The Most Hype Moments From Summer Games Done Quick 2023, Part 1

Another Summer Games Done Quick is in the record books! This year’s weeklong run ended up generating $2.2 million for Doctors Without Borders and completely shredded a lot of popular video games while doing so.

Since watching them all would take literally a week, we usually pare down the list by highlighting our favorite playthroughs. The only problem is, at this present time, GDQ has only put up half of the run to YouTube, and we don’t know when that will change. So here are the most epic runs of the marathon, up to Wednesday. We’ll fill in the rest at a later time.

You’re going to have to watch this one first since, even though it isn’t the greatest game in the world, it’s the run that sparked this year’s meme, which is referenced in just about every run afterward. Adef and fellow runners address themselves as “Chef” constantly throughout and keep saying “Yes, Chef” and “Let them cook.” Just..watch it. I can’t describe what you’re about to see.

There’s a Mega Man MAKER? Kind of. It’s an unofficial bit of PC software (Capcom did not make it) that lets anyone paste together assets from Mega Man’s six NES games and share them with others. Just for GDQ, runner Megamarino recreated other popular 8-bit and 16-bit games in Mega Man Maker, as accurately as possible with Mega Man bosses and tiles.

Perhaps the most exhausting-looking speedrun of the entire week, this spectacle saw the unlucky Verxl flexing his muscles a million times a minute to get the player character moving as fast as possible in order to beat the opening mode of Ring Fit Adventure within 20 minutes. You’ll be grateful you’re watching instead of playing!

Chained Echoes got some attention when it was released for Steam last year — many indie games try to mimic Chrono Trigger, but few come as close as this did. This run stands out for being one o the most broken. Once Moonblazewolf activates a glitch a few minutes in, he’s able to walk out of bounds to anyplace in the entire game. From there, all he has to do is gather the most powerful items and win.

Never heard of a game called Silent Hill: Homepour? That’s because there isn’t one. This is a speedrun of the XBox horror games Silent Hill: Homecoming and Downpour AT THE SAME TIME. Shmumbler does this by shifting from one title to the other whenever a cutscene starts (which happens frequently both ways).

Can’t forget the Silly Block! Every summer GDQ has set aside time in the early morning to cover the weirdest games they can find, and they kicked things off with “Give Me Toilet Paper,” a bizarre puzzle game for Switch where the motion controls require you to stuff the Joy-Con in a real roll of toilet paper and roll it back and forth to control the one in the game. The goal is to please the distressed man on the porcelain throne at the end of each stage, but many things that are hazardous to a roll of toilet paper (like buzzsaws and lasers) are in your way.

Stay tuned for Part 2 soon! Games Done Quick won’t be back until the winter event next January, but you don’t have to wait that long — the next sub-event is Flame Fatales, an all-female speedrun that will be held the week of August 13.