An essential part of speedrunning is to find the most optimal feasible route that leads to the completion of the game (or segment thereof). A route, in the context of speedrunning, is a course of action with which to get from one point in the game to another. The need for determining such a route stems from the complexity of the separate areas in which the gameplay takes place. For example, one may find that a level built as labyrinth will require extensive planning to ensure that the best method for passing the area is found. Even in games in which the levels seem fairly straightforward, it is often required that a route is taken that ensures some kind of advantage; such as a certain degree of safety or beneficial items that can be found along the way, as an “optimal” route is designed not only to be fast, but also to take into account the effect it might have on other resources that might affect later levels. The need for the construction of a route depends on the structure of a level.

In highly non-linearly structured games there is often no obvious choice, as there might be many choices that the player can choose from that require extensive research to appraise. For example, the shortest possible route might contain so many obstacles that it is virtually impossible to use; it is therefore often necessary to find a compromise between ease and distance. Depending on how the player's skill improves, faster but increasingly difficult routes may be chosen; record times for this reason mostly utilize the most highly yielding route, depending on the popularity of the game — it is nearly impossible that a fair degree of competition will not force players to get the advantage by taking the routes that have the most potential. Contrary to strictly linear levels which can only be finished using one predetermined route, there are games in which levels leave a lot of room for creativity in its playthrough.

While route planning may seem like simply the planning out of a route that allows one to efficiently finish a level, it also pertains to other aspects of a game that incorporate choice. For example, one may find that when allowed to choose between several starting conditions, such as the choice to play the game with a certain type of character, will also greatly affect the feasibility of a playthrough. In the game Hexen, for example, we are allowed to choose between three different “classes” of characters, one being a knight (who is agile and strong), a mage (who is slow, yet has powerful magic abilities) and a cleric (a versatile combination of both); speedrunner “Cacodemon Leader” found out that the cleric was the most feasible character to play the game with, as it isn't as slow as the mage in the beginning, yet does gain a significant usability boost near the end of the game (which the knight does not), thus yielding the best outcome in the end.• Runners would describe this choice as obvious, seen as how it simply allows the runner to finish the game more efficiently. And yet, it may not be optimal if the goal of a speedrun were to change. Afterall, we see that the knight is a very strong character in the beginning of the game; if the speedrun's goal were to finish only the first cluster of levels, then the knight, who is able to rush through the first few levels with relative ease, would likely be the most useful character; if the speedrun's goal were to finish using only the first weapon in the game, the mage would be the strongest, as the mage's first weapon continues to be viable even during later levels. A separate rationale, and a very important aspect of this form of route planning, is that some cases may be described as tiers as well; using Hexen as an example again, we find that some runners might want to do a run on the game using the knight or mage anyway, even if this ensures a slower playthrough than when the cleric is used, simply in order to set a fastest time using a different character choice as prerequisite. Such runs are then in a separate category than the “main” run which would still pertain to the cleric. In essence, this is the same as the difference between other differences in classification, such as 100% and any% runs. The possibility to run through a game faster by using a superior strategy that spans across the game in its entirety depends on its linearity. The more linear the game is, the less able a player will be to alter the large-scale route of play, as there simply will not be many choices to take or affect.

The amount of planning that can go in both the level sequence and the actual gameplay may vary a lot and be disproportionate; one might spend a lot of time planning out the route of an individual level while the general route in the game is relatively straightforward, for example. On the contrary, one may also find that the route of an entire game is much more important than the planning out of individual levels, as would be the case with many racing games that incorporate a certain degree of strategy, Gran Turismo, a racing game in which the player is able to buy different cars and upgrades, being an example; the speed at which one can play this game depends almost entirely on the choices made outside of racing, as a player will have to plan out which of the in-game racing tournaments he will attend to be able to get to the point where he can attempt the final one as quickly as possible.

While this type of strategic route planning is essential, there are other (usually highly linear) games in which it is useless. In that case, runners are often presented with extensive methods for optimizing routes for individual levels or segments of the game. A good example is Quake, in which we can find many good examples of the effect that route planning can have on the outcome of a speedrun, as even years after the initial versions of its speedrun routes there are still additional shortcuts being discovered that can speed up one's progress. One notable example of a level which has undergone a lot of route changes in this game is E4M3 * (The Elder God Shrine). Originally, the route for this map was very long and involved going through the graveyard in addition to many other things. After the release of the first Quake done Quick video, in which this route was recorded as a 1:21 run by Yonatan Donner, it was found out that a large part of this route could be skipped by using a slope jump in the starting room, leading to Donner improving his run to 0:57.• This was the basic foundation of the map's route, which is still being used today: do the slope jump, get the silver key, run back to the start room, jump to the other side, get the gold key, and exit. A variety of new shortcuts were found since then, constantly updating the optimal route. Following Donner's record, “DooMfienD” used an in-flight grenade jump from the back of a Fiend rather than one from balcony to balcony in order to get to the other side of the start room. He also added a grenade jump at the silver key and got 0:55 for Quake done Quicker.• Markus Taipale later replaced this with a bunny hop. Evan Wagner ran 0:54 by adding a grenade jump from the Knights near the gold key and an additional boost in a long hallway. These additional grenade jumps became possible due to more efficient health usage attained by picking up the second large health upgrade when returning at the starting point rather than when starting. Ilkka Kurkela added bunny hops to get 0:50. The grenade jump at the silver key went through a few revisions (being replaced by a double grenade jump or a quad boost) but was eventually reverted to DooMfienD's original method because the health was needed for a much more important trick devised by Markus Taipale: a Fiend boost after the start, and a Quad Damage grenade jump at the gold key that carries the player at full speed nearly all the way to the exit. Combining all of these tricks, Markus was able to record 0:40 for Quake done Quick with a Vengeance, a run which he later improved to 0:37.•

