Speedrunning marathon Summer Games Done Quick 2019 starts today

Charity speedrunning extravaganza Summer Games Done Quick is upon us once again: for the next week, you'll be able to tune in on Twitch at any time of the day or night to watch some of the best runners take on the likes of Portal 2, Borderlands 2, Half-Life and Prey.

The pre-show stream starts today at 9:30am PT / 12:30pm ET / 5:30pm BST, and the first run—Spyro Reignited Trilogy: Spyro the Dragon—begins half an hour later. Portal 2 is the second game due up today, and it'll be an inbounds run, which means it'll probably be less glitchy and easier to watch than many Portal 2 speedruns you've seen. Devil May Cry is another one to watch out for later today.

The event, which is raising money for charity Doctors Without Borders, wraps up next Saturday night with puwexil's speedrun of Chrono Trigger, expected to last a marathon six hours: make sure you've got snacks handy. You can view the full schedule here.

If you can't tune in live for a given run, then you'll be able to catch it on the Games Done Quick YouTube channel, which is usually pretty quick in uploading individual runs. The Twitch stream is here—I like sticking it on in the background when I'm doing some work, and often stumble across runs I never thought I'd enjoy.

If you want a taste of what's to come, check out the seven must-watch PC speedruns from last year's event.

Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.