Classic Games Done Quick 2010

The Speedrun Hall of Fame is proud to present the first Hall of Fame “Phenomenal Feats” inductee, one of four nominees selected by the community during the month-long voting period, and finally inducted December 2, 2022: The very first GDQ, held in January 2010, Classic Games Done Quick.

Many speedrunners have been asked: “Will you ever do a run at GDQ?” This is a question some have wondered aloud on stream, or even just to themselves. Speedrunning has taken on a life of its own, largely as a result of the influence and impact that Games Done Quick has had on every speedrunner on Twitch. Multiple times throughout the year, many organizations stream live marathons, the majority of which raise money for charities and groups of underprivileged people. It might, however, be argued that none of these marathons would even exist, let alone be successful, without the groundwork laid down over the past 12 years by the folks over at Games Done Quick.

Ever since the first GDQ, Classic Games Done Quick, was held in 2010, every January and June, speedrunners gather to showcase their finest runs, all in the hopes of raising money for a good cause. While the speedrunners sweat on the big stage in front of an audience numbering in the hundreds, the GDQ Twitch page livestreams it all to a digital audience numbering in the hundreds of thousands. Having flown in from around the globe to perform live in front of this large of an audience, this is a no-reset run that is the pinnacle of pressure for any speedrunner. Luckily, GDQ has a very robust and skilled games committee that picks the runners they believe will triumph over this pressure to not only earn the most money for their charity but also to put on the best show for their viewers.

Since 2010, the GDQ series of marathon fundraisers has grown to extreme heights, with each mainline event now raising millions of dollars for a variety of charities and non-profit organizations, in front of an audience of hundreds of thousands! It has also inspired countless other marathons, organizations, and charity-driven people who live to make a difference in the world.

Fortunately, Mr. Uyama’s parents were not only understanding of the situation, but they were also very supportive. “Mom, can we have the house for three days?” Mike Uyama recalled to the Washington Post in January 2022. His parents moved to a bed-and-breakfast for a few days, and Mike was able to run the event.

MAGfest, which began in 2002, was still one of the bigger retro gaming expos in the United States at the time, and Speed Demos Archive (SDA), the group that helped to organize the event, worked with GDQ and TheSpeedGamers (known today as TSG TV) to not only give advice and support, but also to lend legitimacy to CGDQ and SDA, which was in short supply in 2010. Speedrunning was in its infancy in the mainstream, and Twitch didn’t exist yet in 2010 as it was still part of justin.tv.

“The TSG members actually came by and helped us out,” Emptyeye told us, “and frankly, gave GDQ some much needed legitimacy… as weird as that sounds now, with as big an operation as it is (today). (I remember) everybody thinking that the $5,000 we’d wanted to raise for the charity (C.A.R.E.)… that’s right, not “million”, but thousands… was ridiculously optimistic, and it turned out we raised roughly double that. We raised roughly $10,000, which to us seemed so absurdly high (and crazy) which, obviously, with the way it’s grown now, they routinely raise millions of dollars in one shot. That seems kind of silly now, but we could not have predicted Twitch and the explosion of live streaming popularity, and the explosion, really, of speedrunning at that time”

“Every year, we wonder if this is it, did we finally top out,” Uyama told the Washington Post in 2022. “And then it goes even higher.”

For three days, this impressive list of speedrunners showcased all sorts of classic games, from the original NES all the way through the PlayStation and even the Game Boy Advance. However, this inaugural event was primarily focused on the classic Nintendo console, with the vast majority of runs graced from that 1980’s console. The necessity to include more modern and contemporary games in future marathons is the big reason that “Classic Games Done Quick” (or CGDQ) became “Awesome Games Done Quick” (AGDQ) when the 2nd-annual event took place in 2011.

“I did the Teenage Mutant Acid Turtles run, as it’s now known… which, if there’s a run from Classic Games Done Quick that people remember, it is probably that one.” Emptyeye reminisced with us. “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles started visually glitching out, and this was after it had already crashed twice earlier in the marathon, so it got cut. (Later) it got added back in, and then it started to visually freak out. And, I do remember Mike Uyama trying to sort of cut it on the spot, and me overruling him, because I sort of wanted to see how far I could go before, effectively, the game crashed… which is what I was expecting to happen. And, as it turned out, as I kept playing, I realized okay, everything is visually all messed up, but everything positionally seems to be where it should be.” Emptyeye was able to complete his CGDQ 2010 run of TMNT on NES despite these glitches. “Even though I don’t think I actually ever verbally said it, until the run was over, or until I thought I could sort of breathe… or I thought I had it at Shredder. Thankfully, I didn’t flub that.”

The event was a success in every way they could have expected, despite the issues with the internet and the relatively low-budget way the event was captured. In 2010, this was a much bigger deal than some may realize, with capture cards and upscalers being a much more niche product then than they are today. GDQ focused on raising funds for a Swiss charity: CARE International, which was a great foundation… but in 2010, they didn’t take PayPal, and the fundraising scene then was much less user-friendly than it is today. As a result, GDQ moved on to focus on other organizations. Since then, GDQ has raised over $41 million USD for various charities… and it all started in Mike’s parents’ basement.

Though the first CGDQ focused on almost exclusively NES titles, a handful of other consoles were sprinkled throughout the event, laying the groundwork for today’s GDQ events, which feature games from the Atari all the way to the current generation. With the best speedrunners, representing dozens of countries and thousands of different games and consoles, GDQ has grown tremendously, and continues to be a positive force in the community to this day.