Hot damn. We already knew that The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom speedrunners were wild when they started completing the game in under two hours from almost day one, but the race to a ridiculous one-hour “Any%” run has been ongoing and had some pretty decent efforts so far.
Now, it looks like the first person to achieve the monumental milestone of a sub-60-minute playthrough is a Japanese speedrunner who goes by “Zdi6923,” just scraping in there at a ridiculous 59:22. That’s about three minutes quicker than the previous record, which was already mind-boggling even without the added bragging rights of clocking in under the hour. Various techniques that have been discovered in the weeks since the game launched are used in the run, from making traversal quicking with rapid weapon unsheathing and resheathing to using a number of exploits and clipping bugs to break through the world in unsanctioned ways.
What makes this all even more impressive is that speedrunning efforts in Tears of the Kingdom are still being held back by the game’s opening tutorial section in the Sky Islands, which makes up more than 30 minutes of the run – meaning if a reliable method to skip over this stuff in a way that still allows for the completion of game is discovered we could see people posting significantly shorter times again. Although, the speedrunning community on Reddit seems convinced that this time is going to be incredibly difficult to beat.
You can check out the record-breaking attempt below, although obviously things get super spoiler-y almost immediately after the initial portion is completed so watch at your own risk:
If you’re only just starting out on your Tears of the Kingdom adventure, or need some quick tips on getting through the game (at a regular pace) check out our other guides to unlocking all of Link’s new abilities, creating the most useful recipes, making money efficiently and using amiibo figures to score some great unique gear.
