History of Speedrunning: From Doom Demos to Games Done Quick
How did speedrunning begin? Doom and Quake demos, the rise of TAS, Speedrun.com and Twitch, GDQ charity marathons, and Super Mario Bros. records.
Some people enjoy games slowly, exploring every corner, while others restart an hour-long game thousands of times trying to finish it in under five minutes. The latter is called "speedrunning": a way of playing whose goal is to finish a game as quickly as possible.
It started as a hobby for a small few, but today it's a culture where huge numbers of people watch record-attempt streams and charity events raise tens of millions of dollars. In this post, we look at where speedrunning began, what techniques and rules it's built on, and how its community grew.
The Seeds of Timed Play
Interest in finishing games quickly has existed since the early days of gaming. In 1986's Metroid, the ending changed depending on your clear time, and 1989's Prince of Persia required you to rescue the princess within a time limit from the very start. Structures that rewarded faster clears made players conscious of "records."
The direct foundation for modern speedrunning was laid by id Software. 1992's Wolfenstein 3D displayed a benchmark time called "par time" for each level, based on developer John Romero's personal records. Romero's best times were also printed in the official strategy guide, with the intent of getting players to try to beat them.
1993–2003: The Demo Culture of Doom and Quake
The speedrunning community is considered to have truly formed with 1993's Doom. Doom inherited par times, and gameplay could be recorded into small files called "demos" and played back. Demo files were much smaller than actual video, so they could easily be shared even over slow internet connections and bulletin boards.
- In January 1994, Christina Norman, a student at the University of Waterloo in Canada, created the "LMP Hall of Fame," a server that collected Doom demos.
- In November 1994, Simon Widlake created COMPET-N, a site showing record rankings for each Doom level. This is considered the beginning of the Doom speedrunning community.
- After Quake came out in 1996, Nolan Pflug (Radix) opened a Quake records site in April 1997, and in June 1997 he released Quake Done Quick, a demo that finished the entire game quickly, introducing speedrunning to many more people.
- In April 1998, this site merged with another demo site to become Speed Demos Archive (SDA).
Quake speedruns were famous for movement techniques like "bunny hopping," which builds speed by chaining jumps. The technique was later used in other shooters like Counter-Strike.
After 2003: Every Game, and the Age of Video
SDA covered only Quake records for five years, but after posting a 100% run of Metroid Prime in 2003, it began accepting records for all games. Before then, console game records were mainly submitted as videos to Twin Galaxies, a record-certification organization, but the videos often weren't made public, making it hard to know what techniques had been used. SDA published its run videos so anyone could check and learn from them.
After that, video sharing and live streaming made speedrunning grow dramatically.
| Year | Event | Significance |
|---|---|---|
| 2005 | YouTube launches | Anyone can upload and watch speedrun videos |
| 2011 | Twitch launches | Live attempts can be streamed in real time, and verifying records becomes easier |
| 2014 | Speedrun.com opens | Leaderboards for many games gathered in one place; as of July 2021, it hosted leaderboards for more than 20,000 games |
Live streaming changed not just record verification but community culture too. Instead of one person breaking records alone, a culture took hold in which many people watch streams together, find new strategies, and help each other with their runs.
Routes, Glitches, and Sequence Breaks
Speedrunning isn't just about fast hands. The most important work is planning the "route": designing the optimal path, including the order in which you clear levels, which items you get, and what you skip.
- Sequence breaking: Skipping sections or items that are supposed to be mandatory. The term was first used in reference to 2002's Metroid Prime.
- Exploiting glitches (bugs): Using bugs to pass through walls, skip cutscenes, or abnormally increase speed. There are even "glitch hunters" who specialize in finding bugs useful for speedrunning.
- Arbitrary code execution: In some games, bugs are used to write desired code into the game's memory, making it jump straight to the end credits.
Early Twin Galaxies rules didn't allow the use of bugs. As the record community moved to independent online leaderboards, runs using bugs became common, and categories were created to separate runs by whether they use them.
Categories: What Counts as a "Clear"?
