Awesome Games Done Quick 2022, the latest of Games Done Quick's bi-annual week-long marathon of live speedruns designed to raise money for charity, ended on Sunday night, and it did so on a triumphant note, to say the least. In the last ten minutes or so of the event, during the final battle with Liquid Snake in an Extreme, All Bosses run of Metal Gear Solid, the audience's donations managed to finally topple the record set by Awesome Games Done Quick 2020, with around 3.18 million dollars raised by the end compared to the final total of $3,131,475 from two years ago. However, that 3.18 million was merely the total raised through direct donations. After adding in revenue gained through Twitch subscriptions, bits, sponsors and such, the final total clocked in at a whopping $3,416,729 raised for the Prevent Cancer Foundation.

Once again, Awesome Games Done Quick featured an impressive crop of speedruns covering both modern and classic games. Among the many highlights were runs of It Takes Two, Dead Rising, Deathloop, Pokémon Crystal, Chicory: A Colorful Tale, Donkey Kong Country 2, Slay the Spire, and many, many more, which you can all view here in a convenient playlist. The event even saw seven world records being broken as well, including those for Kena: Bridge of Spirits, Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode II, and the rather imposing Centurion in Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes (albeit with a bit of an asterisk there, as the real-time world record was broken, but not the in-game time world record). But the biggest record broken was for Pumpkin Jack, where runner Jaxler pulled off every trick almost effortlessly and destroyed the original record by a whopping three minutes, a feat which needless to say, saw them and the virtual audience erupt in glee.

But while the aforementioned Metal Gear Solid run was the finale, the audience made it clear that Shayy's run of Chapter 2 in Deltarune was the biggest highlight of the final day, or at least the one that raised the lion's share of the final total. Aside from the $500,000 raised to unlock it as a bonus game in the first place, another $200,000 or so was raised when it was announced after the unlocking that Shayy would perform an additional run of the game's infamous "Snowgrave" route if the three million dollar milestone was also reached. That said, runs of other bonus games were no slouches, with 7rayD's Village of Shadows run of Resident Evil Village raising $170,000 to unlock it, and a multi-runner Rocket League showcase raising $100,000 plus an additional $20,000 for an incentive to complete the Hard version of Panic's Air Race.

And of course, the always entertaining commentary, hosts, and loads of memes kept the audience glued to things even further, be it Mr. Game and Shout's impression of J. Jonah Jameson from a run of the Silver Lining DLC for Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered that he was happy to repeat for several other donations throughout the week, or an entire apology letter written from Shenanigan to Bulbasaur courtesy of the Pokémon Crystal run mentioned earlier, which was not only a result of a $900,000 milestone, but even closed out the event's credits. In the end, though, the important thing was just how much Awesome Games Done Quick 2022 did for a noble cause, with tons of impressively skilled game players coming together to eventually raise so much in order to help out cancer research. And now we'll see if Summer Games Done Quick 2022 can match this week's success when it's held later this year, though no date has been announced yet, as it hasn't been decided if Games Done Quick will be in-person or remain online again. In the meantime, you can check out regular speedruns throughout each week as part of their GDQ Hotfix show over on their Twitch channel.