Awesome Games Done Quick Raised $2.5 Million For Charity With Surprising Musical Speedruns

Video games are a spectator sport, at least for a few weeks every year. The 2025 edition of Awesome Games Done Quick wrapped up on January 12, bringing seven straight days of speedrunning to a close and raising more than $2.5 million for the Prevent Cancer Foundation through ticket sales and donations. AGDQ and its sister event, Summer Games Done Quick, are always a highly entertaining introduction to speedrunning, but January’s event also turned into a surprising spectacle, with multiple speedrunners incorporating live performances into their runs.

A whole week of 24-hour speedrunning streams might seem daunting to get into, but these events do a lot to make them accessible even for newcomers. The proceedings this year were at times elevated into a form of performance art, often involving live music in the process.

Take for example this year’s run of New Super Mario Bros. Wii, by a speedrunner and musician who goes by FunkopotamusWes. For his performance, Wes played the game with one Nintendo Switch Joy-Con strapped to his head and another to his foot. That allowed the runner to control his character’s movement by tilting his head and push other buttons with his toes or by mashing the controller into the ground. Why go to all that trouble? Well, to keep his hands free to play the piano, of course. Throughout the 41-minute run, Wes played his own arrangement of the game’s soundtrack on a digital piano. The hybrid speedrun/concert ended with the live AGDQ audience giving a standing ovation.

Wes’ New Super Mario Bros. Wii run wasn’t the only one to receive a standing ovation during this year’s AGDQ. Ratchet and Clank: Going Commando speedrunner Xem also happens to be a trained opera singer, a skill he put to use during this year’s event. After talking through his nearly three-hour run of Going Commando, Xem delivered a seven-minute opera performance, after which the live audience again rose to their feet.

Along with racing for the fastest times, speedrunners are also known for imposing ridiculous challenge for their runs (like playing the piano while beating a Mario game, for instance). A run of Elden Ring at this year’s show combined that idea with the musical theme. This year saw a speedrunner who goes by Dr. Doot playing Elden Ring using an electronic saxophone modified to act as a game controller. The runner attempted to beat Elden Ring’s bosses in succession without being hit, and while he didn’t managed to finish unscathed, the fact that he controlled the game using mostly his own breath is nothing short of astonishing. Add to that the fact that each input on the saxophone controller was accompanied by a note from the instrument, and the grueling Elden Ring run became one of the funniest events of the week.

No doubt the wildest musical performance came near the end of the week-long event. Games Done Quick hasn’t had a Crazy Taxi run in nearly ten years, due to the fact that the game’s soundtrack is full of copyrighted music that could land the organization in legal hot water for airing it. A speedrunner called chuckles825 broke that streak this year by playing Crazy Taxi muted, with a live backing band playing the soundtrack. For the entire 18-minute, the band played along, stopping and starting in time with the run, as the live audience again stood — not for an ovation this time, but to dance to the unexpected concert.

AGDQ 2025 was packed with other inventive runs, including a four-player race through a randomized version of Super Metroid, two runners completing The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild while sharing a controller, and a speedrun for the fastest time to romance every possible NPC in Fallout: New Vegas. All are worth watching, but the addition of live music (or at least musical instruments) shows the wild creativity of the community. Even for viewers who might not get the appeal of GDQ, there’s no denying how impressive it is to pull off a run while providing a musical performance at the same time.