Awesome Games Done Quick Online kicks off on Sunday, January 8, launching a week-long high-speed gaming extravaganza featuring some of the world’s foremost speedrunners showcasing their skills across a range of games past and present – and one featuring a hard to kill (opens in new tab) action hero who never officially saw the light of day.
The AGDQ event kicks off with a pre-show starting at 11:30 PM ET, followed by the first speed run – an Any% run from Splatoon 3 on Nintendo Switch – at 12 AM ET. The PC gets into action at 2:14 PM ET (these schedules are very tight) with some Crash Bandicoot fun. That’s not really my thing, but an hour after that starts a New Game+ run of Mirror’s Edge, which is more my speed.
Here’s a Catalyst run from Summer Games Done Quick in 2017. It takes 1:03:49 to get from start to finish – the current record, according to speedrun.com, is the significantly faster 49:18.
Other interesting speedruns available during the event include an Any% Nosferatu run through Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, an All-Quest playthrough from Fallout 3, an Any% Frogun run, an All-Trophies completion from Goat Simulator and an Any% co-op playthrough of Dead Space 3.
The real hook for me (even though it’s not a PC game) is an Any% run of Steven Seagal Is: The Final Option, a mid-90s SNES beat-em-up that was never actually released . According to SNES Central (opens in new tab)however, a playable beta version eventually surfaced and it is a “fully functioning game,” according to the AGDQ 2023 Online submission page.
“Just like in real life, Steven Seagal has 255 lives and can respawn in a nearby area,” the description accurately says. “The run consists of out of bounds to complete the stages and death warps on some jumps.”
It’s not a speedrun, but to prove it’s real, here’s a prototype gameplay of Seagal beating up some scientists and maintenance workers:
Besides the solid week of speedruns, Awesome Games Done Quick 2023 Online is notable for another reason: it will be the final event for Games Done Quick founder and general manager Mike Uyama, who announced earlier this week that he step down (opens in new tab) and “taking a break” after the show is over. Uyama has been leading the Games Done Quick series since its inception in 2010, when he broadcast from his mother’s basement; in the years since, GDQ has raised more than $41 million for charitable causes. 100% of the money raised during Awesome Games Done Quick 2023 Online will be donated to the Prevent Cancer Foundation (opens in new tab).
The final run in Awesome Games Done Quick 2023 Online will be an Any% warpless run of Super Mario Bros 3 on the NES, before ending a little after midnight (again Eastern time) on January 15th. dive into the full schedule gamesdonequick.com (opens in new tab).