Actually, the special software you describe does exist and is often used in speedrunning. It is called an autosplitter. It works by reading out known memory ad

Actually, the special software you describe does exist and is often used in speedrunning. It is called an autosplitter. It works by reading out known memory addresses of the game. At bare minimum this would be "start of level 1" and "game completion" but you'll often find more elaborate "splits" as the more popular the game is. See this for an example: https://imgur.com/a/KDp7YFx https://imgur.com/a/KDp7YFx It shows the last three missions, the timestamp when it was completed and a comparison agains this speedrunners personal best. It also shows the current mission and the one after that, along with a timestamp of when it was finished in the speedrunners personal best run. Beneath that it also shows a whole bunch of stats, what the best possible time is the speedrunner could achieve at current pace based on all the best times in the earlier runs, how it compares to the world record, etc. This works really well for PC games and emulators but is a lot harder on real hardware.