The Ultimate Speedrun Challenge: Ranking Games with the Most Satisfying Time-Based Achievements in 2026

As a dedicated gamer who's spent countless hours chasing that perfect run, I've always believed that speedrunning and achievement hunting are like two sides of the same glorious coin—or maybe more like a perfectly synchronized dance between a cheetah and its shadow. Yet, it's frustrating how many games with incredible movement mechanics and level design don't actually reward you for mastering their flow. I'm looking at you, modern platformers that shall remain nameless! But today, I want to celebrate the games that do it right—the ones that bake speedrunning directly into their achievement systems, creating challenges that feel less like chores and more like unlocking a secret language of motion.

Let me take you through my personal ranking of these games, focusing on how satisfying and fair their time-based challenges feel when you're pushing your skills to the absolute limit.

10. Sonic X Shadow Generations: The S-Rank Sprint

It's almost poetic that Sonic—the embodiment of speed in gaming—has achievements that focus entirely on time. The S-rank system in Sonic X Shadow Generations is straightforward: go fast, don't die, collect what you need. While I appreciate the direct approach, the execution feels like trying to win a marathon by simply showing up. The challenges rarely push you to discover advanced routes or master complex movement tech. It's a solid foundation that could have been so much more with tighter time limits or additional objectives beyond basic survival.

What makes it work:

• Pure time-based ranking

• Encourages replaying levels

• Accessible to casual players

What holds it back:

• Too forgiving for veteran speedrunners

• Lacks depth in optimization requirements

• Feels more like completion than mastery

9. A Hat in Time: The Death Wish Dilemma

Here's a game with movement so smooth it feels like sliding on butter across a hot griddle, yet its speedrunning achievements are strangely compartmentalized. The Death Wish challenges are where the real meat is—brutal time trials that demand perfection. What I love about these is how they transform levels you thought you knew into entirely new puzzles. Each attempt feels like solving a complex equation where every jump, dive, and hat-swap must be calculated to the millisecond.

The Good:

• Excellent movement mechanics

• Challenging time limits

• Rewards mastery of individual levels

The Frustrating:

• No full-game speedrun achievement

• Some challenges feel disconnected from main game

• Requires unlocking Death Wish first

8. Halo 2: The Legendary Marathon

Completing Halo 2 on Legendary in under three hours is like trying to perform brain surgery while riding a unicycle on a tightrope—blindfolded. This achievement demands such perfection that it borders on masochism. You need to know every enemy placement, every optimal line through corridors, and every movement trick in the book. And even then, random bullets from enemies you can't even see will end your run. It's less about speedrunning and more about surviving a gauntlet where the game is actively trying to murder you at every turn.

Why it's brutal:

• Combines difficulty with time pressure

• Requires memorization of entire campaign

• Punishes even minor mistakes severely

Why it's rewarding:

• Incredible sense of accomplishment

• True test of mastery

• Legendary status among achievement hunters

7. Antonblast: The Momentum Machine

This game understands something fundamental about speedrunning: momentum is everything. Antonblast's time attack achievements feel like trying to keep a runaway freight train on tracks made of toothpicks. The shoulder bash mechanic creates this beautiful rubber-band effect where maintaining your speed becomes a mini-game in itself. I love how you can chip away at individual levels, learning them like the back of your hand, discovering shortcuts that feel like secret passages in your own home.

What makes it special:

• Momentum-based movement system

• Manageable individual level challenges

• Encourages incremental improvement

Perfect for players who:

• Prefer short, focused sessions

• Enjoy mastering specific levels

• Love finding creative shortcuts

6. Spelunky: The Cave Dashing Descent

The Speedlunky achievement is a masterpiece of design because it fundamentally changes how you play the game. Normally, Spelunky is about careful exploration and resource management. But when you're trying to beat it in eight minutes? Suddenly you're dropping bombs at your feet to create instant descents, running past treasures that would normally be irresistible, and treating enemies as obstacles to bounce off rather than threats to eliminate. It transforms the game from a methodical dungeon crawl into a frantic parkour nightmare—and I mean that in the best way possible.

The transformation:

Normal Play	Speedrun Play
Careful exploration	Reckless descent
Collect everything	Ignore most items
Fight enemies	Use enemies as platforms
Plan each move	React instantly

5. Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove: The Four-Faceted Challenge

What I adore about Shovel Knight's speedrun achievements is how they adapt to each character's unique playstyle. Whether you're bouncing with Shovel Knight, bomb-jumping with Plague Knight, or dashing with Specter Knight, the 90-minute time limit feels perfectly tailored to each campaign. It's challenging but never feels impossible—more like a difficult puzzle you know has a solution if you just think about it the right way. The achievements encourage you to see the levels not as linear paths but as interconnected systems you can manipulate and optimize.

