10 Impossible Video Games Utterly Destroyed By Speedrunners
6. Marble Madness
Since its first launch in 1984, Marble Madness has earned a reputation for being a gruelling and unforgiving experience, despite only consisting of six levels. The goal is to lead a marble across various obstacles and past enemies in a race against time, the latter of which helped make the game so difficult for so many players.
The Arcade version isn't the most accessible title available for runners, who instead turn to the Nintendo Entertainment Systems and GameBoy editions.
Just completing the main six levels will take a decent-level player roughly 34 minutes to complete on average, with a completionist level requiring anywhere north of three hours. American speedrunner yelsraek currently holds the world record for the Any% category on the NES with a whopping time of 2:38.933. Yelsraek also holds the world record for the Any% Co-Op category for Marble Madness, setting a time of 3:3.433 alongside fellow runner chessjerk.
On the GameBoy version, things get even spicier. The 1991 GBA version of Marble Madness currently has a world record of 1:47.865 by Australian runner AD2.