Life - My Very First Speed Run Marathon

After around 2 years of watching the charity speed running event, Games Done Quick, I was finally able to attend one myself! On January 11th, 2017, my family headed down the road to Herndon, Virginia. (They kept claiming we were going to Washington D.C., but I know better than that!) Although the event had started a few days earlier, I'd be able to attend most of the last three days of it.

I know the guy on the left is King Knight, don't know the other guy.

After an eventful car ride up, we finally arrived at our hotel that evening. Boring check-in details aside, I got to AGDQ 2017 in the later morning, on the next day. The first thing I noted was the venue itself. The event was spread out all over the Hilton Dulles Washington Airport Hotel. Several rooms contained TVs for runners to practice and for friends to race each other or share speedrunning strats. Other rooms were available for casual play and impromptu tournaments. In the front area, Hilton had some snacks, a souvenir table (probably an extension of their gift shop, I can't imagine they weren't trying to capitalize on the event, even a tiny bit) and video-game themed fruit-water stuff.

(And there were three different types of piano sitting around, including an electronic keyboard on the way to the casual play rooms. I met a few real-life speedrunners there!)

But that wasn't all! Food trucks cycled during the day and evening. World 9 Gaming let people rent out a variety of systems, and there were free arcade and pinball machines to play; this, all before ever getting to the stream room. I had no idea that there was so much more in addition to the primary focus of the event!

The badge was cooler than I had anticipated.

Exhaustive lists of event features aside, I had a great time at AGDQ. The highlights for me include being able to experience the Philips CD-i and several of its most infamous games, including Hotel Mario and Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon. Those two and the rest were just about as terrible as everyone said, with the exception of a few titles that were just mediocre. In fact, one of them Dimo's Quest, was actually playable! (Later digging reveals that it was not specific to the CD-i.)

Another cool thing was being able to meet several people that I watched stream on Twitch. Introducing myself was frightening, at least for the people I intentionally went to meet, like Gyre, a famous Final Fantasy speedrunner (well, famous to speedrunners and people who watch speedruns.) Hanging about in the practice room, I met a few other people that I followed, but wasn't going out to meet, so those self-introductions weren't as bad.

I don't think I'll be able to attend SGDQ this summer, but I definitely want to try attending as many as I can.

Anyway, this post has been sitting as a draft for long enough! I may follow up with some other thoughts later, but this is it for now.