Breaking down doors, or at least, knocking Snake through them
There is no formula for discovering new ways to save time in a speedrun. Sometimes, it just comes down to chance, as was apparent when a streamer discovered a new skip forMetal Gear Solidover the weekend by accident.
Yogscast streamer “Boba” was playingMetal Gear Solidand reached a section of the game called Comm Tower A, where Solid Snake has to climb a pretty tall tower. Normally, you’d have to ascend a whole bunch of stairs. But as Boba discovered, youcouldalso just get shot by a guard and blasted backwards through the door.
last night i broke metal gearget rekt speedrunnerspic.twitter.com/6tqhBvP5LA
— BOBA 🐀 (@boba_witch)June 29, 2025
AsMetal Gear Solidspeedrunners went on to verify, getting shot canextend Snake’s hitboxinto a loading zone, even those behind doors. It appears to save around2 minutes and 30 seconds, a pretty substantial amount of time, and it also doesn’t seem to require getting shot. Players discovered that you can also make it workwith a chaff grenade and the right angle.
The speedrunners are already having a field day with this, as new records for both Very Easy and Easy Any% are popping up onspeedrun.com. For the Very Easy category, this not only nabbed the world record, but the first-ever run below 30 minutes, clocking in at 29:54.7244.
TheMetal Gear SolidSpeedrunnersTwitterand Discord has been following the new developments as they come in, and those are also good resources to check out if you’re interested at all in running, or just learning more about it. Runners have already beenreplicating the trick and incorporating it into their run, so expect to see some jockeying for the top spot on the leaderboards. With the knowledge gained here too, I’m curious to see if any other paths are found using this trick.
As for what the trick is called? Well, some already started calling it “Boba Skip,” after its obvious namesake. Boba, however, has a different name for it: “Kevin.” So congrats to Boba, on discovering Kevin. And if you want to check out some more speedrunning this week,check out the Flame Fatales event that’s currently underway, raising money for The Malala Fund.
