A smashing start to the new year.
Awesome Games Done Quick (AGDQ), a yearly speedrunning event raising money for the Prevent Cancer foundation, is ringing in the new year January 5. In case you’re unfamiliar, AGDQ is a yearly charity event that sees speedrunners chewing through a buffet of games, streamed live to an eager audience.
It always produces some brilliant spectacles, like a dog playing (digital) baseball. Hey, there ain’t no rules that say it can’t happen. My personal favourite actually comes from Summer Games Done Quick in 2023, wherein a bunch of determined chefs play Ratatoullie and keep up the “Yes, Chef” bit the entire time. Both AGDQ and SGDQ are always instructional and hilarious—and all for a good cause, with AGDQ raising over $2.5 million dollars last year.
The event’s just released its schedule for 2025, and it’s a doozy. Big-ticket games like Portal 2, Skyrim, and Super Mario 64 (which is a huge game in the speedrunning community, I’ve peered into that particular abyss) will of course be making their appearances, but I’m personally here for the challenge runs, baby!
DrDoot will take centre-stage with jazz powers befitting an Elden Lord, dooting through a boss showcase on January 11, 3:50 pm EST—just before that, there’ll also be a “lockout bingo” run at 1:30 pm EST between adef and Captain_Domo. In case you’re uninitiated, lockout bingo is a competitive format in which two players try to get lines on a bingo board full of tasks—twist being, they’re sharing the same board. Sort of like a version of Noughts & Crosses, only designed by gamer SAW. It should be delightful.
But that’s not even the tip of the iceberg. On January 6 at 7:40 pm EST, Player5 and MikeysGone will be trying to complete Breath of the Wild while sharing the same controller. Crazy Taxi will be played with a live accompanying band on January 11 at 4:20 pm EST, and love will be in the air when Fallout: New Vegas arrives on January 8 at 8pm EST in an “All Romances” speedrun.
I had no idea this category existed, but I’m excited to see how quickly you can make Benny go from shooting you to showing you “the tops”, whatever that means. I have also discovered, through looking at these ‘romance’ options, that you can sleep with a robot called “Fisto” in Fallout: New Vegas. I had to learn this information, now you do too.
There’ll also be the “awful runs”, an entire, hellish block from January 8, 11:20 pm EST to January 9, 6 am EST that will feature—charitably—some of the worst games ever made. Superman 64, Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing, and something called ‘Rex Ronan: Experimental Surgeon’ will be streamed to the internet alongside many others, so we can all be both proud and ashamed of our hobby’s shared cultural history. At least Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties isn’t there.
AGDQ kicks off properly on Sunday, January 5, at 11:30 am EST, and runs until January 11/12 (the finale runs about 15 minutes past midnight). You can watch it on the GamesDoneQuick Twitch channel.
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