What makes an iconic game different from a one-night stand? A devoted fan base that remains with the project even decades after its release. Half-Life is undoubtedly a cult game, and you only need to look at another record of its passing speed, set by streamer Muty, to be convinced of that.
Using a variety of GoldSrc engine glitches, which later expectedly went almost entirely to Source, the streamer managed to run Half-Life in 26 minutes and 38 seconds, which is an absolute record in the given speedrun rules. During the passage of Muty actively used the so-called jumping – the most famous bug of the engine, when the speed of the character’s movement increases many times when jumping at a certain angle.
Of course, modern speedruns are all about creating the most optimal route to pass and eradicating mistakes in doing so, so records keep coming up over all these decades. Who knows, perhaps Muty will set another record in the foreseeable future, as every extra bump on a corner or other obstacle can be decisive in this discipline.