In early 2023, one of Pokémon speedrunning’s longest running projects suddenly seemed finished.
For years, runners had chipped seconds off Pokémon Red’s Any% Glitchless category, pushing a forty–plus hour RPG into a tight race that lived and died on movement, menuing, and luck. Then a runner known as Pokeguy sat down at his Game Boy interface and produced a 1:44:03, a time so far ahead of the field that even other world record holders were not sure anyone would ever match it.
That one run did not appear out of nowhere. It grew out of nearly a decade of main–series Pokémon grinding, from early Yellow records, to long hours in Gold and Silver, to marathon showcases at Awesome Games Done Quick. His later decision to step away from Pokémon speedrunning, at least for a long stretch, turned the 1:44 into something larger than a leaderboard entry. It became the closing chapter of a particular style of glitchless Pokémon mastery.
This Speedrun Legacy Profile looks at how Pokeguy built that career, what made his greatest records feel like the end of a road, and how his decision to retire reshaped the story around one of speedrunning’s most optimized categories.
From Variety Runner to Glitchless Specialist
On paper, Pokeguy’s career looks like a tour through almost every era of Pokémon. His speedrun.com profile shows runs across Red and Blue, Yellow, Gold and Silver, Crystal, Diamond and Pearl, Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, Sword and Shield, Stadium, the Trading Card Game, and more.
Those entries stretch back around a decade, with more than one hundred recorded runs and multiple games where he has dozens of submissions logged. The profile is not the story of a single–category grinder in a narrow lane. Instead, it shows a runner who learned many different Pokémon formats and consoles, then kept circling back to the hardest glitchless categories to see how far they could be pushed.
Even within that variety, patterns appear. His best placements are often in glitchless or low–trick categories. On Gold and Silver he holds the Any% Glitchless English world record in 3:12:50, along with a separate first place time in a manipless category. On Yellow he pushed Any% Glitchless down to 1:53:11 on original hardware, a time that his own upload labeled as the current world record at the time.
Those results highlight what made his later Red work possible. Before he ever took on the category that would define him, he had already built out a toolkit across the Game Boy generations: menu routing, damage benchmarks, knowledge of AI patterns, and a comfort with high–variance fights that would be essential when it came time to gamble in Silph Co.
Yellow, Gold, and the Road to Red
If Red Any% Glitchless became the headline, Yellow and Gold were the workshops where Pokeguy forged his approach.
Yellow Any% Glitchless had been a slow burn of improvement. A community thread from several years ago celebrated his 1:53:55 as a new world record, replacing a 1:54:01 that had stood for nearly two years. Commenters were already calling the performance “nuts” for how much it demanded from execution and luck.
He did not stop there. In 2021 and 2022 he pushed that time down again, producing a 1:53:11 run that he uploaded to both Twitch and YouTube as the then–current world record. That run showcased his trademark style: controlled aggression, tight movement, and a willingness to let variance play out in ways that would scare a marathon runner but thrill viewers in a personal best attempt.
Gold and Silver showed a similar arc. A combined leaderboard of English main–series glitchless records lists him with the top Any% Glitchless time in Gold/Silver at 3:12:50, alongside a separate manipless world record. For a long and punishing Johto route, those times demanded long hours of reset heavy sessions and a tolerance for late–run heartbreak that only a few runners can stomach.
By the time he returned to Red in 2022, he was not just another any% hopeful. He was a veteran of multiple main–series world records, with deep familiarity across Kanto and Johto and years of experience turning risky fights into consistent attempts.
The Pokémon Red Any% Glitchless Arms Race
Red’s glitchless record had a reputation long before Pokeguy’s breakout. The category forbids major glitches and save corruption tricks, which forces runners to play through the bulk of the game’s story while shaving seconds from movement, text, and a carefully tuned set of battles.
For years, the record crept forward in small steps. GamesRadar’s report on the category notes that sub–two hour runs had been around for nearly a decade and that a 1:45:05 by runner hwangbro held as the world record for two years. When a previous Pokeguy attempt clocked in at 1:45:06, he was literally one second away from tying that mark, close enough that many in the community thought they had seen the limit.
Instead of walking away, he took a break from Red, then returned in late January 2023 after only about ten days of renewed work. The route itself had not changed in any dramatic way. What changed was his willingness to push strats to a level of risk that most runners would only accept in theory.
The run that finally hit 1:44:03 followed the familiar Nidoking route through Kanto, but leaned into what GamesRadar described as “risky decision–making” in the Silph Co segment and beyond. He let an overpowered Nidoking ride the knife–edge of survival in fights that would normally be buffered with extra healing or safer move choices, and he leaned hard on “red bar” damage states that save time by keeping the health jingle from playing after battles.
The final stretch of the run looks almost casual on video, but only because hundreds of failed attempts had already taught him where he could afford to gamble. Contemporary reporting tied the 1:44 to roughly 2,800 attempts spread over six months, an investment that underlines just how many resets lay behind that one successful cartridge flick.
