Early next week the annual Awesome Games Done Quick (AGDQ) video game speed run charity event will be taking place and streaming live on twitch.tv.  One really cool crossover between the speed running community and the maker community is with tool assisted speed runs (TAS), where a video game is played with inputs that were painstakingly programmed ahead of time to produce amazing game playing results.

Check out the video above for a great overview and demonstration of TAS at last year’s AGDQ.  You can see a Raspberry Pi and controller input buffer board are used to play back inputs for NES and Nintendo 64 games.

This year you can see the full schedule of AGDQ games here, and in particular notice the block of TAS games will start in the evening on January 4th:

• TASbot plays Mario Kart 64 with micro500 and Weatherton
• TASbot plays Pokemon Red with dwangoAC, p4plus2, Masterjun, Ilari, true, twm and ais523
• TASbot plays a mystery game with dwangoAC and p4plus2

Be sure to check out the other speed runs during the event too.  Good luck to all the participants!

Games Done Quick – Speedrunning Marathons for Charity