Summer Games Done Quick speeds onto screens today

Speedrunning charity marathon Summer Games Done Quick is barrelling towards us at top speed, and it’ll be here in just a few hours. Raising money for Doctors Without Borders, players will be rushing through more than a hundred games for a non-stop week. If you’ve never seen a speedrun before, imagine how fast you could get through your favourite game. Now throw that idea away, because these people get weirder and glitchier than you could anticipate.

This year everything’s kicking off with some Spyro Reignited Trilogy, followed by Portal 2. Lots of the classics are Nintendo games, so I can only talk about them very quietly (next weekend, Breath Of The Wild followed immediately by Majora’s Mask should be excellent, though it runs from about 3am BST on Saturday), but there are plenty of PC goodies too.

Pick your poison on anything from Half-Life to Catlateral Damage, or while away the whole week watching most of everything like you know you want to. Dominic has his eye on Prey and Titanfall 2, which are both good shouts. The real magic of the event, though, is definitely stumbling into something excellent you had no intention of watching. Some of the least-known games have the most fascinating tricks or engaging runners.

Of course, it’s also all for a good cause. Last year’s Summer Games Done Quick raised over $2.12 million (£1.66m) for Doctors Without Borders, and its partner event Awesome Games Done Quick topped that with $2.39 million (£1.88m) for the Prevent Cancer Foundation earlier this year.

Summer Games Done Quick 2019 kicks off at 5:30pm BST, and you can find the full schedule (which will handily adjust to your time zone) here. You’ll be able to tune in on Twitch, and catch up with anything you’ve missed (including previous years) on YouTube.