Enlarge / All four mascots seen in this SGDQ promotional image appear in various speeds organized over the past week.
Summer games ready quickly
The Games Done Quick charity event series has long been a favorite among Ars Technica gaming fans and critics, as it combines classic, beloved video games and carefully researched methods of taking them apart in search of high-speed feats.
This year’s summer installment is particularly special as it’s the first in 2.5 years to take place in a physical location – albeit with some of the strictest masking and distancing requirements we’ve seen at a live public show in 2022 (The GDQ organizers seem to be reading the news, which makes sense for a series that benefits the likes of Doctors Without Borders.) Even with the precautions taken, the combination of players, commentators and crowds in the same room has brought the excitement back to her broadcasts, which is why we’re rounding up some of the best tracks from the past week, archived on GDQ’s official YouTube channel.
The event is still ongoing as of this writing, which means you can watch it right now via his Twitch channel. The final runs of the event, dedicated to the Elden Ring, will conclude in the late hours of Saturday 2nd July.
Tunic speedrun Done Quick 2022 summer games
Tunic, 2022, true end series.
If you haven’t played Tunic yet, we recommend you take a break before watching this game-breaking, spoiler-filled game through many of its biggest secrets. (My March review of the game has far fewer spoilers.) But if you’ve already collected the game’s many hidden “how-to” pages, consider this a must-see because it features a fascinating live commentary guest: Andrew Sholdice, lead game designer, programmer and artist.
He’s joined by a member of the Power-Up Audio team who worked on the game’s soundtrack, and they reveal tons of information about how the game was made — including confirmation of how many of the biggest exploits were intentionally left by the developers in game. At one point, Shouldice watches as the trick begins to play out, telling the crowd that he programmed it as a possibility, but could never personally pull it off. Moments later, the speed runner demonstrates the trick, allowing him to warp through a wall and bypass a ton of complex content.
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Halo Infinite speedrun Summer Games Done Quick 2022
Halo Infinite, 2021, “no tank gun” rendition.
The speeds of many classic games include multiple categories, and the most broken of them are known as “any percentage” because they allow players to use any tricks and skip all the missions they want. In some gaming cases, these types of runs can be boring to watch, and the infamous Halo Infinite bug is no exception.
This speed race begins with a demonstration of the “tank gun”, which attaches a gun with unlimited ammo to Master Chief’s legs. That’s a little too much help for speedrunners’ tastes, but this SGDQ demo still features a ton of wacky tricks that combine geometry slicing and otherworldly physics exploits—all boosted by the Chief’s instant access to a new grappling hook item. Sure, the grappling hook makes players move much faster through the world, but it also figures in a wild bug that causes players to bounce off explosive barrels in gravity-defying ways.
Thunder in Paradise speedrun, summer games Done Quick 2022
Thunder in Paradise, 1995, all cutscenes run
We’re not sure if this is the first GDQ speedrun dedicated to a full-motion video game (FMV), but it’s certainly one of the dumber examples of the mid-90s CD-ROM genre. Thunder in Paradise is based on the short-lived TV series of the same name, which starred Terry “Hulk” Hogan alongside Jack Lemmon’s son as an action-packed crime-solving duo on the beach, and it was every bit as bad as it sounds. The version of the video games ported to the CD-I console forces players to watch excruciatingly bad live-action footage between light-weapon shooting sections.
In most video game speedruns, players skip as many cutscenes as possible, but GDQ chose to show the footage of this game in its entirety while clarifying the weapon gameplay parts as quickly as possible. Buckle up bro.
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