At this year’s big speedrunning fest, Elden Ring bosses will be defeated with the power of saxophone

The yearly speedrunning superstream Awesome Games Done Quick is starting this weekend, and it’s set to be a musical one. The events will include a player who will beat a set of Elden Ring boss battles using a saxophone as a controller, and 16 minutes of Crazy Taxi with a live backing band rocking out as the driver collects their fares. Other notable events will see two players storming through The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild while sharing a single joypad, and an amorous attempt to clear “all romances” in Fallout: New Vegas within 30 minutes – wait, there are romance options in New Vegas?

Ah, I totally forgot there are eight named characters in Bethesda’s radioactive wasteland with which you can do the horizontal hip hooray. Including one robot called “Fisto”. Well, you can look forward to that on Thursday. The festival of nippy nonsense starts on Sunday 5th and runs until Sunday 12th. A whole week of saxy shennanigans. You can see the full schedule on the Games Done Quick website.

The appearance of Crazy Taxi during the speedrunning fest might be inspired by news of an upcoming reboot. And the musical accompaniment may include some old favourites from the original soundtrack. Long-toothed taxi drivers will remember the Dreamcast and arcade versions had a punk rock OST with lots of Offspring and Bad Religion, but those songs got removed in later editions of the game due to licensing rights.

However! You can see how the band scheduled for Awesome Games Done Quick performs the Offspring track “Way Down The Line” in this submission video, which they performed alongside a playthrough from a player’s previous speedrun. They even change some of the lyrics to jokily reference speedrunning. And I enjoy the way they cut off abruptly every time the game timer runs out and the menu pops up.

As for the jazzy side of things, you might have already seen the saxophonist “Dr Doot” completing a no-hits run of Elden Ring on his own time. This time he’ll face a “controlled” set of bosses. It is very satisfying to hear the brassy doots and swoots as he calmly rolls away from danger.

Some newer games are also on the roster. Alan Wake 2, Windblown, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and the Silent Hill 2 remake will all see speedruns of various kinds. Some ambitious folks are also planning to nip through UFO 50, with the organisers allocating 50 minutes to the retro collection. Does that mean they’ll spend one minute on each game? Or maybe they’re planning to complete as many games in the compilation as possible? I don’t know. But it could be an interesting one.

The Games Done Quick organisers regularly raise millions of dollars for charity in their bi-annual events. This year they’re once again supporting the Prevent Cancer Foundation. Last year’s Summer Games Done Quick (the beshorted beachy brother of the classic January event) saw a Sekiro player interrupted during a speedrun by that most baffling of Windows interruptions – sticky keys. But it didn’t stop the shinobi slashing from tipping the event over the $2.5 million mark.