Inside the relaxed, RNG-packed world of Animal Crossing speedrunning
From foot races to competitive cooking, there's just something inherently intriguing about watching experts perform everyday activities much faster than you ever thought imaginable. Thanks to the incipient popularity of boisterous events like Awesome Games Done Quick, many gamers around the world have taken up the mantle of speedrunning, applying the exacting shadow of a ticking stopwatch to their favourite games. But while droves of players young and old flow through the virtual turnstiles of Twitch to watch noted runners take shot after shot at famous events, like Ocarina of Time "any percent," or collecting all 120 stars in Super Mario 64, some smaller runners are carrying the brutal second-by-second logic of the perfect run into games that do little to encourage such a competitive atmosphere.
After all, just ask "Zoekay," a speedrunner who currently holds the world record for paying off all the house upgrades in the original Animal Crossing, the charming, colourful life-simulation game for the Nintendo GameCube. While most players take dozens of hours to climb their way out of the capitalist scoundrel Tom Nook's exploitative scheme, through a combination of fortuitous random rolls, optimised movement, and a literal cheat code, Zoekay managed it in just 36 minutes - a feat that would make my tween-aged self mad with envy. As a devoted fan of the series, the irony of making a pitted contest out of an ostensibly-relaxing life-simulation game isn't lost on this runner. In fact, to them, it's an accidental but beneficent side-effect that contributes to Animal Crossing's standing as a runnable game.
"What makes Animal Crossing different from other speedgames is there's no true goal," Zoekay tells Eurogamer. "The story or object of most games translates into the goal of speedruns. In Super Mario 64, it's to collect the stars, defeat Bowser, and rescue the princess. But with Animal Crossing, you hop off a train, move into a house, and then just do whatever you want. The game doesn't tell you what you need to be doing. This leads us to be creative with our speedrun categories, which makes Animal Crossing a much more dynamic speedgame."
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