Shucking the trend of most speedrunners who finish up games in a few minutes or at most a couple of hours, one speedrunner has performed quite a feat of public gaming endurance by beating Final Fantasy VII in just under eight hours. They used the help of many speedrunner pals to put together the necessary route and safeguards in place to shave seconds and minutes off of their time and ultimately completed it near flawlessly, despite the length.
Games Done Quick is the annual celebration of speedrunning, where players from around the world show off their ability to finish games faster than almost anyone. That's what Ajneb174 did at this year's summer speedrunning event, but with FFVII. The final time was seven hours, forty-eight minutes and four seconds.
There was plenty of audience participation throughout the run, with viewers joining in with the squat challenge during that particular sequence in-game. The players even went so far as to pretend to have killed themselves during a particular in-game sequence, though all was well, as it was an intended death that sped up that particular part of the game.
There were no bathroom breaks nor food breaks throughout the entire run, making it a true marathon of epic proportions. It took a lot of prototyping and routing to make the run work as well as it did though. It involved everything from clever team composition and limit break choices, to step counting to avoid certain lengthy fights (thanks Kotaku).
One fight that could not be avoided though is the final battle with Sephiroth himself, where a final Omnislash brought an end to the speedrun as it neared the eight-hour mark. Thus culminated one of the lengthiest public speedruns in the event's history.
