Last week was a seven-day bonanza full of exciting speedruns, as the Awesome Games Done Quick 2018 marathon raised over $US2 million ($2.5 million) for charity. Here are some of my favourite runs from the show.

Awesome Games Done Quick (AGDQ) is a week long slumber party where some people beat all kinds of video games super fast while thousands more watch. Now in its ninth year, the marathon wrapped up early today after raising a record breaking $US2,263,093 ($2,860,330) for the Prevent Cancer Foundation.

What's it like to speedrun huge role-playing games such as Final Fantasy 6 and Chrono Trigger? What kind of tricks are people still discovering? Today on Kotaku Splitscreen, we talk to a speedrunner to find out.

Awesome Games Done Quick 2018 boasts dozens of speedruns where runners make difficult games look like a cakewalk. CarcinogenSDA's Resident Evil 7 speedrun turns the game's toughest challenge into a masterclass in improvisation as he side-steps monsters and changes his route on the fly when things go bad.

The annual Awesome Games Done Quick speedrunning marathon kicks off this week at the Hilton Washington Dulles Airport Hotel in Herndon, VA. Speedrunners from a ton of different games will be talking spectators through all of their tricks while demoing their best runs in real time while donations are taken for the Prevent Cancer Foundation.

The Games Done Quick speedrunning charity marathon started up this weekend. The event, coming off years of increased runner and chat-related controversy, has taken extra steps to keep their chat free from spam and trolls. Their solution has drawn anger from fans and led to short lived chat alternatives that are quickly banned.

The schedule for Awesome Games Done Quick 2018 was released earlier this week. The week long schedule was culled down from a record 1688 game submissions, that would otherwise take over 100 days to complete.

Here's a handful of the game you won't see at Awesome Games Done Quick 2018 and some alternatives to watch instead.

Games Done Quick, the folks behind the popular semi-annual week-long charity speedrunning marathons, are holding an impromptu two-day event to raise money to help those affected by Hurricane Harvey.

The first week of July means it's time to get ready for the annual Summer Games Done Quick speedrunning marathon. The event is now in its fifth year, and SGDQ 2017 has an especially stellar line-up of games.

Remnants of Naezith is a platformer that stars a grappling hook and wants to be the Super Meat Boy of twitch-based ledge swinging. There are dragon souls and remnants of them (as the title suggests), but in the end it's all about being a futuristic Tarzan in a low-res world.

You've probably never given any of the SpongeBob games a second thought, but one speedrunner is playing thousands of hours of SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom in order to change that.

Six years ago, Awesome Games Done Quick started as a small outfit of speedrunners who played games to raise money for cancer prevention. Since then, AGDQ has ballooned into a big event: this year alone, viewers donated $US2.2 ($3) million dollars for a good cause. The added visibility has brought new challenges, as runners and organisers butt heads over rules that dictate what is banned from the event.

If you're a Final Fantasy fan, there are far worse ways to spend a few hours than to watch this wonderful AGDQ speedrun of the first game on NES.

In the waning hours of the Awesome Games Done Quick charity marathon, player grandpoobear raced through Super Dram World, a game designed to torture speedrunners.

Mighty No. 9 was less Mega Man revival and more colourful train wreck, but in the skillful hands of speedrunner GreenZSaber, playing the game during the Awesome Games Done Quick charity marathon Wednesday evening, it's a much more entertaining train wreck.

Speedrunning charity event Awesome Games Done Quick is in full swing and already producing some amazing runs. Yesterday, a speedrun race between two Shovel Knight players stole the show.

Video: There are few things more satisfying than watching someone tear apart one of your favourite childhood video games.

Video: If you have a few extra hours today, spend them watching this three-and-a-half-hour speedrun of Final Fantasy IV, an RPG that was certainly not designed to be completed in fewer than four hours.

A lot of cool stuff went down at Awesome Games Done Quick last week (and over the weekend), but one of the best was a "2P1C" world record on Super Metroid. Where 2P1C stands for "two players one controller".