Even so, this route was still not optimal, as proved by Peter Horvath, who added a grenade jump from a Spawn in the lava near the silver key — labelled by the team as a “never-thought-of-before trick” — which gave him the currently fastest time of 0:33.• While this route is currently believed to be optimal, Horvath himself admits that it is still possible to improve on his play.•

Aside of route planning, there are multiple other commonly utilized techniques that are separate from the typical prerequisite of excelling playing quality. With the previous paragraph in mind, it is implied that the best routes rarely rely upon the paths and progressions that were designated by the developers; skilled players will usually discover ways to finish parts of the game in a different order than was intended, and they consequentially often find ways to skip parts of a game entirely. Using these shortcuts, which are closely tied to route planning in that it builds upon it by providing additional strategic depth, is called “sequence breaking”. Sequence breaks are often possible because their existence has been overlooked by the developers, or via a glitch (see section “Glitches” for an explanation). Usually, only shortcuts that are believed to not be part of the gameplay as the designers had intended it are considered to conform to the definition. It should be noted that there are dissenters who claim that one cannot possibly know exactly which path the developers must have intended players to take.


The first documented action in a video game to be called a sequence break occurred in the Nintendo GameCube game Metroid Prime. It was called “Gravity Suit and Ice Beam before Thardus”; using the since then common “x before y” notation in the nomenclature of sequence breaking (as the disjunction of sequences is the essence of such events). Thardus was designed to be a mandatory boss before the Gravity Suit and Ice Beam could be obtained, hence the novelty of bypassing the boss while still obtaining the items. This was first achieved by Steven Banks on January 18, 2003, after the possibility of such an act was suggested by “kip”, an online persona and important Metroid speedrunner whose real name is unknown.• Since its initial discovery, sequence breaking has become an integral part of speedrunning and has been applied to many other games besides those from the Metroid series as well. It is always considered a possibility when planning a speedrun.

Sequence breaking methods are usually discovered after new techniques have been found. A runner has to adapt his strategy to make the most of such new techniques, which may also create opportunities to skip parts of the game, if the techniques are beyond typical gameplay. A well-known trick for sequence breaking in first-person shooters is the so called “rocket jump”, which consists of intentionally jumping over a mine or shrapnel while it is exploding, or while shooting the ground with a rocket launcher. The propulsion from the explosion allows the player to jump higher than normal, reaching nearby but otherwise unreachable places. Obviously, the player incurs significant damage from the explosion; one usually has access to a limited number of rocket jumps in one level before a next one would cause the character to die. For that reason, rocket jumps require extra planning to make the greatest usage of the health that is available in the level, both directly (through health packs that are found on route, for example), or indirectly (such as by taking a detour to get more health if the resulting rocket jump capabilities will make up for the time lost to obtain the health).


In another example (again, from the Quake done Quick speedruns), the runner jumps to an otherwise unreachable key (used to open up a door that leads to the exit) by deliberately getting hit by a gib that was fired at him by a nearby zombie at the beginning of E3M2 * (Vaults of Zin).• |
format = Theora
}}

A tool-assisted speedrun (commonly abbreviated TAS) is a speedrun movie produced with the use of tools such as slow motion and re-recording. The basic premise of these runs is that a “tool” (like an emulator that provides the author with slow motion and re-recording functionality) is used in order to overcome human limitations such as skill and reflex. These tools are used to create theoretically “perfect” runs.

Tool-assisted speedruns are mostly done with emulators for old console systems. Emulators that currently feature the tools necessary to create these tool-assisted speedruns include the Nintendo emulators Famtasia, FCE Ultra *, Nintendulator and VirtuaNES, the Super Nintendo emulators Snes9x * and ZSNES *, the Genesis emulator Gens *, the Game Boy Advance emulator Visual Boy Advance *, and the Nintendo 64 emulator Mupen64 *.

The tool-assisted speedruns try to avoid comparisons to the unassisted runs, as this would be unfair to the players. In unassisted runs, it would be unacceptable to use emulator's save-state features to take a shorter but more dangerous path, saving the game when passing an obstacle. Likewise, many unassisted speedrunners frown the glitch abuse in some tool-assisted movies, mainly due to the fact these glitches are usually impossible to reproduce without tool-assistance, while it is highly desirable in the tool-assisted community.

Tool-assisted speedruns are not created to show off one's playing skills, but rather to show off all kinds of techniques that are theoretically possible in the game but impossible to do in practice, and to try and establish an “optimal” playthrough of a game. Because of this, tool-assisted runs discern themselves by pushing the gameplay to the physical limits of the game's engine. This is extensively demonstrated in the Mega Man * and Rygar * runs.

While speed is desired in these runs, the focus is on entertainment. For example, there is a famous tool-assisted speedrun of Super Mario Bros. 3 by “もりもと” (“Morimoto”) that finishes the game in approximately 11 minutes; the fun is in the breathtaking speed and overall unfathomable method at which the game is being played, not the presumed skills of the runner.* However, this very video created controversy because when it was "released" many assumed it was a natural speedrun, and were, in fact, amazed at the "skills" of the player. The video has since been rendered obsolete by a faster tool-assisted speedrun, but this video is still the best-known example of its kind.

The controversy revolves around the similarity between the finished products. Websites exist dedicated to each side in the hopes that the movies will be considered separate. However, some individuals have allegedly tried to submit tool-assisted speedruns as unassisted speedruns. Without careful analysis, it is sometimes hard to tell the difference between the two, and this has been said to undermine the effort put into unassisted speedruns.

Official record keeping, which aims to document the top times that players have been able to achieve, only considers unassisted speedruns. Many believe this is the only real way to do a speedrun, and describe tool-assisted speedruns as fake or cheating.