PyGame recently released a new version based on SDL2 instead of SDL. I don't know if it's actually faster but given that SDL2 focuses on accelerated rendering I

PyGame recently released a new version based on SDL2 instead of SDL. I don't know if it's actually faster but given that SDL2 focuses on accelerated rendering I'd imagine so. Worth checking out in any case. Just in case it's still as slow as ever: there's perfectly fine SDL2 bindings for python, so if you use those at least the slowness will be your own fault.