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Twice a year, droves of gaming fans flock to Twitch to tune in to the week-long speedrunning charity marathon known as Games Done Quick, and Awesome Games Done Quick is underway right now! If you’ve never seen a GDQ event, or if you just didn’t realize it was that time of year again, you should give it a look, not just for the master level gaming, but also the worthy cause it supports.

What is Games Done Quick?

Games Done Quick is a charity fundraising organization that raises money via speedrunning. Volunteers play all sorts of games as fast as possible. They entertain both their irl audience and the ones watching on Twitch. For a week straight, the event is streamed 24 hours a day, and all donations go directly to charity.

During the last Summer Games Done Quick (which happens around the beginning of July every year) they managed to raise $2.16M. This time around they’re fundraising for the Prevent Cancer Foundation, and, of course, they’re always trying to beat their previous fundraising total. You can see the live stream from their Twitch channel below.

Watch live video from GamesDoneQuick on www.twitch.tv

What is the Prevent Cancer Foundation?

The Prevent Cancer Foundation is one of the leading voluntary health organizations in the U.S.. It’s the only non-profit in the country that is focused solely on cancer prevention and early detection. It funds projects internationally, working to fulfill its mission through research, education, outreach and advocacy. It’s a wonderful cause, and donating through GDQ is a very fun way to make the world a better place.

What to expect

The runners play their games live. They explain the tricks and glitches involved in getting the fastest times they can. Games run from retro classics like Super Mario Bros to newer games like Celeste and everything in between. There are even some fun challenges like blindfolded runs or two players using one controller to finish their respective games.. Runner commentary is interspersed with comments from donators, which is read live during the runs.

The event kicked off yesterday with a True Ending No Major Glitches run of Hollow Knight by Vysuals, who finished with a final time of 1 hour, 27 minutes and 57 seconds, and it’s only gotten better from there. You can check out the Hollow Night run below!

I highly recommend that you take a look at the schedule, since the games at GDQ are incredibly varied, and I certainly won’t be able to tell you about everything you might be interested in. There is almost definitely a game on their list that you currently love. Or one from years ago that you’ll have forgotten all about. Either way, you’re going to enjoy seeing it get wrecked.

What I’m most excited about

Personally, I’m psyched for Ultimate Doom and Doom 2: Hell on Earth. I’m also thrilled to see Celeste. I can’t wait to watch a speedrun of Crypt of the NecroDancer: AMPLIFIED and I try to never miss whichever Pokemon game they include. The Mega Man, Mario and Castlevania games are also always awesome.

I’m far too tempted to stay up all night watching both The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD run on Thursday night and the Final Fantasy IX run on Friday night, but I’ll probably wimp out and watch the VODs for both of those on their YouTube channel instead.

In the end, there’s a different kind of fun to be had in donating and then not finding out if your comment got read until you watch the VOD. It’s also nice to know that you can pick and choose between all the content you inevitably miss out on. Work, sleep and the rest of life inevitably gets in the way of being glued to your screen.

What games are you looking forward to the most? What did I miss on the schedule that’s going to be awesome? Let me know, because we’ll surely be glued to our screens at the right times this week.