Speedrunning has been a beloved part of gaming since the beginning, before it was even called speedrunning. Players have always tried to show their skills by putting up impressive times in their favorite games, and the advent of the Internet turned hobby club contests and write-in events into a global competition.
It’s always a special moment to see a world record broken live, especially when that time has been unbeaten for years. We decided to look into the records that have stood the longest, a testament to the skill, patience, and luck of the runners. Check them out below!
These durations are for individual records; in cases where a runner beats their own time without losing the record, we’ve selected only the longest-standing record within that period.
25-06-2025
06-05-2025
3659 days
Speed is what racing games likeMario Kartare all about; breaking records is kind of the whole point. Sometimes, though, a player finds a route that’s so perfect, and executes it with such precision, that it practically takes a bolt of lightning to topple their time. That’s what happened with the longest-standing record in the history of Mario Kart 64, set for the Yoshi Valley track byAlex Gin 2010.
Separate records are kept for the NTSC and PAL versions of Mario Kart 64, due to differences in the in-game clock.
Alex G’s record, in a category thatallows shortcutslike running off cliffs to get rescued by Lakitu and tricking the game into thinking you’ve completed a lap,required a lot of grinding to beat. The exact placement of the kart and precision of inputs on each reset made beating their time a matter of frames.
Runnerabney317would break the functionally-identical NTSC record in April 2016, but the record for the PAL version stood untilrunner VAJ eclipsed it by0.04 secondsin January 2021.
06-06-2025
WR as of 07-06-2025
3813+ days
RunnerLegendhas been playingF-Zeropretty much since it first launched for the Super Famicom, recording their first run on Mute City 1 at 1'58"82 in April 1991. They’ve continued to play and optimize since, shaving fractions of a second off their own record well into the 21st century.
Legend’s time of 1"58"39, set in 1996, looked like it might stay in place forever… until runnerFaustbeat Legend’s time by 0.01 seconds in 2005. Legend worked to reclaim the top spot, finally posting a 1'58"36 in 2009, and continued to lower the time over the next several years.
Legend remains the world record holder for Mute City 1, and the current time, set in January 2015, is also thelongest unbeaten record in the track’s history.Will Legend have to defend their title again, or is this record there to stay after more than a decade?
12-05-2025
21-07-2025
4426 days
Rather than completing a full race, some runners attempt to see how quickly they can manage a single lap on their favorite track. RunnerKVDhas proven their mastery ofGhost Valley 1on the originalSuper Mario Kart, beating their own record consistently throughout 2006.
KVD first took the record onJanuary 3 of that year, unseating previous recordholderOliverSGby 0.01 seconds. On September 20, KVD shaved off another hundredth of a second, then another later the same day. They closed out the year with another victory, posting a time of 0'11"65 on December 29.
That last record would go on to standuntil February 2019, when it was broken by - you guessed it - KVD. They took another 0.02 seconds off of their time, whichremains the world record for a single lap of Ghost Valley 1to this day. It’s entirely possible that the current record could beat its predecessor’s duration; as it stands, it’s a little over halfway there.
29-05-2025
16-05-2025
5824 days
GoldenEye 007has some of the most hardcore speedrunners in the world, practicing and grinding for years to shave a single second off of each meticulously-optimized level.Runwayis among the fastest of the game’s maps, with the best runners able to complete it in less than half a minute even on the game’s brutal 00 Agent difficulty.
RunnerBryan B.held the record for Runway on Agent, the game’s basic difficulty, fornearly 16 years.Beating his time by even a second would require not only flawless execution, but aheavy amount of luck; the trick is using precisely-thrown grenades to boost yourself along the path to the objective. The fact that the record wasoften tied, but never brokenuntilEric Bergmann’s2020 runspeaks to how hard the (until-then theoretical) trick was to pull off.
31-05-2025
23-05-2025
5846 days
The GoldenEye community has a lot of crossover with thePerfect Darkcommunity, and it’s easy to see why; the two Rare-produced shooters from the N64 era are true sister titles, and skills from one translate easily to the other. Like the Runway Agent category above, Perfect Dark’sWAR!level was highly optimized, withKarl Jobst holding the record since 2004.
Jobst’s time of 25 seconds was eventually overtaken by runnerPerfect Ace, who managed 24 in 2020. That’s exciting in and of itself, but perhaps the real records to watch in Perfect Dark’s Agent difficulty areChicago and dataDyne Central; both have unbeaten records, set in 2011 byTrue Faithand 2010 byIllu,respectively, and both have crossed the five-thousand day threshold. Both have the potential overtake WAR! as the longest-standing records in the Perfect Dark speedrunning community in the next few years, if they remain unbeaten.
12-05-2025
7319+ days
Lament Of Innocenceis one of a handful of 3DCastlevaniatitles. While they were eclipsed in popularity by theMetroidvania-stylegamesthat the series popularized, and speedrunners tend to flock to those games, there have been a few players who have taken a shot at them over the years.
Not only wasDragondarchthe first player tosubmit a 100% run as the vampire Joachimall the way back in 2005, they alsohave never had their time beaten.Around 2020, a handful of players submitted 100% runs of Lament Of Innocence;tinkerknightposted times with all characters, and even beat Dragondarch’s time with the main protagonist Leon Belmont, eventually being overtaken themselves in that category byCasj1357andTimiTobi, but Dragondarch’s Joachim run remains undefeated to this day, with both tinkernight and Casj1357 well behind.
25-05-2025
8668+ days
Early first-person shooters (or “boomer shooters” if you’re nasty) had some of the most active speedrunning communities of the ’90s, so it’s no surprise to see some long-standing records forQuake. RunnerTimDohertyset full-game records in the 100% category on both Easy and Nightmare difficulties, which still have yet to be broken. While the Easy run came first,no video of it exists; the Nightmare run, which came a few months later, is arguably more impressive anyway.
TimDoherty also held an Easy Any% record until November 2016, and his original time has now been almost halved with a16:46 set by Clouderin December 2024.
09-06-2025
03-07-2025
9504 days
This record is so old it’s still listed onSpeed Demos Archive, which was how runners originally gathered to post their bestDoomtimes. Thomas Pilger’s hyper-efficient tear through the first stage of Doom 2 stood for so long that it was considered to be unbeatable. Between perfect inputs and hoping the stage’s enemies behave themselves, even tying the record is a blend of skill and luck.
Of course, the legendary status of Pilger’s run made itall the more incrediblewhen runner4shockblastbeat it last year. Managing the level in 4 seconds by the in-game clock was a shocking cause for celebration in the speedrunning community, where each barrier broken represents the culmination of countless hours of practics and collaboration.
