For many people who first discovered speedrunning during the big charity marathons of the 2010s, their introduction was not a world record or a perfect execution. It was a booming laugh, a confident voice explaining an infamously cruel Mario sequel, and a roomful of people singing along while Luigi leapt over poisoned mushrooms. That presence belonged to Big Jon, known on leaderboards as BigJon, on Twitch as GameJ06 or BigJon06, and in marathon schedules as the runner who could make Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels feel welcoming instead of hostile.
Over a decade of streaming and competition, Big Jon carved out a legacy that blends solid speedrunning credentials with variety streaming, original game show recreations, and visible leadership within the retro community. His story is as much about making hard games feel inclusive and joyful as it is about any individual world record.
Early Streaming and a Retro Identity
Big Jon’s public speedrunning footprint begins in the early 2010s, the period when Twitch and centralized leaderboards were still finding their shape. His Speedrun.com profile records that he joined the site about ten years ago and has logged eighty nine full game runs across more than a dozen titles, with a heavy focus on 8 and 16 bit console games.
Outside the leaderboards, he built a brand as a retro variety streamer. Coverage of Black Twitch streamers in 2021 introduced him to a wider esports and streaming audience as “the only retro gamer” on that particular list, noting that he had more than one hundred thousand followers on Twitch and that his channel centered on classic platformers and custom recreations of television game shows such as The Price is Right and Deal or No Deal.
Community writeups and fan discussions emphasize not just the games but the personality that came with them. In a long thread about an old fundraising controversy that involved him as the victim, posters repeatedly describe him as “one of the nicest people in speedrunning” and “one of the most beloved people in your community,” a reflection of the esteem he had built among runners and viewers who watched his long charity streams and his marathon appearances.
Over time, he expanded beyond a single game or system. The full set of recorded runs includes Contra, Blaster Master, Sonic 3 and Sonic 3D Blast, Sonic Mania, Super Mario Land and Super Mario Land 2 DX, Blaster Master 2, Yooka Laylee and the Impossible Lair, Super Mario Odyssey, Super Mario Maker 2, and several puzzle and novelty titles. At the same time, Speedrun.com’s statistics show him frequently revisiting the pages for Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels and NES Open Tournament Golf, underlining how central those games remained to his identity even as he explored other challenges.
Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels
Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels, originally released in Japan as Super Mario Bros. 2, is notorious for its invisible blocks, wind physics, and unforgiving jumps. Big Jon took that reputation and turned it into a showcase. On the Lost Levels leaderboards he submitted runs across multiple categories, mostly with Luigi, including Warpless, Any% categories that reach different final castles, and special post game Worlds A through D.
One long standing Warpless run lists him with a 23 minute 38 second load removed time on Famicom Disk System Luigi, a performance that still appears in the top ten more than a decade after it was set. In another category he recorded a 16 minute 47 second “Both Endings” run, where Luigi clears the main eight world game and then returns for the hidden extra worlds using an emulator based FDS setup. A separate leaderboard entry shows him with a 6 minute 31.338 second time in Worlds A D Any%, again with Luigi, a time that remained near the top of the board years after submission.
A community maintained history of Lost Levels world records places him in the formal progression of the game’s most competitive categories. For example, the guide lists him taking the Any% D 4 Luigi record down to 8 minutes 21 seconds in March 2014 and then lowering it again to roughly 8 minutes 19 seconds a few weeks later, before later runners surpassed those marks. These times show that behind his joking commentary and musical bits there was also serious routing and execution work that moved the record forward for a time.
AGDQ 2015 and the “Spring Roll Song”
Big Jon’s reputation with a broad audience comes most clearly from his Games Done Quick appearances. At Awesome Games Done Quick 2015 he ran The Lost Levels on stage, narrating the run in a way that let casual viewers keep up with the dangers while still appreciating the game’s difficulty. A contemporary Kotaku piece singled out the run, calling it “incredible,” praising his willingness to accept mistakes without frustration, and highlighting the later worlds for their tense platforming and his cheerful commentary.
