There was a new dispute opened on Twin Galaxies. A lot of controversy was brought up and andrewg decided to run the game. Omnigamer put out an input spreadsheet and a guide on how to achieve a TAS time as human. Darbian and many other known speedrunners e.g. Summoningsalt and so on picked up the game and played / streamed it. It is a race to 5.57 the fastest time possible.
I remember a month or two ago this had 5 or 6 runs on it, but it's slowly been growing ever since. Definitely a huge spike when andrewg came along
I'd say EZScape was the catalyst for all of this, since he made that video on Todd's supposed 5.51 time before it all blew up.
The 5.51 dispute has been ongoing for 35 years, and has now reached its pinnacle. This is due to a myriad of reasons, but primarily because of a number of viral YouTube videos which revived the interest in this game and the Todd Roger's dispute.
Omnigamer has since published a slew of data, and spreadsheet that suggests 5.57 is the best possible time. This means the dispute threads at TwinGalaxies are heated to the max, and thus an explosion of popularity and aura surrounds the game currently.