Melee: The Quest for Sub 3:00

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Melee: The Quest for Sub 3:00, or Break the Targets: Quest for Sub 3:00 from the thumbnail, is a documentary created by speedrunner Summoning Salt and released on June 20th, 2025. The story follows an history of Super Smash Bros. Melee's Target Test mini-game and its speedrun category in the span of two decades, with the earliest archived world record set only a year after the game's release. Upon its release, the video accumulated over 2.5 million views as of 2026. This documentary mentions "The Most UNLIKELY Record in Smash Bros: The History of Peach's Melee Break The Targets World Record".

Synopsis

The video starts with Salt describing the state of Super Smash Bros. Melee with its different branches, such as the competition and speedrun communities, followed by a short description of Target Test and how it works, and finally shows a graph of its accumulated time with every fighters; going from a sub-4:02 minutes in 2002 to sub-3:04 in 2008 and slowly to sub-3:01 in 2019. By January 2019, the then-world record was stuck at 3:00.87. Due to its slow pace, a group of speedrunner have decided to make a bounty in order to reach below 3 minutes, with sockdude1 going even further in this idea by adding $10/10€ for each frame a player save. This bounty renewed its interest in the speedrun community, which led to both newcommers and veteran players of the Super Smash Bros. community to break this new world record.