Another community discussion of his early marathon years remembers that run and a subsequent performance for an impromptu song about spring rolls during his attempts. The thread links directly to a video of the “spring roll song” and calls it “amazing,” one more reminder that what viewers carried away was less a time on a leaderboard and more the sound of his voice leading a crowd in a surreal chant while clearing one of Mario’s hardest stages.
In 2017 he returned to the AGDQ stage for a cooperative Lost Levels category that would become one of the most replayed runs of that marathon. The schedule and post event coverage describe the run as Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels Any% in just under twenty four minutes with a “two player one controller” twist, pairing him with fellow NES veteran AndrewG. Each runner controlled half of the controller inputs while they talked through strategies and joked about failures. SlashGear’s recap of AGDQ 2017 listed this Lost Levels performance as the very first of six recommended runs to watch from the week, emphasizing both the unusual control scheme and the humorous commentary as reasons for its inclusion.
Those choices underline a pattern in how Big Jon used marathons. Rather than simply bringing his fastest category, he tended to choose formats and setups that would be easy for a general audience to grasp and that left room for entertainment. In this way he helped define a style of NES and retro marathon run that balances technical skill with showmanship.
NES Open Tournament Golf and Obscure Leaderboards
Beyond Mario, one of Big Jon’s defining interests is a set of 8 bit golf games, particularly Nintendo’s NES Open Tournament Golf. On Speedrun.com, the NES Open Tournament Golf page lists him with multiple high ranking times across the United States, United Kingdom, Japan, and All Courses categories. An early set of entries shows him at 8 minutes 41 seconds in US Course, 8 minutes 46 seconds in UK Course, 8 minutes 54 seconds in Japan Course, and 28 minutes 07 seconds for All Courses, times that once sat at or near the top of their respective leaderboards before later runners pushed them down.
Independent of the leaderboard, several YouTube uploads show him labeling his runs “world record” at the time. One video records a U.S. 18 hole run in 9 minutes 30.17 seconds, while another shows an 11 minute 49 second time described as the “first sub twelve” for that course. A separate Japan 18 hole run clocks in at 9 minutes 48.87 seconds. These times and labels trace an era in which he pushed the game’s routing and execution forward in public and brought attention to a title that most viewers would otherwise have ignored.
Speedrun.com’s moderation logs list him as one of the moderators for NES Open Tournament Golf, Bandai Golf: Challenge Pebble Beach, and Mom Hid My Game, reflecting his role in maintaining rules, verifying submissions, and shaping category structures for several small but active communities.
Marathons Beyond GDQ
Although the Kotaku and SlashGear writeups tie his name strongly to Games Done Quick, the record shows him supporting other marathons as well. The European Speedrunner Assembly’s schedule for its 2020 online summer event lists him running Sonic 3 and Knuckles in a “Blue Spheres plus All Perfects” showcase and later a run of the ROM hack Super Mario Logic, both placed in blocks of retro platformers and puzzle games.
By 2023 he had also carried his custom game show work onto the ESA stage. The ESA Summer 2023 schedule includes an entry titled “The Price is Right! (ESA Style), Crowd Wins For Charity%” on PC with BigJon as the runner and a fifty minute estimate, sitting in the program alongside traditional speedruns of Half Life, BioShock 2, Dishonored, Control, and other titles. A separate VOD index on Reddit lists the completed segment at fifty minutes under the same name.
These appearances show the two sides of his public work converging. He is both a speedrunner in the traditional sense and the host of interactive game show segments that treat the marathon audience as contestants, using his own custom software and layouts to turn a charity block into something closer to a television taping.
Event Organizer and Community Builder
Big Jon’s influence is not limited to runs he performs himself. In late 2015 he organized a charity stream aimed at helping runners who could not afford the travel costs associated with attending Awesome Games Done Quick. According to a widely cited public service announcement on the speedrunning subreddit, he streamed for more than eighteen hours, raising over four thousand dollars that he then distributed to several runners based on their stated needs.
