hatcher stream
• dude using his donation comment to propose to his girlfriend
• the chance to name the Paper Mario 2 Yoshi after Jeff Gerstmann
• a guy playing through a world of Super Meat Boy blindfolded
• 

[Ozzie]

I looked forward the most to the Psychonauts speedrun. Expectations were met and confounded. I couldn't stand the attitude of the speedrunner at first, though I warmed to it, though not to his obnoxious crew. Also, his mic constantly slipped off, causing mic readjustment guy to re-appear every time it happened. Once mic readjustment guy gave the speedrunner overly enthusiastically a kiss on the head, it looked like he almost knocked him over.

The two most memorable runs so far were in the same night (for me, probably day there and for others). The first was of sadistic fan mashup game "I Wanna Be The Boshy", speedrunned by witwix. The commentary was insightful and funny, the speedrun skillful. The second one wasn't memorable because of the execution, but more for the performance. It was the race of "Castlevania: Symphony of the Night" between romscout and Dacidbro. The witty banter at the beginning was great, and the singing of the end tune by both of them, after romscout finished his run and while Dacidbro still tried desperatedly to finish his as fast as possible, was also really something.

A memorably failed speedrun was the one of Double Dragon Advance, which Murphagator softlocked by triggering a bug. He throwed an enemy of a cliff which continued living out of reach.

 

It was kinda hard for me to stop watching. So compelling...

 

Edit: From NeoGAF

 

For someone who didn't get to see that Chibi/Caveman "incident" live, this video more than makes up for it.

Well, I guess a runner has every right to ask somebody to shut up. Still, being a no-fun isn't exactly positive for a charity event and I thought Chibi's comments lightened things up and were harmless enough. I wonder though why he was there on the couch since he didn't speedrun anything at the event. Either way, no big deal, of course, just an awkward moment.

[Ozzie]

The ZZT one is the most comic speedrun so far. And a short watch at around 6 minutes.

[SecretAsianMan]

The Super Ghouls 'N Ghosts run was pretty entertaining.  The game did a good job of trolling the runner with weapon drops (which he was required to pick up as part of the run conditions).  The runner had a really good attitude about it too, laughing and joking the whole time. 

 

Octodad was excellent, but I think what I really enjoyed most was seeing a female runner.  There aren't a lot of them at these events so it was great to see.

 

The 2 controller Lost Vikings run was just insane.

[tegan]

The Oracle of Seasons run is being done by Bananas, one of the few female speedrunners in the event. Mods are having to delete every other comment in chat, and the ones that make it through aren't much better. Eugh.

[Bjorn]

The Oracle of Seasons run is being done by Bananas, one of the few female speedrunners in the event. Mods are having to delete every other comment in chat, and the ones that make it through aren't much better. Eugh.

 

Fucking lovely. 

 

My daughter and I actually had a talk about her streaming at one point.  She was tired of her fast food job and thought about trying to build up a channel (I of course am biased, but think she has the personality to pull it off).  Then we watched a couple of streams done by female gamers and that was pretty much the end of the discussion. 

[Ozzie]

Twitch chat is a cesspool, it brings out the worst in people. :/

[BadHat]

Edit: From NeoGAF

 

Well, I guess a runner has every right to ask somebody to shut up. Still, being a no-fun isn't exactly positive for a charity event and I thought Chibi's comments lightened things up and were harmless enough. I wonder though why he was there on the couch since he didn't speedrun anything at the event. Either way, no big deal, of course, just an awkward moment.

I was watching live when it happened. Chibi was being loud and obnoxious through the entire previous run, the runner seemed pretty aggravated but was probably too nice to say anything. I get the impression he wasn't invited onto the couch (don't they get to choose who sits with them?) and didn't know Caveman, and he was just constantly commenting on everything even though it was very apparent that his commentary wasn't appreciated. I honestly thought he was being pretty grating well before things got awkward. I mean Caveman certainly could have handled things more tactfully, but you can't expect people to always be on form when they're doing something mentally taxing for hours on end in front of an audience of thousands, possibly on little sleep if their run is scheduled as early as his was. Non-runners need to respect that the show isn't about them, unless the runner is actually engaging with them or arranged for them to commentate beforehand, having some random asshole constantly joking around while you're trying to focus is aggravating as hell.

It's not unprecedented either, here's an example of Cosmo getting fed up with people talking, albeit with a bit more tact.

Anyway, none of this matters as this was clearly the best awkward moment from the stream so far. (Does anyone else get the impression that they need to move the desk closer to the couch? Seems like the runners can't hear shit all the announcer is saying a lot of the time.)

[tegan]

What I caught of the Paper Mario 2 run was pretty fantastic. It involved a glitch where the NPC Flavio followed Mario around for the entire second half of the game, climaxing with the final cutscene of characters around the world cheering Mario on in his final fight, with Flavio appearing in the background of every single scene as some omnipresent weirdo.

[Ozzie]

I was watching live when it happened. Chibi was being loud and obnoxious through the entire previous run, the runner seemed pretty aggravated but was probably too nice to say anything. I get the impression he wasn't invited onto the couch (don't they get to choose who sits with them?) and didn't know Caveman, and he was just constantly commenting on everything even though it was very apparent that his commentary wasn't appreciated. I honestly thought he was being pretty grating well before things got awkward. I mean Caveman certainly could have handled things more tactfully, but you can't expect people to always be on form when they're doing something mentally taxing for hours on end in front of an audience of thousands, possibly on little sleep if their run is scheduled as early as his was. Non-runners need to respect that the show isn't about them, unless the runner is actually engaging with them or arranged for them to commentate beforehand, having some random asshole constantly joking around while you're trying to focus is aggravating as hell.

 

Fair enough. I certainly didn't catch all of Chibi's presence, and from what else I've seen based on what people posted, he does seem immature. I didn't get what the jumping jacks were about. Was it a donation request or just him being obnoxious? I think it would be a good idea to make sure that the chemistry on the couch is right.

[neonrev]

I'm pretty sure the jumping jacks were a donation request, but its still seems pretty obnoxious to do that in front of a guy speedrunning a game, especially after he asked you to be quiet.

[Yasawas]

I've only caught bits of this this time around due to the World Cup and Wimbledon hogging my attention for when I've had time to slump motionless in front of a screen this week but here is a wonderful link from Reddit to all the things if anyone would like to pick through the archive for games they like. 

 

http://www.reddit.com/r/speedrun/comments/28spkz/sgdq_vods_thread/

 

I watched the Tony Hawks 3 run earlier and couldn't believe what I was seeing. Pre-internet this was a series of games I was of the opinion I was good at and while I've long since come to appreciate that I'm actually shite and it's just that my pals we even more so, to see the game 100%ed in the same time I took to make a sandwich and a cup of tea earlier was hugely impressive.

[BadHat]

I'm pretty sure the jumping jacks were a donation request, but its still seems pretty obnoxious to do that in front of a guy speedrunning a game, especially after he asked you to be quiet.

Yeah, it was a donation request.

Just watched that ZZT run, that was pretty hilarious.

[Ozzie]

I liked the insight Cosmo gave into his "optimization technique".

[SecretAsianMan]

I've been watching some of the runs I missed during the stream.  Most of them (if not all) can be found

.  My favorite thus far is still the Super Ghouls 'N Ghosts run.  Not because the runner is amazingly skilled or some insane moment happens, it's just entertaining and hilarious throughout.