Joe’s primary speed gain comes from bunnyhopping. He starts off doing long, wide bunnies until he reaches the outside stairs. You can’t bunnyhop up stairs because the back of the steps slows you down when you hit them, so Joe takes an ingenious route, jumping to the right and landing on the lift in the middle of the slime pool [5.1 seconds]. The lift gives him just enough height to jump even further to the right, where he performs a long, curving slope jump off the slanted decoration on the wall [5.6 seconds]. This takes him to the far side of the slime pool, where he begins another sequence of bunnies. This time, however, he starts from standing directly in front of one of the spike-trap shooters in the wall. The first spike hits him in the back just as he takes off from his first jump [7.0 seconds]. As all damage gives a speed increase, this adds to his forward velocity. From there it’s just bounce, bounce, bounce to the exit.

The Nightmare demo from Markus takes a different approach due to the monsters that lurk around every corner on the harder skill levels. Upon stepping out into the sunlight [3.6 seconds], there is a spawn lurking in the shadows to the left. When a spawn dies, it explodes. To a speedrunner, explosions, if they don’t kill you, are your friends. Three shotgun blasts prime the spawn, and a fourth shot just as Markus takes off from a bunnyhop finishes off the spawn, blowing the player clear across the slime pit at a very high speed [5.5 seconds]. Unbelievable air-control and momentum-preserving bunnies allow him to maintain this speed all the way to the lava pit in front of the exit. There’s no chance of a spike boost this time, because he’s just moving too fast!

A fiend blocks his way to the pit [8.8 seconds]. Markus fires his gun as soon as he comes into sight and then flings himself out over the pit. The fiend, taking umbrage at the attack, launches himself at the player’s back to deliver a savage blow. The blow is enough to double Markus’s forward speed, propelling him all the way to the other side of the lava and the exit.

Our final Quake demo may be the best demo of all time: Peter Horvath’s legendary Easy 100% (killing all monsters and finding all secret areas on Easy skill before exiting) of The Necropolis (episode 1, mission 3) in 60 seconds (http://speeddemosarchive.com/hack/e1m3.html).

He begins with a couple of simple bunnyhops and acquires the grenade launcher. His first true boost comes from throwing a grenade against the wall and riding the explosion of the rebounding grenade. This also hits the zombies he has just run past. He then throws a grenade at the ogre behind the bars as he flies down the stairs on the right. He then drops down and shoots a secret door in the wall. This door will take two seconds to open wide enough for him to squeeze through, so he nips around the corner to finish off the first ogre with another grenade. This is a good example of good route planning; killing this ogre has cost absolutely no time at all.

After plundering the secret health and ammo supplies, he needs to return to the walkway above. Jumping and firing a grenade into the feet of a conveniently placed zombie blows him right where he wants to be. After dropping down into the cave/water area, he tosses grenades around seemingly at random. Don’t be deceived: each will kill one or more of the zombies that haunt this murky area. On reaching the far side of the water and collecting the gold key from its tiny island en route, he plunges into another secret area: a hidden pit in the water, just far enough to trigger the secret.

Peter then throws the most precise grenade ever used in a speed demo. To avoid having to backtrack through the caves and the start area to reach the gold-key door above, he performs a grenade slope jump from the gold key’s little slopey island. Not wasting a moment, he throws the grenade onto the slope while still under water on the other side of the room, then runs and jumps all the way to the gold-key door.

After opening the door and killing the scrags and ogre that infest the area, Peter then performs another very precise grenade jump. He throws the aforementioned explosive down onto the stairs in front of him and then bunnyhops down after it. The grenade explodes the moment he takes off from his jump just in front of it, blowing him clear over the sewer trap toward the final area. Before he gets there, he must deal with zombies hiding in the walls. To release them normally requires climbing the wall steps and pressing the button. With the aid of a handy slope, another grenade, and a mid-air 180-degree turn (air control again), that’s a mere formality.

Pausing briefly to eradicate the ogres lurking by the roof, and to uncover the last secret, Peter then throws another grenade into the giant elevator. As far as I know, the next trick has never appeared in a speedrun before. Wall sliding, moving forward into an obtuse angle between two walls in a vertical shaft to slow or stop your descent, is well-known in Quake circles. However, slowing techniques rarely appear in speedruns.

In this case, jumping up the left side of the lift shaft and sticking to the wall like a low-budget Spider-Man lures the zombie from the corridor below into the lift—as well as the bar trap. That’s too good for Peter to pass up, so he triggers the trap, pulverizing the zombie. Then he heads back out through the door, fortunately kept open by the dearly departed zombie. This trick was first done with a fiend, present on Nightmare skill, who is much easier to lure into the trap. Peter’s finish is just a matter of hopping through the opening teleporter and killing the final fiend before exiting!