At last, it's time for the most exciting live competitive event of the year. No, I don't mean the Super Bowl - it's time for Awesome Games Done Quick, the annual charity speedrunning marathon that features a week of talented gamers showing off the wildest things they can do with video games.
Games Done Quick (GDQ) has been running for 15 years now, since 2010. The event is a live broadcast speedrunning marathon, during which speedrunners take turns showing off beating video games as fast as possible, and often in wacky and especially impressive ways. In recent years, the events have shown off increasingly ambitious performances, including blindfolded or one-handed runs, two players using a single controller, showcases of tricky arcade games, and even speedruns performed by dogs.
The annual event is held to raise money for the Prevent Cancer foundation, having previously raised a record high of $3,442,033 in 2022, and $2,539,832 just last year. And this year's marathon has some pretty ridiculous runs on the docket. There's a run of Crazy Taxi backed by a live band, someone playing Elden Ring with a saxophone, new Super Mario Bros. Wii run while simultaneously playing piano, a two-players-one-controller run of Breath of the Wild, loads of randomizer races, and it all wraps up with a Map Randomizer Race between some of the best Super Metroid runners out there. If you've never watched GDQ before, it's really worth tuning in.
AGDQ 2025 kicks off at 9:00 AM PT on Sunday, January 5 with a run of Pikmin on Nintendo Switch, followed by Portal 2. In fact, Sunday's full of bangers: Kirby's Air Ride follows, there's an Astro Bot run, then The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, a run infamous for appearing at GDQ every years and getting shorter each time as the community discovers new, run-changing skips.
If I keep going I'll just list every single run in the entire event, so here's a quick list of highlights you should definitely check out. Definitely peak at the official website for a look at the full schedule, because there's tons of great runs I didn't list here, and the timing will be subject to change constantly throughout the week.
At 8:24 PM PT, GDQ will kick off a block of games that have been affectionally referred to in past years as "Awful Games Done Quick" or the "Awful Block." These are games that are silly, janky, broken, or otherwise of questionable quality, and always make for some hilarious speedruns. The first run, Superman 64, you've probably heard of before, but the rest you may have not. The Awful Block runs throughout the night on Wednesday into very early Thursday morning. Speaking from experience, I highly recommend having insomnia and staying up all night to watch it. The block concludes with Kevin Costner's Waterworld at 3:11 AM on Thursday.
Seriously, just stop sleeping and watch the entire day Saturday. I want to list every game here. It starts with Peggle Extreme and Metal Gear Solid, for pete's sake! There's not a bad thing on the schedule! Fine, fine, my editor said I have to narrow it down:
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
