God Mode: 7 Incredible Video Game Speedruns You Have To See To Believe

There's no wrong way to play a video game—as long as it doesn't spoil it for others, of course. Play it like a marathon or take it in chunks. Use the strategy guide if you want and look for plot spoilers. Ignore every trailer and news report to stay fresh.

Or play the same game over and over until you literally can't play it any faster. This is the art of speedrunning—or the art of recording, timing, and publishing optimized video games.

Even in a quick run, there are many ways to play. Some speed runs are presented as the game is intended to be played without glitches or cheats. Others use any glitch to turn a typical 20 hour game into 20 seconds.

Regardless of how a fast runner handles their chosen game, the end result is usually fun. Games we know back and forth and have played over and over again can look completely different in the hands of a skilled and determined speedster.

Collected below are some of the most mind-blowing, thrilling speed racers around—but we're just grazing, picking the hottest games around. But it's a good starting point if you're new to sprinting or want to taste different approaches and have a lot to explore.

Superhot VR

Sure, clicking the mouse to take down your enemy is cool, but have you ever tried throwing something? Surreal sci-fi “John Wick” parody superhero has made the leap into virtual reality, and so someone steps in and shows us exactly how it's done.

Superhot VR gives us guns and pistols, swords and throwing stars and just a bunch of throwables to fire at our enemies. Speedrunner Trickster00 beat the VR version of Superhot in just 6:38 (not including loading time)—and when you fire a few shots in a row, you usually throw the gun at enemies and break the Red Raiders with their hands. A gun instead of taking all the time to pull the trigger.

Portal

Portal is a tough puzzle game that requires you to think outside of the Friend-Cube and master the time it takes to get through the game's complex back puzzles.

Or you can break the game completely and go outside the bounds of reality, like the best portal speed runners. In this “out of bounds” run, Saraspedrun completely ignored portal restrictions to beat this normally three-hour game in less than six minutes.

If you're curious about how these game-breaking speedruns work, Portal is a great place to start thanks not only to how short the game is, but also to how much speedrunners are talking about it. In 2021 video IGNA fast runner called CantEven Set with Valve software developers To talk about how to break their game. In the process, he breaks their minds – but in the best possible way.

Super Mario 64

Although Super Mario 64 was released in 1996, it remains one of the most popular games to speed up. It's one of the first full-3D games, but it holds up well mechanically to make this type of game interesting, and the hack has a variety of glitches to make it a lot of fun.

Super Mario 64 is one of the most competitive speed running game communities around. The current record holder, Wege, pictured below, earned the first spot for the run that collected all 120 stars on November 18, 2022—less than a year later. In the past two months, however, three other fast runners have matched or surpassed his 1:37:35 record within 10 seconds.

In other words, Weggy can't rest on his laurels if he wants to stay on top. People are still looking for new ways to save time, too, with the so-called “carpetless” level of “The Big House in the Sky” appearing in a series of instrumental runs—that is, outdoor sprints. Software to help –Just a few months ago.

Explosives

Minesweeper was available from Windows 3.11 in 1993 to Windows 8 in 1993. Solitaire was all about drag and drop, and Minesweeper was your first teacher of clicking the right mouse button. Left-click to reveal a square on the grid and right-click to mark a spot as (potentially) mine.

Speed ​​racing in a semi-random game is always tricky, but this one is still fun to watch. Speedrunner Shane Simpson goes through a practiced click-and-reset pattern here, looking for a board with the potential to be a one-click board. The skill here isn't how fast you click, but recognizing that this board is “one” in seconds, and then clicking the mouse once to finish.

Dark souls

Dark Souls and its successors—like Bloodborne, Sekiro, and more—are all hard-hitting boss games that require precision and patience to defeat. With % runs dropping around the 20 minute mark, we're more interested in what Kahmul has done here, beating all bosses with Dark Souls in just 58:39.

A run like this requires you to store in your head the accuracy and memories required by multiple bosses for each Dark Souls and repeat it at any time.

Sonic the Hedgehog 2

What's more in the spirit of gaming than speeding through Sonic the Hedgehog 2? That little guy is going fast. As we write this, Russian sprinter Iandis holds the current world record, having taken the first a month ago.

But this is very difficult. Outside of the top 10 runners, there are records set six years ago. Eandis stops at 12:43, but Segajunki barely passed the 15-minute mark in June 2017 at 14:58. The second world record – he scored 12:19 before the final fall – was very difficult.

Mike Tyson Punch!!

Perhaps the most impressive speed run on this list comes from the game Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!, a 1986 NES classic. This game was very tough for us kids at the time, Tyson himself seemed invincible. But speedsters like SummoningSalt have shown us that not only is Tyson probably not that tough, but that he can understand the game well and beat it. Blind.

In this 18:03 run, SummoningSalt sits in front of his Nintendo Entertainment System with his shopping bag over his head and cleans the game flawlessly. All Mike can do is swing helplessly as Little Mac hits him whenever he's open. Punch-Out gives you plenty of cues about when it's safe to punch and when to stay away. The victory is only pattern recognition using only memory and audio signals, which gives you an idea of ​​how much the developers think about different signals Punch-Out sends the player.

Edited by Andrew Hayward.