Summer Games Done Quick has begun, which means that we’re in for a full week of video game speedruns. This year’s charity livestream, which is raising money for Doctors Without Borders, features Hollow Knight: Silksong, Pragmata, Resident Evil Requiem, and more. It’s already delivered an all-time great GDQ moment, though, thanks to a record-breaking Kirby Air Riders run.
During the first night of the event, speedrunner Bluekandy took to the GDQ stage for a unique Kirby Air Riders run. The original plan was to speed through all 18 of the game’s standard Air Ride courses, but that changed when the stream reached a donation incentive that mixed up the objective. Instead, Bluekandy would have to pull that off by using a different racer and cart on each course, in a speedrunning category dubbed No Dupes.
That’s a more complicated task than you might expect. Kirby Air Riders’ vehicles are all wildly different from one another. Some can glide through the air thanks to their low lift stats, while others are grounded wheelies that can take tight turns with ease. The weirdest vehicle of the bunch is a slippery star that slides around a track like a bar of soap. Combine that with characters who have their own unique stats, and you’ve got a recipe for a deceptively complex run that requires a lot of mastery.
Thankfully, Bluekandy is a genuine Air Riders master. The 38-minute gauntlet had him working with complementary character-vehicle builds engineered to nail each course. Using Rick on Rex Wheelie, for instance, allowed him to conquer Waveflow Waters’ tight boardwalk turns. Perfect combos and clean routing only accounted for part of the feat; he also had to worry about defeating as many enemies as possible on each course to raise his max speed. You can see him pulling off tricks like strategically tossing bombs backwards to maximize the number of enemies hit.
Not only did Bluekandy nail the challenge, he destroyed the world record in the process. His final time of 37:54 in No Dupes appears to have crushed a previous 39:51 record by runner KazuYoshi. (The final time has yet to be confirmed by Speedrun.com.) It’s not often that you see a world record set on the GDQ stage; it’s less often that you see one obliterated by two whole minutes.
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It’s a spectacular performance that reveals Kirby Air Riders’ hidden depth. At a glance, the arcade racer seems extremely simple due to its two-button control scheme. (You don’t even have to hold a button to accelerate.) The high-level strategy comes from figuring out the nuance of every character, cart, track, and power-up to keep your momentum up in lightning-fast races. There’s a good reason we called Kirby Air Riders one of the best games of 2025, after all. Bluekandy’s run shows off just how skilled you can get in taming an untamable game.
Summer Games Done Quick runs from now through Saturday, July 11. You can watch it live on Twitch and YouTube.
