Update [Wed 11th Jan, 2023 22:30 GMT]: The VOD is now live on YouTube, so you can check out the whole race in the video above!
AGDQ 2023 is underway right now, and if you haven't been watching it already, you've been missing some cracking speedruns from the very best runners in the world. And yesterday, a brand new world record was set for Super Mario Galaxy 2 at the charity speedrunning event.
The new record was set by Jhay — who actually broke his own world record by 4.4 seconds. Now the record sits at 2:54:51.33 in the Any% (With Bank). What does Any% (With Bank) actually mean? It's a particular category that means you don't have to do or collect everything, just simply beat the game, but the only requirement is that you need to use the Bank Toad to unlock the final galaxy.
What makes this record even more impressive is not only was Jhay playing the game in front of a live audience in the tens of thousands on the GDQ Twitch (the event is remote), but Jhay got the record while racing three other Super Mario Galaxy 2 speedrunners — MutantsAbyss, HardcoreGaming, and SuperViperT302.
It's safe to say that Jhay, who's from Wales and already holds 7/9 world records in both Super Mario Galaxy and the sequel, is pretty happy with himself going by this tweet. We don't blame him for celebrating.
The whole nearly 3-hour speedrun race is worth watching as all four runners demonstrate some incredible skills and techniques. You can watch the speedrun over on Twitch (where the embed should be time-stamped), and we'll update this post with the YouTube link when it's been uploaded!
And there are tons of other speedruns taking place until early Sunday morning (UK time), so make sure you check out our picks for the speedruns to look out for: