It's been quite some time since we've seen a new run for one of our more popular titles, Super Metroid. Ever since Hotarubi brought his highly praised (and deservedly so) 0:32 any% run onto the scene several years ago competition on the title seemed to dry up. Undoubtedly, his efforts are a hard act to follow, but today I have the pleasure of unveiling a new run for the game that is definitely worthy of going up alongside the fantastic runs we already have. Runner Christopher Hill has obviously put a lot of time and energy into his work on the PAL version of the game, and the first result of these efforts we get to see is an any% run clocking in at 0:34. This is truly a fantastic effort from a new runner, and recent forum activity shows that he's not done by a long shot, so fans of the title likely have more good things to look forward to.

Next up we have something for all the Pokémon fans out there. Runner Stephen 'Toothache' Stafford chose quite a massive project for his first full game run. Simply finding a quick and efficient way through the main story of the Gamecube's Pokémon Colosseum would have been quite an undertaking, but he decided to take things one step further and go for 100% snags as well. Considering he dubbed his own test run of over 10 hours "pretty fast" it's really quite remarkable he was able to bring his final time down as low as 7:17. There's obviously a lot of optimization to be found in the 33 segments he used, so be ready to see just how quickly you can catch them all with a little concentrated effort.

Finishing things off today we have a two man effort on an individual levels table several years in the making. Runners Nicholas 'Sir VG' Hoppe and 'Persona' have pooled their best efforts over the years for the Time Attack mode in Castlevania Chronicles. The times are as follows:

• Stage 1 in 0:02:16.4 by Sir VG
• Stage 2 in 0:02:34.0 by Persona
• Stage 3 in 0:02:48.5 by Persona
• Stage 4 in 0:02:41.0 by Sir VG
• Stage 5 in 0:03:04.4 by Persona
• Stage 6 in 0:02:53.4 by Persona
• Stage 7 in 0:04:13.6 by Persona
• Stage 8 in 0:03:43.6 by Persona

This gives us a total time for the table of 0:24:14.7. And while it took quite some time for many of these levels to get to SDA, I'm sure you will agree that it was well worth the wait.

Also of note at this time is that our friends over at The Speed Gamers are currently in the middle of yet another marathon. This time they're playing through as many Mario games as they can get their hands on and raising money for the autism charity ACT Today. As of this posting they are about 48 hours deep into a week long event, so there's still plenty of action to see. While they may not burn through their games with the same fervor you see displayed at SDA, they do put on quite a show and are offering a multitude of prizes and have several special guests and events scheduled over the course of the week. So go check it out and maybe give a little money to a good cause while you're at it.

For starters today we have an improvement for Mario Kart Wii, though those who play the game for speed no doubt find the title to be a bit of a misnomer. Sure it features the gang from the Mario games, and it is undoubtedly a game released for the Wii, but with the introduction of bikes to the series anyone playing for top times and using a kart is just asking to get beat. Fully embracing the era of bike racing in kart games is runner Jose 'UchihaSasuke' Karica who is offering an improvement to his previous run of the game. Still played single segment, this time around he's upped the difficulty to hard mode, but despite this added hardship he was still able to obsolete his old time by just shy of 30 seconds, finishing with a time of 1:07:09.

Next up we have a new run for the Mega Man series with a somewhat unique twist to it. As followers of the site no doubt already know, we have a ton of Mega Man runs available for download, and one thing all these runs have in common is that they all have the player controlling either the Blue Bomber himself or one of the other hero characters introduced over the course of the series. Today, however, thanks to a feature in the PSP's Mega Man Powered Up it's one of the robot masters who gets his day in the sun. Piloted by runner Michael 'MAS8705' Solseth, Fire Man gets his chance to play the hero, and while he doesn't quite stack up to the likes of Mega Man and Proto Man he does show he's got what it takes to get the job done efficiently. Michael gets the once-villain through the game and achieves the good ending with a time of 0:26:07.69.

Finishing off today's update is a significant improvement to a run I personally thought was pretty solid to begin with. It's been quite some time since a serious attempt has been made at the original Castlevania. In fact, the run we've been hosting has stood for over four years and has received much praise in that time. You will note, however, the use of the past tense in that last sentence, as today we present an improvement to this long-standing run. Runner Aleksi 'Bablo' Kanerva took it upon himself to push this game closer to its limits, and by changing some strategies, tightening the execution, and forcing a few lucky breaks along the way he was able to chop nearly a minute off the incumbent time, bringing it down from 0:13:13 to 0:12:21. While it should go without saying, fans of the game and the old run should rush to check this one out. It truly is quite a treat.

Starting things off today is another one of those games I feel has been a notable omission from our collection to this point. Metal Gear as a series has been shown a lot of love from the speedrunning community over the years, but the same cannot be said for the game Metal Gear itself. While a few have started attempts at a run of the original, a finished product had never made its way onto the site, until today that is. Playing on the NES version of the game, runner Marko 'Master-88' Vanhanen provides us with a single segment run with deaths clocking in at 0:28:46. Described by the runner himself as using a route that "looks a little bit like TAS" you can be sure he made Solid Snake appear true to his reputation for resourcefulness and efficiency.

And for the second update in a row our first runner is also our second. Master-88 is at it again with another run for a classic NES title. The game in question keeps with the military theme set by Metal Gear, but rather than overhead maps he's now guiding his character through a platformer filled with spike pits and tall towers. Pretty standard fare for a sidescroller, but made much more interesting when the player is deprived of a jump button. Yes, we have a new run today for Bionic Commando. Going up alongside Jeff Feasel's any% run is Master-88's new 100% effort, collecting every weapon, item, armor, and translator the game has to offer in 0:26:57. Fans of the game will no doubt enjoy seeing the game's many optional levels blazed through and those less familiar with the title still get to see the Hitler look-a-like's head explode at the end. Everybody wins with this run.

Wrapping things up today we have an inaugural run for a superhero title. The Genesis version of The Incredible Hulk offers an interesting gameplay feature in that the titular character can actually revert to his mild-mannered alter ego, the brilliant scientist Bruce Banner. Now this might actually be useful if the game were subtitled something like "The Dastardly Differential Equations," but fortunately for your entertainment purposes such is not the case. The developers did, however, also include a feature on the other end of the spectrum where the Hulk can be even more superhumanly strong and fast, and it is this state you will see a lot of in runner Troy 'Hellfire7777777' Spence's run of the game. Playing on Arcade difficulty he pilots the big green behemoth through in a time of 0:19:35.

A bikini-clad zombie slayer, a vampire hunter, and a robot walk into a bar. . .

First up we have a run for a game that doesn't put on airs. With a title like Onechanbara: Bikini Zombie Slayers you'd expect to get a game that has scantily clad women slicing up hordes of zombies, and that is exactly the experience that it delivers. No lengthy exposition scenes, no moral choice system, no bizarre mini games that have nothing to do with the plot. Just hordes of the shambling undead, crazy acrobatic swordplay, and over the top outfits. For its debut on SDA we have runs for two different characters courtesy of Nicholas 'Sir VG' Hoppe. Playing on the game's easy difficulty for both runs, Nicholas hacks and slashes his way to a time of 0:23:16 for Aya and 0:16:46 for Saki.

But Sir VG's skill at killing hordes of the undead with female characters isn't limited to just one game, oh no. He's also providing us today with a run of Castlevania: Rondo of Blood which prominently features the game's secret character, Maria (though that Richter guy does see a little screen time too). Unlike his previous 100% effort, in this run he simply strives to complete the game in as direct a fashion as possible, and accomplishes just that in 0:23:31.

People watch these speedruns for a variety of reasons. Some know whatever game they're watching inside and out and want to judge for themselves how good the run is, some might barely know the game at all and just like watching skillful play regardless of their own familiarity with it, and some like to see a game that frustrated them to no end as a player get its ass handed to it. For me, today's final run falls into that third category. Robo Warrior is a game I owned when I was younger, and one of the few that, despite putting many hours into it, I was never able to beat. Fortunately, this is a problem not shared by runner John 'chessjerk' Kearsley IV. Making the best of the game's random factors and having a solid plan for everything else, he was able to charge through the game with a final time of 0:36:12. And while I doubt it was a motivating factor for him, I would like to personally thank the runner for getting a little revenge for my childhood.

Two updates ago Breakdown mentioned the power update themes have to both the viewers of the main page and the updaters of the main page alike. Unfortunately, now I am the one distressed by the lack of any conceivable theme linking the runs available for me to update. In fact, I'd venture to guess that it would be a legendarily difficult challenge to find 3 PC games so different from each other.

Of course, that little inconvenience can't and won't stop me from giving you another batch of runs to enjoy. The first upstanding gentleman to provide us with speedrunning material to savor today is Eli 'Smilge' Chase, who decided to improve his earlier run of the isometric perspective RPG many would agree to be BioWare's best to date (I certainly would), Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn. And improve it, he did, managing to somehow come up with over 18 minutes of timesavers in what was already a well run game. The new time of 0:23:09 was achieved using 26 segments, which is nine more than what was previously needed, but considering the improvement comes close to bordering on halving the earlier time, I think we can let that little 'transgression' slide. Check it out, it's great (if that wasn't evident already).

It seems the famous female adventurer, one Lara Croft, is making many frequent appearances on the main page lately - clear evidence how crowded the Tomb Raider speedrunning community is. This time we follow her hasty exploits in Tomb Raider: Legend, thanks to Jarek 'j.calling.2bad' Hanzelka's speedrun on the hard mode of the game. Even though the hard mode run by Shaun Friend is slower than Jarek's creation, it will continue to stay up on the page (am I the only one noticing the accidental innuendo in this paragraph?). Why is that, you ask? The reason is simple, Jarek's run uses an airwalking glitch, which lets him cut off insane amounts of time. The advantage this glitch brings is significant enough to warrant a new category. In any case, the new run uses the glitch and 24 segments to bring the time down to 0:37:32. Good show, good show. (late note: it appears I forgot to mention this run includes an audio commentary - all the more reason you should go download it. Sorry for the omission.)

Finally, as a sort of a dessert, to follow the isometric RPG and TPP platformer, we have an FPS run. As it usually is the case with desserts, it's quite short, but also very tasty. Albin 'quadrazid' Sigby and Daniel 'rayv3x' Babik made a Half-Life Hazard Course run to tease your palate. The run is segmented (8 segments, to be exact), and manages to beat the single segment run by 9 seconds. The time is 0:02:45, and while 9 seconds better than the single segment doesn't sound breath-taking, I assure you the SS time is rather optimised, which makes the improvement that much more impressive. HLSP Bunny and scripts were used.

Former SDA updater extraordinaire DJGrenola at one point in his tenure documented a phenomenon he called the run bomb. For the uninitiated, a run bomb is when one harmless enough looking entry in the queue contains a multitude of runs. Now, in my time in this position I have encountered several games with multiple runs already, but this is the first time I feel safe in saying I have encountered the run bomb myself, and I'm sure as you read on you will (or if your eyes have already been attracted to the links below, already do) agree.

Sparking the fuse today is a run from SDA regular Andrew Gardikis, owner of some of the more high profile runs we have on the site. So what did he choose for his next project? None other the massively popular NES title Pro Wrestling. Who doesn't remember performing knee drops from the top rope with Star Man, chomping on their opponent's head with Amazon, or unleashing the fury of the Back Brain Kick with Fighter Hayabusa? Likely, it's most of you who don't remember, which is a shame really as this was a great title back when it came out. But one thing which should be a given is that with andrewg at the controls the time of 0:06:00 is very close to the limits of what's possible for this title.

And for the meat of the update we have SquareEnix yet again proving that their fantasies aren't always final. As the name implies, the Wiiware title Final Fantasy IV: The After Years takes place a few years down the line in the same world as Final Fantasy IV, giving players a chance to revisit familiar locales and characters as well as some new ones. In addition to a new main storyline, many of the characters are given their own scenarios as well to help further the plot, and it is around these scenarios that the first batch of runs for this game revolves. For starters, runner Thomas L. Mallory Jr. offers up segmented runs for every single character specific scenario the game has to offer. The details are as follows:

• Ceodore/Kain's tale in 1:09 in 20 segments
• Edge's tale in 0:26 in 7 segments
• Edward's tale in 0:25 in 17 segments
• The Lunarian's tale in 0:34 in 14 segments
• Palom's tale in 0:38 in 33 segments
• Porom's tale in 0:27 in 14 segments
• Rydia's tale in 0:36 in 12 segments
• Yang's tale in 0:30 in 12 segments

And if that weren't enough to keep fans of this title busy, we do also have a single segment effort of Edge's tale performed by Patrick 'messenger' McElwee clocking in just a couple minutes behind the segmented run at 0:28 with an embedded audio commentary included. With all this attention paid to this game by the speedrunning community, the only question that remains is who is going to tackle the full game run? Whoever it may be, these runs certainly lay the ground work for them very nicely.

While on the the subject of Final Fantasy, it seems a truly fitting time to unveil our newest piece of non-speedrun content. With runs on three games in the series under her belt, Kari 'Essentia' Johnson has amassed quite the fan base around the site as well as the title of "The Destroyer of Final Fantasies." Now, those who may be curious can gain a little insight on how she got into speedrunning, her thoughts on her own runs, and other interesting tidbits of information through this interview.

And as long as I'm knocking the dust off our Features page I may as well announce a few other additions to it. First off, this page will now become the permanent home of the link to our collection of videos from our charity marathon Classic Games Done Quick. Also, while its inclusion on this page is more for archival purposes down the line, it is certainly worth mentioning here that it is once again tournament time on the SDA forums. Longtime SDA member mike89 is playing host to the 6th SDA Tournament which will feature five games over the course of five weeks, with each playing week focusing on either speed, score, or survival. As of this posting the third week has just begun, but there was no formal registration and anyone is welcome to join at any time. While there is a competitive element (I mean, it is a tournament after all) the focus of these is more on discovering new games and having a good time. So come check it out, I personally guarantee a good time or your money back!

People seem to like it when these updates have themes to them, and given that it's a little to my chagrin that the order the runs currently available to me were produced make it so I'm deprived of two sets of very easy themes. So what's the theme of this update then? Why, the fact that these two runs deprived me of the opportunity to write back to back updates with themes I didn't need to think about at all (which is a pretty noteworthy thread tying them together if you ask me). And the fact that they're both runs for Nintendo handhelds, mostly the former reason though.

I have some fond memories of playing Final Fight in the arcade. Some friends and I would huddle over our respective joysticks and charge through the game with what we believed to be the undeniably best strategy possible: $10 worth of quarters and no regard for our own safety. At that time if you'd have tried to tell me skill could be applied to such a game I wouldn't have believed you, and I would have balked at the notion of getting through it without dying. Currently, I don't see the feat being quite nearly as ludicrous, but it's still quite impressive to see Jeremy 'DK28' Doll perform it at speed. Playing on the GBA's port of the game entitled Final Fight One, Jeremy pilots Alpha Cody through the game's very easy difficulty in a speedy 0:21:39. Now, I'm sure some of you watching will have questions about what's going on, and foremost among them will likely be what would possess a man to eat a turkey he found in the remains of a chandelier that had just fallen from the ceiling. Answers to this and other puzzlers are addressed in the embedded audio commentary.

And our next run deals with what everybody associates with a bunch of guys punching their way through members of a street gang one by one: vampire hunters. Yep, that's an obvious and not at all random progression. OK, granted it makes no sense, but this fact doesn't take anything away from the newest edition to our Nintendo DS run catalogue. Runner 'Serris' incorporated a couple glitches and some extensive planning into his normal mode run of Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia. The final result is a time of 0:57:25 in 29 segments and makes for a very entertaining and, thanks in no small part to his recording rig, surprisingly good looking run (which when you consider that this is not just a DS game, but also one that requires some touch screen inputs, is higher praise than it initially seems).

Sincere apologies for the delay, purely my fault you had to wait this long for an update. In my defense, I was swamped with work; let's hope that won't happen again, eh? Now, with that out of the way, time for what you were actually waiting for - brand new additions to our catalogue!

The first run today is another installment of the adventures of everyone's favourite female Archaeologist Who Would Undoubtedly Lose The Job In Real Life, this time in a quasi-expansion pack for the third game in the Tomb Raider franchise, Tomb Raider III: The Lost Artefact. Familiar to those that follow the Tomb Raider speedrunning attempts should be the runner, Shaun 'MMAN' Friend, who decided to run the pack after running the original game. However, contrary to that original run, this time he uses the full potential the glitches in the game offer in order to speed through the expansion levels in just 0:16:31. Since the whole pack is so short, MMAN only needed 6 segments to complete it. Very nicely done!

It would seem Jānis 'Pendrokar' Lukss has acquired powers unavailable to mere mortals, as evidenced by him giving us another amazing run after his mind-blowing Morrowind playthrough. This time he blitzed through the third-person triple perspective game with real-time strategy elements, Giants: Citizen Kabuto. Pendrokar shows no mercy to the game and plows through the 34 segments using a huge amount of various boosts, tricks and glitches, finishing the stories of all three characters in just 1:21:35, a time that (according to his comments) surprised even him. It remains to be seen if he'll continue to submit quality runs at this frequency.

Finally, to round the update off, we have a run of a Tom Clancy game. Of course, since many a game bears his name, that's not really saying much. Right now we focus on the third worldwide release in the Rainbow Six series, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield. The game focuses mostly on meticulous planning and careful, tactically sound attacks, but runner going by the name of 'Berry' only takes the first one under advisement. Specifically, he plans the routes of his teammates so as to wreak havoc in the ranks of the terrorists as fast as possible, and does so very well, since this 15 segment run on the easiest, recruit difficulty is only 0:11:37. A pretty short time to end a terrorist crisis, don't you think? Of course, such a low time first required a lot of failures, and Berry provided us with a bloopers reel, as well.

Starting things off today we have a familiar face with a run on a familiar franchise. While far from Nintendo's most popular series, the Kirby games are far from obscure, and from the perspective of a speedrunner the wide array of ability choices available in these titles makes guiding the cutesy puffball with an insatiable appetite efficiently through the stages an interesting problem. No stranger to this particular brand of planning is Nicholas 'Sir VG' Hoppe who has previously had two runs from the series posted, and has now come back for more. This time around he's set his sights on the Super Nintendo's Kirby's Dream Land 3. Split up into 22 segments, Kirby once again saves the world of Pop Star in 1:36:23.

On the subject of familiar faces, I think there are few among the SDA faithful who aren't familiar with the name Nolan 'Radix' Pflug. For those of you not in the know, Radix is the founder of SDA and the one responsible for the site's move from Quake only to all games about 6 years ago. He also produced a fair number of runs himself, and while probably best known for his often referenced yet long since obsoleted Metroid Prime 100% in 1:37 (+1), several of his runs have endured for years on the game list. Today, that number decreases by one. Pikmin 2 is the subject of a massive improvement courtesy of runner Charles Griffin. Through the use of more streamlined strategies and tighter execution Charles was able to chop over 2 hours off the incumbent run, finishing with the best ending in a time of 3:10 over 128 segments. These have been combined into 8 files, one for each game day, for easy downloading.

Finally, a series that has been notably missing from the game list gets its first run on the site. While RPGs are far from the most common games picked up by speedrunners we do have a fairly healthy stock of runs for the genre on the site. Earthbound? Got it. Chrono Trigger? Got that too. Final Fantasy? Got a bunch of them. But before now we've been lacking a run from the series that paved the way for the JRPG as we know it today. That, however, all changes today thanks to the efforts of a runner known by the screen name 'Darkwing Duck'. Careful planning and a healthy dose of luck went into his run for the American release of the Dragon Quest series' third installment, or more succinctly put Dragon Warrior 3. Making use of 12 segments he makes his way through a game notorious for requiring heavy amounts of grinding in an impressive 5:14. If you can't tell, I'm very happy personally to see this series finally have a home on the site, so a special thanks from me to the runner, and hopefully we'll see some other installments in the not too distant future.

And for those of you all set to start downloading the new Dragon Warrior run, you may be interested to hear about an upcoming event. Starting on April 8th the group Bonus Stage Marathons will be attempting to run through all eight games in the main Dragon Quest series in a 72 hour period, and while they're at it they'll be collecting donations for the charity Frisky's Wildlife Sanctuary. While this event is in no way affiliated with SDA, those familiar with this series will recognize that if they are to meet their time goal it will require some truly speedy play. So check it out, see how they do, and donate some money to a good cause while you're at it.

Kicking this update off is a run that obsoletes one of the older runs on the site. It was back in October of 2005 that Astra Piper recorded her Luigi run of the SNES version of Super Mario Bros. 2, and I don't mean that palette swap of Yume Koujou Doki Doki Panic. No, I mean the real Super Mario Bros. 2, more commonly know under the moniker of Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels. Now, about four and a half years later, this category is seeing an improvement. Brandon 'Grimslade' Coker took up the challenge of running the game initially deemed too hard for American gamers and the product of his efforts is a deathless run from 1-1 to D-4 in 0:16:38, just shy of 50 seconds faster than the old run.

Next up we have an entry from a runner who has been a regular on the news page as of late. Justin 'UCPro' Salamon is at it again, this time with a return to his speedrunning roots with an improvement to his first published run. The game in question is the WiiWare title LostWinds, and by cleaning up a few minor mistakes in the first publication and the discovery of a new sequence break he was able to shatter his old segmented time of 0:21 with his new 0:18 run in 17 segments. This one got rave reviews from the verifiers, so for all you fans of the game out there this is one definitely not to miss.

And it's another familiar face that rounds out today's update. While it's been a while since his last submission, those who've followed the site for any appreciable amount of time should be familiar with the name Andrew Gardikis. Today he makes his triumphant return to the front page with an improvement to one of his existing Excitebike ILs: Track 1 in 0:00:43.69 to be precise. This brings the total time for the table down to 0:04:08.85. Really only so much to say about this one. I mean, it's an andrewg run, and the fact that the name is synonymous with quality is a fact that shouldn't be lost on anyone.

Inspired in part by dex's last news post as well as by today's first run, I think I'm going to take a little time out to reminisce on how I first came to SDA and started speedrunning. There's really only so much to say about how I found the site. I got linked to the NES TMNT run on some forum, was thoroughly impressed, and thought to myself "I can do that." I thought long and hard about a game I both knew very well and liked enough to play to death (which is sage advice for those of you who are considering taking up the hobby) and settled on Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. After a short period of time looking for strats around the internet I found this site, registered for the forums, and a few months later had completed a deathless run of the game with no Up+A warping in 1:17.15. That was about 3 and half years ago, and that run has gone unchallenged in that time, until now that is. Driven either by a burning desire to have sole ownership of the game page or just a love of the game that borders on the fanatical, Kristian 'Arctic_Eagle' Emanuelson has successfully set the bar higher for this category. By skipping a few of the items I deemed necessary he has chopped a significant chunk off my old time. And while I plan to take care in throwing out superlatives in these updates, I will say that for me this 1:13:05 is one of the most entertaining runs I've seen hit the site in quite a while. If you have so much as a passing interest in this game check this one out, it's awesome.

And for all you Zelda fans out there, we've got one more for you. It would seem that Link is a Hylian very mindful of his future. He knows that this hero business isn't something that'll last forever, and when the bubble bursts on it he wants to be sure he has something to fall back on, so he took the time to learn a trade. What trade you might ask? Why, the noble profession of goat herding of course. Yeah, I kind of doubt that's the motivation behind the goat herding mini game in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, but if it were, as long as Link had Justin 'UCPro' Salamon on hand to coach him he would have a long, stable career in front of him long after the princesses of the world stopped needing saving. All the goats go from loose in the field to in the barn in a very quick 0:00:15.43.

I hope you'll forgive a little bit of personal rambling, because (in no small part due to the first run today) I feel an irresistible urge to tell something about the way I got to know SDA. To keep a really short story even shorter, I discovered it in 2004, but only dropped by once or twice, thinking "yeah, this is kinda neat", then largely forgetting about its existence. In my defense, I was still young and stupid back then. In any case, the 'breakthrough' happened when I saw a run of one of my favorite games - Morrowind. It being a game of huge proportions, I didn't consider it remotely possible to beat it in less than 15 minutes. Ever since seeing that run, I was hooked. So, why am I telling you this? Because the old, 14 minute and 26 seconds single segment run that impressed me so much, AND the 7:30 segmented that followed shortly thereafter have both been demolished by Janis 'Pendrokar' Lukss' new single segment. Using a bug present in version 1.0 of the game and a plethora of different tricks, he managed to get the time down to 0:04:19. Yes, you didn't misread, 4 minutes and 19 seconds. As impressive as the time itself sounds, it pales in comparison to the video of the whole ordeal. I personally recommend this one.

Speaking of my favorite games... Harri 'Rogston' Väisänen and Esa 'SaunaChum' Kivirinta keep on chipping away seconds in Thief: The Dark Project, a game that encourages the player to patiently hide in the shadows and evade encounter, ideally not having the enemies notice anything is amiss. The duo of speedrunning taffers evidently doesn't subscribe to this philosophy, instead opting for a quicker approach - namely, to do everything they have to do and get out fast enough to avoid registering to the senses of the guards. 7 levels in total have been improved, and a new run (the training level) joins the level table. As usual, these are money runs. There's too many of them to list here (our master thieves have really done a lot of good work), but you can get all ILs here. Curiously, the new total time (0:35:41) is 40 seconds longer than the time before the improvements were uploaded - but before you start wondering how that's possible, let me remind you about the Training run (which adds over a minute and a half to the timer).

Lastly, in a fortunate coincidence that lets me pretend this update has at least a partial theme, we have a new run for another stealth-based game, Hitman: Blood Money. It's an individual level run, as well! Mark 'ExplodingCabbage' Amery has made a New Game+ run, and before you ask, yes, there was a run for this game before - one done by mister Amery, in fact - but he asked for it to be replaced by this new run. ExplodingCabbage switches the Rookie difficulty from the old run to Pro - the hardest of the four difficulties. Using every little timesaver he could think of and straining agent 47 to the limit, he finishes all 13 levels in 0:22:44. Check them out, they're really entertaining.

I've been around this site for quite some time, and in that time I feel I've been exposed to a lot of what SDA has to offer. I've watched a bunch of runs, submitted a few of my own, taken part in forum activities, and attended live SDA events. But today's update marks a first for me in my stay here: my first obsoletion. For the first time in just over three years, my run for the criminally underappreciated NES title Faxanadu no longer has a home on the game list. Replacing it is Rhett 'ShinerCCC' Dobson's debut effort for the site. Through the use of a glitch from the TAS and a much tighter and more difficult route he produced a significant improvement from my old 0:36:24 run with a very solid 0:30:14. If you're curious about some of the finer points of the improvement be sure to check out the included audio commentary. And now that it's happened, I have to say getting obsoleted isn't so bad, especially when it's a great run like this one replacing your old effort. Congrats man.

Next up we have a run on another NES game that too often gets lost in the shuffle. When people talk about 8-bit Konami games it's usually games like Castlevania, Contra, or Gradius that get mentioned, with next to no attention paid to a great little game by the name of Jackal. While somewhat obscure, this game does have its fans, one of whom is Marko "Master-88" Vanhanen. Motivated to see this game have its place on SDA, the Finnish runner persevered through the game's several random elements and performed some tight maneuvering in the production of his "no upgrades with deaths" run. Getting a time as low as his 0:08:54 with only grenades is quite an impressive feat, and I definitely suggest checking this one out.

Lastly, after two less than mainstream games, we finish with the amazingly popular Mega Man 9. Those familiar with this game's history on SDA are no doubt also familiar with the name Mike 'MegaDestructor9' Dickson. He's been the sole owner of the IL records for this title, and while that isn't changing with this update, three of our hosted videos are. The improvements are as follows: Galaxy Man down from 0:01:38.41 to 0:01:38.11, Splash Woman down from 0:01:32.86 to 0:01:31.91, and Wily Castle 2 down from 0:01:56.85 to 0:01:54.43. These runs bring the total time of the table down three seconds to 0:20:13. To the uninitiated viewer 3 seconds over 3 runs might not sound like a lot, but if you watch the runs the level of optimization in them is plain to see. Check these ones out, you won't be disappointed.

First up today is an inaugural run for a title from the Nintendo DS. Metroidvanias have historically been riddled with game-breaking glitches, and Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow is no exception to this trend. Runner James 'Aftermath' Downing took full advantage of this fact in the production of his hard difficulty new game + run with major skips in two segments. While the name of the category is quite lengthy, the run itself clocks in at a very quick 0:04:09, and for those of you who spend those four minutes staring quizzically at the screen wondering what exactly is going on, don't fret. Included is an embedded audio commentary to help clear up the finer points.

Next up we have a shining example of a game being beaten far faster than its developers ever intended. If you happen to find yourself a complete, in box copy of Ogre Battle 64 and check out the list of selling points on the back you'll see that it promises "over 50 hours of gameplay." This may hold true for a first time player, but certainly not for the likes of Ben 'simmeh' Boven. Through the utilization of an item duplication glitch and some solid strategies along the way, Ben decimates the developers' estimate, finishing the game in 4:24 using six segments. This one also comes with audio commentary for your listening pleasure.

Now I know some of you are looking at the title of today's update and thinking that three games in one update really isn't anything all that special, and you're definitely right on that point. However, when one of those games has three different full game runs being posted it's definitely a noteworthy occurrence. Such is the case today for Mega Man Zero. In the span of a month Youri 'Elpis TK31' Landweer both improved his own hard difficulty with mission skips run from 0:11:19 down to 0:10:31 and completed runs for two new categories, namely hard difficulty with deaths in 0:22:59 and an ultimate mode run in 0:09:05. No audio commentary for this batch, but you can check the game page for some . . . interesting written comments.

And while this is old news to the forum regulars, it should be mentioned for those of you who don't frequent our fine message boards that we now have the entirety of the footage from our charity marathon available for download. Anything you may have missed or moments you'd like to experience again can now be immortalized on your hard drive. Just head to the schedule page for the links.

First up today we have a run for a new category on Trauma Center: Second Opinion. Japanese runner 'szsk' is no stranger to this game. He previously published a normal mode SS run, and while that run is very impressive in its own right, today's offering represents the completion of a much larger task. For this run he's set the sight of his Wii-mote on hard difficulty and completes every mission available in the game, leaving all his patients GUILT free with perfect XS ranks throughout. In short, 100% completion. Oh, and did I mention this was done in a single segment? Completed in 2:34:03, this is one not to miss.

Keeping with the medical theme, we have a new record in an old category for Dr. Mario 64. Kari 'Essentia' Johnson has had sole ownership of the page for quite some time, but no longer. Kevin 'neskamikaze' LaLonde has offered up a new run for the "Classic mode with deaths" category, topping the old mark of 0:38:50 from 2006 with a very quick 0:37:02. To cite our recent marathon, I think many of the viewers (myself included) were very surprised just how entertaining watching a run of this game can be. Check this one out; it's definitely worth the watch.

Last, but certainly not least, is one of the most anticipated runs to come to the site in quite some time. Freddy 'Frezy_man' Andersson is a man who needs no introduction. One of our most prolific runners, he bolsters his own reputation for excellence today with an improvement of one of the more hotly contested titles we have to offer. You may have heard of it, a little game called Super Mario Bros. 3. After logging literal thousands of attempts, the Swede of Speed was able to comfortably beat Andrew Gardikis's time of 0:11:01 with a truly stellar 0:10:48. I think it's safe to say this game has been pushed pretty close to its limits, but the runner himself admits there's still seconds to be squeezed out of it. The only question is who is going to rise to that challenge?

Apologies for the delay on this second update of mine, and since it's a little later than I originally intended I'm upping the usual serving size for this one. Yes, the added run is entirely because of me feeling guilty about making you good people wait 10 whole days between updates and nothing at all to do with the fact that we have quite the backlog right now. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

The first run on the menu today is an improvement over a longstanding run on the game list. Zack 'zallard1' Allard is new to SDA, but no stranger to high level play on Star Fox 64. An accomplished high score player, he recently turned his efforts to speedrunning the game. Through the use of a few new strategies and the tightening of some old ones, he was able to take down the old mark of 0:25:45 for the "with deaths" category set by Brett 'Psonar' Ables back in 2006. The time of the new run is a very quick 0:25:16, which he achieved by trusting his instincts and using the boost to get through.

Next up is a new addition to the site also coming from the N64. Star Wars: Rogue Squadron is a great example of one developer improving on the work of another. The first Star Wars game for the N64, Shadows of the Empire, was produced by LucasArts and is generally considered a fairly poor third person action title with two fantastically fun flying levels. About two years later along comes developer Factor 5 with this game consisting solely of flying levels and critics and players alike adored it. One such player is runner Evan K. N. Jankowski who today provides us with a single segment run with deaths clocking in at 1:01:17.

Last, but certainly not least, we have a run of a game that truly changed the face of its franchise. To call Star Fox Adventures a departure from the previous games in the series doesn't really begin to describe just how amazingly different this title is from the ones that came before it. Taking place outside of an Arwing for the bulk of the game, the series moved here from straight up space shooter to a style more similar to that of the 3-D Zelda titles. Whether this was a good move for the series or not is a matter for debate, but what is certain is that runner Justin 'UCpro' Salamon has put this game through its paces. Making use of 100 segments, Justin saves the aptly named Dinosaur Planet in a speedy 4:46. 100 files is a lot, so we have torrents available for the medium and high quality versions for easy downloading.

