Speedrunning isn’t just about finishing a game, it’s about breaking it, mastering it, and pushing it to its absolute limits. Whether it’s warping straight to the final boss, exploiting game-breaking glitches, or just executing pixel-perfect movement, speedrunners turn games into high-speed puzzles where every second counts.
But not every game is built for speedrunning. Some have deep, well-balanced mechanics that reward precision. Others? Absolute chaos with game-breaking skips that let you hit the credits in minutes.
So, if you’ve ever wanted to blaze through a game like a pro or just see how far the rabbit hole goes, here are 10 of the best speedrunning games that will test your reflexes, patience, and your sanity.
Super Mario 64
Take one plumber, add a broken camera, a million glitches, and a timer. That’s Super Mario 64 speedrunning in a nutshell. It’s fast, weird, and honestly kinda beautiful in its chaos.
The categories that people compete for world records:
- 120 Star – The full tour. Every star, every secret. Painful, but pure.
- 70 Star – Mostly normal. A little janky, a little spicy.
- 16 Star – Here’s where reality breaks. Enter: glitches.
- 0 Star – Who needs stars when you can phase through walls?
Key Move: BLJ. The Backwards Long Jump. Mario launches himself backwards so fast the game just… stops caring. It’s the heart of the broken runs, and it never gets old.
The movement is slick, the glitches are fun, and new strats still drop decades later. It’s not just nostalgia, it’s speedrunning comfort food, with a side of unhinged tech.
Want to get hooked? Watch some of those world record runs and see how addictive it is. I watched many speedrunners attempting to break world records and I came to a simple conclusion, I’m not capable of doing that. So, kudos to them.
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
This isn’t your childhood Zelda run. In the speedrunning world, Ocarina of Time isn’t just a game, it’s a playground for breaking space and time. You thought Link was the Hero of Time? Nah. He’s the Hero of Warping Through Walls and Deleting Reality.
Main Categories:
- Any% – Beat the game. Fast. Really fast. Current strats let you warp to the end credits in under 7 minutes. Yes, minutes. No, you don’t need the sword.
- All Dungeons – A more “honest” run, but still loaded with skips.
- Glitchless – For people who like pain and rules.
- 100% – Every item, upgrade, heart piece. It’s long, it’s brutal, and it’s a flex.
Key Tech: Wrong Warps & ACE
- Wrong Warp – Trick the game into sending Link to the wrong scene. Like opening a door in Kokiri Forest and ending up at Ganon’s front porch.
- ACE (Arbitrary Code Execution) – The nuclear option. Runners rewrite the game’s memory mid-run to warp to the credits, or just give themselves items out of thin air. Actual sorcery.
The movement’s smooth, the glitches are endless, and the community is somehow still finding new skips. It’s fast, it’s weird, and it rules.
Celeste
Celeste is already a tough game. Speedrunners looked at that and said, “Cool. What if we never stopped moving?” The result: a speedrun that’s all about perfect inputs, wild tech, and enough resets to make your keyboard beg for mercy.
Main Categories:
- Any% – Just beat the main story. Short, sweet, deadly.
- All Chapters – Includes B-Sides, C-Sides, and full panic mode.
- Farewell – One level, one emotional breakdown.
- True Ending – Everything. All chapters, Farewell, 100 strawberries. Good luck.
- Movement Tech (aka the cool stuff):
- Hyper Dash – Dash into the ground to launch forward.
- Ultra – Stack momentum like a speed tax evader.
- Wallbounce – Jump off walls with a speed boost. Flashy and fast.
- Reverse Demo Hyper Bunny Hop (yes, that’s real) – Because of course it is.
None of this is required in casual play. All of it is required if you want to finish a level in under 20 seconds like the absolute monsters at the top of the leaderboard.
Celeste speedruns are pure platforming art. No major glitches, just tight execution and movement so clean it’s ASMR for your eyes. And with how responsive the game is, it feels as good to play as it is to watch.
Plus, the community is super active, inclusive, and constantly cooking up new categories and modded maps. It’s speedrunning with heart and one hell of a soundtrack.
Super Metroid
So here’s the deal: Super Metroid is old. Like, SNES old. But speedrunners never let it rest. Why? Because it’s the perfect combo of tight movement, open routing, and bugs that let you moonwalk through walls if you ask nicely.
What’s the Goal?
Depends on the category:
- Any% – Finish the game fast. Real fast. Clip through everything that tries to stop you.
- 100% – Grab every item and still finish fast. Routing this clean is an art.
- Low% – Basically “How little gear can I bring to a boss fight and still win?”
- RBO – Beat the hardest bosses first. Welcome to the deep end.
The Cool Stuff:
- Mockball lets you break the game’s rules about speed early on. It’s the first real “ohhh” moment.
- Shinespark turns Samus into a glowing torpedo. You’ll want to do it even when it’s not optimal just because it looks sick.
- Wall Jumps are buttery smooth and let you skip stuff like a rebel.
