SGDQ 2026 Photos + Recap

Feral pigeons outside the downtown Caribou Coffee on my walk back to my apartment at 6AM, morning of the second day.

The first photo I took at SGDQ2026, in the room where it happens. This year they had insanely-dim colored lighting which was very strange. This photo is about how dark it was in the room, though it was more saturated.

My attendee badge! This year's design had Rick from Kirby. This photo is more saturated than it actually was. The specific splendor of the lights' saturation — hard to capture!

Me in the audience closer to the front, with the brighter blue lights.

The front-er rows, for games. This was Fire Emblem Three Houses.

Holy shit it's Medecins Sans Frontieres Tony Tony Chopper

Me later the first night playing some rhythm game with an anime woman protagonist.

A photo taken by Taran at the Sushi Train we went to on the first night, about two blocks from the Hilton. On the way there we had to push through an insane, bustling crowd of hundreds of fucking people, in the block between the Chipotle (which is a straight line from the Hilton) and the Sushi Train (which is a straight line from the Chipotle, rotated from the first straight line 90 degrees). They were in the block for the Mexico vs. England World Cup game, 'cause someone had set up a massive LED screen. Was a wonderful experience, first time ever pushing through a crowd like that for something so communally joyful. Though Mexico lost. Strange, ever since the World Cup I've been mentally referring to football as football, even though my entire life before then I called it soccer. I don't call American football American football either, it's just football too, they're just context-sensitive in my head. Strange, personally!

First night in the degen corner (the non-smoking patio outside the Hilton where everyone drank and smoked). Had a white claw Pineapple. Did not like it very much. I didn't smoke weed this night, I think that was night 2.

Playing some Marathon s2 in the w9 room/practice room. Someone had already downloaded it onto this computer, so I logged in with my Steam, and then I was playing Marathon! Crazy how that works.

Queueing for a Night Marsh (I'm pretty sure) game on Marathon. My fave map 😌

ME EXTRACTING (FROM A LATER GAME AS RECON)!!!!

DABBING AT THE EXTRACTION! Some random guy came by to take my photo, I didn't even ask them, they just were like

Jackalacka's setup. I was playing Guitar Hero/Rock Band across from him, in the southwesterly corner of the practice room (which I'll comment upon in the next photo, cuz these photos are a whole chronology), and he commented upon my playing of The Flaming Lips' Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Pt. 1, and then we just started talking! Really cool guy. He was playing the Spongebob Squarepants Movie game here, looking for wallclips, and he found one, right there, where the screenshot is. Turned out to be completely inconsequential skips-wise, and the Spongebob Squarepants speedrunning Discord apparently joked about his excitement for this skip afterwards, but. Anyways, we talked! This was his setup! He was rad. Later in the event him and some other Spongebob people were to the right of the Guitar Hero setup (rather than across), doing a race of I think Battle for Bikini Bottom? And fucking Jackalacka softlocked, horrendously tragically, which was just so so so so so sad. I spectated, of course. They then showed me some skips.

Me playing Rock Band 3 that first night. With a Sprite.

The dawn glow from the degen corner. This was at 4:53 AM. The night shift — from like 1 AM to 8 AM — is fucking, I don't know, heaven, at GDQ. Nobody's around except you and like maybe 15 other regulars, plus the runners who are up all night? You can really get to know people. And it's calm, and, I don't know, quite serene. Also you can play all the arcade games for however long you want 'cause there's nobody in there.

The Aussie Snowboard Kids runners getting in the mech, Shinji! That morning of the second day was my friend Morgan and Hayley's first world9 night shift, so they ran the rent-a-game-for-free (but of course it's actually just prepaid with the cost of your ticket) booth from midnight to 8 AM, when like maybe 3 or 4 people over the course of the entire shift rent things out? I hung out with them during that, as I did the first time around at SGDQ2025, where I met them. Anyways. These are the Aussie Snowboard Kids runners, who were up all night shift (because of jet lag), and who were absolute kings of that shit for the three days they were there. They contributed so much to it. I loved them. Oh yeah, they're playing Steel Battalion, with the original controller, because someone set up a Steel Battalion controller with the game. People do that in the practice room! They bring their own gear and then set it up on a monitor or CRT TV from world9, and leave it there for other people all week. It's beautiful.

