A new world record in speedrunning Virtual Hydlide was set this week at the Awesome Games Done Quick charity event.
Mechalink finished the 1995 Saturn RPG in 27 minutes and 11 seconds Thursday morning live on site at the Wyndham Hotel in Pittsburgh. He ran in the “any percentage” category — in other words, reaching the game’s end regardless of how many items were collected or objectives accomplished along the way.
He beat the previous record of 30:48 that stood for 10 months after being set by Zophar, who congratulated Mechalink on social media later that morning.
Each playthrough of Virtual Hydlide is set up randomly based on a string of letters and numbers that the player inputs to begin the game, which Hydlide uses as a “seed” to generate its world. During the run, Mechalink said that he tested a lot of seeds to find one that would be the most amenable to a speedrun.
For a closer look at Virtual Hydlide check out the review video that SHIRO!’s own PandaMonium made in 2019.
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 the Prevent Cancer Foundation, a U.S.-based nonprofit that works to empower people to stay ahead of cancer through prevention and early detection. The fundraiser ends Sunday morning.
A couple Saturn games were featured at the Summer Games Done Quick event in 2022 — Nights into Dreams and Bulk Slash.
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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