Alexo pictured at a Rush concert, June 2015.
Alex "Alexo" Bowes is a Doom player from Michigan, US. He is known for speedrunning Doom for home consoles ports made prior to 2003, and various machinima films.
In 2019, he became the first person to speedrun Doom for the Game Boy Advance in under 10 minutes.
Internet presence
Alexo was a well established youtuber in the world of Machinima film making. In 2008, he created the first episodes of his most well known comedy, CNP . The show has short runs every year and a half, and has a large following in underground machinima.
In 2017, Alexo began speedrunning Various Games from his childhood, eventually playing the first version of Doom he had ever played, Doom on the Game Boy Advance.
GBA Developments and History
Alexo began speedrunning Doom for GBA in November of 2017. By December, he was the full game world record holder, and individual episodes record holder, on the easiest difficulty.
In December of 2017, a Tool Assisted Speedrunner named Icy, made the community of Doom GBA aware of out of bounds capabilities. Icy had discovered a glitch in the mid 2000's while playing a multiplayer match with a friend. Icy had conceptualized a route using out of bounds in E1M5, E1M6, E2M6, and later levels like LIMBO (E3M7 on PC). Alexo expanded on Icy's research in the years following this discovery.
This discovery created the category now called 'Any%'. The traditional routes, without out of bounds, were made into a category called 'Any% No Out of Bounds'. At this point, 'Nightmare' and 'Nightmare No Out of Bounds' were made distinct also. In January of 2018, Alexo had discovered the possibility of returning into levels from the out of bounds area. Gathering enough speed and momentum, allows Doomguy to pass through solid walls while out of bounds. This would bring Alexo to discover out of bounds completions in E1M7, E1M8, E2M1, and E3M4. Alexo would develop a new category for Doom GBA called God%, in Feburary 2018, allowing for god mode and all weapons codes. Allowing the player to freely run the game, without taking damage, and using glitches to the maximum advantage for speed.
Alexo is also credited with discovering the capabilities of Linedef deletions in the GBA port of Doom. Accomplishing a route of Diemos Labs in 22 seconds using heavy glitching while out of bounds . Walking into a particular spot out of bounds in the level, allows for walls to be placed in different positions, allowing for a completion of the level without any keys. Alexo would eventually become the first person to complete a version of Doom, without picking up any blue keys over the course of an entire game.
On June 8th, 2019, Alexo completed Doom for GBA 100 times, in under 24 hours . This would be the first attempt at such a high number of completions back to back, and clocked in at 23:34:24. He attempted a second GBA 100 completions run June 14th, 2020. The run had technical malfunctions 4 hours in when the timer froze. Physical limitations of being awake for over 30 hours, made the attempt impossible to complete with the time alloted. Another GBA 100 completions attempt is planned before 2021.
Alexo is currently attempting to complete Doom for GBA in less then 9 minutes on a real cartridge. The current number of attempts has reached over eleven thousand. He has also stated he would like to finish the game on Nightmare in under 15 minutes. His current GBA Nightmare time is 15:03 , over 10 seconds ahead of the highest optimized PC run performed by ZeroMaster on Ultra-Violence settings. The UV difficulty was renamed Nightmare on GBA, while true Nightmare was removed entirely.
Other Doom Runs
Alexo is one of a few who have specialized in running Doom for inferior platforms from the 90's. He currently holds the fastest completion of Doom 32x (10:28 ), Doom 3DO (16:36 ), and Doom II GBA (42:35 ).
He was the former world record holder in SNES Doom Any% and Doom 1 on Sega Saturn . The only version he hasn't held a single record in is Doom for Playstation 1.
He was one of many who had a tied 9 second run for UV difficulty on E1M1. His time was set before the first 8s speedrun was performed on the level in 2019. This would be the only PC Doom record Alexo has ever played currently.