Check out the annual Awesome Games Done Quick video game speed-running charity event that’s going on now! You can watch live on Twitch.tv as players try to play games as fast as possible all in the name of raising money for the Prevent Cancer Foundation. In past years the event has raised over $1.5 million dollars for charity, and numerous new video game speed running records have been smashed. Check out the full schedule of events and watch & donate on the Games Done Quick site.
One very interesting part of the event is the TAS, or ‘tool-assisted speedrun’, block of games. These speedruns use emulators, programming, and other tools to manipulate games and make superhuman speedruns possible. There’s an interesting crossover with the maker community as hardware like the Raspberry Pi, Arduino, etc. are used to play back controller input on real consoles. Sometimes the TAS runs go well beyond just completing a game too, for example the video above shows the manipulation of memory access bugs in Pokemon Red to completely reprogram it to display Twitch.tv chat!
This year the TAS block of games starts in the afternoon (eastern time) of Saturday January 9th and includes events like:
- TASBot vs Humans — Mystery Game
- TASBot plays Brain Age
- TASBot plays Super Mario Bros. 3
- TASBot takes Total Control of…
It’s sure to be another amazing year for Awesome Games Done Quick, good luck to all the speedrunners! And be sure to check out Adafruit on Twitch.tv for fun creative and hardware streams like the Desk of Ladyada.