Summer Games Done Quick 2023 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 the time we had to report this last week, GDQ had only put up half of the run to YouTube. We decided to split the list in half and fill you in on the rest later. As of today they’ve uploaded the remainder, and you’re about to see why we had to wait:
One of the wildest stunts this year’s SGDQ promised was a BLINDFOLDED run of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. This game is so immense, a blindfolded run didn’t seem possible. GDQ locked this run as a stretch goal and said they wouldn’t do it unless the marathon raised two million dollars by its end. A late-night rally on Sunday made that possible, but was this run worth two million dollars? We say the cash was well-spent.
A blindfolded BOTW run wasn’t the only stunt GDQ had in store. Other games were played in unusual ways, like this one-handed run of Super Mario Bros…
…and this run of Mega Man 6 that was achieved by two players at the same time, using one controller.
It’s routine now for GDQ to feature hacked “kaizo” editions of popular games that are redesigned to be super-hard, but we hadn’t seen anything like Kaizo Monkey Ball yet. If you’re familiar with how hard the original can get, you can imagine how twisted (literally) this hack is. Runner IkeSMB does better than any of us could ever hope to.
Celeste is another game that many GDQs have featured, but never THIS fast. This is a TAS (Tool-Assisted Speedrun) where all the moves are pre-recorded and executed by a bot. That makes for impossible (for a human) moves and literally flying though some stages.
This Super Mario Maker 2 match is a real nailbiter. The two relay teams are evenly matched and neither gains an advantage over the other. The level creators may have made their games too challenging as more than one ends in a draw (no one reached the end)…but you’ll be on the edge of your seat until it’s over!
Finally, it used to be tradition that GDQ would end with Super Metroid, and a donation pool to “save the animals” or “kill the animals” (during the end sequence of this game, Samus has the option of breaking open a hidden room where some alien creatures are trapped. The ending where she saves them is canon, as they return to save HER in a later game). We haven’t seen a “classic” GDQ ending in a while, but it’s nice to return.
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Sassy Survivor
Boom!
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Master Gamer.
RedRankRider
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