While we can officially talk about DOOM as the pioneer in the world of Speedrunning, it could be said that the first game based entirely on beating a time marker was created in 1980, for the Atari 2600, the Dragster. It was not only the first commercial game based on overcoming a time, but also in the manual they challenged you to overcome it in less than 6 seconds. If you did and sent a capture to Activision they would include you in the "World-class Dragster Club". We could call it the first video game with a Speedrunning challenge.
First signs of speedrunning
The concept of Speedrunning would reemerge 10 years after the launch of the Dragster thanks to the 1990 Nintendo World Championship. In this championship players they had 6 minutes and 21 seconds to get the most points in Super Mario Brothers, Rad Racer and Tetris. Including point multipliers, such as collecting 50 coins in Super Mario or getting a high amount of points in Tetris.
Although everything would change with the release of DOOM. DOOM's contribution to the Speedrunning scene came from the same demos, which could be saved. The demos are a timed recording of each entry, all saved in one file. The same demo could be reloaded into the game, playing it back and creating a perfect recording. DOOM was one of the first games that allowed to share and reproduce these demos.
The birth of speedrunning
Following the launch of DOOM, several online communities were created to share these demos. Many of these ended up allowing the upload and download of replays, which led to create the challenge runs. Some simpler ones, like overcoming any level with 100% kills, while others were somewhat more obtuse, like getting 100% kills using only your fists, chainsaw, pistol or berserker. When these challenges were no longer a challenge, they began to compete on speed, to see who was able to complete them in the shortest time.
Compet-n was one of the most famous communities of the moment, had an online leaderboard for all DOOM challenges created by players. Furthermore, each challenge was classified according to speed and the runs could be easily sent, observed and verified by the players. These characteristics led Compet-n to become the first great Speedrunning community in history.
The 90s and the Quake
The Speedrunning scene within DOOM continued to grow, but The next big step for the Speedrunning scene was the launch of Quake in 1996.. Like DOOM, it allowed us to save and share demos. Once again online communities were created to share these demos. One of the greatest achievements this time was thanks to a well-known Speedrunner named Nolan Radix Pflug and several members of his community. While most of the demos were single-level, Radix and three other speedrunners teamed up to create a single demo that spanned all of Quake. They put together several demos with the best times of each level in the game, creating a complete run as quickly as possible, they called it Quake Done Quick.
Finally in 1998, a large set of speedrunner communities were unified, thus creating speeddemosarchive. They continued with Quake, until finally a few years later it was expanded, by the hand of Metroid Prime in 2002. Radix was recorded playing this game, achieving a time of 1 hour and 37 minutes.
Radix speedrun not only beat the previous record of 30 minutesIt was also publicly online via the speeddemosarchive website. After the immense popularity of the Metroid speedrun, they started accepting speedruns from other games besides Quake. While the rest of the communities focused on a single game, speeddemosarchive became the main center of the scene, both for PC and consoles.
Tool-assisted speedrun is born
The next breakthrough within the Speedrunning scene came from Japan, after a gamer named Morimoto posted a Super Mario Brothers 3 online Time Attack video that swept the Internet in 2003. This awesome speedrun used perfect jumps and glitches without a single mistake. Completing the entire game in 11 minutes and 3 seconds. However, Motimoto later updated the video description indicating that the "run" it had been achieved using speed hacks to slow down the game and that they used innumerable "saves" of the emulator to get it. Making itself known as a tool-assisted speedrun.
It could be said that the following years for Speedrunning were calmer, until thanks to technology and internet improvements
Speedrunning and today
In March 2008, a group of players under the name Speed Gamers, they completed each main game of Zelda in a live broadcast, which lasted 3 days, aiming to raise money for st. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital. Becoming the first Speedrunning marathon in history. This group of players they followed this up with seven other live marathons over the next two years.
From here to the present, it can be defined in the number of charitable events that this group of people who love Speedruns have carried out and participated in. Events like Classic Games Done Quick getting $ 10,531, Awesome Games Done Quick getting $ 52,590.
Currently they hold several events of this type a year, as always most of a charitable nature, with thousands of online spectators and millions of dollars every year.
Speedrunning, that movement that sooner or later would end up being born thanks to the competitiveness between us, has become events, the majority of which are charitable, to help those most in need, and that is that Speedrunning doesn't slow down and just makes it grow and grow.
And you, what is your best time?
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