Just setting a personal best time in your favorite speedrun category requires a lot of things to go right, some of which are beyond your control. Getting a world record, especially when there are other top contenders vying for that extra second, practically means a cosmic alignment of good fortune mixed with the best gameplay you’ve ever managed.
Sometimes, all it takes is a tiny mishap for a dream speedrun to come crashing down. Ruined runs are never fun, but they’re always memorable; here are some of the most heartbreaking ways speedruns have failed.
Seeing a record go up in flames can be frustrating, so some of the links in this article contain harsh language.
8Running Out Of Gas
Big, in-depth RPGs make for impressive speedruns, blending comprehensive game knowledge with masterful gameplay. Sprawling, hundred-hour epics are condensed down to under half an hour, like withDivinity: Original Sin2.
Of course, RPGs also have a lot of randomness to contend with, so mitigating luck or just rolling with the punches is a big part of the run. RunnerSemanariwas showcasing his speedrun at Awesome Games Done Quick in 2019, and luck was not on his side that day; bad roll after bad roll impeded, but didn’t stop, the run.
Semanari currently holdssecond place in Divinity: Original Sin 2 Any%, under the Old Patch subcategory, with a time of 19:16.
As Kotaku explains, Divinity speedrunners play undead characters and use copious amounts of Deathfog (to which undead are immune) to blaze through fights quickly. As foes survived unexpectedly throughout the run, Semanari had to use extra Deathfog, ultimately finding himself just one barrel short of what he needed to complete the game, seventeen minutes into the nineteen-minute run.
7Muscle Memory Misery
Lots of speedruns rely onrote memorization and muscle memoryto ensure that inputs are consistent and perfectly timed. In the majority of runs, that’s an important skill to build up, but sometimes it can turn against you. The biggest time-saves rely onrisky tricks that don’t always play out, meaning that if you’re going to try for one, you need to break your old routine.
A trick onMario Kart 64’s Kalimari Desert track required such a perfect execution that an individual attempt had about a1 in 90000 chance of success, but pulling it off would let a player clip through a fence, practically guaranteeing a world record at the time. Runnermrpittjrattempted the feat, perhaps not expecting anything to come of it; he would use a Mushroom to rush the fence, bounce off of it, then restart the race and try again. Onjust his 45th attempt, mrpittjr miraculously clipped through the fence… and paused the game to restart, purely out of habit after bouncing off every previous time, thus invalidating the run.
6Too Efficient For Your Own Good
The classic GameCube RPGBaten Kaitos: Eternal Wings And The Lost Oceanhas a notoriously long speedrun in the 100% category, primarily because of theSplendid Haircard. Splendid Hair, which is required to 100% the game, is obtained byequipping a character with shampoo for at least two weeks, in real time, measured by the in-game clock.
Baffan is one of the few players dedicated enough to compete in this daunting category,currently holding second place with 14:02:23:46.In 2019, Baffan was working on beating his best time, a then-world-record 14:05:20:03, tried to save time bycompleting two quests at once, getting the rewards for handing in 13 Quest Magnus and 21 Quest Magnus at the same time. As it turns out, going straight to 21prevents you from getting the reward for handing in 13, meaning Baffan couldn’t get to 100% on that run. By that point, he was already four days into the attempt.
5Accidental Cheating
Cheat codes might be a time-honored tradition in classic video games, but they’re not allowed in most speedrun categories. Unless you’re aiming to set a record specifically where cheats are permitted, they’re strictly forbidden, even if you manage to enter the exact sequence of inputs to activate them purely by accident.
That’s exactly what happened toLelReset, who was on pace to potentially set a world record inGrand Theft Auto: San Andreasfor PC. A specific sequence of WASD inputs, however unlikely, triggered the OHDUDE cheat, spawning a helicopter. LelReset didn’t mean to summon the chopper, but what was done was done; a cheat had been triggered, so the run was invalid.
4Stumbling At The Finish Line
If a run is going to go wrong, it’s better if it happens near the beginning. It’s no great loss, you just restart and make another attempt. The further you get in a speedrun, though, the more frustrating it is when what could have been a record suddenly isn’t.
Liamis aSuper Mario 64speedrunner who has previously held the world record in the 120-Star category, and currently sits at twelfth on the leaderboard with an impressive 1:37:17. Considering that Super Mario 64 isone of the most-speedrun games in existence, and 120 Stars is possibly its most prestigious category, that’s no small feat.
In 2022,Liam was on pace beat his own personal best of 1:37:53, which was the world record at the time. Everything had gone smoothly, and all he had to do wasdefeat Bowser; grab his tail, throw him into the bombs at the edge of the stage, and repeat two more times before grabbing the final star.
The first two throws went fine, but Liammissed the third toss, landing Bowser too close to the edge; when he tried to get around the Koopa King, he accidentally fell off the platform himself,scuttling his chance at the new record.
3Missing The Moonshot
Another prolific Super Mario 64 runner and former world recordholder,Weegee, currently holds fourth place in the 120-Star category, with a time of 1:36:02. In 2024, he was in the middle of a dream run, locked in and ahead by a minute. At the time,a new trick had just been developedthat runners had been trying to crack for years;Carpetless, a way to skip the time-consuming magic carpet section.
Weegee had two choices; continue the run as normal, and probably get a world record, or deploy the risky new Carpetless strategy.If it worked, his record could be unassailable for the forseeable future.
It didn’t work. Weegee made several attempts at Carpetless,burning off the lead that he had built up.It’s hard to blame him for wanting to go for the big prize, or for being demoralized after it didn’t pay off.
2Revenge Of The Endermen
Part of speedrunning is taking an honest look at the errors that you make on a run and learning how to improve. Luck plays a role, of course, but sometimes there’s no solution but to practice, practice, practice.
Then again, no amount of practice could have savedskycrab1’s Minecraft run, which was frames away - frames! - from shattering an existing world record by a full minute. Defeating the Ender Dragon with just half a heart left, skycrab1’s victory was ripped away whenan Enderman suddenly finished him off just before the credits rolled.
Skycrab1 is currentlyfourth in the Random World Seed rankings, with a time of 7'23"784. If the run had succeeded, he’d have set the world record at around 5'49", breaking the six-minute barrier at the same time.
AsGamesRadar+ notes, a post-run analysis showed that skycrab1 had looked at the Enderman for15 frames,precisely long enough to pull its aggro. Commenters noted that, “If he was in the crafting menu for one less frame, or 0.017 seconds less, this would’ve been the world record. Also, if his crosshair was four pixels to the right, this would’ve been the world record. It’s literally divine intervention.”
More like Nether Intervention, if you ask me.
1You Did It, But It Doesn’t Count
The speedrunning community is dedicated to keeping records honest and accurate; sadly, that’s necessary, as players have frequently tried to submit faked videos or cheat during live runs.Speedruns have strict rules that players have to abideby if they want their runs to count.
This means that on several occasions,a run that could have been a record will be abandoned, or completed but rendered invalid, because it can’t be verified. If a live stream cuts out, or video footage is interrupted, a run can’t be validated even if there were credible witnesses present in person.Rules are rules, and it’s a case of cheaters ruining the competition for everyone else.
Even trusted, respected runners have to abide by this, and they accept it as part of the competition. After all, in the past there have been (formerly) trusted, respected runners who turned out to have cheated. It’s disappointing to have a run not count because of something beyond your control, butthe integrity of the community as a whole comes first.
