The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdomhas been publicly available for less than 24 hours, yet speedrunners have already set a 94-minute record for beating it. It’s still behindsome of the records set for its prequel, but there’s still plenty of time to beat it.
Warning: This article includes a link to massive story spoilers for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.As the much-anticipated sequel to 2017’sBreath of the Wild,Tears of the Kingdomhas just dropped, expanding upon its overworld and moveset, while also addressing several fan complaints and promising the return of Ganondorf to the series for the first time since 2006’sTwilight Princess. Despite its brand spanking new status, the most hardcore and dedicated players have already unlocked major spoilers for the game, found many of its secrets, broken the physics engine, and of course started to figure out how little time it can take to beat the game’s campaign.
RELATED:Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is Now One of the Highest-Rated Games Ever Made
In a tweet,Zeldaspeedrunner gymnast86 linked to his own Any% playthrough on YouTube, in which he completed the open-world adventure in exactly one hour, thirty-four minutes, and thirty-three seconds. A second tweet in the thread links to a shorter video, in which he explains how exactly he was able to accomplish it. In it, he mentions how none ofBreath of the Wild’sspeedrun-friendly glitches made a return, or at least cannot be executed the same way. The playthrough made heavy use ofthe game’s new Fuse ability, but notably made little to no use of the Ultrahand ability.
Withvehicle construction acting as another prominent featurein the game, it’s only a matter of time before someone discovers how to exploit it more and thus beat gymnast86’s record. gymnast86 himself even conceded that he probably won’t hold the record forever, and that his tactics will surely become obsolete in a matter of days. Such is life for any sort of record, but nonetheless, both the comments on his video and the replies to his tweets seem thoroughly impressed in the meantime, considering the game’s newness.
Speedrunning has been a popular activity within the gaming community for the longest time, trying to see how quickly both old and new games alike can be beaten. Even game developers themselves sometimes speedrun their own work as part of the testing process, witheven Eiji Aonuma beating this very gamearound 20 times; some of those playthroughs were quite quick, although he didn’t disclose his clear time. It should be interesting to see how soon this current speedrun record will last before other players discover new exploits and strategies.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdomis available now for Nintendo Switch.
MORE:New Super Mario Game Announcements Could Work in Tandem With Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
