As is customary, we - that is to say, the general internet gaming discussion scene to which I tenuously belong - begin every year with the Awesome Games Done Quick charity livestream event. The 2017 event will begin very shortly, around midday on Sunday the 8th. Also customary is how I'll prepare for each event beforehand by running down their week-long schedules and work to ensure we have presentable wiki pages for every featured game, since the event will be broadcast on Twitch which in turn uses our wiki for its meta information. Besides a few exceptions when it comes to fan-games and free browser stuff that our wiki doesn't support, we're once again covered this year. Feel free to stop by if there's a game being played you want to learn more about.

Performing this task also gives me insight to the more curious and esoteric games we can expect to see between the usual Castlevania and Metroid races, or watching Ocarina of Time get obliterated with its various warp glitches. Watching the streams is a great means to wile away a few unfocused days, but at the same time a lot of it can get awfully familiar. That's where the following list comes in.

I've picked ten games that will be covered in next week's event that, in some small way, reflect both what the event is about and the depths of obscurity that these streamers plumb for their next speedrun challenge. The streamers are keenly aware that the event should balance old favorites and new material to keep both casual stream visitors and long-time donors happy, and calling some of these games esoteric is an understatement. Here's just a small sampling of just how bizarre this event can be, especially in the wee hours when no-one's paying much attention.

(All included scheduled air times are in GMT. Just subtract five hours for EST and eight for PST. Keep in mind the schedules will likely shift around a lot.)

Hydra Castle Labyrinth

In some ways, Hydra Castle Labyrinth is the perfect obscure AGDQ game: a doujin freeware homage to a Japan-only action RPG that few in the west remember. That RPG would be Knightmare II: Maze of Galious, which is also what the infamously obtuse SpaceWhipper La-Mulana was roughly based on (La-Mulana, or the recent Steam remake of it, is also getting a speedrun this year). It's worth remembering that AGDQ doesn't discriminate between major AAA releases, some of which came out as recently as last year, or Indie games, or free browser and fan games. Sometimes it's neat to see a game you've never seen before get a speedrun and then realize you're only a few free (legal) clicks away from trying it out yourself. Case in point: try the (English patched) game here.

(Scheduled air time: 11:30 AM, Monday 9th.)

Tetris with Cardcaptor Sakura: Eternal Heart

Tetris is an evergreen presence in this industry, and has been ever since its invention in the mid-80s and the messy string of attempts to commercialize it for consoles and home computers that soon followed. At this point, everyone's played the game enough to know it works, though possibly not to the extent that they can "Tetris Grand Master" it with the instant-drop T-spins and what have you. So it's cases like the PS1 game Tetris with Cardcaptor Sakura: Eternal Heart, which more or less resembles Tetris 2's Puzzle Mode but with awkwardly cut-out Cardcaptor Sakura characters in short looped animations standing around on the side, that make an impression amidst the many traditional takes on the Soviet block-stacking game. It's a creatively bankrupt concept, especially compared to site favorite Tetris Battle Gaiden, but one that should make for some interesting voiceover commentary. Specifically, why the runner chose this cheap license tie-in to run instead of any of the more serious Tetris games out there.

(Scheduled air time: 3:00 AM, Tuesday 10th.)

Shippuu! Iron Leaguer

GDQ started running games for the original Game Boy semi-recently, with last Summer's Bubble Ghost run by Protomagicalgirl being a highlight, and that meant a whole new library of bizarre Japan-only license games to draw from. The benefit of running a game like Shippuu! Iron Leaguer, a platformer based on an anime about sports-themed mecha, is that I can't imagine there's a huge amount of competition for the world record. Besides the fact that you can play as either a baseball mecha or a karate mecha, the game has very little to distinguish it from the thousand other anime-licensed platformers for the Game Boy.

I'll mock the SNES library whenever I have the opportunity, but I think the Game Boy saw even more zero-effort licensed platformers.

(Scheduled air time: 8:00 AM, Tuesday 10th.)

Dark Messiah of Might and Magic

This one's not particularly obscure, but I don't recall seeing a speedrun for it in years. Anyone who's played Dark Messiah of Might and Magic has a fairly good idea what the runner will use to quickly dispatch most of the enemy encounters in the game, simply because the weapon in question is so devastatingly effective: the player character's "Duke Boot" of a kick. One of the game's selling points at launch was the introduction of "environment kills": using the game's physics engine, the player could launch enemies at conveniently located wall spikes or down cliffs to their immediate death rather than wearing them down with a more conventional offensive, and no weapon generated more knockback than the not-so-modest kick. A player could feasibly run through the game punting enemies into all these traps and never touch the elaborate systems for upgraded weapons and magic at all. It's a speedrun I'm looking forward to watching, at any rate.