Me, after having slept, the night of the second day, playing Chunithm, which I fucking fell in love with, oh my god! It's so fuckingggg good. Photo taken by my friend Taran.

I myself got in the mech. And I never got the hang of it, that shit is sooooo fucking hard.

Me and the aussie Snowboard Kids commentator whose name I never got though I could probably look up the VOD. We ended up meeting up the morning of the third day, which — okay, so much fucking happened between the night of the second and the morning of the third. After Chunithm, me and Taran watched Mario Odyssey, and then we went to Chipotle (where I tried their lime sauce, it was fine?), and then I played a shittonnnnn of Guitar Hero, and then Taran left, then I smoked some weed, and then the Battle for Bikini Bottom practice room race happened where Jack softlocked (RIP), then the guys there showed me Vertical Momentum Storage, then the XBOX's disc drive stopped opening (so I couldn't swap out games), then I went to the stream room, then I watched the Ogre Battle run, and THEN, FINALLY, I went for a walk to find somewhere to linger. And I found the Aussie Snowboard Kids commentator in the music room (where people set up a shitton of instruments, that you can just jam with), going full one-man-band mode. And then we just talked, for a while, I was a little high and he was very drunk, and. It was fuckingggg wonderful. He's an amazing dude. I remember talking about getting breakfast (because at the point the photo was taken it was 5:17 AM), and I mentioned how my coffee order is alwayssss a medium dark chocolate iced mocha with 2%, and he said, fuckin', that he always has just normal-ass black coffee and holds off all sweet stuff, and then when the occasion finally feels right, he'll have a hot chocolate. Such a cool dude.

We went and watched Mickey and Donald's Magical Quest or something in the stream room afterwards. One angle from the VOD.

This is us AFTER watching Mickey and Donald's Magical Quest or something, shortly before he left to do something.

Me at Caribou Coffee, with a grilled cheese on sourdough and a medium dark chocolate iced mocha with 2%. I forgot to mention this because I'm reading through my (mostly linear) notes as I'm writing this, but while I was guitar heroing out the night of the second day (as opposed to the current morning of the third), fuckin', I look to my left and there were a bunch of people playing modded smash 64, and the guy who made the blue dog video, vidyajames, was there! Which just felt crazy. Cuz they're here in my city. All these random people from the internet whose stuff I've seen are here in a Hilton right near where I live.

I went back to the Hilton after getting Caribou and played some Guitar Hero 3. Good stuff.

As I was leaving the practice room, I snapped this photo which some mischievous folk had left on a TV screen.

Big time skip between the last photo and this one — a whole 31 hours (I think if I do the math right)! Yeah after the fucking, perfect, I guess, day 2 night & day 3 morning, I was fucking poooped. So I just didn't go back, night of day 3. I stayed home, I think I played some Marathon? And, uh. Then I went back, the morning of the fourth day. It was raining, a shitton, I felt like a god in the Caribou Coffee next to the Hilton because I had brought an umbrella when NOBODY ELSE HAD. Mwuahahaha... Then I just, I don't know, spent my time there? I think I was extremely depressed that day, as I took zero photos, and didn't really talk about anything. I know I played classic Marathon on my Steam Deck, in the stream room, and talked with the guy who had done guitar tour tech for some like millennial/gen x band (who I think is the last photo in this gallery) about Marathon, and also talked with him about nuMarathon. But man. Day 4 was just very empty emotionally. Now it's afternoon of day 4, this selfie, as I'm walking from the venue, back home. Banger fit IMO, and the best photo I've taken of myself in a long long time.

The broken escalator in the middle of day 5.

