In an era where many runners specialize in a single game or category, HardcoreCheese5 has built a quieter legacy across several corners of the speedrunning world. From their home in New York they have spent nearly a decade routing and grinding a handful of favorite titles, pushing co op platformers, licensed RPGs, and comfort RPGs in ways that are easy to overlook until you study the leaderboards closely. On Speedrun.com their profile shows 157 recorded runs across nine games, with the majority concentrated in A Hat in Time, South Park: The Stick of Truth, and Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time.
Those numbers only hint at what the runs actually represent. Over the years, HardcoreCheese5 has helped carve out co op routing in A Hat in Time, built an overwhelming suite of records in South Park, and then carried a long standing interest in the Fantasy Life series into the new Fantasy Life i release. Along the way they have appeared in online tournaments and charity marathons, contributed guides, and turned a modest Twitch and YouTube presence into a record of how one runner can keep returning to the same games and keep finding new angles.
Early Runs and a Move Toward A Hat in Time
The public record for HardcoreCheese5 begins in the late 2010s with single runs in two very different games. On The Impossible Quiz they posted a 100 percent run in just under six minutes, a short but telling introduction to the kind of pattern memorization and persistence that speedrunning demands. Soon after, they submitted a Legacy Version Any percent run of Cuphead on PC, clocking a 32 minute time on one of the era’s hardest action games.
Those one off records could have remained curiosities. Instead, they served as a bridge into a long term relationship with the 3D platformer A Hat in Time and its extensive set of categories. Within a few years of joining the community, HardcoreCheese5 was no longer a dabbler. Their profile now lists 73 full game runs in A Hat in Time alone, with dozens more in related category extensions and workshop content.
Coop Experiments and Tournament Play in A Hat in Time
The heart of HardcoreCheese5’s A Hat in Time career lies in cooperative and lag based categories. Speedrun.com records show them repeatedly pairing with runners like Doka, tomex, EpicYoshiMaster, afterimage, and others across a wide range of co op rule sets and patch versions. These runs span everything from All Time Pieces to All Acts and DLC specific goals under both lag abuse and lagless rule sets.
One through line is a willingness to explore the edges of what co op can do. In a four player Any percent co op lag abuse run on PC version 1.0 with default settings, HardcoreCheese5 and their teammates pushed the All Time Pieces route to a first place 1:07:16.690 time, while a separate four player Any percent co op lag abuse run landed at 21:32.990, also in first place. Both runs still stand as examples of how aggressively the community pushed the game when lag manipulation was allowed, and how much coordination a four player team needs to maintain across an hour or more of gameplay.
Even outside four player records, HardcoreCheese5 has carved out a deep catalog of strong co op times. They hold first place results in categories such as Co op Lagless All Rifts, Co op Lagless All Acts, and Co op Lagless ATP Seal The Deal with Doka, and they have multiple first place Solo co op lagless runs in category extensions that require controlling both characters to optimize routing and movement.
Their involvement in the wider A Hat in Time scene shows up in other places as well. A 2018 SpeedGaming match titled “HardcoreCheese5 vs SefiCompacto” documents their participation in an A Hat in Time tournament race, putting their routes to the test under direct pressure. In a Steam community discussion about a difficult Death Wish level, HardcoreCheese5 weighed in with routing advice and a demonstration video, emphasizing that clever strategy and planning could matter more than perfect execution on individual jumps.
On their own channel, they posted runs like “A Hat in Time Bow Kid Any% Speedrun in 45:41.70 (WR)” and All Time Pieces route attempts that mirrored their leaderboard work. While exact placements have shifted as the years have passed, these videos show a runner willing to test new categories, adopt new DLC content as it appeared, and preserve those experiments in public form.
Charity Marathons and All Time Pieces On Stage
HardcoreCheese5’s A Hat in Time play eventually moved beyond personal streams and leaderboards into marathon settings. In 2021, the Horaro schedule for the Imerman Angels Marathon lists them as the runner for an All Time Pieces run with all DLC, with a block scheduled for two hours and twenty minutes on a Sunday afternoon. That charity event supported Imerman Angels a Chicago based nonprofit that provides free one on one support to cancer fighters, survivors, and caregivers.
The combination of a long, marathon friendly route and a charity focused event fits the way HardcoreCheese5 tends to approach their main games. Rather than chasing only the most streamlined, any percent categories, they have gravitated toward categories that show the whole scope of a game, whether that is all time pieces in a platformer or all friends, quests, and classes in later RPG work.
South Park: The Stick of Truth and Category Domination
If A Hat in Time showcases HardcoreCheese5’s co op and platforming instincts, South Park: The Stick of Truth is where their leaderboard dominance is most obvious. At the time of writing, their Speedrun.com page lists an extraordinary series of first place times across almost every major full game category on PC. These include 100 percent, 120 Friends, Catch Em All, and both current patch and unpatched Any percent routes for all four character classes, along with additional category variations.
The numbers give the outline of that achievement. Their 100 percent PC run sits at 1:54:37.490, a route that requires not only finishing the main story but also tracking down side quests, collectibles, and specific flags that the community has agreed define full completion. For Any percent current patch, they hold four separate first place times in the low one hour and fifteen minute range for Jew, Thief, Mage, and Fighter, each one threaded through a different early game build and set of abilities. On unpatched versions, they built another set of top times that exploit older glitches and skips, including a 1:10:38.180 run in the Jew Any percent category.
