Arcus’ first attempt at burrito speedrunning was a fairly placid affair. He took care of the ingredients, spooning refried beans onto his tortilla before adding pre-grated cheese, sour cream, tomatoes, chillies, lettuce, and hot sauce. How seriously he’s taking the endeavour is shown by the fact he stops halfway through to get a different pot of sour cream out of the fridge because it&💛rsquo;s already open.
Within two months, his time was down from 3.05 to sub-14 se๊conds. I maintain that the first burrito he ever s♊peedran was the most delicious, was folded with the most care, and had the best ratio of fillings, but burrito speedrunning is not about the flavour, it’s about the time.
I suspect some of you clicked on this art▨icle thinking that Burrito speedrunning was a meme, or a euphemism for something else. Perhaps Burrito was a game you hadn’t heard of, or it was a subculture, a speedrunning clan, or something else entirely. While the jury’s still out on whether or not the whole thing is a joke, those who compete are serious speedrunners who seriously want the best times.
Arcus, for instance, is known as “the cowboy who speedruns NES games.” He has a thriving Twitch channel and impressive runs of Ninja Gaiden (1, 2, and 3), Super Mario Bros. (1, 2, and warpless in 3), and Ca𝓡stlevania. And, for a brief period in 2020, he speedrun (speedran?) making burritos. Seriously, check out his 13-second run above.
You can pick out some of the rules from this video, too, as there is no official docu🔥mentation. “That is definitely a burrito,” Arcus says. He points out that it has “nice folds all around,” and is “not o🐈pen.” That makes it a burrito. However, it goes much deeper than that.
Not content with regular burrito speedruns, Spyro speedrunꦗner ‘Dayoman’, who is inexplicably naked for most of this video (it’s safe for work, but you’ve been warned), invented the spoonless category. Dayoman forgoes spoons to 🦋paw at the burrito fillings with his bare hands, making his run far faster than any time Arcus posted.
However, this is where burrito speedrunning borders on parody. This video is obviously more intended to be funny than a serious attempt at setting a time, but it has a place in this chronicle of burrito speedrunning history. If we’re taking it at face value, though, Dayoman only uses one hand to scoop the fillings into his tortilla throughout. His left hand is only used to hit the timer, and I feel that he could easily shav🌳e a second or two off this run by simply using it. I also believe there’s an argument that his burrito does not fit Arcus’ description of being “not open.” While it is folded, there is clearly filling spilling out, and it is nowhere near as neat as Arcus’ attempts.
Perhaps this is just another aspect of burrito speedrunning that I don’t quite understand. Flavour isn’t important, so perhaps aesthetics aren’t either. After all, Dayoman describes it as “fully closed,” and says t🌳hat, despite the “wetness” of hot sauce on the outside, it counts. After all, you wouldn’t speedrun Elden Ring in order to best understand the story. You wouldn’t speedrun making a burrito and expect to end up with restaurant-quality Mexican food. Dayoman describes i🎶t best:
“I know it doesn’t🔯 look appetising, okay? It’s not meant to be appetising. Are you f***ing stupid? It’s a speedru♔n.”
Dayoman believes that spoonless runs are the future of burrito speedrunning, and hopes his video from last year will reinvigorate the scene. “Is sub-6 possible?” he asks, and I&r🙈squo;m inclined to believe it is. If more players get involved in the burrito speedrunning scene, and the categories become more competitive, the addition of left hands to spoonless runs will surely slash his world record run to pieces. As long as the burrito stays whole, though, it’ll count. The future of꧃ burrito speedrunning looks bright, and who knows, maybe they’ll even have a place at GDQ in future?