Me and Taran playing UFO 50, the afternoon of day 5. These later ones, I was feeling really depressed and bad, 'cause after I feel really good I usually feel really bad (and vice-versa). And day 2/3 was just. It was so good. Also this morning, of the fifth, I had an apartment tour. Didn't end up choosing it. Smelled like mold. Went to Barnes and Noble beforehand and bought an $8 Blu-ray of Blade Runner and a copy of Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union. Got this like weird strawberry shake from the Barnes and Noble Starbucks. Let's hear it for the morning of Day 5! I should say, right before this, we played some Tetris (in the arcade room) and some Puyo Puyo (in the practice room), and. Unfortunately, I like totally smoked him in both. I was really into Puyo Puyo Tetris like 8 or 9 years ago as a teenager, so I'm permanently much better than average person about both Puyo Puyo and Tetris, but also I'm not good, I'm like, okay, so against someone who's GOOD, I will lose. Which is unfortunate because they are very fun versus games.

Me in the VR setup Medecins Sans Frontieres had for a VR art piece about a man's very difficult life, though unfortunately I don't remember where. It's called 'Forced to Hope', if you wanna look it up. Photo taken by Taran. Taran and I would've probably just been coming back from lunch, where we went to Qdoba. We couldn't actually find our way inside the building from Apple Maps. Turns out the Qdoba was in the skyway! But we randomly ran into ShadowInsignus, who's an acquaintance I met during SGDQ2025, and he like kind of tried to help guide us. It was crazy just running into him like 6 blocks from the Hilton. The whole third floor vendor alley was actually suuuuuper awkward on the last 3 days, 'cause one of the vendors was a guy I had talked to on fucking Scruff like a month prior! We didn't do anything (I had zero luck on Scruff (and I'm now off all the apps, currently)), but. Awkward as shitttttt. I avoided him the entire time.

Evening of the 5th day my extreme depression caught up with me. I tried to find a place to linger, and couldn't, because people don't go back to their hotel rooms until 2amish. This photo was taken around midnight. Um. And it's the very depressing stairwell. I went outside to get some air, but it turns out that uhhhhhhh there were like 20, 25 people on the no-smoking patio, so, I couldn't be there, it was just reeking of cigarette smoke, to which I am particularly sensitive. So I sat in this tiny stairwell next to the front door. And, I don't know, was very sad. I wrote up why I was sad. And in horror. Uh. I have — had, hasn't happened in a few weeks — nightmares where I get sexually assaulted or raped. Never happened to me in real life, and it's like, fucking impossible to talk about, because it's such a sensitive topic and, like, I'm not a victim, but. The 'but' is the fucking hard part, because the memories of these things fade but I feel them really bodily, I've got a really strong mind-body connection, but like. They never happened. I'm fine. Nobody is real. But I still, I mean, even right now typing about them, into my command line for the python script I hand-wrote to automate this blogging process (hand-wrote is something I have to say even though the code sucks shit, because I don't vibe code), I. I feel really bad and uncomfortable. But whatever. Anyways. I wrote a whole blog post on this stairwell, about them. Who knows if I'll ever publish it. Gets pretty in detail. I should say, I couldn't go home at midnight from the Hilton, because there had been a shitton of shootings as of recent after dark near my apartment at the time. Like it was insane they just kept happening. So I didn't really go out after dark anymore. Whatever. After the cigarette smoke started travelling to the stairwell I went up to the third floor event room, which was dead empty at 12:50 AM, and. I just sat there. And then a sanitation person came in, to clean the room, and we talked. They were really cool. I feel bad because I was kind of being happily miserable in that room, not the easiest person to talk to. But they were great. Then I cheered up, some.

So Nate Anon Shelljump, the guy I met last year playing his indie game (which I was extremely good at, as a kaizo noob, and he showed me off to people like a show horse, and then I became a playtester), was at the event almost the whole time, but we only ran into each other on the fifth day! He hung out at the center of the practice room, where I never went, so even though the room was quite small, we just, never were near each other at the same time. Anyways, before the very depressing stairwell, around 5:30pmish, we met up. And then we talked about Inpulse while some guy (amongst his buddies, the Super Mario World romhack scene) played Inpulse. Then Nate played Not in the Groove 2, and then I tried Not in the Groove 2, and me and him and his buddies talked about, like, Mario World romhacking? I mostly listened along. There was a guy playing an auto-mario hack, I remember. Then I went and got Chipotle, as him and his group went and got dinner on their own (I was invited but decided not to come, I was feeling very depressed). Got back, uh, went to the corner of the practice room, tried to get Godot open on my laptop (to work on IOODancing), but my laptop has a wicked soul. And then the very depressing stairwell happened. And then after talking to the cleaner, I had cheered up, and went down to the practice room, and ran into Nate Anon Shelljump. And here we are, with a third guy, at 2AM. Before this photo they were playing a 2-player hack, I'm pretty sure. In this photo they're talking about Super Mario World Cape strats, and how the timing works, and how speed works. I remember bits and pieces. Kind of a nightmare, cape stuff!

