So yeah, I blame searching "yoshi's island" on youtube a few weeks ago for getting me into speedrunning (agdq 2014 tri-hex 100% run). So now I want to learn all I can about speedrunning so I can be able to speed run some games that I enjoy playing. some examples would be etrian odyssey untold, the pokemon mystery dungeon series, and of course yoshi's island. i found the gba version of it in elementary school and loved it ever since :). So since I want to get into speedrunning, I have a few questions that hopefully the people here on the internet can help me out with.

1. I've seen people have a timer on the side of their screen that keeps track of their time, goals, etc. What i this and is it useful?
2. Where do I go to find information about speedrunning certain games. I know there is a yoshi's island speedrunning wikia, but is there a place like that for all games?
3. What do I do if I want to speedrun a new game? Cause I want to speedrun pokemon super mystery dungeon (just came out in english friday), but no it's so new there's probably no information about what speedrunning the game entails (i.e. information from question 2).

Please help me out, cause I've always wanted to speedrun, just never had to drive until I saw someone speedrunning yoshi's island :)

1. The timer is just that, a timer. There are a few varieties out there, with livesplit and wsplit being the main ones. There is a link to both and more useful stuff over on the resources page. http://www.speedrun.com/resources

2. Information for an individual game will vary game to game. In general, the bigger the games community, the bigger the pool of information will be. For a game like Pokémon Mystery Dungeon there will likely be a lot of information on Bulbapedia, but again as a new game the information may be limited.

3. Speedrunning a new game will be down to you, and anyone interested in the game. I would suggest heading over to the game's speedrun page and posting on the forums and see if anyone else is interested in helping with information and routing. http://www.speedrun.com/psmd

As an extra note - If you do run the game you will want a way to record your runs. A camera is fine, you don't need to show your splits on screen, but if you really want to get into it I'd suggest a 3DS with a capture card in it. Never used one, so I'm afraid that's all the information I can provide on that.

1. A timer helps you comparing between all your runs. Splits also helps you comparing with some segments of the run like "Do the glitch" or "beat this opponent" and these small goals might help you to detect your weaknesses.
2. There is a searchbar on the top of the website
3. Like Ozotuh said