The exploits and tricks that define competitive speedrunning — documented and explained
A wrong warp in Hera's Tower that sends Link directly to Agahnim's Throne Room, bypassing the entire Dark World and all seven Dark World dungeons.
A speed accumulation glitch in which repeated backwards long-jumps on narrow staircases build velocity past the game's signed 16-bit speed cap, causing the value to overflow negative and teleport Mario through star-locked doors.
A wrong warp using the Prelude of Light cutscene that sends child Link directly to the game's ending credits, bypassing all adult temples and the final Ganon confrontation.
Maintaining Speed Booster velocity while morphing into Morph Ball, combined with the game's wall-jump mechanic, allows Samus to bypass Hi-Jump Boots and Grapple Beam requirements across large sections of Brinstar and Maridia.
A save data manipulation technique that corrupts Alucard's room pointer on the title screen, causing the game to load him into the final boss room on new-game start.
Rapidly pausing and unpausing during boss fights causes Mega Man to enter the invincibility frames of a hit repeatedly without taking damage, allowing bosses to be defeated without losing health.
Manipulating enemy patrol AI by leaving bodies in specific positions causes guards to investigate rather than raise the alert, allowing Bond to pass through restricted areas without triggering mission-fail alarm states.
Hidden warp zones in Worlds 1-2, 4-2, and 4-2 allow Mario to skip to Worlds 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, or 8, with the 4-2 World 8 warp being the centrepiece of modern Any% routing.
Using Fly or Teleport the moment a Trainer initiates a battle corrupts the encounter pointer, causing the next wild encounter to load any Pokémon — including the otherwise uncatchable Mew.
Exploiting Quake's Newtonian movement physics to maintain and accumulate horizontal speed through repeated jumps, combined with rocket-jump propulsion, enabling movement speeds and trajectories the game's level design never anticipated.
Moving diagonally by combining forward and strafe inputs simultaneously to achieve approximately 141% of the base forward movement speed, using a specific strafe-run key combination documented by the community as SR50.
Exploiting the GoldSrc engine's air acceleration model to maintain and accumulate speed through continuous jumping, allowing the player to move at several times normal walking speed throughout the entire game.
By accelerating Mario to speeds so extreme that his position value overflows, players can reach "parallel universes" — copies of the level existing outside the map — in order to complete a star using only half of an A-press.
By getting Samus stuck inside a wall and repeatedly toggling the X-Ray Scope, runners force the game to shunt her upward five pixels at a time — climbing out of bounds and skipping vast swathes of the game.
Placing a bottle on the B button causes Ocarina of Time to write item values outside the space reserved for the inventory — letting runners conjure almost any item in the game, and eventually warp straight to the end credits.
By arranging Koopa shells at pixel-perfect positions, runners write machine code into the SNES's sprite table and make Super Mario World execute it, jumping straight to the credits from the first level.
id Software assumed nobody would fire a rocket at their own feet because the damage would be suicidal. The damage turned out not to scale the way they expected, and a programmer discovered by accident that it launches you across the map.
NES Tetris was thought to end at level 29, where pieces fall faster than the game's input delay allows you to move them. Two techniques — vibrating your arm, then drumming the back of the controller — proved otherwise.