Clips, zips, and screen transitions that make it look like Samus is teleporting. Because sometimes… she is.
It’s fast. It’s stylish. And it feels like the game was accidentally built for speedrunning. Nothing beats watching someone run full tilt through Norfair, tanking lava damage on purpose, skipping upgrades, and somehow making it all look easy.
Minecraft
Speedrunning Minecraft is like trying to win a lottery while juggling lava buckets. You’re dropped into a random world and told: “Beat the Ender Dragon as fast as possible.” No script, no safety net — just crafting, luck, and pure gamer instincts.
Main Categories:
- Random Seed Glitchless (RSG) – The classic. New world, no glitches, full survival mode. Everything is earned. Or stolen from villages.
- Set Seed – Practice makes perfect. Same world every time, full route optimization.
- Any% Glitched – End portals out of nowhere, beds exploding everything. This one’s wild.
The Strats:
- Boat travel to blaze spawns? Yep.
- Piglin bartering for pearls? Essential.
- One-cycle the Ender Dragon with beds? It’s an art form.
Every run is a mix of fast decision-making, lucky spawns, and desperately trying not to die while looking cool.
It’s unpredictable, high-risk, and deeply satisfying. One second you’re chopping wood, the next you’re using beds as precision bombs. Top runners make it look easy, but behind every PB is hours of resets and a deep-seated hatred of blaze rods.
Also, the community? Huge. Active. Always grinding.
Portal
Portal is the puzzle game that makes you feel like a genius… or a glitch wizard, depending on who you ask. Speedrunning Portal is about optimizing physics, abusing momentum, and solving puzzles with as little “puzzling” as possible.
Main Categories:
- Any% – Beat the game. No extras. No mercy. It’s a one-way ticket to the exit, skipping every step along the way.
- 100% – Do the entire game, collecting all radios and cubes. No skips here just pure, unadulterated perfection.
- Glitchless – Because you don’t need glitches to be impressive. Just quick reflexes and brain power.
The Tech:
- Portaling Through Walls – Skip entire rooms by placing a portal on an invisible surface. It’s like cheating, but the game’s totally okay with it.
- Flings and Propelling Momentum – Drop from high places, build speed, and launch yourself into the next section like a human cannonball. You’re a physics god at this point.
- Reverse Portaling – It’s like time travel but with portals. By reversing your momentum mid-air, you can skip sections and still hit the landings. Feels too good.
- Edge Glitching – Finding the sweet spot where your portal lands in a space the game doesn’t expect? Golden.
It’s a short game, but every second counts. Speedrunners reduce the puzzle-solving to nothing but raw physics. And once you’ve mastered the art of propelling yourself through portals like some interdimensional acrobat, the game becomes less about problem-solving and more about bending space and time like a pro.
Hollow Knight
Hollow Knight isn’t just a metroidvania. It’s a speedrunner’s dream, once you get past the initial misery of learning the movement and boss patterns. Speedrunners have dissected this game like it’s a bug under a microscope, and the results are nothing short of insane.
Main Categories:
- Any% – Skip the lore, skip the upgrades, just beat the game as fast as you can. Expect some wild sequence breaks and totally broken skips.
- 100% – Grab every upgrade, every charm, every little piece of lore. It’s a grind, but damn if it isn’t rewarding to complete.
- Any% No Major Glitches – Minimal glitches, maximum pain. This one’s a lot more “legit,” as the cool kids say.
- Steel Soul – Hardcore mode. No healing. If you die, it’s over. Zero room for mistakes.
The Tech:
- Movement Mastery – The real fun begins when you figure out all the little movement tricks: Superdash, Desolate Dive, and Vengeful Spirit all combine to make you a blur of shadowy spikes and dust.
- Glitches – From early skips in the tutorial area to the “Spacedash” glitch that lets you zip around the map in ways the devs never intended, this game is full of secrets that break the flow of time.
- Void – Runners use precise map routing to skip whole areas, leaving you staring at how a single dash through a wall can save 5 minutes.
- Boss Strats – Prepare for some extreme muscle memory. In 100% runs, bosses like the Radiance or Nightmare King Grimm aren’t just fights, they’re tests of pure focus. One slip-up, and you’re going to lose time.
Hollow Knight isn’t just tough, it’s mesmerizing. Watching a top-tier runner zip through Kingdom’s Edge like they’re surfing on spikes is pure art. The movement is so precise, every jump, dash, and attack feels earned. And the community is full of passionate players who grind like they’re after an ancient relic. If you love challenges, you’ll love watching this because let’s face it most of us don’t have enough patience to do something like this.
Dark Souls
Dark Souls speedrunning is all about one thing: how quickly can you kill every boss without getting killed yourself. The game doesn’t care about your plans, and neither do speedrunners. You’ve gotta fight the game and the inevitable chaos of RNG, all while keeping your cool.
Main Categories:
- Any% – Beat the game as fast as humanly possible. This means skipping whole areas, glitching through walls, and doing boss fights with half the usual equipment. It’s chaotic.
