Summer Games Done Quick

Summer Games Done Quick is a 7 day straight speedrunning marathon being held to raise money for the Doctors Without Borders charity. It starts up at some point on this coming Sunday. (The website says 2pm but there's no indication what time zone that might be. The event is physically being held in Colorado so maybe it's that time zone?) I'm going to be watching it all next week!

I've been watching a lot of speedrunning streams ever since I watched AGDQ in the winter. I've mostly found that I can't watch regular speedruns of games I don't really understand. A normal stream with a speedrun is trying to set a record time and involves a lot of resetting and not a lot of entertaining. Which is fine... Record times tend to be the goal and with games I do understand I enjoy this format. But the marathons tend to have a different focus. They don't involve resetting, they tend to involve 'safer' strategies which slow things down a little, and they also tend to involve extra people on the stream able to explain what is going on. This actually makes it so I prefer to watch marathons for games I don't know very well. There's more to learn and I'm not just getting fed information I already know. And while they may go a little 'safer' they're still going stupidly fast!

I think SGDQ is a lower key event than AGDQ so I'm not sure if there's going to be as many super cool moments like there were in AGDQ this year what with the blindfolded Punch-Out runs and the Super Metroid race and such but I'm expecting it to be pretty enjoyable. Maybe you want to check it out too?