Recording and sharing gameplay doesn’t seem that revolutionary in the age of Twitch, but back in the 90s, it was an absolute game changer. Add the internet’s ability to share these videos with other gamers, and a brand new hobby, and eventually a new culture was born. “Doom” and “Quake” had a recording feature that allowed gamers to document their speed runs. But it was the 1990s when the culture really took off.

These two games were the spiritual forebearers of modern speedrunning. In 1980 Activision released a similar game called “Dragster” with a promotion that encouraged players to take pictures of their screens if they finished a race in under 6 seconds. The purpose of it was to complete a drag race as quickly as possible.

In 1977 a game called “Drag Race” was released by Kee Games. They must complete the game as intended by the designers.

In this category of speedrunning, however, players are not allowed to utilize these glitches. Many games have glitches in the programming that don’t allow players to ski[ ahead. In the case of Super Mario Bros 3, that includes all the worlds, castles, airships, and the treacherous Hammer Bros. This requires the player to complete every level in the game, skipping none of them. If you accidentally play a skippable level, you are automatically eliminated. That means exploiting all glitches, warps, or items that allow a player to skip ahead. This is where the player must play as little of the game as the programming allows. This is the category where players complete the game as fast as possible and there are little to no restrictions and qualifiers.

A few of the most popular categories of speedrunning that are currently being played are listed below. Speedrunning also allows for creating different categories that go beyond the established ones. There’s not just swimming, there’s the 100m freestyle, the 200m backstroke, and so on. There are several different categories of speedrunning, like events in the Olympics. There are entire communities online dedicated to watching, discussing, and practicing speedrunning. World records are won and lost all the time, and many of the record-breaking runs can be viewed on Twitch or other streaming platforms. There are players who commit themselves to speedrun many games and some players who specialize in only one. It can take a matter of minutes or several hours. Simply put: speedrunning is playing a section of a game, or the game in its entirety, as quickly as possible.

Super mario bros 3 world 3 level 6