Tune Into One of Gaming's Coolest, Quirkiest Events Right Now

Have you ever seen someone beat Castlevania on the NES in less than 15 minutes? What about someone racing through Super Mario World without ever touching a single mushroom? No? Curious how that's even possible? Summer Games Done Quick (SGDQ) is going on now, and it's your chance to find out.

SGDQ, and its wintertime twin Awesome Games Done Quick, is a days-long livestreaming event dedicated to the impressive, alien art of video game speedrunning. For days on end, experts in various games show up to blast through their games of choice at breakneck speed, making equal use of trained motor skills and bug-exploiting ingenuity that breaks the games at the most fundamental level to let players achieve the impossible.

Perhaps the best part is the commentary from runners themselves, explaining the minutiae of their incredibly detailed strategies and offhandedly illustrating and explaining the inner workings of a game with such detail that it's mind blowing. It's a real treat for anyone who has a general interest in How Things Work.

Even better still, SGDQ is done as a charity event to raise money for Doctors Without Borders, which can help you rationalize watching a speedrun of Pikmin 3 at 2 PM on a Monday.

Tune in see what's going on right now, or check the schedule of events that runs from now until the wee hours of Sunday, July 1st. While it's a thrill to watch live, there's also no pressure to wake up at 4 AM for a run you want to see. All of SGDQ's runs are dutifully archived on YouTube for on-demand watching at your leisure, including runs from years past like this masterful Super Mario 64 speed run from last year's event (shown in the GIF above) or this jaw-droppingly glitch-filled two-hour run of Pokemon Blue from 2015.

So take a peek if you want to witness a bizarre side of video games you've likely never seen before. Just be careful, because chances are good that you'll get sucked in.