speedrun

A speedrun is playing through a game, or one part of it, as fast as possible, usually with a timer running and a route planned down to the second. People who do it are speedrunners.

What it means

Serious speedrunners practice the same game for years, memorizing routes and using glitches to skip whole sections. Runs are sorted into categories so times can be compared fairly:

• Any%: finish the game by any means, as fast as possible.
• 100%: finish with everything collected.
• Glitchless: no exploits allowed.
• TAS: a tool-assisted speedrun, made frame by frame with software. These are shown as demonstrations, not competition.

The word has also become everyday slang for doing anything absurdly fast. Merriam-Webster notes the figurative use: you can speedrun a degree, a group project or a breakup.

Examples

• “He finished Mario 64 in under 20 minutes. Insane speedrun.”
• “I speedran my morning routine and still missed the bus.”
• “They met in June and got engaged in August. Speedrunning the relationship.”

Where it came from

Merriam-Webster dates “speedrun” to 1993, the year Doom came out. Wikipedia credits Doom with the first strong speedrunning community, because players could share recordings of their runs as small files. Communities and leaderboards followed: Speed Demos Archive in 1998, and Speedrun.com, now the main leaderboard site, in 2014.

Games Done Quick

The best-known speedrunning event is Games Done Quick, a series of charity marathons founded by Mike Uyama. The first, in January 2010, raised $10,532. By January 2026 the events had raised more than $59.8 million in total, with the record set at Awesome Games Done Quick 2022: $3.44 million.

Related terms

• cheese: winning with an exploit, a speedrunner’s friend
• clutch: pulling it off under pressure
• git gud: practice more
• sweaty: playing at maximum effort
• try-hard: someone who takes the game very seriously

See more terms like this in our gaming slang dictionary.