Summer Games Done Quick 2022 has come and gone. This year's event pulled in over $3 million (USD) for charity and was full of ridiculous runs, various incentives, and a few cases of "that's never happened before." One run in particular, the one for Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, seemed to pull in a lot of hype.
Metal Gear Rising also happened to be one of the games that had an incentive. If enough money was donated, the Blade Wolf DLC campaign would be run. The goal was met, the DLC was run, and a new world record came from it! Or so runner Mekarazium would have everyone believe.
As it turns out, Mekarazium faked that record breaking run of the Blade Wolf DLC. It was all pre-recorded and Mekarazium admitted to it being fake a few days after the event concluded. Mekarazium spliced together his best segments from previous runs. This was admitted to a representative of SGDQ through Discord.
Mekarazium's run was done remotely despite SGDQ being an in-person event this year. He says, "I haven't mentioned it anywhere, neither during the submission process or the email that I sent to the committee. It was supposed to be a real-time run, but I've changed my mind at the last second after switching the saves."
PCGamesN pointed out a few things that viewers noticed that were a bit off about the run prior to Mekarazium admitting what he did.
Users on the speedrun sub-Reddit noticed various discrepancies in Mekarazium’s run of Blade Wolf. Compared to his run of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance’s base game, the DLC run contains almost no keyboard sounds. There is also a moment, captured by Redditor SevenStack, where Mekarazium seems to remove his right hand from the mouse while the in-game camera continues to move. Mekarazium tries to explain this by saying they were moving the mouse with their left hand.
At the end of the run, the GDQ announcer tells Mekarazium their time, confirming that they have set a new world record. Mekarazium responds by saying “can we not, like, use the world-record stuff? It’s very misleading. It assumes what happened here is the fastest time, when in fact someone else could have a faster, world-record versionâ€.
At the end of the run, the GDQ announcer tells Mekarazium their time, confirming that they have set a new world record. Mekarazium responds by saying “can we not, like, use the world-record stuff? It’s very misleading. It assumes what happened here is the fastest time, when in fact someone else could have a faster, world-record versionâ€.
Those in charge of GDQ say that Mekarazium has been banned from future GDQ events.