- All Bosses – Kill every boss in the game, whether they want to die or not. It’s not as clean as you might think, but it sure is entertaining.
- No Major Glitches (NMG) – No map breaks or weird skips, just pure speed and skill. This one’s for the purists.
- New Game+ – Start the run with everything carried over from a previous playthrough. It’s like speedrunning, but your opponent is overpowered.
The Tech:
- Warps & Glitches – Every Dark Souls runner knows the best way to skip a section is with a good ol’ warp. Or… accidental death. Or a well-placed camera angle that lets you phase through walls.
- Rolling Through – At first, rolling is for dodging. After hundreds of runs, it’s just movement. You’ll be rolling in and out of boss fights like it’s second nature. Invincibility frames? More like “I’m too fast for you” frames.
- Parrying & Riposting – If you’ve got the timing down, you can skip a long fight with a well-timed parry. No one cares about the story, just the fight.
- RNG – From the item drops to boss attacks, Dark Souls loves to keep you on your toes. It can make or break a run. But hey, that’s half the fun, right?
Dark Souls doesn’t give you a break. If you slip up, the game punishes you sometimes with death, sometimes with a slow crawl through a whole area you’ve already conquered. But when you nail that perfect run, dodging attacks with pixel-perfect precision, or glitching through an impossible wall? That’s the good stuff. Every successful run feels like an achievement because the game does not want you to win.
Doom
Speedrunning Doom is like turning every demon into a speed bump. You’ve got the weapons, the movement, and enough adrenaline to make your heart race just watching a top-tier run. It’s all about clearing levels in the shortest time possible while dodging explosions, gunfire, and probably some bad decisions.
Main Categories:
- Any% – Get to the exit as fast as possible. No extra objectives, no fluff. Just gun down everything in your path and use some very questionable movement tactics.
- 100% – Collect all the items, secrets, and kills. Yes, you’ll be spending more time than usual in each level, but it’s more satisfying to leave no demon unpunished.
- Ultra-Violence% – Because why not add more pain? Play on the hardest difficulty while trying to beat your time. It’s like running a marathon… through hell.
- No Major Glitches (NMG) – Skip the crazy warps or sequence breaks and focus on doing it clean. It’s still fast, but with less of the wild “whoops, I ended up in the final level” stuff.
The Tech:
- Rocket Jumping – Blast yourself across the map with a rocket to save frames. You’ll be hopping over obstacles like a speed freak.
- Bunny Hopping – Keep your momentum while jumping, gliding across the levels like a demon-slaying parkour master.
- Chaingun/Shotgun Strats – Get up close, blast everything, and use precise shots to conserve ammo while dishing out the pain.
- Warping & Sequence Breaking – Skip huge chunks of levels by warping through doors or out-of-bounds. One moment you’re killing zombies, next you’re on the final boss like you’ve been there all along.
Doom speedruns are pure adrenaline, firing guns, jumping over obstacles, and dodging hellish fireballs while you’re trying to shave fractions of a second off your time. You don’t play Doom speedruns. You feel them. Every second counts. One bad move and you’re back to square one, but when you nail it? Feels like you’ve just kicked down the gates of Hell and walked right through.
Cuphead
Cuphead speedrunning is all about precision and insane reflexes. The game’s notorious for its unforgiving difficulty, but speedrunners don’t just play the game, they break it. The goal? Beat those heart-stopping bosses in the fastest time possible, while keeping every ounce of style.
Main Categories:
- Any% – Finish the game as fast as possible. Skip cutscenes, skip fights, but don’t skip your insane skill level. There’s no room for error here.
- All Bosses – A fan favorite. You gotta beat every single boss in the game, and trust me, each one gets nasty at top speed.
- All Inkwell Isles – Complete the whole game, including side missions, while making the game look like a casual stroll through Hell.
- No Major Glitches – Keep it clean. No skipping entire stages or warping just raw speed, skill, and all-out dodging.
The Tech:
- Perfect Dodges & Parries – Get that parry timing down to an exact science, and you’re golden. It’s all about that moment when you almost get hit… but then you don’t.
- Weapon Optimization – Every boss has a perfect weapon setup. From the spread shot to the chaser, you’ll be swapping mid-fight, dealing maximum damage while dodging impossible bullets.
- Super Meter Management – Timing your supers to never waste a hit, always maximizing damage while still dodging the insane barrage of attacks.
- Skip Stages – It’s not just about the bosses. Runners can find clever skips to avoid entire levels, shortening the path to the next mega-fight. Talk about creative routing.
You think Cuphead is tough when you’re playing it casually? Try doing it fast. Every boss fight is like a bullet hell nightmare, but when a speedrunner gets it right, it’s like watching a master pianist hit every key with flawless precision. One slip-up, and it’s back to the beginning. Every second counts.
But here’s the kicker, Cuphead looks beautiful. The hand-drawn art style and jazz soundtrack make you feel like you’re playing through a 1930s cartoon, even as you dodge flaming missiles and giant fists.
