Insatiable 'Overwatch' players are speedrunning the hero menu, of all things

Overwatch, primarily known for its online FPS action, is actually a highly competitive game in the speedrunning community thanks to an oft-overlooked precision-based challenge hidden in plain sight right in the game's menus: the hero gallery.

That's right, Overwatch players are speedrunning the hero gallery. How? Take a look:

The Overwatch hero gallery speedrun rules are pretty simple: Place your cursor on the left side of the hero gallery between the two rows of heroes and drag the cursor all the way through to the right end of the gallery without touching any of the hero portraits.

This niche speedrun was recently highlighted in a post on the Overwatch subreddit, which ignited a lot of discussion about the hero gallery race. Redditor PitoTheThird explained why the competition is so exciting:

The hero gallery UI changes often, making speed running hero galleries an invigorating sport. I have no doubt that we'll see this as an official e-sport by the end of the year.

Drag method meta will be a huge topic of debate. Bots could be their own meta, but if that's too powerful, then there could be a separate category for bot runs. I feel that trackpads and controllers are going to be thrown out of the drag meta entirely, while touchscreens and mice drags are closely debated.

Not long after the first video was posted on the Overwatch subreddit, other hero gallery speedrunners started posting their own efforts. OfficialDia brought the record down from 32.12 seconds to 10.64 seconds.

Not long after, ToddlerToys tore through the hero gallery in a jaw-dropping 5.02 seconds.

Remikzfully has the current world record of 530 milliseconds (they incorrectly said their time was 53 milliseconds), which is going to be pretty tough to beat. It appears that they just whipped their mouse from left to right over and over until they managed to do it in a straight line, throwing strategy out the window for a more reckless approach to the run.

Overwatch already had an active speedrunning community long before the hero gallery run became so popular. People have been racing through the tutorial for months. The current world record holder is Midnight with a time of 3 minutes, 50 seconds, 930 milliseconds, which he hit just nine days ago.