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 18
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.
Never miss these events. Several great runs this year ❤️
@Pillowpants
Neither the article or YouTube thumbnail make this clear, but this isn't a vanilla Pokémon Emerald speedrun.
It's a heavily modified category that the runner commissioned himself, that lets the viewers decide through donations what his solo lead Pokémon will be throughout the run, changing each time he defeats a gym leader or boss.
However the run is so heavily modified that it's hard to give any real credit as a speedrun, since it removes multiple required battles from Team Aqua and Magma, introduces (changes to) items and moves from or inspired by future generations, and has its own custom rules like level caps, and an item to instantly raise to that level cap.
So, it amounts to a run that bypasses all of the usual strategy and route planning of a Pokémon run that makes it interesting, and more of an exhibition of demonstrating intimate knowledge of the third generation roster of Pokémon and specific gym leader battles.
@RupeeClock Thanks! I already had a feeling it wasn't possible to finish the game that quick. I'll still give it a watch and see what's what!
@Pillowpants
Actual vanilla speedruns of Emerald without using glitches, have times in the 2.5 hour mark! So adef's custom run is slower than that lol.
The glitched category gets that time down to under 80 minutes.
Much of this is possible because Emerald has been reverse engineered and heavily studied, so even without glitches things like intense RNG manipulation is possible.
@RupeeClock yea ngl, I feel like I got pranked when I clicked the vid simply titled "Pokemon Emerald by adef" for the runner to then proceed to pull out some new busted game altering mechanic every minute like the mach bike everywhere and safety blast lmao
@Ham-n-jam
It's become a recurring issue for GDQ schedules.
Familiar fan favorite games keep appearing on their schedule, but with caveats like it's a gimmick category or a modified game.
Super Mario Bros 2 can't just be SMB2, it has to be a kaizo hack.
Wind Waker can't just be Wind Waker, it's an Arbitrary Code Execution run that turns into an exhibition of what they can do when they have full control over the game connected to a computer feeding it inputs.
It's no longer enough to see the original game played to its conclusion, since speedrunners have optimized those runs so well that there's nothing new to see.
Even something arbitrary like beating Super Metroid with the four main bosses in a reverse order, is no longer enough.
It's on the same level as those "Game But Different" videos that swamp YouTube recommendations.
@BeefCatStudios Yeah, that random factoid at the end seemed so shoehorned in. It added nothing to the article.
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