Summer Games Done Quick 2017: What's good?
More Songs About Having To Go Fast.
It’s Summer Games Done Quick next week! Meaning that a whole load of people are getting together in a hotel in Minneapolis in order to do some speedruns. Normally that wouldn’t be much of a deal but there’s a lot of them, they’re doing it for charity and they’ll be watched live on Twitch by hundreds of thousands of people -- meaning that at some point next week, Samurai Pizza Cats on the Famicom will likely be more popular on Twitch than League of Legends, Hearthstone and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. For that reason alone, SGDQ is very good. There’ll be plenty of happenings over the course of next week, and Retronauts will strive to bring you any awesome runs of note, but here’s five that I’m personally excited for.
(all times are approximate and GMT, but the SGDQ schedule automatically defaults to your timezone)
Battle Kid: Fortress of Peril
Sunday July 2nd, 11:11 PM
Runner: InfestedRiche
Battle Kid is a very difficult I Wanna Be The Guy-inspired homebrew platformer for the NES -- a game that sort of brings that sort of really hard game back to its ancestral home. It’s also awesome and considerably better than the majority of games like it...it’s fun enough to see folks struggle through it blind, but watching someone blitz it is even better - and as the World Record holder for the game with a time of 37:38, InfestedRiche is most certainly up to the task.
Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse
Tuesday July 4th, 2:46 PM
Runner: darbian
Naturally a lot of these events tend to gravitate more towards Nintendo games, so it’s always nice to see classic Sega somewhere, and Castle of Illusion promises to be a nice and chilled 20 minute run -- particularly if it’s darbian running it. If that name’s familiar, then it’s because he’s the current world record holder for Super Mario Bros., capable of beating that game in 4:56. Running this game is presumably what he does in his time off (needless to say, he has the WR in this game too).
NES block
Wednesday July 5th, 11:22 AM
Runners: Various
The NES block is always full of good bite-size runs -- they’re never particularly long, but they’re challenging for the player and easy to watch. There’s a little mini Ninja Gaiden block to kick things off which will demonstrate that pretty well, alongside runs of Marble Madness, Bucky O’Hare, the aforementioned Samurai Pizza Cats and more. The NES is perfect for speedrunning -- it’s so good that one of this block’s runners, Toad22484, recently did a Twitch stream in which he managed to complete 100 NES games in 26 and a half hours.
Bionic Commando: Rearmed
Thursday July 6th, 8:33 PM
Runner: PJ
Bionic Commando is a pretty fun speed game in all of its forms due to the constant usage of the grappling hook -- whether it’s the NES game or this rather enjoyable remake, it’s worth watching. But in particular it’s worth a watch because of PJ, a very entertaining runner known for his remarkable ability to break things. Last time he ran a Bionic Commando game at a GDQ, the result was 90 minutes of very manly screaming from Rad -- definitely worth a watch.
Super Metroid (low% ice, Race)
Friday July 7th, 3:12 AM
Runners: oatsngoats, zoast, Overfiendvip
The GDQ events became famous in part due to an amazing 4-way race of Super Metroid in 2014 where the winner triumphed by tenths of a second. However, Metroid 3 is one of the trickiest speed games of them all, and while always very popular at the event (in particular due to the Save/Kill the Animals donation war that’ll run through the week), the race has struggled to reach those heights since for various reasons - sometimes you just end up dying no matter how good you are. Low% ice is a particularly fiendish category, based around completing the game with as few pickups as possible. If anyone can give us a good race though, it’s the 3 best runners in the category -- and funnily enough, that’s just who GDQ have got.
These are just five of what will be many games run at SGDQ during the week -- this is an event where there’s something for everyone, from quick indie game runs to lengthy RPG’s through the night, high-octane races and chilled solo runs, retro stuff and modern stuff. It’s certainly something that’s worth dipping in and out of through all of next week! Mind you, the Twitch chat is what you’d expect it to be when there’s often 100,000+ people in there at any given time...still, you can watch the fun at gamesdonequick.com, or on the Twitch channel right here. Greetings from Germany.
