Metroid Dread speedrunners are blasting through it in under 90 minutes

Metroid Dread screenshots
(Image credit: Nintendo)

Metroid Dread speedrunners are beating the game in under 90 minutes flat.

As first reported yesterday by Kotaku, the Metroid Dread speedrunning community is on fire right now. If you head over to Speedrun.com, a database where speedrunners from all over the world can catalog their attempts at beating a game, you can see that eight total people have beaten Metroid Dread in under 90 minutes at the time of writing.

Right now though, the speedrunning title for Metroid Dread belongs to Hardpelicn, who posted an astounding time of one hour, 25 minutes, and 21 seconds last week on October 24. You can head over to the user's YouTube channel to view their complete speedrun in full, but prepare yourself for an absolutely blistering speedrun that would make anyone feel inadequate about their progress in Metroid Dread.

As pointed out by Kotaku though, this is all done under the "Any%" speedrunning category. Any% speedruns don't require users to defeat any particular bosses or attain any abilities while playing a game, so in Metroid Dread Any% speedruns, competitors are free to skip out any bosses and abilities that they don't feel are absolutely essential to completing the game as quickly as possible.

This is all going on less than a month after Metroid Dread first released, so there's no telling what the future ultimately holds for Nintendo's new 2D action game. For what we made of the revival of Samus Aran when the game first launched earlier in October, you can head over to our full Metroid Dread review for more.

Additionally, you can head over to our complete Metroid series recap for a complete explainer on everything before the events of the new game.

Hirun Cryer

Hirun Cryer is a freelance reporter and writer with Gamesradar+ based out of U.K. After earning a degree in American History specializing in journalism, cinema, literature, and history, he stepped into the games writing world, with a focus on shooters, indie games, and RPGs, and has since been the recipient of the MCV 30 Under 30 award for 2021. In his spare time he freelances with other outlets around the industry, practices Japanese, and enjoys contemporary manga and anime.