Late summer's premier videogame speedrunning event takes off this week, as Flame Fatales 2023 looks to raise money for Malala Fund, benefitting women's education around the world. Running from August 13th to 19th, Flame Fatales 2023 features an array of skilled speedrunners doing their thing for about 12 hours a day, every day, while chat donates to cheer them on and/or make their lives harder.
At press time Flame Fatales is deep inside a run of Final Fantasy Origin, with runner Syanidesugar just absolutely chewing apart a bunch of Chaos despite getting a bad hand on random [[link]] drops of [[link]] much-needed axe weapons.
A quick perusal of the schedule serves up a number of promising speedruns that'll be a delight to watch. Today alone there are runs of Overcooked! 2 and Sook, Serve, Delicious on high-difficulty settings. Tomorrow a run of Titan Souls, then a bonus run of cult shooter F.E.A.R. finishes out the night. [[link]] Tuesday's got a run of, no joke, Dino Crisis 2, a game I have not thought about in probably two decades. On Wednesday someone's speedrunning Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, and there's also the more serious Solar Ash and PlateUp!
Thursday has a back-to-back banger duo with Fable: The Lost Chapters followed by Final Fantasy—the original one. Friday has a Final Fantasy 10 run, as well as a beatmania IIDX showcase. Next Saturday Has some great stuff like Resident Evil Village and Octopath Traveler 2 to round out the whole show.
Speedrunning, if you're not too familiar, is a practice where people play games as quickly as they can in competition with each other. It's a practice so enjoyed by those who do it that they've set up entire systems to rank against each other and set the rules for competition. You can watch a great documentary about it, Running with Speed, to get the gist.