Playing Games Fast

I know you have played video games before, but have you played them FAST?????

Yeah baby! We’re shaving off seconds and frames, battling the clock like it’s your little brother and he just stole the last cookie that was clearly for you. Such a personal attack cannot go unpunished.

There is something about speed running games that gets me excited. On the surface, it seems somewhat mundane. All the players are doing is repeatedly playing the same game, slowly reducing the time at the end. Honestly, that is exactly what it is. An exercise in apparent futility that requires a TON of time. From the outside looking in, it is useless.

I prefer to think of it as people challenging themselves. It takes pure tenacity to fire attempt after attempt at a game. There are people who have thousands of hours practicing specific levels of games, not even including the rest of the experience. Because of this investment and how personal these goals and records can be, it is incredibly engaging to watch people strive each day to better themselves.

I have recently been watching a YouTube series by Speed Docs. They create fascinating videos on the history of world record speed runs for specific games. These are not simply 10-minute jaunts through some old leaderboards; rather, the videos tell the entire nuanced story of the record. All of the failures and successes of runners, those that have since moved on and those that continue to hone their craft.

I can compare it to watching a documentary on something random like the history of parapets. This information is realistically useless, but the story that is told is so entrancing, it does not matter. I have learned about the iron-fisted reign of Xem92 over the any% record of Ratchet and Clank: Up Your Arsenal. He held the record for years. Each time someone came and challenged his time (which happened quite a few times over the years), he would lower it again and again. He would eventually put a bounty on the record. One thousand dollars would go to whoever could remove Xem from his throne.

Stories like this are worthwhile. It doesn’t matter that it came from some guy playing a PS2 game religiously. And this is only the tip of the iceberg. There are charity events, such as Games Done Quick, that present runners and their games. They accept donations to help fund cancer research and other positive pursuits. Millions of dollars have come from events such as this, and all because some people play a game fast. I might have to speed through a game myself one of these days.