#speedrunning

#speedrunning

punishing dodge and parry windows are one of the RPG's defining characteristics . Enemies basically do a little dance before they bring their weapon down on your party, and you're expected to memorize and dodge every pattern lest you end up dead before your Gommage. Naturally, fans took this as a challenge, and one person has finally beaten Sandfall Interactive's GOTY sweeper without taking any damage.

It's the latest edition of Morning Checkpoint, brought to you from my in-laws' basement in western PA where the wind chill has temps near zero. I'm currently blogging with an original Xbox to my right and the Sega Genesis version of Shaq Fu to my left. I am trying to put the finishing touches on my January backlog plans.

Megabonk, a 3D reimagining of Vampire Survivors that became one of 2025's surprise hits, has somewhat belatedly released its Halloween update just in time for the winter holidays. But hey, Christmas has always been spook-adjacent, right? There's A Christmas Carol, Krampus, A Charlie Brown Christmas ... "yoo I've finally finished the update I was working on," said solo developer Vedinad in a post on Steam. "Was originally going to be a small halloween update, but I wanted to make it a bit bigger so it turned into a bit more work than I initially planned."

Games Done Quick has wrapped up its 2025 events, but a new year of speedrunning for charity is on the horizon. The organization released the schedule for Back to Black 2026 on Tuesday. You can watch the action from February 5 to 8. As its name suggests, the event celebrates the Black community through the joy of gaming. Organized by Black in a Flash, the event will showcase all-Black speed runs of titles ranging from popular to obscure.