In the realm of human endeavors, there have been many tales of feats of strength, cunning, and intelligence. Some of those feats have transcended the mere act and have become their own form of legend.
Around 2560 BC, the Great Pyramid of Giza, the oldest and the largest of the three pyramids in modern-day El Giza, Egypt, was finished. It still stands today, a great feat of engineering and human labor. It is considered one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
In basketball, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar holds the records for most points scored in the NBA with 38,387. Kobe Bryant, who just retired after 20 seasons in the league, is only third on the list with 33,643. Michael Jordan, the G.O.A.T., is fourth at 32,292. It’s safe to say that Kareem’s feat is pretty insurmountable.
IBM, long forgotten as the pioneer of the personal computer (PC), still chugs on, creating absolute computational marvels. In 1997, IBM’s Deep Blue supercomputer beat the reigning chess champion, Garry Kasperov, in six out of seven matches. Not to be outdone, IBM rolled out Watson in 2011. It was featured in Jeopardy!, where it competed and defeated former Jeopardy! Champions Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings, winning $1 million in the process. This was a supercomputer that LISTENED to the answers, UNDERSTOOD what was said, THOUGHT about the proper question, BUZZED IN, and SPOKE THE QUESTION! That is a pretty crazy feat of technology, and further proof that the Terminators are going to kill us all.
Gaming is not considered a marvelous feat to people outside of the gaming sphere. Playing a video game doesn’t seem to be all that difficult to most people, even though most of those same people couldn’t play a game well enough to progress through it. But gamers know a feat when they see one.
On May 18th, a speedrunner went on his Twitch channel and started livestreaming a speedrun of Bethesda’s reboot of the classic Id Software title, Doom. He managed to do a complete speedrun of the game in less than 90 minutes. To the uninformed, that doesn’t seem like that big of a deal. Even to those in the know, it’s not a great feat, since he was playing on the easiest setting and did not try to do 100% of everything there is to do. But it’s still pretty cool to see, and any speedrun of a video game is pretty impressive.
Speedruns, sessions where gamers try to beat a game as fast as possible, have been a thing for years. The most recent world record run that caused a stir was on April 13th, when speedrunner darbian posted a world record run through Super Mario Bros. on his YouTube channel. The run, clocked at 4:57.42, beat the previous world record, which had stood for a year, by less than a half second.
There ae YouTube and Twitch channels dedicated to speedruns. One of my personal favorites, Games Done Quick, hosts marathons where known speedrunners take on classic games like Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, as well as more modern titles like Minecraft and Bloodborne. These marathons are usually organized as charity events, benefiting organizations like Doctors Without Borders and the Prevent Cancer Foundation. In these events, you can see gamers absolutely rip through games, even setting world records for speed.
Speedrunning, however, may not be considered a real feat, because they may take advantage of glitches or other exploits within the game. Also, many speedruns require gamers to simply memorize and practice certain moving or jumping patterns in order to achieve faster times. Despite this, some of the runs are mesmerizing to me. My favorite ones are speedrunner PJ’s run of the NES sleeper title Solstice and dram55’s world record run of Kaizo Mario World, a Super Mario World ROM hack commonly known as Asshole Mario. Seriously, the latter looks like a level designed in Super Mario Maker by Vlad the Impaler during a fever dream. And this is a WORLD RECORD RUN!
But maybe speedrunning is not your thing. Maybe a fast run through a video game is not impressive enough of a feat for you. That’s fine; there are other feats that are just as crazy.
How about beating Dark Souls III, the latest game in a series known for its brutal difficulty? How about beating it on NG+7, the absolute hardest difficulty in the game? And how about beating it with NO WEAPONS?
That’s what Twitch livestreamer TolomeoR accomplished on the same day as the Doom speedrun. Granted, he was at Soul Level 196, a pretty high character level, but beating a game as challenging as Dark Souls III with only fists is pretty crazy.
These so-called “challenge runs” test the skill of a gamer who wants to beat game using a ridiculous set of restrictions. The craziest such run I have ever seen is one done by mev1978 and posted to YouTube on November 18th, 2011. He did a full playthrough of The Legend of Zelda, getting to Ganon, the game’s final boss, with no sword, no rings, only three hearts, and without dying or continuing! If that is not a feat of gaming prowess, I do not know what is!
There are hundreds of similar challenge runs. Lobos Jr. did a run of Dark Souls III without healing and also did a run of Bloodborne without a weapon as well, also on NG+7. Craziest of all are the people, like KahalachanGames, who try to beat games like Grand Theft Auto V, where you play criminals and commit dozens of crimes regularly, as law-abiding citizens. Now THAT is a feat!
Okay, none of the speedruns and challenges are feats that can be compared next to the Great Pyramid of Gaza and Kareem’s scoring record. But to a gamer, those feats are very impressive to pull off and are an absolute blast to watch happen. Seriously, watch that Asshole Mario speedrun and tell me it’s not impressive! Kareem can’t do that!