A fan work on Scribd titled “Surviving South Park: An Isekai Guide” jokingly frames another player as trying to steal “at least one of Cheese’s records,” and then notes that HardcoreCheese5 held the majority of South Park categories, including 100 percent, 120 Friends, and all the major Any percent PC routes on both current and unpatched patches. That kind of offhand reference illustrates something that pure times on a leaderboard cannot capture. For other runners inside a niche community, HardcoreCheese5’s South Park work became the standard to chase.
YouTube uploads of runs such as “South Park: The Stick of Truth Any% Unpatched Speedrun” or current patch category attempts show what those routes look like in practice. They combine careful menuing, schoolyard level memorization of each beat of the story, and an eye for where the game can be bent without breaking.
From Fantasy Life Guides to Fantasy Life i Story Mode
Before Fantasy Life returned as a modern console RPG, HardcoreCheese5 was already investing time into its systems. On the Speedrun.com page for the original Fantasy Life they authored a “Fantasy Life Items Guide” that links out to an extensive Google Sheets document. The guide notes that it was put together mainly to support crafting lists for Alchemist, Blacksmith, Carpenter, Cook, and Tailor, and that it includes individual and overall totals that are particularly helpful for All Creators style runs.
When FANTASY LIFE i: The Girl Who Steals Time released in 2025, HardcoreCheese5 pivoted quickly. On the Story Mode No Assists leaderboard, Speedrun.com currently lists their PC run of 2:07:41 as the first place time, with a clear gap down to the second place runner. Their YouTube channel shows a sequence of Any percent and Story Mode runs over the months following release, gradually lowering their times and documenting the early evolution of the route.
That work did not stay confined to personal channels. In late 2025, RPG Limit Break announced on social media that Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time would be part of its Random Encounters schedule, with HardcoreCheese5 as the runner. The marathon VOD titled “Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time by HardcoreCheese5” captures them walking an audience through the route, narrating systems and story while keeping to the tight pace that their records demand.
Taken together, the early items guide for the original Fantasy Life and the modern Story Mode leadership in Fantasy Life i form a through line that is easy to miss. For HardcoreCheese5, this series has been less a one off project and more a long running laboratory for understanding how RPG systems, crafting trees, and open ended quests can be fit into a real time run.
Puzzle Boxes, New Projects, and Smaller Games
While their main identity rests on A Hat in Time, South Park, and Fantasy Life, HardcoreCheese5 has also explored smaller puzzle adventures. At the top of their Speedrun.com profile sits an Any percent Maskless run of Boxes: Lost Fragments with a 45:53 time on PC that currently occupies first place on the leaderboard. They follow the page for Doors: Paradox as well, keeping an eye on routing developments in that series of puzzle rooms even when they are not actively submitting runs.
Earlier experiments in games like Katana ZERO show up as full game runs in the 59 minute range, while their single The Impossible Quiz and Cuphead submissions remain as snapshots of where their journey began. These titles help round out a portrait of a runner who is comfortable moving between precise action games, puzzle box adventures, and long form RPGs, rather than locking into a single genre.
Streaming, Video Archives, and Community Presence
Outside formal leaderboards, HardcoreCheese5 keeps a modest but steady streaming and video presence. Their Twitch channel lists South Park: The Stick of Truth, Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX, and Call of Duty: Black Ops among their most streamed titles, mixing speedruns with casual play. On YouTube they have uploaded hundreds of videos, including world record labeled runs, routing experiments, and tournament VODs, turning the channel into a kind of living archive of their work.
These uploads serve several roles at once. They document their own progress, preserve obsolete routes that might otherwise vanish when rules or patches change, and provide raw material for other runners who want to study how a particular world record developed. The co op Bow Kid Any percent recordings, the All Time Pieces marathons, and the successive Fantasy Life i Story Mode attempts all invite close study from viewers who want to follow the thought process behind each route.
Legacy and Place Within Speedrunning History
Measured in followers, HardcoreCheese5 has a small footprint. Their Speedrun.com profile lists only a handful of followers, and their Twitch audience is modest compared to top level variety streamers. Measured in routes and records, though, their legacy looms much larger within a specific set of communities.
In A Hat in Time, they stand as one of the most prolific co op specialists of the late 2010s, a runner whose name appears again and again alongside important partners on the All Time Pieces and All Acts leaderboards. In South Park: The Stick of Truth, their name effectively defines the modern PC records, spanning completionist goals and every major Any percent class route and leaving other runners talking about “taking one of Cheese’s records” as a personal milestone. In Fantasy Life, both on the original 3DS release and in Fantasy Life i, they have helped map out what full series runs look like when you take every job, crafting tree, and story beat seriously under the clock.
That is the kind of legacy that Speedrun Legacy Profiles aims to capture. HardcoreCheese5 is not only a name attached to fast times. They are a long running presence whose routes shape how others experience their favorite games, whether that is through a Steam post about a Death Wish level, a sheet full of Fantasy Life item data, or a charity marathon block where All Time Pieces suddenly becomes a guided tour rather than a private grind. Their career is a reminder that in speedrunning history, the most important stories often belong to the people who quietly choose a few games and keep pushing them forward, year after year.