A pair of Sega Saturn games were among those featured this week at Summer Games Done Quick, with speedrunners showing off amazing skill to help raise money for charity.
The games were Nights into Dreams and Bulk Slash, both of which were played Monday morning.
Pochilin beat Nights into Dreams in a blazing 23 minutes and 10 seconds.
Pochilin had a “that’s never happened before” moment — a meme at GDQ events — near the end of the run when the last boss used attack patterns he didn’t expect.
Earlier that morning, Aquas beat Bulk Slash in just 17 minutes and 45 seconds.
While Aquas asked to use the English fan localization patch for Bulk Slash, Games Done Quick organizers denied his request, citing legal concerns.
A Saturn-adjacent game was featured this week, too — PowerSlave: Exhumed, which launched for modern consoles and PCs in February.
PowerSlave was run Wednesday morning by Kaos_Wulf and was joined by the primary developer of the remake, Kaiser.
One interesting nugget Kaiser mentioned during the speedrun was that he started with the Saturn version of PowerSlave and added the exclusive levels and enemies from the PlayStation version, making it closer to an enhanced version of the classic Saturn FPS rather than a mashup of the Saturn, PS1 and PC versions.
Each January and June for more than 10 years, Games Done Quick has raised money for charity by organizing a full slate of players who speedrun video games. The events are streamed live online 24 hours a day for a full week, and all donations go directly to the charity.
This week, money is being raised for Doctors Without Borders, which provides food, water and health care around the globe. The fundraiser ends Sunday morning.
Danthrax is a contributor to the Shiro Media Group, writing stories for the website when Saturn news breaks. While he was a Sega Genesis kid in the ’90s, he didn’t get a Saturn until 2018. It didn’t take him long to fall in love with the console’s library as well as the fan translation and homebrew scene. He contributed heavily to the Bulk Slash and Stellar Assault SS fan localizations, and has helped as an editor on several other Saturn and Dreamcast fan projects such as Cotton 2, Rainbow Cotton and Sakura Wars Columns 2.
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