speedrun

noun

speed·​run ˈspēd-ˌrən 

variants or less commonly speed run

plural speedruns also speed runs

: a timed playthrough of a video game or portion of a video game completed as quickly as the player is able to complete it

Speedruns have, in one form or another, been around as long as video games have existed. There's a simple reason for that: Being the fastest at something is an easy, quantifiable way to measure a player's greatness, not unlike earning a high score.

—Erica Lenti

Start with a speedrunning timer. … It's important to use these, as they show times for various sections of the game as opposed to just one timer for the entire game. They also show what the current world record time is for each section, which you can use for comparison. If you see that you've fallen way behind after a certain section, you can just start the speedrun over, as opposed to slugging through a playthrough you know won't hit the goal.

—Jhaan Elker

A few years ago, she stumbled across a Twitch streamer who was doing speed runs of Super Mario Sunshine—trying to complete the game as fast as possible.

—Avi Selk and Emily Guskin

Examples of speedrun in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Further Reading Record-breaking Super Mario Bros. speedrun approaches robotic perfection In the speedrun, PB took over for the robot in a category called B Game. —Samuel Axon, Ars Technica, 17 Jan. 2024

Case in point: Awesome Games Done Quick 2024, which is streaming live 24 hours a day this week on Twitch, saw the very first speedrun performed by a dog. —Samuel Axon, Ars Technica, 17 Jan. 2024

Just because Lightning 4-2 was technically possible for a human didn't mean the extremely precise sequence of inputs was reliable enough to start integrating into full-game speedruns, though. —Dan Goodin, Ars Technica, 8 Sep. 2023

James flips it upside down for a manic, unpredictable speedrun of a remix. —Nina Corcoran, Pitchfork, 25 Oct. 2023

That's remarkable, because the number of exploits and glitches shown off in this year's speedrun was pretty remarkable. —Sam MacHkovech, Ars Technica, 24 Aug. 2020

This makes finishing enemies or moving around planets far different than we’re used to in Destiny 2 right now, and players are bound to find interesting new ways to use the grapple hook for speedruns or breaking older content. —Tom Warren, The Verge, 16 Feb. 2023

Almost every speedrun falls into one of these categories. —Washington Post, 13 July 2021

Toftness points to the story of a gamer in Quebec who accidentally found a previously undiscovered glitch in Castlevania while streaming a casual speedrun of the game on Twitch. —Erica Lenti, Wired, 10 July 2021

Word History

First Known Use

2004, in the meaning defined above