speedrun

Diablo II streamer finds 1-in-3-million item drop, instantly sells it for laughs

Blizzard, Diablo, Diablo 2, Diablo II, gaming, speedrun, steamer, twitch / Mike M. / February 11, 2024

Gold digger —

Many players have never even seen a Zod rune drop over decades of play.

Kyle Orland – Feb 9, 2024 6: 10 pm UTC

Enlarge / Mere seconds before an epic livestreamed troll moment.

The Zod rune has a mythical place in Diablo II lore. The incredibly rare socketed item, which can make other in-game gear indestructible, has just a 1 in 2,987,183 chance of dropping from the game’s highest class of enemy, according to one calculation.

To this day, it’s not hard to find dedicated players admitting online that they’ve never seen a legitimate copy of the rune despite years of play (though duplicated versions made using glitches can be less rare).

So when Diablo streamer and speedrunner Kano saw a Zod rune drop during a livestreamed Diablo II: Resurrected run Wednesday (as noticed by GamesRadar), it was something of a legendary moment. And when Kano sold that rune for a relatively unimportant 35,000 in-game gold mere moments later, it was something of a legendary troll.

“Please, for the love of all that is holy…”

“Yo, that’s my highest speedrun rune—here we go,” Kano said calmly on-stream when the rune dropped, projecting a cool detachment that belied the import of the moment. “That’s the first-ever Zod I’ve found, by the way. Like, ever.”

Viewers seeing the moment live on Twitch chat were not nearly so detached. “That’s easily the rarest thing ever dropped in a speed run, lol,” Twitch user R__A__C__E stated, probably accurately. “I just opened the stream WHAT THE F hahahha” Twitch user creatingmadness added.

The chat’s mood changed mere moments later, though, when Kano left the dungeon, walked to an in-game vendor, and quickly sold the incredibly rare item. “Do not vendor that!!! Please for the love of all that is holy,” YouTube viewer Ragnar begged, to no avail. “YOU ASSHOLE,” Twitch user R__A__C__E added in all-caps outrage.

Kano just chuckled a bit to himself at the reactions he was getting from his viewers. “What, dude, it’s 35K, it’s good… it’s good money,” he deadpanned. Later in the same stream, he feigned ignorance over why the sale would even generate controversy. “Why would they be angry at me for selling a Zod, dude? It’s 35K gold. I don’t get it. What’s the problem? I think I should be more angry at people who keep a Zod rune, to be honest.”

Kano’s full stream. The Zod rune drops at around the 8: 15: 30 mark.

Elsewhere in the stream, though, Kano dropped the act and fully appreciated what had just happened. “I can’t believe it, like, that’s so sick,” he said. “Hello, it’s my first ever Zod rune, dude. Now, whenever people ask me the question ‘What’s the highest Rune you’ve ever seen in a speedrun?’ I can finally say it’s a Zod, man.”

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That’s never happened before: Games Done Quick video stars speedrunning dog

Personal Best Boy —

The Shiba Inu was trained to use a custom controller in a game meant for a robot.

Samuel Axon – Jan 17, 2024 8: 27 pm UTC

Peanut Butter the dog speedruns Gyromite at Awesome Games Done Quick 2024.

The twice-a-year video game speedrunning and fundraising live event Games Done Quick has been a source of amazement and joy for years, but we’re still saying “that’s never happened before” even now, more than a decade after the first event.

Case in point: Awesome Games Done Quick 2024, which is streaming live 24 hours a day this week on Twitch, saw the very first speedrun performed by a dog.

A Shiba Inu named Peanut Butter (shortened to PB, also a speedrunner term for “personal best” finish time) completed a 30-minute speedrun of the 1985 Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) game Gyromite.

Gyromite was originally bundled with the nostalgic but failed ROB (Robotic Operating Buddy) accessory for the NES. It’s a platformer of sorts, but not a conventional fast-paced one. Rather, it’s a comparatively slow-moving game where you make inputs to raise and lower pipes to allow a character to pass through the level safely.

In the speedrun, PB took over for the robot in a category called B Game. PB didn’t set a world record or a personal best (most GDQ runners don’t at the event), as there were a couple minor mistakes, but he still finished the game under its estimate by dutifully sitting, pressing buttons, and holding down those buttons at the right moments at owner JSR_’s prompts. JSR_ also prompted PB to periodically bark “hello” to the stream’s tens of thousands of viewers. PB received numerous treats throughout the run, including bits of cheese and ham.

The final time was 26 minutes and 24 seconds, compared to PB’s personal best of 25 minutes, 29 seconds. The human record is 24 minutes and 39 seconds, by a runner named Octopuscal. PB’s PB is currently the world record among dogs, but of course, he’s the only runner in that particular category.

Speedrunner JSR_ adopted PB during the height of the pandemic and has spent a portion of every day training him to press and hold large buttons on a custom controller for treats in order to play the game. “This took years of training,” he said. “I wanted to train him to do something special, when I realized as a puppy that he was much smarter than most other dogs I’ve seen. Since I’m a speedrunner (and PB was literally named after, you know, getting a ‘PB’ in a speedrun) it only made sense to me.”

You can see the full video of the run above. Awesome Games Done Quick is an annual event benefiting the Prevent Cancer Foundation. A sister event called Summer Games Done Quick benefits Doctors Without Borders later in the year. You can watch and donate on the event website.