The Most HYPE Moments From Summer Games Done Quick 2026

Summer Games Done Quick managed to gather $2,408,701 for Doctors Without Borders through its weeklong run and rack up a ton of memorable moments in the process. (Also, you can relax — they aren’t doing that SNK sponsored stream after all, though avoiding Saudi connections is going to be much harder in the future if not outright impossible). If you missed most of SGDQ and would like to catch up, the YouTube archive is always there, but you probably don’t have a literal week’s worth of time to see all of it. That’s why, in the service we’ve performed since 2015, we’ve pared the list down to what we thought were the most interesting runs of the bunch. Check these out…

Two or three player races are a common sight at GDQ, but this is an interesting way to do it: one runner played the original Spyro: Year Of The Dragon while the other played its remake in the Spyro Reignited Trilogy. They weren’t always in sync but there were various moments where areas (like the first boss arena) could be directly compared split-screen.

Imagine trying to speedrun something like Hey You Pikachu — the 2000 N64 game that was controlled by voice commands. Competing runners tried to be the first to verbally corral the electric rat (who it turns out really hates being called “electric rat”) through five tasks across different stages, and since the mikes were sensitive enough, the audience could participate (or interfere).

And how do you feel about a hack of Jak & Daxter that turns it into a first-person game and the main character into Gordon Freeman from Half-Life? It exists, apparently.

Sometimes when they’re running a new game I have to bow out midway through because I haven’t finished it yet and the entire run would spoil areas I haven’t been to. This runner blazed through months of my progress in Pragmata within minutes, and he didn’t even use very many glitches. I had to leave tie stream halfway through.

This year’s Silly Block came out swinging with this bizarre Snoopy game for the Commodore 64. When it first starts, you might be thinking the C64 CPU is too sluggish to run a sprite that big, or something. You would be wrong. With each round the game loops through, it increases its speed exponentially, until it becomes literally impossible (runner Msushi here is using a cheat for infinite lives).

The nice thing about this year’s Silly Block was that it was held during the day instead of overnight…well, if you were on the East Coast it was the day. For me, “Snoopy” ran at 4 AM and I had to catch the archived version. But after games with titles like “Drywall Eating Simulator” and “Grandma, No!” it wrapped up with — what else — Zelda: Wand of Gamelon for the CD-I. A donation goal assured that every cutscene would be played.

This super-tense Tetris match happened on Friday and you won’t be able to take your eyes away through the whole thing. Tetris pros are some kinda freaks.

It’s always a treat when Super Mario Maker appears, but this run was a little different. The “Troll Showcase” was designed for two players and sabotaged them at every turn. It’s one of the most hilarious speedruns GDQ has ever had.

Of course, kaizo hacks had a presence as well…

Wouldn’t catch me playing these, no sir.

We haven’t had a TAS run of Super Mario 64 since the dawn of GDQ itself, but it made up for lost time quickly….and we do mean quickly. No star takes longer than thirty seconds to get and some of the tricks are literally dizzying.

GDQ will return in January with the “Awesome” week, but before then, watch for the Flame Fatales run in September.