Speedrunning

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 is a sub-category of speedrunning that uses emulation software to slow the game down and create a precisely controlled sequence of inputs. Many online communities develop around speedrunning specific games; community leaderboard rankings for individual games form the primary competitive metric for speedrunning. Racing between two or more speedrunners is also a popular form of competition. Videos and livestreams of speedruns are shared via the internet on media sites such as YouTube and Twitch. Speedruns are sometimes showcased at marathon events, which are gaming conventions that feature multiple people performing speedruns in a variety of games. Routing is considered a fundamental process in speedrunning. Routing is the act of developing an optimal sequence of actions and stages in a video game. A route may involve skipping one or more important items or sections. Skipping a part of a video game that is normally required for progression is referred to as sequence breaking, a term first used in reference to the 2002 action-adventure game Metroid Prime. Video game glitches may be used to achieve sequence breaks, or may be used for other purposes, such as skipping cutscenes and increasing the player's speed or damage output. Some people, called glitch-hunters, choose to focus on finding glitches that will be useful to speedrunners. In some games, arbitrary code execution exploits may be possible, allowing players to write their own code into the game's memory. Several speedruns use a "credits warp," a category of glitch that causes the game's credits sequence to play, which may require arbitrary code execution.