I guess it isn’t very clear. On SDA (Speed Demos Archive) the Timer starts when you start moving the character in the first level and stops when you can’t move the character after killing the final boss.

I couldn’t stop playing the game and improved my record a bit. I had to do about 120-130 attempts and this was nr. 17 of my finished attempts. Thanks to Stanski I didn’t stop that much in Snow field and thanks to Verberos at youtube and his speedrun Im very close to pass the waterfall level without a stop.

Its not the first time Im surprised over realising how fast you can beat this game. When I saw Tmonts 11:25 I thought an improvement with 15 seconds where possible but when I practiced like Crazy I realised that even sub 11 minutes where possible and I did 10:55. When I got 10:55 I had a theory that 15-20 seconds fast should not be impossible for me.

And When I got the 10:40 I belived my potentials limit should be somewhere around 10:25. And now I’m here at 10:24! And I belive that in the theory its possible to beat the game under 10 minutes but I’m pretty sure that a sub 10 will never ever happend. Its though to beat the game under 11 minutes. And you got to be a fast shooting bastard if you want to came close to this record.

I think I will keep trying to be even faster. though. Im not sure If I will ever improve the run even if a multi segment probably is 15 seconds faster. Where you can save most time is killing the waterfall boss and the base 2 boss faster.

Today I rank these Contra speedrun as one of my very best runs. Togheter with, I guess, Mario 3, Mega Man 3, X, X2. though. Mario 3 took a lot more time to accomplish.

The run where in general very smooth. Except for the first two room in Base 1 my spread rythm where good. I did what I can tell two small details that I can call mistakes. My position on the waterfall level where a bit off and a random enemies pop up and shot exactly when I did a jump in snow field. I had to dodge those bullets. I knew a random enemie pop up here in about 1 out of 50. Other than that everything is about getting luck and better spread rhythm. Freddy Andersson

[source]

I decided to do this run just before I finished my multi segment run. With all the time I put into doing each chapter quickly, the SS run was actually fairly easy to do. It serves as a nice distraction from the semi tedious nature of shaving seconds off of a nearly perfected segmented run. I took several attempts at completing this. This was my best completion time, but I know it could be faster. When I first recorded a multi segment run for submission to SDA, my time was 1:53:29. In just under two months I developed enough skill to nearly match that in one sitting. So I’m very pleased with this run, despite its flaws, and I hope it will be as enjoyable to watch as it was to make. Josh Mangini

[source]

Michael “DemonStrate” Yanni recorded this impressive Portal speed run - total time 13:46 playing the PC version, and if you’re curious he’s using a Logitech MX518 mouse.  Check it out.

If you want to play the flash version of Portal - play for free here.

Watch this under 20 minute (19:55 to be exact) speed run of Sega’s classic Sonic the Hedgehog 2 for the Sega Genesis.  It should be noted that this video was made tool assisted - played using a emulator at super slow speeds and save states. The goal is to provide entertainment by showing off game glitches and beating the game as fast as possible.

• No death
• Aims for fastest (primarily in-level) time
• Ignores delays caused by bonus effects
• Takes damage to save time
• Abuses programming errors in the game
• One player controls two characters