A speedrunner who goes by the handle "Shizzal" recently broke one of Portal's four primary speedrunning world records, making him the current forerunner in each main category.
The four most prestigious Portal speedrunning categories, as denoted by speedrun.com, are Out Of Bounds, Inbounds, Glitchless, and Inbounds NO SLA ("Save Load Abuse," as a poster clarified on Reddit).
Shizzal was already the world record holder in the first three, with his fastest time clocking in at 6m, 53s, 940ms in the Out Of Bounds category. Second place is only 120 milliseconds behind, which is indicative of how tight the gaps between perfect runs are.
Yesterday, Shizzal took his record for Inbounds No SLA back after having been dethroned by another runner, adamantite. The current world record is 12m, 01s, 750ms, but Shizzal asserts in the YouTube description for his video that, "sub-12 is possible."
"Probably my main goal for a while," he adds. "This run can definitely be improved, minus the whole doorlaunch thing."
The speedrunning scene in Portal has drastically picked up of late. The top four runners in the Inbounds No SLA category have all set records within the last month, and two of Shizzal's world records were set roughly a month ago.
There are some outliers, with a runner named Msushi sitting pretty in third place of Out of Bounds for over a year, but the scene as a whole is definitely experiencing a resurgence in interest—and if Shizzal is right about sub-12 being possible, it's likely Portal's newfound popularity will continue.
You can watch Shizzal's video below. If anything, it's worth checking out purely to see his reaction at the end. "Carried by doorlaunch!" he exclaims, as his friends laugh in the background. You love to see it.
