Speedrunning: Old Games, New Challenges

A game has an intended way to be played, and then there is the way a speedrunner plays it. Speedrunning is the practice of finishing a game as fast as possible, and over the past two decades it has turned dusty classics into living competitions. Titles that were finished and shelved decades ago now have active communities pushing their completion times down by fractions of a second, which has given old games a remarkable second life.

What a speedrun actually is

At its simplest, a speedrun is a race against the clock through a single game. The interest comes from the rules the community builds around it. Runs are divided into categories, the most common being “any percent”, where the only goal is to reach the end by any means, and “100 percent”, where the player must complete everything the game offers. Separating the categories lets very different styles of play coexist, so a frantic glitch-heavy run and a careful complete-everything run can each have their own records.

Reaching the top times demands extraordinary knowledge of a game. Runners memorise enemy patterns, optimise every movement, and rehearse difficult sequences thousands of times. The depth they find in old titles often exceeds anything the original designers imagined, much as the variety celebrated in our look at the best retro-style games of 2016 rewards players who dig past the surface.

Glitches as a craft

Many runs rely on glitches, the unintended behaviours buried in a game’s code. A well-known trick might skip a whole section, clip a character through a wall, or warp to the end credits from an early level. Far from being seen as cheating, finding and mastering these exploits is a respected craft within the community. Discovering a new glitch can rewrite the record books overnight and send every runner back to relearn the game.

A community sport

Speedrunning grew into something social. Runners share routes, verify each other’s records, and gather for charity marathon events that draw large online audiences and raise considerable sums. That communal side turned a solitary pursuit into a spectator activity, and it keeps players returning to games long past their commercial life. It is a fitting companion to the shared play celebrated in our piece on couch co-op classics worth revisiting. Speedrunning shows that an old game is never truly finished. There is always another second to shave, another route to find, and another player ready to try.