It was described by Derek Yu, the creator of Spelunky speedrunning as “the most serious cheating situation I have ever heard of”.
BarryMode, a speedrunner who was completely unknown in the speedrunning scene, beat Spelunky Classic in just 2 minutes and 30 seconds eight years ago. Speedrunners of all ages have tried for years to beat that time, but to no avail.
It turned out that BarryMode was actually cheating. It took just shy of a decade for us to discover how.
In a video about the run, Spelunky YouTuber XanaGear stated that “this run has not been credible for a long while.” He submitted the run to speedrun.com first, unfortunately.
XanaGear explains in the video that suspicions didn’t really escalate until February when members of the community noticed that a tile had disappeared from BarryMode’s transition room. Although this would not be enough to cheat a run by itself, it was a side effect that BarryMode used in order to save his run.
