A new year means a new Awesome Games Done Quick event to help kick things off, and so the past week has seen the semi-annual charity event place a lot of eyes on some impressive video game speedruns. Just as impressive as the speedruns is the amount raised for the Prevent Cancer Foundation, coming in with an end total of $2,515,980. A good chunk of the donations came courtesy of the penultimate game on the event’s schedule, none other thanBaldur’s Gate 3,thanks to it not only being a Bonus Game on the final day of the event with an All Acts run by maeeeeee, but also offering up a bonus Any% run of the game if the milestone of two million dollars was reached. Said run was less than eight minutes long, but needless to say, many people were willing to donate to see just how such a massive game could be beaten so quickly.
The actual final run of the event,Final Fantasy V Pixel Remasteras run by Zic3, was no slouch as well when it came to helping raise money, thanks to a similar milestone incentive of seeing a fight against Omega, the game’s optional superboss, if the two and a half million dollar mark was reached. Other notable runs of the event included games such asLies of P,30XX,Jet Set Radio Future,Cocoon,Super Mario Sunshine,Resident Evil 4: Separate Ways,andBluey: The Videogame,among many others. One particular highlight was a run ofSuper Mario 64by CZR that used drums as controllers, but in the eyes of many, the main event was the much-hyped run ofGyromiteby JSR and their shiba inu, Peanut Butter, making it the first time at the event where a dog was one of the speedrunners. As seen below, it did not disappoint.
Awesome Games Done Quick 2024 also marked the first in-person AGDQ event since 2020 (save for one small block earlier in the week), marking a triumphant return as well, although the past two Summer Games Done Quick events were in-person as well. Notably, a new dual stage setup proved to be quite the improvement, as in contrast to several recent GDQ events, most of the event was kept perfectly on schedule. In fact, things were actually ahead of schedule so much that multiple backup runs were added to the event’s schedule, allowing games such asWhiplash,Aragami,andTrepang2to shine with some superb runs as well, with viewers even selecting Whiplash as the best run that day in a poll afterward.
The end result was Awesome Games Done Quick 2024 being one of the smoothest and arguably best Games Done Quick events yet, thanks to some terrific hosts, commentary, and a lot of insane skills on display, be they lightning-fast reflexes or insane techniques used to go out of bounds and skip entire sections. And it all went towards such a noble cause to boot, with so much raised to help support the Prevent Cancer Foundation. GDQ will return with Frost Fatales from March 3 to March 10, and Summer Games Done Quick 2024 will take place from June 30 to July 26, but you can always watch GDQ’s daily Hotfix showsover on their Twitch channel,and of course, watch any AGDQ 2024 runs you may have missedover on their YouTube page,along with several other past runs.
