Summer Games Done Quick, a charity speed marathon that returned with a face-to-face event for the first time in a few years, was held between June 26 and July 3 in Bloomington, Minnesota. And by the end of the week, once all the races were done, the event had raised a whopping $ 3 million for the charity.
The final total was $ 3,021,310.49, all of which will be donated to Médecins Sans Frontières / Médecins Sans Frontières. When you add that to the $ 3.4 million that Awesome Games Done Quick raised earlier this year, which went to the Cancer Prevention Foundation, it’s a lot of money that people are splitting up to see how runners do very interesting shit with video games.
SGDQ 2022 was the first GDQ event in person since the pandemic began in early 2020, so it was amazing to see a live crowd on hand to support / react to all the action taking place. . If you haven’t seen any action, here are some of the highlights. We’ll start with this amazing Ocarina of Time race, which goes beyond fast, safe play, but also does so much more:
Ocarina of Time TAS by dwangoAC, TASBot, Savestate, Sauraen at 53:05 – Summer Games Done Quick 2022
And here’s an Emerald Pokémon race that involved a four-player co-op, along with a randomizer that meant that every time your Pokémon leveled up, it would randomly become a different Pokémon. The result was absolute chaos:
Kizaron Emerald Pokémon, 360Chrism, Shenanagans, adef at 3:14:04 – Summer Games Done Quick 2022
This is a Super Mario Sunshine race that has ups, downs, and ups again before it’s over:
SB_runs’ Super Mario Sunshine at 2:59:24 – Summer Games Done Quick 2022
And finally, here’s a Yakuza: Like a Dragon race that finished the whole game in less time than it took me to complete a couple of the toughest boss battles:
Yakuza: Like a Dragon by Froob at 4:09:52 – Summer Games Done Quick 2022
If you want to see more rounds, or just pick one from a game that interests you especially, the organizers have recordings of each of them on their YouTube page.