Speedrunners in video gaming are a very, very special breed of players. To these people, it’s not enough to just clear the game content (or at least, the main story in most cases). These people… Well… They aim to be the person that finishes the task in record time and embed themselves in a Guinness-like book of speedrun records. Speedrunning took off in the 90s when people passed demo files on message boards (forums), and nowadays, in the modern era of fast communication through the power of the Internet, people live stream their activities pertaining to the speedrun discipline in various games. Like with any new game, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (TotK) is a target, or a mountain top, so to speak, for a lot of players. The game has been out for less than a month at the time of writing this article, and players are already optimizing their strategies on how to cut corners as much as possible to reach the end of the game as fast as possible.
Let’s have a look at the current Speedrun World Records for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (TotK).
Best Speedruns in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (TotK) Any%
This article was last updated on May 16, 2023. We’ll check for newly documented speedruns every once in a while, and you can also report if you find any that are interesting, but not listed here.
Related: How to Not Get Struck By Lightning in Tears of the Kingdom (TotK)
Clocking in at 1:29:44 (1 hour, 29 minutes, 44 seconds) we have “gymnast86” as the current (unofficial?) world record.
Gymnast86 has another, slightly slower run (1:34:33) and another run (1:32:27). Based on what he is claiming in the above-embedded video that currently holds the (unofficial?) world record, I feel that gymnast86 might do some more practicing and then chase his own record pretty soon! After all, when it comes to Breath of the Wild, there are people who can beat it in under half an hour, so I assume that we’ll very soon see a better-optimized strategy for TotK that will push the timer under one hour. It’s not going to be like Ocarina of Time where you can gun it in less than 5 minutes.
Related: All Special Controls in Tears of the Kingdom (TOTK) Listed
On speedrun.com, we might soon see some posted runs as well. At any rate, as promised, we will check back from time to time to see what the new World Record is.
Here’s a meme video related to speedruns by Matthew McCleskey as well, to close this article. Make sure to also check out our TotK tag below the article, for more Tears of the Kingdom content. See you soon at Prima Games.