Speedrunner Beats 'The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom' In 94 Minutes
Less than 24 hours after the game was released, nonetheless.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is already being hailed as a masterpiece, a rich, immersive and deeply interactive experience with no linear path and a huge open world that’s begging to be explored. It offers hundreds of hours of gameplay, and while most Zelda fans have dove in in full, speedrunners have already found ways to complete the game as quickly as possible.
One of these Zelda speedrunners, who goes by gymnast86, has already posted a video to YouTube in which he completes the game in a mere 1:34:33. This launch day record is in the “any percentage” category, which means the participant doesn’t have to find every collectable and complete ever side quest — just polish off the main story as fast as humanly possible without the assistance of Amiibo. The video isn’t linked here because, as you can surely imagine, it contains major spoilers. However, if you want to see it for yourself you can view it on gymnast86’s channel.
Crafting and constructing are key gameplay mechanics of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, so speedrunners had likely been plotting ways to “break” the game weeks before it was announced. There’s no telling how long the current speedrunning record will stand as well: IGN notes that The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild‘s current speedrun record was set only a few months ago, and speedrunners are still breaking records in classic titles like Super Mario 64. Any way you slice it, however, finding a way to beat a game that has hundreds of hours of content in a mere hour and a half — less than a day after it was released too — is quite a feat.
For more from the world of gaming, be sure to check out the ROG Ally, a powerful new handheld console from ASUS.