Even in the same game, records differ completely depending on the rules. That's why speedruns are divided into several categories.
| Category | Rules |
|---|---|
| Any% | Reach the ending as fast as possible, with no conditions |
| 100% | Clear after collecting every item or element |
| Low% | Clear with the minimum number of items and elements |
| Glitchless | No bugs used at all |
| No Major Glitches | Only bugs that badly break the game are banned |
Records are usually kept as video, with a "split" timer that measures each segment shown on screen. Each game's leaderboard is run by volunteer moderators chosen from the community, who check the videos and verify the records.
TAS: The "Theoretical Best" Beyond Human Limits
A TAS (tool-assisted speedrun) is a run made using emulators and tools. The game is advanced one frame at a time, and inputs are perfected by rewinding with save states as many times as needed. The goal is to show "theoretically perfect play" with a precision no human could achieve.
The term TAS was born in the Doom speedrunning era. Once Doom's source code was modified so demos could be recorded at slow speed in multiple segments, the first site collecting such demos opened in June 1999.
TAS became widely known in 2003. A Japanese user named Morimoto uploaded a dazzling video finishing Super Mario Bros. 3 in about 11 minutes, but because it carried no explanation that it was a TAS, many people believed it was real human play. When the method was later revealed, people reacted with "we were fooled," and Morimoto apologized. Bisqwit, who had seen the video, created a site dedicated to TAS (today's TASVideos) in December of the same year.
Today, regular human speedruns (RTA) and TAS are recognized as separate fields. Techniques discovered in TAS are often later used in human runs, so the two fields are closer to collaborators than competitors.
Games Done Quick: Speedrunning Becomes Charity
What brought speedrunning culture to the widest audience was the charity marathon Games Done Quick (GDQ). Speedrunners take turns on stage clearing games quickly, and the event is streamed live while viewers donate.
It started modestly. In January 2010, SDA users held Classic Games Done Quick, themed around 8-bit and 16-bit games. The hotel venue's internet gave out, so the event had to move to the home of organizer Mike Uyama's mother, but it still raised more than $10,000. After that, Awesome Games Done Quick (AGDQ) every January became established as an event supporting a cancer prevention foundation, and the summer Summer Games Done Quick (SGDQ) as one supporting Doctors Without Borders. According to Wikipedia, more than $59.8 million had been raised from over a million donations as of January 2026.
The fun of GDQ broadcasts isn't just the records themselves. Commentators explain the glitches and routes, and viewers use donations to name characters or request extra challenges. A format that people unfamiliar with speedrunning can easily enjoy played a big role in bringing it to the mainstream.
Super Mario Bros.: Competition Down to the Frame
A prime example of speedrunning at its extreme is 1985's Super Mario Bros., considered one of the most optimized games ever.
- On December 24, 2010, Andrew Gardikis (andrewg) broke the five-minute barrier for the first time (4:59.690).
- In September 2016, a way to reliably perform the flagpole glitch in real-time human play was discovered, cutting the record substantially again.
- On April 7, 2021, Niftski broke the 4:55 barrier (4:54.948). Ars Technica likened it to breaking the "four-minute mile" in track.
- On August 13, 2026, Niftski set a time of 4:54.332. The difference from 4:54.265, considered the theoretically perfect time, is just four frames (about 0.067 seconds).
The game has "framerules," which process progress only in fixed frame intervals, so the time that can be saved comes in steps. As a result, competition at the top became a battle of thousands of attempts over several years to shave off a single frame. Brazilian runner Lekuky even set a world record after the community pooled and sent him equipment, having practiced on a Brazilian console version that runs slightly slower than the North American one.
What Speedrunning Shows Us
Speedrunning goes a step beyond enjoying games "as their creators intended"; it's a culture of exploring a game's rules and limits to the very end. The fact that new bugs and new routes keep being discovered in decades-old games shows how deep the systems we call games really are.
The speedrunning community is also known for a collaborative culture in which people compete yet share strategies openly and help each other's runs. Seeing challenges like "fewest moves" or "fastest time" emerge even in puzzle games, the desire to solve things quickly and perfectly seems to cross every genre.