Me and Nate playing DDR, that morning of the 6th day. Gonna recount the rest of the morning, as I have no photos until the late night of the 6th! After previous photo, Nate started talking my up and boosting the shit out of my ego. How he thinks I'm goated at kaizo, and how I'm maybe the best Inpulse player, and how he thought it was truly not possible I got as far as I did in the Inpulse cube on my first time trying the game with no Kaizo experience. Then I ran some bit about Alan Wake 2, which I don't remember the details of. Then just me and Nate did Bad Apple DDR, to wake ourselves up, and I fucking, oh my god, I died. Then we Inpulsed some more, and he made a level based on the idea of a 'red note and bouncy spring'. Then I made a level, which. He said I could make a level for the final game and have his sprite person do full art for it. So I made a level with nondeterminative RNG, using the only interaction in the game (it's broken, unfixable) that has that, and it was soooo fucking fun and funny. He seemed a little upset but I was having a great time. Then we BOTH played Guitar Hero. It was awesome. Then we watched carlsagan42 showcase his indie game to people — and, like, I had no idea it was literally carlsagan42 until the other guy he was showing it to finished it and the credits said 'by carlsagan42' and I laughed and thought it was a joke for like a second before realizing, shit, it's actually carlsagan42. 'Cause Nate was just calling him 'Carl'! Then Carl and Nate talked about carlsagan42's indie game for quiiiiiite a while, and made a shitton of jokes about Kaizo level editor stuff which went wayyyy over my head. My notes say 'Feeling like Graggle Simpson rn' which like soooooo true. I actually came up in conversation because Inpulse came up so I talked and joked around a bit, and carlsagan42 laughed at THREE of my jokes. I was completely normal in the presence of a personal celebrity. Big news for Zug nation. Then Nate and I went to the music room, and jammed out, and I played violin there, and after 6ish years of not playing, the muscle memory just came back instantly. 'Cause I'm a classically-trained violinist. Not to brag. Nate walked me through how to play along to the chords of the song he was strumming to — something from Inpulse, if I remember — and then I hit the drums a bunch. And then just listened to Nate strum the guitar there. 'How beautiful a sound'. Damn, we talked for an hour in there, according to my notes. We get along real fucking well. We talked about our games, and what they meant to us, and what we'd worked on. And a lot of life stuff. Then we went and got breakfast, at 7 AM, and I got an iced mocha with a grilled cheese, and he got some bagel thing and a white blended drink and a Diet Coke he chugged. And he talked about his life, how he used to be a teacher, and how academia crushed his spirits, how he teaches math Olympiad high schoolers now for like 6 remote hours a week, makes hella good money. Likes snowboarding, and beatmania. I talked about my life, college, plans. He encouraged me to do some shit. And we talked about speedrunning celebrities at GDQ, and it was very funny because I didn't know like any of the ones he saw as like sky-high figures, meanwhile like 5 hours before it turns out he's on a first-name basis with carlsagan42. Aaahhh. Good shit. Morning of the 6th day — another day 2/3. The Aussie Snowboard Kids runner and Nate, they made SGDQ2026, I'm telling you.

This photo was taken late night of day 6, after I had gone to bed and then woken up again. Taran stayed the whole night that night along with me. Here we are playing Guitar Hero or Rock Band!

