SDA's primary focus is hosting downloadable, high-quality speedrun videos, and currently has runs of over eleven hundred games, with more being added on a regular basis.

SDA was formed initially by Nolan "Radix" Pflug of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania by merging with a site created by Gunnar and Jesse in April 1998.

In January 2010, SDA ran its first charity marathon, Classic Games Done Quick, raising over $10,000 for CARE.

The site includes videos of popular games as Mega Man, Metroid, The Legend of Zelda, Super Mario Bros., and Sonic the Hedgehog.

The review process also attempts to certify that the submitted speedrun contains no foul play such as cheating[Note 1], hacking, or improper segmenting.

Nevertheless, SDA does permit the use of emulators in certain cases; submissions performed on the Game Boy Player, GameTap, and Virtual Console[4] are allowed.

[5] Virtual machines and DOSBox are allowed in cases where an older PC game does not run properly on modern computers.

SDA accepts runs that adhere to one of three different completion requirements:[10] Discrete runs of the same game can vary substantially based on self-imposed restrictions such as using a specific character, playing the game on a specific difficulty level, avoiding the use of glitches and exploits, or requiring completion of optional objectives.

Following an initial meetup at MAGFest, the SDA community, inspired by TheSpeedGamers, began their first charity marathon in January 2010, titled Classic Games Done Quick.

Viewers who donate are given the option to have a message sent to the marathon attendees to be read during the stream, allowing them to vote with their donation money for, among other things, which games they want played, what they want in-game characters to be named, or to request runners to perform specific feats such as difficult tricks or glitches.

On 27 January 2013, SDA announced that AGDQ 2013 had raised $448,423.27,[22] surpassing Desert Bus for Hope 6's donation total of $443,165.29 to become the most successful single gaming charity marathon at the time.