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Animal Crossing run answers the question 'How do you speedrun Animal Crossing?'

Michael McWhertor is a journalist with more than 17 years of experience covering video games, technology, movies, TV, and entertainment.

This year's Awesome Games Done Quick, the charity speedrun that's been livestreaming all week, featured a speedrun of GameCube game Animal Crossing. Yes, Nintendo's life sim may seem like an unusual choice for a speedrun, but the above video provides a solid answer to the question "How do you speedrun Animal Crossing?"

According to members of the Animal Crossing speedrunning community, one of the goals for a speedrun of the game is to pay off your debt to Tom Nook as quickly as possible. Some speedrunners have managed to "beat" the game under that rule in just 38 minutes, according to the above video, which shows an Animal Crossing playthrough that runs a little longer than 42 minutes. You can also catch the replay on Twitch.

How do they pull it off? Speedy play during some of the chores that Tom Nook asks the player to do, taking advantage of a fascinating item duplication glitch and doing a little time-traveling by moving the game's clock forward. It may not be the most exciting of speedruns to come out of Awesome Games Done Quick 2015 — watch this Tetris: The Grand Master 3 video if you're looking for speed — but it's certainly one of the more unexpected.

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