Tears of the Kingdom speedrunners continue to bring any% closer to the one-hour mark

Zelda speedrunners have been pulling off all the stops ever since Tears of the Kingdom released to try and complete the game as fast as possible and to secure that highly sought-after world record run.

Most notably, the any% category is currently being contested between a dozen speedrunners, some of which have been speedrunning the game from day one. The latest world record attempt, recorded by Samura1man, clocked in at 1 hour and 12 minutes, a drastic decrease from launch day runs of 1 hour and 30 minutes with the route and the game still being in its infancy.

For those unfamiliar with speedrunning or how people are beating the game so fast, it mainly revolves around making use of all the items and abilities available to players early in the Great Sky Island where you can create weapons to help you in the depths under Hyrule Castle. This includes using some glitches and starts along the way to have the best weapons and items available for you to take on impossible odds.

The speedrun is still far from optimized, and it’s likely that as more glitches are discovered, we could likely see the game fall under the one-hour mark within a few months, if not weeks, as routing improves. Still, for a game that has been out for a few weeks, the fact that we are anywhere close to that number is a testament to the Zelda speedrunning community and the skill of its runners.

It’s honestly pretty amazing to watch to see how the community is breaking the game this early, although we don’t advise you watch the speedrun if you have not completed the game yet. It heavily spoils what is to come. Should you not care about that, though, or just finished the game and see everything you want to see, chances are you’ll feel like your skills in the game aren’t as good as you thought they were—just like me.