(Scheduled air time: 7:50 PM, Tuesday 10th.)

Cobra Triangle

Cobra Triangle sits within a substantial "NES block" this year, which also features the likes of Kabuki Quantum Fighter, which Jeff recently streamed for his Home Game show, priceless obscurity Little Samson and perennial favorite River City Ransom. I picked Cobra Triangle for this slot for two reasons. The first is that this little isometric boat racing/action game is a truly unusual one, in that the game is built around missions that feel completely independent from each other in a gameplay sense: besides the fact that you're always driving a speedboat around, the objective can be anything from a race to an arena full of enemies to escorting mines around to disarm them to a battle with a sea serpent. The second reason is that it's another favorite of Jeff's, and I always like when a treasured game from the duders' pasts suddenly rises in the public consciousness (see also: Windjammers).

(Scheduled air time: 9:30 AM, Wednesday 11th.)

Castlevania: Rondo of Blood

Naturally, Castlevania: Rondo of Blood is well known by premium members of this site at least, as it was one of the pleasant surprises to come from Vinny's "VinnyVania" series. Vinny never got around to playing much of Maria's route, however: the pint-sized deuteragonist plays a lot differently than the traditional Belmont hero Richter, and a truly gifted player can really break the game wide open with Maria's array of summoned creatures to call upon. This run should be a great way to revisit that game and enjoy its music while watching a twelve-year old girl absolutely annihilate the worst the netherworld has to offer.

(Scheduled air time: 8:40 PM, Wednesday 11th.)

Town & Country 2: Thrilla's Surfari

Town & Country 2: Thrilla's Surfari is one of those games that I had no idea existed, and was shocked to discover is actually a sequel to Town & Country Surf Designs: Wood & Water Rage. Wood & Water Rage was a barely competent tie-in game using the mascots of the titular surfboard and clothing manufacturer, a Skate or Die also-ran that managed to be even harder to control. That it saw a sequel featuring a proto-Funky Kong gorilla hero "Thrilla" who chases after a random witch doctor after he kidnaps his (human) girlfriend is some mildly disturbing Adventure Island nonsense that leads to even more impossible-to-navigate skateboarding/surfboarding-based action stages across the dark continent. If anything, I'm curious to see how anyone can actually beat the game, let alone do so in a timely fashion.

(Scheduled air time: 8:50 AM, Thursday 12th.)

Catechumen

Every year, we get a few runners that reach deep into the (ironically) godforsaken market of shoddily constructed Christian video games. Some, like the notorious The Zoo Race, are so rough that you sit and marvel at how something so amateurish could possibly make it to retail... or at least you might before Steam threw out anything approaching quality control and started publishing a hundred janky asset flips per hour. Conversely, Catechumen is a surprisingly competent (at least comparatively speaking) FPS game in the Hexen mold: you have a lot of weaponry from the antiquity age, many of which can shoot holy energy that instantly converts demon-worshipping heathens into penitent believers, as per that Flanders-approved gag video game from The Simpsons. It might not be particularly remarkable outside of its Christian messaging, but at this point anything's going to be better than The Zoo Race...

(Scheduled air time: 10:20 AM, Thursday 12th.)

Refunct

Refunct is a Steam game I'd never heard of before working on this list, but immediately went and bought for next to nothing in the Steam sale once I'd done a little research for its wiki page. It's a first-person platformer that presents itself as a no-stress, no-enemies type of chill out game where you simply have to navigate around a world of monolithic blocks rising from the sea to reach the very top, occasionally solving puzzles. My intent is to play it for my new "Indie Game of the Week" feature before the speedrun begins early Friday morning. Whether on here or on the AGDQ streams, anticipate seeing more of the game in due time.

(Scheduled air time: 6:40 AM, Friday 13th.)

Contra Block

Konami's Contra games were, once upon a time, the go-to series for balls-hard run-and-gun action. The NES original was challenging enough without the thirty lives cheat, and every subsequent game seems to have built on that original's "not for babies" reputation and made itself even more difficult. This block features Contra, Super C and Contra 4 (though apparently not the third game, Contra III: The Alien Wars, though there is a set-up block afterwards into which it might feasibly sneak in) and it could be worth sticking around to watch some world-class Contra speedruns. There's Metal Slug 3 directly preceding it too, if you wanted a warm-up.

(Scheduled air time: 4:00 PM, Friday 13th.)