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A team of seven players has completed the 1998 action game

Half-Life in less time than it takes to watch an episode of The Simpsons. What's more, the new speedrunning record -- standing at 20 minutes 41 seconds -- has smashed the existing record of 29 minutes and 41 seconds by almost a third.


The record-breaking run was completed on Hard difficulty in segments by a group known as Quadrazoid, comprised of runners quadrazid, Crash Fort, coolkid, pineapple, YaLTeR, Spider-Waffle (who held the previous record) and FELip. Each player has been practicing and honing their specific segment relentlessly, with the entire planning phase taking almost four years to nail down.

"Starting back in the summer of 2010, the estimated time for this run was thought to be roughly 27 minutes," the group wrote in the video description. "However, after almost four years of painstaking planning, theory crafting and execution, we have arrived at our final time, smashing all of our wildest expectations."

In executing the attempt, the runners have used a mix of player physics exploits in the GoldSrc engine -- the predecessor to Valve's current Source engine -- as well as tools and automated key scripts to perform superhuman manouevres such as "jump spam, duck spam, 180-degree turn for gauss boost and precise use-key actions".

Amongst the speedrunning community, runs of this type (tool-assisted speedruns completed by multiple parties) are seen as less difficult than the true, or natural, act of completing a game solo as quickly as possible. But to the uninitiated, the video to the right is still incredibly impressive, and to fans of the series there will be more than a little annoyance as you watch the runner bunnyhop past that boss that took you 4 days to beat 16 years ago.