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5 Absurd Speedruns you Have to Watch
There are some classic speedrun categories that everyone knows but some categories and challenges are quite out there. From the weird to insanely difficult, here are some of those speedruns.
As speedrunning becomes more and more popular the limits to what’s possible in some of the biggest games within the speed running community are tested again and again. Nothing proves that more than the speedrunner Marbler beating the A button challenge in Super Mario 64, in which he had to beat the game without jumping.
The 86 hour long marathon was a recent example of just what’s possible when a community puts their efforts together and tackle a seemingly impossible challenge. Although these next examples won’t have a long history behind it like the A button challenge, they’re still all impressive in their own rights. So from the incredibly difficult to the outright silly, here are some other absurd speedruns that you should see.
Super Mario 64 Blindfolded
Staying in the realm of Super Mario 64, the game’s speedrunning scene is known for its precise and often difficult tricks to the point that an average run is already impressive on its own. Now add in the added difficulty of being blindfolded and it just becomes even more impressive as runners need to rely on muscle memory and sound cues to complete a run.
Overall, blindfolded runs like this are an impressive display of a runner’s knowledge of their game and makes for an incredibly entertaining run no matter which game it is.
Break the Targets (Super Smash Bros. Melee)
From one game with cool movement to another, Super Smash Bros. Melee has quite a few interesting speedrun categories. But one of the more interesting categories to watch is Break the Record. For each character, there’s a separate stage and category with routes being perfected to the point where a couple milliseconds makes all the difference between first and second.
Even though runs only last a few seconds overall, it’s still an impressive sight to see a character being used to their full potential and in creative ways overall.
Max Heat run (Hades 1)
Next up let’s head over to a more modern title with the original Hades. For Hades speedruns, the categories are split into different levels of Heat, which is the game’s difficulty amplifier which players can control how they make each run more difficult. Among the average categories, the highest heat is 50 heats, however as difficult as that already is, that’s not as high as it can go. Instead, with every possible difficulty modifier maxed out, a player can actually attempt a run on 64 heat, which until recently was considered nearly impossible (as explained by Haelian) without the help of seeding or modding.
Luckily, if there’s one thing to take away from speedrunning it’s that nearly impossible isn’t enough and eventually someone will be able to accomplish it as the speedrunner AngeL1c became the first ever to accomplish this insanely difficult run completely unseeded and unmodded.
Reverse badge order (Pokemon Red/Blue)
Now we head over to the original Pokemon Red and Blue, a game where a lot of its more interesting runs typically involve glitches that bypass the game’s forced linear progression of obtaining all the badges in order. So what if instead of just skipping all of it, you do everything in reverse?
That’s where the reverse badge category comes into play as the run, which completely flips that linear progression around, makes for an interesting watch as you witness some absurd things like seeing the runner get Mewtwo and destroy Giovanni to obtain the 8th badge long before even being told that they're light years away from facing Brock.
Sharpening 10 pencils
Let’s finish this list up by leaving video games altogether and into the real world. While pencil sharpening is a pretty mundane task most of us won’t really think about that deeply, some people have decided to make it the most intense and competitive thing you can think of.
And so pencil sharpening became a speedrunning category. For anyone interested in the history of the category, the Youtuber SmallAnt created a video detailing his journey to becoming a record holder in the category (before eventually being dethroned) and it’s just as silly of a journey as you may think it is. No matter what you may think about the concept of the category, you do have to admit that it is impressive to watch someone sharpen pencils that quickly no matter how impractical of a skill it may be.
Now that you’ve seen some of the absurd categories you can speedrun under, go out there and discover what more the wonderful world of speedrunning has to offer. Who knows? Maybe you could even become a record holder in some crazy category as well!
