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Gotta go fast: all the awesome stuff at AGDQ 2024

• Jan 21

  Ash Parrish

  God’s (least) favorite princess.

  Shadowheart is the most romanced character in Baldur’s Gate 3 and has been nicknamed “God’s favorite princess” by the BG3 community (it’s a meme, trust me.) Apparently, this designation also makes her the most valuable character in a Baldur’s Gate 3 speedrun. She gets transformed into a bear and throws her massive ursine weight around to kill one of the game’s major bosses.

  She also dies...a lot. Most of this Baldur’s Gate 3 speedrun at AGDQ 2024 involves shoving her off cliffs, using her dead body as a resource, and generally abusing one of the game’s most beloved characters.

• Jan 20

  Ash Parrish

  Weeeeeee!

  If you’re a regular, mortal player, it probably took you somewhere between 50 and 750 hours to beat Elden Ring. But if you’re a speedrunner, you can beat the game in 20...minutes and! you don’t even have to fight a boss.

  At AGDQ 2024, runner mitchriz1 showed off the visually impressive feat of zipping across the map to beat the game, a trick that’s so sensitive that he needed an actual metronome to make it work. Check out an example below and you should be able to find the full run on YouTube soon.

• Jan 19

  Ash Parrish

  It’s dangerous to go alone, take this.

  In my short tour of all the technology that keeps GDQ running, I asked what piece of equipment director of technology Jason “Wyrm” Deng would grab first in case the building caught on fire.

  Meet “The Wing.”

  It’s a 48-channel digital mixer responsible for ensuring all the runners, commentators, game audio, and hosts come in crystal clear and it’s the GDQ tech team’s most expensive piece of equipment.

  While it’s not exactly feasible to pick up this monster in the case of a speedrunning-related catastrophe, it’s what he’d at least try to save first.

  The Verge / Ash Parrish

• Jan 19

  Ash Parrish

  This PlayStation RPG is the game the GDQ tech team hates the most

  Image: Square Enix

  Making sure an event as large as Games Done Quick (GDQ) runs smoothly is a monumental task. There are lots of technical moving parts, from video equipment, to lighting, sound, and stream overlays, to donation trackers that have to be kept running 24 hours a day for a week straight. The tech team also has to consider the individual needs of over 100 runners playing on consoles that range in age and complexity from the NES to the PlayStation 5.

  With all of that going on, I wondered which game out of the thousands that have been run at GDQ throughout its 10-plus-year history the tech team hates the most, and the answer surprised me.

  Read Article >

• Jan 19

  Ash Parrish

  Now...get me some news!

  I’ve only been at Games Done Quick for all of 20 minutes and I’m already charmed by the event’s press badge. It’s Penn! The journalism bird from The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, one of the best examples of press representation in a video game ever. I’ve collected a lot of press and convention badges in my time but this is one I’m proud to keep.

  “SOAR LONG!”

  Ash Parrish / The Verge

• Jan 16

  Ash Parrish

  Awesome Games Done Quick’s adorable dog speedrun was just the start

  Photo: JSR_

  Though Awesome Games Done Quick will go on for the rest of the week, the charity speedrunning event may have already peaked with a run performed by Peanut Butter... a Shiba Inu.

  Using a custom-made controller and spurred by commands and treats, Peanut Butter button-pressed his way into our hearts and the speedrunning history books with his run of Gyromite in the first-ever speedrun done by a dog. Gyromite is a game where the player guides a sleepwalking scientist through his lab by pressing buttons to raise or lower colored pillars in the scientist’s way. To successfully complete a level, players must not get squished by releasing a pillar too soon and avoid monsters called “smicks” that can kill the player in one hit.

  Read Article >

• Jan 16

  Ash Parrish

  There’s no rule that says a dog can’t speedrun.

  In about an hour, Peanut Butter, the shiba inu partner of speedrunner JSR_, will make his Games Done Quick debut running Gyromite — an NES game that made use of Nintendo’s R.O.B accessory. This is the first time a dog has ever speedrun a game at the annual speedrunning charity event and it is sure to go down as one of the best runs of all time. Don’t miss it.

• Sep 5, 2023

  Jay Peters

  Awesome Games Done Quick is taking place in-person in Pittsburgh at the beginning of 2024.

  The event will take place from January 14th through January 21st.

  Last year’s show was set to be in-person in Florida, but the GDQ organization switched it to an online event so that it could “provide a safe and welcoming event to all.”

  GDQ founder Mike Uyama is also sticking around, he explained in an interview with NME. He had been planning to step down.