Change your name, speedrun organizers tell tomatoanus

Tomatoanus, a Twitch streamer and world-record speedrunner in the Fallout series, must perform under a name other than “tomatoanus” in order to compete in Awesome Games Done Quick. Tomatoanus confirmed the name change via Twitter today, saying that it was only for AGDQ in January and that he will still go by tomatoanus on Twitch.

Instead, tomatoanus will perform a run of Fallout Anthology as “TomatoAngus.” Tomatoanus, in an extended note to fans and viewers, said that three of his past six submissions to AGDQ events had been hidden from public view because of the tomatoanus name.

For AGDQ 2020, tomatoanus decided that “I would prefer to have my submissions be publicly viewable [under a name other than tomatoanus] so people could see that I was submitting on their website rather than only know based on me tweeting [under the handle @tomatoanus] what my submissions were.”

Awesome Games Done Quick is the January end of the biannual, week-long speedrunning marathon and charity fundraiser that has been going for a decade. Organizers build the schedule from proposals made by elite speedrunners from all over the world. Tomatoanus has submitted proposals to six different GDQ events, and recently realized that his submissions were not publicly viewable under the handle Tomatoanus. Tomatoanus then reached out to GDQ organizers and the “tomatoangus” compromise was reached, thus making his participation visible to the public. However, tomatoanus’ Twitch information still wasn’t publicized during those runs, because he still went by the tomatoanus handle on Twitch, not tomatoangus.

Tomatoanus holds the Any% world record (reaching the narrative conclusion) for Fallout Anthology, a compilation of the first four numbered Fallouts, plus New Vegas, that Bethesda Softworks published in 2015. Tomatoanus first gained renown in 2017 for a run of all the games in 1:37:54, which included running Fallout 1 and 2 in less than 22 minutes combined.

Since then, tomatoanus has taken more than 10 minutes off his world record, running the anthology in just 1:27:38 on April 12, 2019. Tomatoanus is also the world-record holder for a “sex%” run of the collection, which is the fastest time to getting the player character into a sexual encounter in all of the series’ games.

In his proposals, tomatoanus (Ctrl-F for “tomatoangus” here) says that the speedrun possibilities for Fallout 3, New Vegas and Fallout 4 have changed dramatically since the games were last run at a GDQ event. Glitches for all three games have allowed players to move at super-speed and even teleport, which tomatoanus says will help him play at a pace worth watching. Fallout 4 alone can be run 10 minutes faster than the last time it was shown at a GDQ event, tomatoanus said.

Tomatoanus (again, under the name tomatoangus) has been given 2:05:00 to play Fallout Anthology on Monday, Jan. 6. “Through the whole thing, GDQ was very transparent and quick to respond with any questions I had, and I applaud them for that,” tomatoanus wrote.