That same post exists because one of the recipients refused to return a thousand dollars after learning he would not be able to attend AGDQ due to passport issues, leading to significant controversy and frustration. The discussion makes clear, however, that the community saw Big Jon himself as the injured party and treated the episode as a cautionary tale about trust, charity, and the complexities of informal fundraising in an online scene where legal recourse is limited and personal reputation is a kind of currency.
Separate from that incident, he has hosted and helped organize online marathons, including a 2020 event titled “Speedrunners Helping Fight COVID 19.” The description of a highlight video credits him as the person who “put together” the marathon, featuring an American Gladiators showcase and other retro runs in support of pandemic related causes.
These efforts are consistent with the way he uses his channel generally. Profiles and interviews describe him as someone who leverages his programming background to build custom games, overlays, and events for his viewers, whether that means elaborate Price is Right or Deal or No Deal setups or “swapmania” style formats that rotate participants through different roles.
Game Shows, Custom Software, and Comfort Streams
If Lost Levels and NES golf define his speedrunning legacy, his other lasting mark lies in how he has brought television game shows into the streaming space. Over the course of years he created PC and Flash versions of The Price is Right, Press Your Luck, and other game shows and used them in recurring channel segments where chat members or invited guests act as contestants. These formats blur the line between speedrun and variety show, but for many viewers they are inseparable from his identity.
Nerd Street’s profile of Black Twitch streamers highlights exactly this point, describing him as a retro gamer whose channel is built as much around these custom game show experiences as around traditional runs. The article notes that his streams tend to feel like “comfy” hangouts in which familiar viewers return for the atmosphere as much as for any particular game being played.
An ESA Summer 2023 schedule translated for a Taiwanese audience goes so far as to label his Price is Right segment with both the English title and a Chinese description that frames it as an ESA exclusive version of the show, reinforcing that his format is taken seriously enough to be localized and placed alongside headline speedruns.
Health, Hiatus, and Community Support
Longtime fans know that Big Jon’s streaming output has not been perfectly continuous. At various points he has taken breaks from regular broadcasts, sometimes citing health concerns. In a widely shared Reddit thread where posters discuss how much he means to them, several commenters mention that he has dealt with “serious health problems” and express hope that he will be able to keep streaming for years to come, encouraged by his positive attitude and the comfort his channel brings them.
More recently he has used social media to mark milestones rather than constant grind. A 2024 post on X, archived by a Twitch data tracking site, quotes him reflecting that it had been “a long time” since he first started streaming on Twitch and celebrating a ten year marker for his channel. Those notes, along with his continued involvement in events like ESA and occasional speedrun submissions, suggest a transition from constant daily streaming toward a more measured presence that still values the community he helped build.
Legacy in the Speedrunning Community
Measured purely by world records, Big Jon’s legacy is strongest in a snapshot of the mid 2010s. Lost Levels record progression charts show his name repeatedly in the Luigi Any% timelines. NES Open Tournament Golf leaderboards record him as one of the earliest runners to push all four courses under nine minutes apiece. Sonic Mania and Sonic 3 and Knuckles categories list him among the early top finishers on Nintendo Switch and Genesis emulation.
Yet most people who talk about him do not lead with those facts. They talk about the spring roll song. They talk about “two player one controller” Lost Levels and the way he made that brutal game sound approachable. They talk about a Price is Right segment at ESA where the entire block became a shared joke and a fundraiser. They talk about an eighteen hour stream to get other runners to a marathon and the way he handled betrayal with more grace than many think they could have mustered.
Taken together, those moments explain why community members describe him as “one of the nicest guys in the speedrunning community” and why his occasional returns to streaming and marathons still draw attention even when he is no longer actively chasing every record. In the story of speedrunning’s first big era of charity marathons and retro streaming, BigJon06 stands as an example of how a runner can turn technical proficiency into something more like a shared celebration and leave a legacy that is measured in smiles as much as in seconds.