While we wait for Awesome Games Done Quick, there’s another event that’s much more unknown but just as hype that you could check out, RTA in Japan.

RTA means Real Time Attack and is the term used for “speedrun” by Japanese players. RTA in Japan is an event inspired by GDQ, that happens right before SGDQ and AGDQ, two times a year. It’s the same type of charity event, with the donations going to Medecins Sans Frontières.

RTA in Japan has been ongoing since 2016, growing each year. The event can also help you practice your Japanese. Each run is commented. Either by the runner themselves or by a team of commenters.

Last but not least, the biggest appeal of RTA in Japan is that you’ll often see speedrun of games that never released outside Japan. Overall, the lineup is much more varied than at GDQ.

RTA in Japan Summer 2021 most notably had an amazingTokimeki Memorialrun, as seen above. Meanwhile, RTA in Japan Online 2020 in August had alegendaryRacing Lagoonspeedrun.

All speedruns are also archived onYouTube, but you need to watch that one on Twitch for the chat experience; This run made many in Japan discoverRacing Lagoonfor the first time, turning the game’s hilarious dialogues which mix Japanese and English into a huge meme still perduring now on Japanese Twitter.Racing Lagoonalso just got anEnglish Patch in November 2021.

RTA in Japan Winter 2021 schedule

The full schedule for RTA in Japan isavailable on this page. The first column shows the times each run starts. These times are automatically converted to your time zone. The second column shows the games' names, so you can just google translate that if you can’t read Japanese.

Among the games you probably won’t see on GDQ, l personally recommend checking out these runs: (Use ctrl+f to search for the start times on the schedule):

RTA in Japan started on Saturday, December 25, at around 10 PM EST with aChrono Triggerrun. The final game of the event will be a 100% run of the legendary kusogeFinal Swordon Switch. It’ll start on Friday, December 31, at around 4 AM EST.

Where to watch RTA in Japan

The event is on Twitch.GDQ has several restreams in multiple languages including Japanese. Sadly, RTA in Japan does not have any English restream. Not yet at least.

Update:an English restream started several hours after RTA in Japan itself.Check it out on the SpeedGaming channel.