Speedrunning is the act of playing a video game, or section of a video game, with the goal of completing it as fast as possible. Speedrunning often involves following planned routes that allow sections to be skipped or completed more quickly than intended.
Many online communities revolve around speedrunning specific games; community leaderboard rankings for individual games form the primary competitive metric for speedrunning. Racing between two or more speedrunners is also a popular form of competition. Videos and livestreams of speedruns are shared via the internet on media sites such as YouTube and Twitch.
the act of navigating through previously explored areas, usually for the purpose of progressing in an objective-based adventure game; players who are lost may also backtrack to reorient themselves
the process of storing a portion of a game's content in a device's temporary memory; typically performed by abusing the pause function in video games
passing through anything that is meant to be solid to the player; clips are extremely common in all sorts of games
intentionally getting hit in order to gain extra speed/height or to pass through enemies/obstacles quickly.
intentionally dying to save time, usually to avoid backtracking by abusing the death mechanic to teleport the player to a certain location
software that runs a game outside of its original console; oftentimes emulators come with extra features that were not present on the original console, such as frame advance and save states; these functions are not allowed in races.
the time it takes for the game to update the screen and poll input, typically 1/60th or 1/30th of a second, but can vary
a technique in a game that you only have a 1 frame window to successfully pull off
a delay between you performing an input and seeing it happen on the screen; some HDTVs have significant input lag, as well as things like playing the game using a capture device without splitters
the screen that appears while the game is loading, which is when the program moves data from the disk to RAM; typically takes place between two different areas in a game
to go outside of the playing field of the game; out of bounds areas are sometimes vaguely defined
a player's personal best time achieved in a speedrun category; also can be called a Personal Record
the function in the game's code responsible for creating random events by generating random sequences of values or single value
routing is the act of developing an optimal sequence of actions and stages in a video game; a route may involve skipping one or more important items or sections.
saving and reloading the game to save time, typically to avoid backtracking by teleporting the player in a specific location; similar to Death Warp
a situation where a game remains apparently playable, but further progress is impossible, typically due to a design flaw or glitch
a term that refers to each individual segment/checkmark for a speedrun; splits are a great way for speedrunners to get an idea of how their run is progressing compared to their PB or the WR of the category
a prefix word essentially meaning "under" or "below"; often used to refer to a time that is under a specific benchmark
a speedrun or playthrough composed of precise inputs recorded with tools such as video game emulators; tool-assisted speedruns are generally created with the goal of creating theoretically perfect playthroughs
the fastest time in the world for a category for a game