Hello SDA viewers. I'm Breakdown and I'll be your updater today, and if you're reading this it means I managed to not break the framework of the site getting this thing posted. But yeah, I'm the new guy on staff. I've been hanging around the site for years now and have been given the opportunity to give a little back, and intend to do so with pride. My only hope is that I can keep the quality of these front page updates up to the standards set by those who have come before me. I truly have some large shoes to fill.

But enough about me, you're here to see some runs, right?

The title of today's update serves the dual purpose of expressing my fear of my technical ineptitude being put on display for all to see as well as quoting one of the more memorable lines from the movie on which today's first game is based. As with most wildly successful movies, Jurassic Park has been ported to just about every console imaginable in nearly every gameplay style imaginable. Really the only thread tying them all together is that each features a variety of dinosaurs that you need to blast your way through in some form or fashion. Today's offering is on the SNES version of the game, which has no shortage of dino blasting, but also has a focus on exploration and item collection to advance the plot. The three man team of Patrick 'ev0lution' Seibert , Frank 'Nokia3311' Jahn, and Nicolas 'ZdadrDeM' Grosmann make their way through this single player adventure in a very efficient 1:02:36 on the PAL version. Sure it doesn't have the length of a Spielberg film or a Crichton novel, but this run is an excellent example of how less can indeed be more.

Vagrant Story is generally heralded as one of the more innovative games Squaresoft ever produced. Lauded by some and reviled by others, it features a deep combat system and an intricate item crafting mechanic. Love it or hate it, though, there is no denying that Yadir 'Riskbreaker Y' Osornio annihilated it, cruising through the game using 13 segments and finishing in just under 2 hours (1:59 to be exact).

Also of note is that we have more videos from our wildly successful Charity Marathon ("Classic Games Done Quick") up and ready for download, commentary included. We currently have up through Strider on the second day ready to go. You can find the links on the schedule page, and keep an eye on that page because there's more on the way.

Hundreds of Star Wars games have been released since the franchise began its existence in 1977, an overwhelming majority of them not very enjoyable. However, our new star (pardon the pun), Star Wars: Republic Commando, is one of the more notable exceptions, partly due to the fact it puts the old adage 'if you want to have something done right, do it with 3 copies of yourself' to the test by making you the leader of a clone squad. '-Arcadian-' doesn't seem to like being a clone too much, because he's trying to get through the whole experience as fast as possible in this Easy run of Geonosis, finishing in 0:35:41. To compensate for the player character's lack of Force abilities, he used 15 segments, in addition to his own Jedi-like reflexes.

Diablo II: Lord of Destruction is a game that needs no introduction. What definitely needs introduction, on the other hand, is the absolutely insane improvement of the Assassin run by the absolutely crazy Sören 'FraGFroG' Heinrich. Drawing on sinister powers that shouldn't be named, he managed to save over 16 minutes and actually bring this epic game under the magical 1 hour threshold. This 0:58:52 in 33 segments is so crazy, you're really gonna think Sören is possessed. Which actually might not be that far off from the truth: this game is infamous for drawing players in for good, and 'FraGFroG' couldn't evade this mysterious power and had to also make another run. Virtually identical to that 58:52, it abuses a death in the last segment to save a pretty palpable amount of time - 24 seconds, to be exact (0:58:28). Go check it out.

Our Charity Marathon ("Classic Games Done Quick") is now over. We got off to a slow start, but we made up for it: we ran 67 games in just over 55 hours and collected over $10,000 from over 450 people for CARE (and we are still accepting donations for the next few hours). We usually had at least 1,000 viewers on our streams. That's not bad for our first shot at this! There is already talk of another marathon, but nothing is concrete yet, so keep dropping by SDA to stay informed.

Much of the marathon (both game and commentary streams) is already available for viewing on our ustream page. Higher quality versions (with both streams in one video and without problems with sprites disappearing, for example) will follow soon. Right now as I type this I'm burning all 55 hours of video from Mike Uyama's DVD recorder in 2-hour chunks, then copying those DVDs to my laptop's hard drive in preparation for combining with the Flash Media-encoded commentary stream. Syncing the two streams will be the real hard part, but I don't anticipate that will take me more than a few days. Keep checking back, and you'll see that nice version of the marathon available for download here soon. Otherwise, if you don't want to wait, just hit the ustream recordings.

We'd like to thank all our runners and mods, the MAGfest staff, CARE for being willing to try us out, and especially TheSpeedGamers for taking us under their wing for our first run through this charity marathon game they built completely from scratch. You should know that there would have been no Classic Games Done Quick if not for your vision.

Here's to another record-breaking year!

Our Charity Marathon ("Classic Games Done Quick") begins tonight at 6 pm Eastern Standard Time (US)! Please tune in and donate to support CARE's mission to combat world poverty! (The live stream will be embedded right on this very page starting later today.)

If you want to help beyond just donating, you can spam the link to our promo video. (Or, you can download a higher quality version if you want to upload it to your own account somewhere.)

See you tonight!