 Over the past few years, the speedrun community has become a pretty major deal. It's a great way to look at older games in a brand new light, and there's tons upon tons of YouTube channels and Twitch streams dedicated to this, many of which go toward a charitable cause which is pretty cool, like awesome games done quick. They have a ton of stuff on YouTube, go look for yourself. But yeah, there's worldwide leaderboards, subset communities dedicated to particular games, for example there's a wiki for Yoshi's Island dedicated to pointing out glitches that can save you time, both for 100% runs or for any percent runs. So yeah, speedruns are ridiculously popular right now, so I thought it'd be neat to take a look at some of the best Super Nintendo games that lend themselves well to speedruns. Of course, any game can be speedrun, or is that speedran? I'm gonna start by very quickly addressing the most obvious of obvious games for speedruns like Super Mario World, Yoshi's Island, any of the Donkey Kong Country games, any of the Mega Man X games, Super Castlevania 4 or Contra 3, I mean any game that consists of simply running to the right, beating a boss and completing the level, is going to make for a great game for speedruns, you don't need me to tell you that. I don't think the world needs some guy painstakingly pointing out why Super Mario World is a good speedrun game, but this wouldn't make for a very interesting video if I just left it at that. Look, I'm not saying I'm an expert on speedruns, far from it actually, I just thought this would be a good excuse to open up the comments so people could talk about what SNES game they like to speedrun the most. There is one obvious game I wanted to talk about that I think stands above and beyond the rest, and that's Super Metroid. The way the game is structured lends itself really well to speedruns because you can skip particular sections and just seek out certain powerups, like for one run you can get the speed and jump boost, or for another you can just get the weapon upgrades, or you can say screw it and go for 100% as fast as you can, or conversely you can say screw it and get as little as possible. That kind of flexible functionality combined with a wide open level design is perfect for this style of play. It's easily the best speedrun game on the Super Nintendo, the only games that I think come close to this kind of open-ended flexibility of stuff like Yoshi's Island and Donkey Kong Country 2, but even then you still have to mess with a world map and all sorts of other stuff that gets in the way. And while we're here, real quick I want to address the Donkey Kong Country games, just to point out that the first game is by far the most speedrun friendly out of the three. The second game is too spread out where you're moving in all directions, and the third game, well, you'd have to play as Kitty Kong, and nobody wants to do that. The first Donkey Kong Country is the best for it because it's a lot more streamlined. The level design for the most part lends itself well to just sprinting straight through. Anyway, I wanted to point out a few slightly less obvious Super Nintendo games that would be good for speedrun purposes. One of the first games that pops up in my mind is Killer Instinct, because the gameplay here is predicated on combos that do a ton of damage, so the natural result of nailing a big damage combo would of course speed up the game. The combos here are what separate this game from other fighting games in this regard. If you're able to nail high-end combinations one right after the other, then you'd be able to cruise right through this game in no time flat. And hey, there's even a practice mode where you can sit here forever and work on mastering that ultra combo. Now, try and stay with me here, but some of the best speedrun games are hinged on gameplay that actually has, you know, a timer right there on the screen. Imagine that. Anyway, Super Punch Out is another fantastic speedrun game because it rewards you for picking up on the subtle nuances of the timing and accuracy of certain aspects of the boxing action here. There's kind of hidden combos here that you can execute to the point that you can knock out most opponents in like 20 seconds. Crazy stuff. Plus, this game gets extra marks for me for being really hard. If you can beat Super Punch Out quickly and take out Rick and Nick Bruiser, then you are legit. Sticking with the whole crazy talking point of speedrun games with an actual timer on the screen, there's obviously racing games like Super Mario Kart and F-Zero. As if these games aren't hard enough to win on their toughest difficulty settings, a whole new sense of urgency is added when you consider going for an overall quick time. Another nice thing about these games is that you don't have to do one long run taking hours. You can just Google a leaderboard for a particular race or circuit and just see how you match up. Next, I'll mention a game that's a little off the map, Umihara Kowase. This game only came out on Super Famicom, but it's available on Steam. It's open-ended puzzle platforming that has multiple paths available to complete each level. It's really well done and it's also really freaking hard. Since it's on Steam, there's screenshots and times being posted every so often, so that's pretty cool. And while I'm on the subject of Super Famicom, there's two other games I've looked at in the past few weeks, Doremi Fantasy and Twinbee Rainbow Bell Adventure that are both well-suited for any potential no-death run. There's also stuff like Chrono Trigger, which you can speedrun in a variety of different ways or however you want to use the New Game Plus option. You could beat Labos with just Chrono and the Wooden Sword. Okay, maybe I couldn't, but you could. I also want to point out a more oddball game, Evo Search for Eden. Progressing in this game is hinged on grinding and evolving your creatures, so being able to beat bosses in a quick time despite having lesser attributes would really be an accomplishment. This game is hard as balls and counts on you to grind in order to be even somewhat competitive with some of these monsters, so I don't know. Evo would either be kind of a fun speedrun game or a really boring one. I just thought I'd throw it out there. Anyway, that's all for now. Thanks for watching and have a great rest of your day.