Campaign comparison:

• Shovel Knight: Traditional platforming optimization

• Plague Knight: Bomb momentum mastery

• Specter Knight: Dash-chaining precision

• King Knight: Shoulder bash routing

4. Hollow Knight: The Triple Threat

Hollow Knight's speedrun achievements are like a carefully graduated training program for becoming a true master of Hallownest. The three-tier system (10 hours, 5 hours, and 100% in 20 hours) creates this beautiful progression where each achievement teaches you something new about the game. What starts as "just reach the ending" becomes "optimize your route," which then becomes "know every secret location by heart." The Speed Completion achievement in particular is a work of art—it forces you to balance the need for speed with the requirement of thorough exploration, creating constant tension between rushing forward and doubling back.

Achievement breakdown:

1. Speedrun 1 (10 hours): Learn basic routing

2. Speedrun 2 (5 hours): Master movement and skip optional content

3. Speed Completion (20 hours, 100%): Balance speed with completionism

3. Super Meat Boy: The World Record Workout

The world-based speedrun achievements in Super Meat Boy are deceptive in their simplicity. "Beat the world in as little time as possible" sounds straightforward until you realize it means creating an optimal route through 20 levels, skipping the longest ones entirely, and executing every jump with frame-perfect precision. It's like trying to solve a Rubik's cube while balancing it on your nose—every element must be perfect. The controls are so responsive that failure always feels like your fault, which makes success taste all the sweeter.

What makes it work:

• Perfect controls = no excuses

• Encourages creative routing

• Focuses on mastery of specific worlds

• Satisfying incremental progress

2. Neon White: The Speedrunning Simulator

If someone designed a game specifically to teach people how to speedrun, it would be Neon White. This game doesn't just have speedrunning achievements—it's built from the ground up as a speedrunning playground. The Ace rank requirements on every level are like personal trainers pushing you to be better, while the friend leaderboards turn improvement into a social competition. The color rush challenges (complete sequences without dying) add this wonderful risk-reward element where maintaining momentum becomes a life-or-death calculation.

Why it's addictive:

• Built-in leaderboards

• Immediate feedback on performance

• Constantly introduces new shortcuts

• Makes optimization feel like discovery

1. Pizza Tower: The Perfect P-Rank Pursuit

And here we are at the peak of the speedrunning achievement mountain. Pizza Tower doesn't just encourage speedrunning—it demands it. The P-rank system is so demanding that even S-ranks feel like monumental achievements. Mastering Peppino's movement—which feels less like controlling a character and more like trying to steer a shopping cart filled with angry cats down a mountain—becomes an obsession. Every level becomes a complex dance where you're juggling speed, collectibles, and style points, all while maintaining momentum that feels as fragile as a house of cards in a wind tunnel.

The P-rank perfection requires:

• Maintaining combo throughout entire level

• Collecting every collectible

• Reaching the exit within tight time limit

• Never getting hit

• Executing advanced movement tech consistently

Watching expert speedruns of this game is like watching poetry in motion—if poetry involved a mustached Italian man ground-pounding through walls and using enemies as springboards. The achievement for getting all P-ranks isn't just a test of skill; it's a transformation of how you perceive and interact with the game world.

Final Thoughts: The Art of the Speedrun Achievement

Looking back at these games in 2026, what strikes me is how the best speedrunning achievements aren't just about going fast—they're about changing your relationship with the game. They turn levels from static challenges into dynamic puzzles where every element can be manipulated, skipped, or optimized. They reward not just execution but understanding, not just skill but creativity.

The perfect speedrun achievement should feel like learning to play an instrument—difficult at first, but eventually reaching a point where you're not just hitting notes, but making music. It should transform the game from something you play into something you speak, with movement as your language and time as your meter.

Whether you're chipping away at Antonblast's individual levels or attempting Halo 2's legendary marathon, the joy comes from that moment when everything clicks—when routes become instinct, movements become fluid, and you're no longer playing the game, but dancing with it. And in that dance, the achievements become not just rewards, but milestones in a journey of mastery that, for those of us bitten by the speedrunning bug, never really ends.