The Awesome Games Done Quick 2026 event has now closed with a total of $2.443.554 raised for the Prevent Cancer Foundation.
The week-long fundraiser ended with a speedrun for Pokémon Emerald by streamer adef, who managed to beat it in 3 hours and 13 minutes. Other highlights from the event include a 70-Star, 70-Player relay for Super Mario 64 and an any% speedrun for Hollow Knight: Silksong from streamer Ceen, who stormed through the game to beat the final boss in 54 minutes and 55 seconds.
The next major event, Summer Games Done Quick 2026, will take place later this year from 5th - 11th July, with donations going to Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders).
The charity events have not been without controversy, with the 2022 Summer Games Done Quick fundraiser seeing the complete ban of speedrunner Mekarazium for faking a run of the Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance DLC. The player had shown a segmented, pre-recorded video of the run rather than playing it live, later admitting to this and receiving a ban from future GDQ events.
Did you watch any of the Awesome Games Done Quick event this year? What was your personal highlight from the schedule? Let us know.
[source youtube.com]
Comments 11
I could swear I've seen that exact Pokémon thumbnail before. Probably not the first time adef did that run at AGDQ.
Or as I call it, Avant Garde Dragon Quest.
Wow, I can't even imagine how to beat Emerald in such a short time. Definitely going to watch the replay. And great to see they managed to raise so much money. This event went a bit under my radar, but next time I might be inclined to donate and follow the live streams more.
Love to hear that they raised that much money for charity - hope those who took part and watched this had fun, too (doubt I'll watch them myself, but thanks for including the Emerald and Mario 64 speedruns)!
Watched the silksong run pretty cool, but skipped some other games I like because the runner or couch people had annoying voices. As they do talked and explain the run the whole time
I want to play Pokemon Emerald on the Switch!
@Don One of my biggest wishes for the 30 year anniverary of Pokémon is that we can finally play the classics on Switch (2). Let's hope it'll become reality!
Why even bring up a controversy that is one bad streamer from three years ago and not reflective of GDQ? Is it not more impressive that in the hundreds of challenge runs they've hosted, only a tiny tiny handful have attempted to cheat?
Edit: GDQ is such an amazing celebration of gaming and some of these Nintendo runs were magic. DK64 Randomizer? DK Bananza in like an hour? Shouldn't a site like this be celebrating these awesome Nintendo related achievements and highlighting charity rather than talking about a completely unrelated "controversy" that isn't Nintendo or GDQ 2026 related?
ok I find it a bit weird how an entire third of this article is spent detailing a 2022 cheating incident, is that supposed to colour my feelings toward the GDQ event or what?
@Pillowpants
Agreed, this year is the best chance for it to happen. I will be optimistic given they re-released the Gen 1 games on 3DS for the 20th anniversary.
Anyways, I've been watching the stream archives over the past few days - so far I've seen the Mario Sunshine, Luigi's Mansion, Sonic Adventure, Spyro 2, Katamari, and backward Mario World romhack runs. They've all been really entertaining. Next I'm gonna watch the Metroid Prime 3 run.
Also the Fitness Boxing with Hatsune Miku run was a fun showcase - they really went on stage to do a full workout! Quite impressive
First of all let me preface my comment with the fact that I have never played a Pokemon game nor do I even care about the series. That being said, I did watch the AGDQ finale and there are reasons it took adef over 3 hours to complete his run.
The donors got to pick the Pokemon and with the encouragement of adef himself, picked from what I understand were the weakest of the Pokemon. Once adef defeated a trainer, the next one adef used was again picked by the donors. Lather, rinse, repeat. adef also modded the game giving him a skill for the weaker Pokemon to overcome their weaknesses, otherwise he would still be playing out this run 3 days later.
Unfortunately during the run, some jackass decided it would be fun to pull the fire alarm which necessitated everyone having to leave mid-stream. But overall it was still a fun watch and raised a ton of money for a great cause.
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