In a world of simple video game guns, Receiver is a game that makes guns complex. Originally released in 2013, it’s still a unique experience, and speedrunner meanwhile_0 has trivialised it by beating it in 10:06.

Yesterday, a thread full of conversations between a handful of speedrunners gained traction on Twitter. Said to be screenshotted from a private Discord, these conversations included derogatory comments about women as well as transphobia and antisemitism.

After some initial hesitation, speedrun charity organisation Games Done Quick said last night that these streamers will no longer represent them at events.

A group of co-op speedrunners have completed the Left 4 Dead 2 campaign “Dead Air” a record time of 7:53, and to do so they’ve used some interesting strategies.

Briefly: Runner YaroKarozuno has completed the game in a flat six minutes, beating last week's world record run by 12 seconds. The community has also began subtracting load times from final times, meaning that YaroKarozuno has a 4:23 run.

Breath of the Wild players have always taken advantage of the game’s wonky physics, either in speedruns or for fun. It’s one thing to ride on stasis-launched trees, but it’s way more fun to shoot across Hyrule Field with a good head stomp. A new glitch allows just that, letting players gain tremendous speeds and blast off if they shield jump onto an enemy at the right angle.

Speedrunner “PootLoops” has defeated the bread simulator I Am Bread in a blistering six minutes and twelve seconds while pontificating about ABBA songs.

Into The Breach is fiddly, tactical game where I have often taken three or four minutes to consider a single turn, so watching someone beat the game in less than twelve minutes is pretty impressive.

SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom is a forgettable 3D platformer from the early 2000s that’s nevertheless gained a small cult following in recent years thanks to a dedicated speedrunning community.

Now, a glitch discovered just a few days ago that allows players to infinitely farm one of the game’s collectables threatens all that.

Is there anything so satisfying to watch as a well-played Mario speedrun? What makes an expert run of Super Mario Bros. so eminently watchable, and how do the players master their moves so perfectly? It turns out that the answer to both questions could be "music."

Briefly: The preliminary list of games for Awesome Games Done Quick 2019 has been released. The list is not final and will certainly change before a final schedule is made, but there are a lot of games to get excited about. The charity speedrunning event will happen in January 2019.

The original Super Mario Bros. is tightly optimised, as far as speedruns go. Runners have been shaving off milliseconds using highly-skilled play and glitches, all in the hopes of someday reaching a theoretically perfect run.

Previously, this was only achievable using special programs, but yesterday, a runner did what some people thought impossible, matching those computer-assisted performances with nothing but grit and skill.

In September of last year, Caleb Hart first streamed a completionist run of Final Fantasy VII. The PS1-era JRPG is notoriously involved, filled with hyper-difficult extra bosses and complicated sidequests. When it released in 1997 it shocked people by being too big to fit on one disc, instead requiring three. In recent weeks though, Hart has redoubled his efforts to marathon the game in all of its glory, in the process managing the herculean feat of doing everything in the game in a record-breaking sub-21 hour sitting.

Behold someone who has clearly played a ton of Dead Cells kicking the game’s arse in record time and making it look easy.

Ori and the Blind Forest is a beautiful metroidvania game where players progress through different areas and unlock new skills along the way. Each new skill gives the player new movement options that open up new areas and let them explore all the nooks and crannies of previous areas.

The Ori Randomiser mod takes that, mixes it all up in a giant bucket and spits it back out in a new way to explore.

A new Spelunky world record by Kinnijup is a lightning-fast 3:30:25-. It is genuinely shocking that someone can go from the beginning of the game through Hell in this amount of time.

The last month has seen some dramatic changes to The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time speedrunning, especially in the completionist category. A handful of newly-discovered glitches and shortcuts have blown open the doors on what was previously thought possible. One of the scene’s most accomplished players has managed to combine them to achieve some incredible new world records.

Yesterday Kevin “KevinDDR” Birrell managed to beat Perfect Dark’s Air Force One level in 52 seconds. This made him the second person in history to do so, tying speedrunner Karl “Sim Threat” Jobst’s record, set back in November 2017. From the decibels Birrell let loose upon completion during a livestream, the run was clearly more than just a tie.

Eighteen months on and people are still finding crazy stuff to do in Breath of the Wild: Here’s Zants smacking a rock a few times and ending up on top of Hyrule Castle.

Most players will take days to complete The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, but speedrunners do it much faster. Thanks to a year full of new discoveries and attempts by hard-working runners, The Wind Waker HD has been completed, for the first time ever, in under an hour.