The Super Monkey Ball run at AGDQ was so fast my eyes couldn't keep up

I think Super Monkey Ball might be one of the best games ever for speedruns - from the perspective of a casual viewer, at least. As a physics-based game divided into short stages, it's easy for an audience to understand what's going on (most of the time), which allows for quick restarts should things go wrong. As a bonus, it also provides plenty of breaks for well-deserved applause.

I learned all this from watching the Super Monkey Ball speedrun at charity event Awesome Games Done Quick last night - and, quite frankly, it blew my mind.

Played by speedrunner Helix on GameCube, the run was in the "all difficulties, no extra, warpless" category (a mouthful, I know), and took him a total of 23:41 minutes. It was a little off his personal best of 21:28, but he achieved his goal of a time in the "23s" - and it's impressive considering he was slowing down to show off strategies and explain his techniques. Yes, he was slowing down - and even then my eyes could barely keep up. Just check out this clip from the extra stages he did after his main run. You can barely see the goal.

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