What I mean by “speedrun franchise” is a series of games that are generally pretty popular and also culturally relevant within and outside of the speedrun scene. When a new game in the series comes out it usually makes a splash in the speedrun scene and adds “another chapter” in the iconic speedrun history of the series.

The reason I titled my post the way it is, is because I feel like Mario and Zelda are probably unquestionably the top 2 within my definition. Mario probably has a bit of a gap on Zelda (though they used to be closer back in the day). You can feel free to disagree in the comments if you think one of them are not the top 2.

Back to the question then, what do you think comes after those two in terms of being most iconic within the speedrun community as a franchise, getting attention for speed running outside of the community, etc.?

You are also welcome to have a tie between a few games, or rank games after the 3rd if you think others deserve a mention.