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Awesome Games Done Quick 2026 is entering its final days, but it may have already peaked on Thursday, January 7. That's the day that brought us an American Truck Simulator race so off the rails, so absurd, and so utterly chaotic that it seems destined to live forever in GDQ infamy.
You might be wondering exactly how you go about doing a speedrun of American Truck Simulator, an open-ended game without clear objectives that's made up mostly of long, lonesome highways that generally allow you to easily pin the accelerator down. The obvious choice, of course, is to run a point-to-point race for two equally matched truckers beginning at the same starting line.
That's how the AGDQ run started out, with a race from Amarillo, TX to… well, the destination's not really important, for reasons that will quickly become apparent. Runners anarchyasf and Lazlotus, adopting the names Big Ranch and Heavy Chevy, respectively, donned trucker caps and put on their best Mid-South accents as they got commentary support from sapphire_in_pink (Dispatch Diva) and Buffalo Boone (Buffalo Boone) on the couch, and chibicarrera (The Godfather) on hosting duties.
Buffalo Boone in particular has become a minor celebrity in the GDQ circuit thanks to his madcap Texas vibes, and the energy was off the charts from the start of the run. But equally, you could tell from the start that this wasn't going to be an exquisite look at the best in speedrunning tech. That's partly because it was impossible to see anything at all – the in-game clock started in pitch-black night – and partly because Big Ranch landed her truck sideways less than a minute after the race began.
If you're starting to pick up the vibes, I'd recommend just hitting play on the video below, because it's worth letting all this just wash over you as it comes. But somehow, the chaotic energy only escalates. Less than 10 minutes into the race, Big Ranch has another oopsie, checking the map for too long and careening into a roadside guardrail. This, it turned out, absolutely broke the game.
Big Ranch's rig got embedded in that guardrail in such a way that she could not move, but the game believed the truck was still in motion, preventing her from opening the menu to call a tow truck or fast travel to a different location. Minutes passed. Blame was placed upon an Etsy witch who may or may not be real. Everyone scrambled to figure out how to fix the problem, with no solutions presenting themselves. As dawn breaks in-game, the runners, commentators, and audience all break out in a desperate rendition of 'Life Is a Highway.'
Buffalo Boone keeps spirits high by calling for "donies" to be read by The Godfather and calling out "yee-haw" where appropriate. Eventually, Heavy Chevy turns around and drives back toward Big Ranch's location in hopes of ramming her truck and knocking it loose of the physics bug. Several crashes do nothing. The host asks haplessly, "Is this yuri?" But eventually, Heavy Chevy gets some distance, builds up some speed – and crashes directly into the guardrail, getting embedded right alongside Big Ranch. At this, the GDQ audience spontaneously breaks out in a standing ovation.
But somehow, this unbreaks the physics, allowing both truckers to call for a tow and break free of their makeshift prison. Buffalo Boone exclaims, "The Etsy witch has saved us!" The drivers settle on a new destination, and resolve to simply ride out their estimated time of 35 minutes to the end.
Now, you'd expect that nothing more ridiculous could happen from here. Surely, there could be no punchline to elevate this run even further into the most chaotic realms of GDQ history. And yet… The run concludes with Heavy Chevy crashing into Big Ranch at such an angle that the latter's truck embeds backwards into the ground and points straight at the sky. The crowd begins to chant, "Trucks! Trucks! Trucks!"
"This is yuri, y'all," The Godfather observes. "This right here is yuri!"
"That's the most yeein'-haw thing I've ever seen I've ever seen in my life," Buffalo Boone concludes. I couldn't agree more.
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