The Doom speedrunning community has been turned upside down recently after a 26-year-old world record was beaten by just one second.
As detailed in this video by Karl Jobst, Doom's oldest speedrunning world record was finally beaten earlier this month. Back in 1998, a speedrunner known as Thomas Pilger managed to set not only the world record for Doom's first level 'Hangar' but also the opening level of Doom 2, 'Entryway.' It's been 26 years since then and both of these records have now been beaten by just a couple of seconds.
Pilger's original time for Hangar, set in 1998, sat at an already very impressive 9 seconds. This was the quickest anyone had ever got from one side of the level to the other and it stayed that way up until 2019. It was believed that nobody could beat this incredibly fast time, but then another Doom speedrunner, known as '4ShockBlast' gave it a try and managed to do it in just 8 seconds.
This must have stung for Pilger, who had held that crown for 21 years at that point, but things were about to hurt even more. In the same year that they achieved the Doom world record, Pilger found a way to complete Entryway from Doom 2 in just five seconds. Thanks to its limited number of turns and its small map, this level can be completed in no time at all. This is where 4ShockBlast comes in again.
On April 6, 2024, 4ShockBlast uploaded a video to their YouTube channel which saw them completing Entryway in just under five seconds. As you can see from the video above, this Doom player managed to shave the previously set world record time by just one second, and honestly, it's so fast, we're not even sure how they did it.
"If you were to have asked any Doom speedrunner even just a year ago if 4 seconds was doable they would have said no," Jobst says in their video, so suffice to say, this new world record is a pretty big deal in the community. To find out exactly how this speedrun was pulled off, we suggest watching Jobst's video for a full breakdown.
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