Behemoth

Behemoth is a popular speedrunner in the Metroid community, most notably for his achievements in Super Metroid, where he has set multiple records over the years. He also holds records in Metroid II: Return of Samus and toyed around with runs of Metroid NES, Metroid Fusion and Metroid: Zero Mission. Having made numerous achievements with the series, he has moved on from Metroid titles, and is currently running Turok 2 full time. Until recently, he held the world record in Hardcore Mode on PC with a time of 1 hour 15 minutes.

Christopher “Behemoth87” Hill

I started speedrunning in around 2007/08 after first discovering sites such as GameFaqs, Speed Demos Archive and YouTube. I was so impressed by what I saw, and was blown away by a runner named ‘Hotarubi’ from Japan who had a 32 minute game-time run of Super Metroid, a childhood favourite game. The expertise on display was incredible and I think that’s the starting point which drove me to want to try and do the same thing. Little did I know I’d still be doing this more than 10 years later!

I’ve had various records over the years for Super Metroid and Metroid 2: Return of Samus. The Metroid community as a whole is a great community to be involved with, share ideas and have fun hanging out. The competition, particularly in Super Metroid, is pretty fierce with a number of top players battling it out for records and always raising the bar which keeps you on your toes. I think that’s a big reason there’s always a compulsion to come back to try and improve. I had the honor of participating at Summer Games Done Quick and Awesome Games Done Quick in 2016 and 2017 respectively. These two events were kind of the highlight of my speedrunning “career”, because I never envisioned traveling so far to do this and be around so many likeminded awesome people. It was a surreal moment to be sitting up there with guys I had watched on Twitch for a few years already, and with how the race unfolded with all 3 losing their runs, and then scraping together a survival win from a bad performance from myself was both hilarious and unexpected to say the least.

My main focus right now is Metroid 2: Return of Samus which I’ve recently gotten back into after a very long hiatus. After this I plan to go back to Super Metroid and try to improve some of my times there yet again. Despite all this I don’t envision myself being a speedrunner forever because it’s a lot of time to invest if you’re serious about it, that I’d like to spend pursuing other things. That said I’m sure I’ll always be involved with the Metroid community to some degree, whether participating in it or sharing ideas.

Our Thoughts

Darren

Metroid has played a big part in the Speedrunning community, and Behemoth is a fine representative who has shown incredible skill and determination. I cannot even begin to imagine how much time and practice went into achieving some of the records Behemoth currently holds. I admire how speedrunners can find shortcuts and paths through games that most fans and even the original developers did not foresee. I will be following Behemoth’s career as a speedrunner very closely, and wish him the best of luck in retaining and possibly improving on his records in the future!

Achievements

All records are correct as of the time of publishing: 14th April 2018

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