The Boston Marathon is an annual marathon race hosted by several cities and towns in greater Boston in eastern Massachusetts, United States. It is traditionally held on Patriots' Day, the third Monday of April. Begun in 1897, the event was inspired by the success of the first marathon competition in the 1896 Summer Olympics. The Boston Marathon is the world's oldest annual marathon and ranks as one of the world's best-known road racing events. It is one of six World Marathon Majors. Its course runs from Hopkinton in southern Middlesex County to Copley Square in Boston.
Speedrunning is the act of playing a video game, or section of a video game, with the goal of completing it as fast as possible. Speedrunning often involves following planned routes, which may incorporate sequence breaking and can exploit glitches that allow sections to be skipped or completed more quickly than intended. Tool-assisted speedrunning (TAS) is a subcategory of speedrunning that uses emulation software to slow the game down and create a precisely controlled sequence of inputs.
A tool-assisted speedrun or tool-assisted superplay is generally defined as a speedrun or playthrough composed of precise inputs recorded with tools such as video game emulators. Tool-assisted speedruns are generally created with the goal of creating theoretically perfect playthroughs. This includes but is not limited to the fastest possible route to complete a game and/or showcasing new ways to optimize existing world records.
The iQue Player is a handheld TV game version of the Nintendo 64 console that was manufactured by iQue, a joint venture between Nintendo and Taiwanese-American scientist Wei Yen after China had banned the sale of home video games. Its Chinese name is Shén Yóu Ji (神游机), literally "God Gaming Machine". Shényóu (神游) is a double entendre as "to make a mental journey". It was never released in any English-speaking countries, but the name "iQue Player" appears in the instruction manual. The console and its controller are one unit, plugging directly into the television. A box accessory allows multiplayer gaming.
In shooter games, rocket jumping is the technique of using the knockback of an explosive weapon, most often a rocket launcher, to launch the shooter into the air. The aim of this technique is to reach heights and distances that standard character movement cannot achieve. Although the origin of rocket jumping is unclear, its usage was popularized by Quake.
Glitching is an activity in which a person finds and exploits flaws or glitches in video games to achieve something that was not intended by the game designers. Players who engage in this practice are known as glitchers. Some glitches can be easily achieved, while others are either very difficult or unperformable by humans and can only be achieved with tool-assisted input. Glitches can vary greatly in the level of game manipulation, from setting a flag to writing and executing custom code from within the game.
Quake done Quick is a series of collaborative speedruns and machinima movies in which the video game Quake, its mission packs, and related games are completed as quickly as possible without the use of cheats. Most playthroughs use shortcuts or tricks, such as bunny hopping and rocket jumping, in order to achieve a faster time. These movies are available in the game engine's native demo format and in various multimedia formats such as AVI.
DeFRaG is a free software modification for id Software's first-person shooter computer game Quake III Arena (Q3A). The mod is dedicated to player movements and trickjumping. It aims at providing a platform for self-training, competition, online tricking, machinima making, and trickjumping. Hence it constitutes an exception among other Q3A mods.
In computing, an emulator is hardware or software that enables one computer system to behave like another computer system. An emulator typically enables the host system to run software or use peripheral devices designed for the guest system. Emulation refers to the ability of a computer program in an electronic device to emulate another program or device.
TheSpeedGamers is a group of video gamers based out of Arlington, Texas, who raise money for various charities. They accomplish this by streaming live marathons of video games on Twitch. The group was founded by Britt LaRiviere in early 2008 and still hosts marathons regularly through the year. Viewers can interact with the commentators and other viewers via chat on Twitch. The group has raised over $845,000.00 for more than 20 different charities.
Mario Marathon is an annual fund raiser for Child's Play Charity. As of August 24, 2017, the event has raised more than $600,000 during the seven years it has been running. In 2008, the event organizers also orchestrated a smaller Zelda marathon that managed to bring in an additional $2,477.00 for Child's Play Charity.
Mychal Ramon Jefferson, better known online as Trihex, is an American professional gamer, speedrunner, and Twitch streamer. He is best known for his runs of Super Mario and Yoshi games—including several notable appearances at Games Done Quick events—and as the face of TriHard, one of Twitch's most popular emotes.
Games Done Quick (GDQ) is a semiannual video game speedrun charity marathon held in the United States, originally organized by the Speed Demos Archive and SpeedRunsLive communities. Since 2015, it has been handled by Games Done Quick, LLC. Held since 2010, the events have raised money for several charities.
Narcissa Wright is an American speedrunner and co-founder of the website SpeedRunsLive, which allows speedrunners to race with one another in real time. She previously held the records for the fastest completion of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker on the GameCube, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time on the iQue Player, Paper Mario on the Wii using Virtual Console, and Castlevania 64 on the Nintendo 64.
Piotr Delgado Kusielczuk, better known as The Mexican Runner or TMR, is a speedrunner who specialises in Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) games. After three years, on February 26, 2017, TMR was the first player to play through the entire NTSC and PAL NES catalogue, completing 714 officially-licensed titles in a project he called NESMania, which earned him a Guinness World Record. TMR is also known for his speedrunning accomplishments in Contra, Battletoads, and Cuphead.
Environmental Station Alpha is a 2015 Metroidvania created by Finnish indie developer Arvi Teikari.
Due to the perceived negative connotations of video games, both industry members and consumers of video games have frequently collaborated to counter this perception by engaging in video gaming for charitable purposes. Some of these have been charitable groups, or regular and annual events, and the scope of these efforts have continued to grow, with more than US$22 million having been raised by video game-related charity efforts in the first half of 2018 alone.
TASBot is a tool-assisted speedrun mascot created in 2013, developed by a team led by dwangoAC. A replay device takes a list of controller inputs which it then sends to a console such as a Nintendo Entertainment System or Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) directly via signals to the controller ports.
Zfg is an American speedrunner and streamer known for his The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time gameplay. He has held various records in speedrunning the game and its alternative version Master Quest, most notably the 100% completion category for the original game, for which he had held the record since mid-2015. He was the first person to complete Ocarina of Time to 100% in under four hours. He currently holds the record in the 100% SRM category with a time of 3 hours, 0 minutes, and 39 seconds, as of December 2022.
European Speedrunner Assembly, formerly European Speedster Assembly, is a semi-annual video game speedrunning charity marathon held in Sweden. Held since 2012, the events have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for several charities.