The final photo I took at SGDQ2026 — me and the guy I mentioned way way back, the guy I talked about Marathon with, who had been a tour guitar tech for some Millennial/Gen X band. And of COURSE his fucking name badge is cut off. I have another photo where the name badge isn't cut off, but that photo is BLURRY because I have SHAKY HANDS so it's, like, fuck, nightmare! Nightmare! Anyways yeah real cool dude. Listened to some music of his in the degen corner alongside Bonnie and Hayley and Morgan. I ran into him right after midnight and knew I should snap a selfie because I realized I didn't have any photo documentation of myself with him. I'm sooooo fucking shit at memory recall, I knew I'd never be able to remember stuff unless I had photos. But sadly I did not snap his name 😔. Anyways, after this, all I can really remember is that me and Taran did a sweep of the entire arcade (he really enjoyed some like death ball game where you're a wizard who can double jump? Or something?). Then we got breakfast together, but Caribou opened 30 minutes late, so we lazed around in the empty square that just 5.5 days prior had been fucking packed. Then he left real real early. My notes say he talked about Resident Evil and Valkyria Chronicles and Patapon... but not what we did! And then the true morning of the 7th day, like 8am-onwards, I can't remember, I don't really know what else I did, after. I remember Shadow was on the livestream for a, like, donation raffle prize showcase (cuz he makes swords (this time around he made Leon's axe)), not wearing his hat, and I saw his super bald head, and was fucking insane (because he ALWAYS wears his hat!). Then I went and chilled in the music room with Anon Nate Shelljump, but I don't remember what we talked about. I think, just. Similar stuff? I think he mentioned Dan Salvato's new game. Which, by the way, apparently Dan Salvato has been at both SGDQ 2025 and 2026, and literally everyone except me saw him? Or something like that? I have no idea. I've never seen him! And then I went home, around 11am. I had planned to stay later, initially, but. I was just so pooped. I went straight to bed, woke up around 9pm, and. Decided I wasn't gonna go back for the finale, 'cause I was so tired. I watched it on my computer, and. That was the end of SGDQ2026. Overall good (: .

SGDQ 2026 Photos + Recap

Explanation:

This is many photos that I took during SGDQ2026, with me explaining my time during through them, a carousel. The telling is out-of-order, but it was written linearly with the photos, and the photos are a tattered chronology of my time at SGDQ2026.

Postscript:

• Day 1 was the 5th of July, 2026. Day 7 was the 7th of July, 2026.

• They ran out of the extremely beautiful dark blue zip-up SGDQ2026 hoodie in Medium, like, immediately, so I didn't get one. I'll never forgive myself... or them.

• carlsagan42's runner shirt ended up in the ownership of my friend Hayley! He just left it. So it ended up in the lost and found, and at the end of the event Hayley raided the lost and found for everything unclaimed, and ended up with his runner shirt. So now she has it, lmao.

• I didn't talk much about Hayley (Pigeon) or Morgan or Bonnie or Shadow or Taran but they are all fuckingggg wonderful to be around. Hayley and Morgan beat The Last of Us 2 during their morning shifts, and Bonnie had a ticket this time.

• My GDQ Santa gift from Bonnie (AKA Aiden) was a Butterfly bracelet (: .

• When I first met up with Hayley and Morgan at the event I ended up going up to their room with them ('cause they get a free room, 'cause they're staff), and that was actually the first time I've ever been in the hotel part of the Hilton! I imagine a bunch of crazy stuff happens there, in rooms. But I'm a creature of the public lands during the night shift, my calling. The best there is at GDQ.

• The Crokinole Chaos guy(s?) was (were?) there again! The game looks a lot more polished this year.

• carlsagan42's game looks strange and very interesting and also very difficult to perfect game-design-wise. And holy shit, I wanna play it, I don't know why I never played it.

• I have gotten realllyyyyy fucking into Fake Guitaring since SGDQ2026! I bought a PDP Riffmaster! I've played it as much as I can with my current quite bad wrist issues! I'm Clone Heroing Out!

• It took me a really long time to have the energy to write this because my July afterwards was pretty rough and busy and then August was rough and busy and then I moved.

9/8/26 11:11:43 PM CST