Speedrun mode (often abbreviated as SR), is a gameplay mode implemented on NReality whereby only the frame count is what matters, as opposed to the Highscore timer. On this playing mode, the player aims to beat the levels and episodes as fast as possible, in the least amount of frames possible, and therefore, the gold pieces are irrelevant and incidental.
Although speedrun history had its roots on NUMA when players would regularly submit speedruns, as opposed to all gold demos, it wasn't until a mode was eventually implemented into the first version of NReality that speedrunning gained mainstream traction on a competitive level. A lot of highscorers took a shot at it, although over time, the original highscoring community started to split into highscore and speedrun specialists, including many who were new to competitive playing altogether. Even though there are many players who play regularly on both modes, each mode is dominated by a small handful of players, usually dedicated solely to that mode, with the major exceptions being Kool-Aid and EddyMataGallos who are established highscorers.
At the mode's initial inception, the former German grandmaster, xaelar, played through each of the 1000 levels on Speedrun mode - including the NReality expansion levels - eventually attaining 628/1000 different level 0ths, however, they weren't held simultaneously. Lookatthis also dominated, owning almost 300 SR Level 0ths, not at the same time. So did Darkshadow1416, who reached almost 300 as well. However, not a lot of time was dedicated on these runs, and were therefore beaten later by cleaner runs.
As of 19 March 2014, xaelar has 33 0ths, lookatthis has 4 and Darkshadow1416 has 11. A lot of other players also made a significant contribution to speedrun mode in this first SR age, including Gutland, clux, joe1284, ToeFaceKiller, Mr_Lim, Hendor, Analu, johnny_faneca, Fenneth, zapkt and WoC, each of them attaining a total of over 50 SR Level 0ths at one time or another. Again, most of these runs didn't last long, as they were done during the first speedrun era, and not much time had been dedicated to polishing them. As of March 2014, 757 0ths are owned by the five dominators of the mode - OutrightOJ (202), Kool-Aid (196), danielr (142), EddyMataGallos (115) and kryX-orange (102). Meanwhile, the rest of the 243 0ths are comprised of runs made by retired or casual speedrunners.
As the highscore community was beginning to diverge, some players kept playing very competitively on the speedrun boards, and a few would eventually dominate the speedrun scene. At first, during 2008, kryX-orange came onto the speedrunning scene. As opposed to his illegitimate HS runs of his past, his SR runs are all legitimate, as verified by NReality's inbuilt speedhack detection. He started amassing incredible amounts of impressive 0ths, and eventually reached the milestone of 400 SR Level 0ths and owning the top spot on 0th Rankings; which still stands as the most amount of 0ths ever attained in speedrun mode. As of 19 March 2014, he still holds 102 of them.
In 2009, Kool-Aid surged and quickly became highly skilled. He started his rampage by grabbing 0ths here and there, mostly from the original Metanet levels, and dominated the scene; also making a sufficient contribution to the highscores section as a well-rounded player. In 2010, he surpassed kryX-orange for the top ranked 0th player. He took a full year break in 2011, and in 2012, he came back and reached 200 SR 0ths. Ultimately, his goal was to reach 500 SR 0ths to beat kryX's achievement. As of 19 March 2014, he trails the current top ranked speedrunner, OutrightOJ by just 6 0ths, with a total of 196.
During 2010, an already experienced player by the name of OutrightOJ, decided to launch an assault on speedrun mode. By the end of 2010, OOJ had taken a plethora of speedrun 0ths; eventually reaching 300 SR Level 0ths. Hoever, by 19 March 2014, his count has been reduced to 202.
In mid-2012, the mysterious player danielr came from nowhere, and started a massive 0th-destroying rampage, in which he accumulated 90 speedrun 0ths over a couple months.
Aside from the dominating players, several other players have also made contributions to this mode's leaderboards; including vankusss, Izzy, swipenet, Meta_Ing, Raif, MiBeM, Oleary15, ska, trance and many others.