Speedrunners can utterly wreck your favorite games and leave you wanting more. When indie developer Frima opened the floodgates with a speedrunning contest featuring its 2014 couch co-op favorite Chariot, the end results surpassed their wildest expectations. Here's the story of how a co-op speedrunning team achieved a new world record.
Individually, veteran speedrunners Cyghfer and Blechy boast blazingly fast completion times in games like Mega Man 2, Shadow of the Ninja, Ninja Five-O, and Gimmick. Together, the pair has produced impressive co-op speedruns of Capcom's SNES puzzler Goof Troop and the classic NES platformer Chip'n Dale's Rescue Rangers.
Responding to Frima's challenge, Cyghfer and Blechy set their sights on level 2-5 of Chariot. After days of work and countless retries, the team achieved a world-record time of 3:07, beating the developer's best recorded time by more than a minute. Below is a replay of their contest-winning submission:
It's a lot to take in at once, and the run takes advantage of several mechanical quirks that you may not be familiar with, even if you've played Chariot through to completion. As part of this exclusive Co-Optimus feature, we're going to let Cyghfer and Blechy themselves take over and explain the work that went into their record run. Read on to learn how the pair won Frima's contest.