Within hours of the run, other runners and commentators were calling it “category killing” and “without a doubt the greatest world record ever set in Pokémon speedrunning,” language that captured how far it seemed to leap past what most people thought possible without a new route.
Retirement, Mental Health, and “PBs Too Good”
Six months after that 1:44, the same runner who had just pushed Red farther than anyone else publicly announced he was stepping away from Pokémon speedrunning.
Because his original explanation was posted to a personal Pastebin that is now blocked to many readers, most players learned the details through reporting that quoted from his post. In that message, he linked the decision to mental health treatment, a desire to return to school, and a feeling that the strain of chasing ever smaller improvements was no longer worth the cost.
He wrote that “all my PBs in games are just too good,” a concise way of saying that further progress would require another round of massive grind for tiny gains. The GamesRadar summary notes that he described the Red record as the product of thousands of attempts and months of high–intensity practice, and that the idea of pushing for a 1:43 in the same category did not feel healthy or appealing.
At the same time, he did not frame the announcement as a dramatic farewell to gaming. The post talked about taking a long break, focusing on exercise and mental health, and going back to college. His Twitch profile still describes him as one of the best Pokémon runners in the world and lists his world records across Red, Yellow, and Gold/Silver.
Taken together, those pieces paint a picture of a player who reached a rare level of mastery, recognized the personal cost of staying there, and chose to step back while he still felt proud of what he had done.
Marathon Rooms and Public Presence
For many viewers, Pokeguy’s legacy does not start with the 1:44 at all, but with marathon streams and charity events where his consistency and commentary turned long Pokémon runs into comfortable background viewing.
He has been a recurring figure at Games Done Quick events. The AGDQ 2019 tracker shows him in a Pokémon Gold race practice context, and AGDQ 2023’s official run index lists him as the runner for a Pokémon Yellow Any% Glitchless showcase on the Wednesday evening schedule.
Recordings of the AGDQ 2023 Yellow run, hosted on YouTube and mirrored by regional restreams, show him delivering a two–hour run that commentators later described as “supremely comfy” and a highlight of the marathon’s middle days. The route itself is less aggressive than his personal best attempts, but the same discipline is visible in how he explains encounters, manages risk on the fly, and keeps a complicated RPG legible for a general audience.
Outside marathons, his YouTube and Twitch channels have become an informal archive of modern glitchless Pokémon. His video list mixes full world record runs, practice segments like “The Best Pokémon Yellow Run EVER Through Surge,” and longer marathon–style playthroughs. The result is a body of footage that both documents his own progress and gives newer runners a reference point for what clean movement and fight planning look like at the top level.
After the “Category Killer”
When GamesRadar first covered the 1:44:03, the writer echoed a familiar doubt in the community: maybe this record really had “killed” the category. For a while that felt true. Months passed without any runner getting close to his minute–plus leap.
Over time, though, other players did what speedrunners always threaten to do. As of mid 2025, aggregated leaderboards list a 1:43:40 by runner SlNNED as the current world record in Red/Blue Any% Glitchless, with Pokeguy’s 1:44:03 now sitting in second place. On Yellow, the same runner has inched the Any% Glitchless mark down to 1:53:02, just nine seconds faster than Pokeguy’s long–standing 1:53:11.
Those developments do not diminish what the 1:44 meant in 2023. In some ways they reinforce it. The fact that it took years and new talent to scrape that extra twenty seconds out of Red proves how far his run pushed the frontier at the time. It also fits neatly with the sentiment in his retirement note. He had already invested six months and thousands of attempts to break 1:45. Watching the category confirm his instincts about how hard a 1:43 could be only underlines why stepping away made sense for him personally.
Meanwhile, his Gold/Silver glitchless times remain on top and his Yellow personal best sits only a few seconds behind the current record, a reminder that his influence was never confined to a single game.
Speedrun Legacy Profile: Why Pokeguy Matters
In the long view of esports and speedrunning history, Pokeguy’s legacy rests on three pillars.
First, he helped define what “optimized” looks like in main–series Pokémon glitchless categories. His Yellow and Gold/Silver world records, followed by the 1:44 Red run, gave other runners concrete targets that seemed impossible until he hit them.
Second, he turned that level of optimization into accessible viewing. From GDQ marathons to long YouTube uploads, his runs provided a bridge between highly technical routing and casual viewers who simply wanted to see their childhood games taken apart in real time.
Third, his public retirement statement forced the community to confront a question that lurks behind every “perfect” record. How much grind is worth it, and what happens when the personal cost of chasing frames outweighs the thrill of improvement? His decision to step away, frame it openly in terms of mental health and life priorities, and leave his records for others to chase is part of the story, not an epilogue tacked on after the times.
For Pokémon speedrunning, the leaderboards will continue to change. New names will appear at the top, and routes will evolve. For glitchless RPG speedrunning as a craft, though, Pokeguy’s six months of attempts, his 1:44:03 Red, his Johto marathons, and his willingness to say “enough” at the right moment have already secured his place in the history that esportshistorian.org is working to preserve.