The 2016 edition of the Summer Games Done Quick charity speedrunning marathon took place last week, and the videos of the entire event are up on the official Games Done Quick Youtube channel so you can watch the whole thing almost as though you were there.

If you don’t have over a hundred hours spare this weekend to do that, then that’s fine, because I’ve done all that hard work for you. Here’s what I thought were the highlights of the event, which ended up raising over US$1.2 million for Doctors Without Borders.

First up, there was From Software’s Demon’s Souls, run by saintmillion in a bit over an hour. This is impressive just because it’s very much about technique and skill.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlyhZdqrUIA

Metroid Prime is one of the staples of speedrunning, with it bringing many players to the community and showing off their skills. Runner JustinDM takes a lot of liberties with the Gamecube’s classic and shows just how well-understood it is nowadays as he beats it in a little over eighty minutes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLXZtW1etL0

Immediately after that was Ghoul02’s run of Atlus’ cult hit Catherine. The run uses the game’s Babel mode, which involves two players climbing a randomised tower together. In this case, however, Ghoul02 controls both players for an impressively skillful run.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTsqOqthkPU

It wouldn’t be a Games Done Quick event without a block of Mega Man games, and SGDQ2016 was no exception. There were, in fact, two blocks: one for the main Mega Man series and another for the X and ZX spinoff series. The highlight of the classic block was this solid run of Mega Man 3 by fastatcc, one of the longer games in the series, as it forces you to fight all the Mega Man 2 bosses in between clearing its own bosses and heading off to fight Dr Wily.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uf4IWeNCJzM

The PC first-person shooter was well-represented at SGDQ2016, and there were runs of more recent titles as well as an excellent block of retro runs. From the more modern games comes this entertaining run of Dishonored by DrTChops, which makes for a nice reminder of what to look forward to when Dishonored 2 launches later this year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUtTKM5qytA

The Dreamcast is always welcome at GDQ events, and there’s usually one or two runs for it each time. This time around it was Jet Set Radio‘s time in the spotlight, as Maxylobes gets his skates on and blasts through Sega’s stylish classic.

The difference between a good speedrun at a GDQ event and a great speedrun at a GDQ event is often the quality of the commentators, and while free game Curse of Issyos isn’t widely known, the run is worth watching because it’s actually a race between two very entertaining runners, pcull44444 and Mr_Weables. This is well worth watching just for the commentary alone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDTT7zhLACY

Speedrunning a game involves having excellent knowledge of the game. You need to know every single nook and cranny, every possible way to do everything. You need, essentially, to be able to run the game blindfolded. With this run of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, runner romscout does exactly that, going through the entire game blindfolded, with a tiny bit of help from Puwexil due to a technical issue at one point. This is a doozy of a run.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0H4atoATpNE

Indie games have become a significant part of GDQ events, and for some indie developers, having them there has been an important way to showcase their games. This run of Momodora: Reverie Under The Moonlight, however, is special for its own reason. The runner, Halfcoordinated, has a condition that means he can only effectively use one hand, but that doesn’t stop him from doing just that to beat this difficult game on its hardest setting. This is easily the most heartwarming moment of SGDQ2016.

The early 1990s was a rich time for Disney games, with a number of solid platformers based on its franchises coming out across all the major consoles of the time. That means that there’s always a block of Disney games at GDQ events and SGDQ2016 was no exception. The highlight is likely this run of the somewhat lesser known sequel to DuckTales, DuckTales II. Runner NME shows off the game to a wider audience.

The classic PC FPS block had most of the usual staples, with runs of various Doom expansions, Hexen and even Deus Ex, but this run of System Shock by Fearful Ferret stands out because it drastically reduces the time needed to beat the game, and relies heavily on a glitch to get through sections that would otherwise be difficult to complete. With a remake of the game coming up, this seems like a perfect time to revisit the classic.

Good races are a highlight of any Games Done Quick event, and this race of the much-maligned Zelda II not only shows off the game in the best light by not relying on any major glitches or skips in order to complete the game with a full inventory. This is a tight race all the way through and the commentary is really solid, giving good insight into the process of getting through the game.

Puwexil is famous in the speedrunning community for his dedication to running generally very lengthy RPGs from the 16-bit era, having in the past been involved in many Final Fantasy runs at GDQ events. This time he turns his attention to the middle game in Quintent’s loose trilogy of SNES RPGs, Illusion of Gaia (known to us in PAL-land as Illusion of Time). This is a good run as it involves getting the game’s best ending, requiring him to find a number of easy-to-miss red jewels. It’s a long one, but Puwexil and his couch make it all worthwhile.

The Tetris: The Grandmaster demonstrations have been a highlight of  recent GDQ events, with KevinDDR and his crew impressing everyone with their mastery of what is, by far, the ultimate Tetris challenge. This may be the last time we see these guys at a GDQ event, so they pulled out all the stops across the entire series. If you’ve never seen this game in action, then you’re in for a treat here.

There was an entire block of Bethesda titles run this year, marking the first time every main game in the Elder Scrolls series has ever been run at the one event. Alongside that series, however, were runs of both Fallout 3 and Fallout 4. We’ve picked the Fallout 4 run because it shows off just how much players have been able to learn about the game since its release last year.

Jonathon Blow’s The Witness is a critical darling mostly about drawing lines on screens in a mysterious world. It’s a challenging, cerebral experience that will lead to many hours of frustration and discovery for most players. Not, however, for Fearful Ferret, who blasts through it in a little over twenty minutes.

Imagine being a teenager that’s really good at Super Mario World, a game that came out years before you were born. Now imagine you got so good at it, you could beat it without ever picking up a single power-up. Now imagine you had to do that in front of a live audience and several thousand more Twitch viewers. Now imagine doing all of that in front of your grandmother. You don’t have to, because that’s exactly what rezephos did in this great low% run.

It may not be an eSport quite yet, but the success of Super Mario Maker at Awesome Games Done Quick earlier in the year saw it come back for another round at SGDQ 2016. Two teams of skilled Mario Maker players had to work their way through ten tough levels that none of them had ever seen before. The results are sometimes infuriating, but always entertaining.

PEPSIMAAAAAAAAAN (I’m so, so sorry)

Trauma Centre: Second Opinion may, on the surface, not seem like a game that can be easily speedrun, but that doesn’t stop Irisjoker from putting on an impressive display of physical coordination as he blasts throught what is a very physically demanding game to play. This run will leave you worn out by the end.

TASBot returns once again to SGDQ, and this year provides a few really cool moments, including an incredible speedrun of VVVVVV and a mindblowing run of all four NES Super Mario Bros titles.

The big finale at SGDQ this year started off with the Final Fantasy VI Sketch Glitch run. The first part is at the end of the TASBot video above, and you can find the rest here. This is interesting as it takes advantage of a glitch in the first version of the game that allowed players to skip a huge amount of the middle and late game sections.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jQS3SqjHrE

Following that was the traditional Super Metroid race. This time around, the kill the animals donation incentive won, meaning that world records were on the table. This is one of the most dramatic Super Metroid races in GDQ history, so buckle up.

Finally, the big finale run this year was Super Mario RPG. The first foray for the Mario universe into RPGs, the game came out on the SNES in Japan and the US, but never originally saw a PAL release.  It’s a fascinating look at the game that led to the development of the Paper Mario and Mario & Luigi RPG series. The run itself is solid and fun, but the real drama on the day came from the possibility of beating last year’s SGDQ donation target. Either way, this is one of the true classic SGDQ runs, and well worth sitting through.

The next Games Done Quick event will be Awesome Games Done Quick in January 2017. Look forward to it!