New Super Mario Bros. World Record Raises HUGE Questions

hello you absolute legends on the 18th of january 2020 the speedrunner cosmic set a new world record for super mario bros with a time of 4 minutes 55 seconds and 646 milliseconds this was a monstrous run perfectly executing every strategy and finishing off the run with one of the fastest endings ever seen this world record was a pretty big deal when it was achieved cosmic had been grinding the game for over eight years and while he already had a long history of breaking historic milestones this most recent record seemed to be at the very edge of what was attainable by human players super mario bros is so ridiculously optimized by this point that the only way you are going to save further time is by introducing strategies that for many years have been considered simply out of the question cosmic's run as is tradition with new super mario records amassed a ton of attention the video sits at over 2 million views on youtube and very few games in the speed running realm could ever compete with mario in terms of overall mass appeal super mario brothers resides in the very upper echelon of games where the world records are universally cherished whenever they happen so it may surprise you to learn that on the 23rd of october the brazilian speedrunner lukuki stunned everyone when he tied cosmic's record this was truly shocking as only a week before his personal best was still a full three seconds behind i don't think anyone was expecting it to happen this soon and if it did you would assume it would be one of the existing top players who had been grinding hard lukuki seemingly came out of nowhere and achieved this incredible feat after only several days of trying however weeks later lukuki's record still wasn't showing on the ranks despite the fact that there was no clear evidence of cheating the only evidence the run ever happened remained the video itself and a post on our speed run in any other circumstance a run like this would essentially be accepted and verified almost immediately but this is no ordinary circumstance and lucuki is no ordinary speedrunner the context in which this record was achieved is nothing short of bizarre and no one has any clear idea about what should be done the problem is not only the strange way in which the time was achieved but also the history of the runner himself in order to know the best way to proceed there are a couple of very important questions that need to be answered i'm going to try to present the entire story in an unbiased way and i want you to come to your own conclusion and let me know in the comments how you think this situation should be handled let's begin now before we go on we are only a couple of weeks away from 2021 and a new year's resolution i want everyone to have is to learn a new skill and what better place to learn than skillshare skillshare is an epic online community that hosts thousands of classes where you can learn pretty much anything you can think of whether you want to tackle something completely new or take your existing talents to the next level skillshare has got you covered my own new year's resolution is to improve the editing in my videos so i'll be going through skillshare courses to learn new techniques i'm going to start with the course creative video storytelling and editing by nikki stevens as i really want to focus on creating more emotion in the way i tell stories skillshare premium is extremely affordable at less than 10 a month and you can even grab a free trial by being one of the first 1 000 legends to click the link in the description i died record what i tied record i tried record what the [ __ ] what the [ __ ] [Music] on the 23rd of october the speed runner lukuki tied the record for the fastest completion of super mario brothers it was an incredible run as was cosmic's run of the same time achieved earlier in the year this world record tie appeared to come out of nowhere and the cookie's previous personal best was relatively far away from the top players sitting at 4 minutes 56 seconds and 878 milliseconds technically it's just over a second slower which doesn't seem to be a massive amount of time but it put him at 21st place and bridging that extra second to join the exclusive group of top players is extremely difficult lukuki did have some experience with the game though competing in the much less popular super mario bros category extensions these are random challenges that speedrunners compete in for fun like trying to beat the last level as quickly as possible or collecting 500 coins these fun categories aren't as heavily contested but they do provide players with a novel way to practice specific skills and given that lukuki holds the joint record of completing 8-4 he obviously has some skill but it doesn't really matter how much skill you have if you want to compete for the any percent world record you are going to have to grind the game for many hours every single one of the best players has put in thousands of attempts to get where they are lakuki's progression is not typical at all in fact it is extremely atypical enough to raise concerns over its legitimacy speed running communities revolve heavily around trust and new records are always met with skepticism when they are achieved by lesser known players lakuki certainly did not have a history of top level play and had in no way shape or form developed the community's trust as a top player his previous record submissions only included two runs a 458 achieved over a year ago and the 456 achieved a week before his new record this always leads to runs being heavily scrutinized and this world record is no exception lakuki's run has a lot going for it though and the proof he did provide is above and beyond what is normally considered acceptable his hands are visible throughout the entire run and afterwards he shows the controller chord plugged into the console even going as far as entering the second quest and executing a few jumps establishing that he does have control over mario try as they may no one has been able to establish any evidence of foul play and yet the run has still not been verified as i alluded to before there is much more to this story and there is a reason that lukuki has such a high level of proof for this time it is a requirement for him specifically this isn't the first time lakuki has come out of nowhere to achieve an insanely difficult world record it has happened before and it wasn't very long ago happening in may of this year bowser it's up to you man it's up to you no way no freaking dude oh my god oh my god oh my god on the 4th of may 2020 lukuki claimed a new world record in super mario bros the lost levels with a time of 7 minutes 56 seconds and 515 milliseconds the crazy thing about this run is that it was his very first ever submitted for the game he even claimed himself that this was the first time he had ever completed a single speed run for the lost levels i've been a speedrunner for over 20 years and i can't remember a single instance of this ever happening in a heavily contested game this claim is so bizarre that the other members of the community had no choice but to be immediately skeptical again there was no direct evidence of cheating but ultimately the run was rejected and would never be seen on the ranks the moderation team of the lost levels provided a lengthy and detailed document outlining all of the factors that were considered when making their decision one of the biggest oddities was the fact that the console used runs slightly slower than what should be expected super mario bros is timed in part by using the bowser pattern to determine how many frames have passed and using this metric the run was world record pace but in real time it was actually half a second slower even if it was accepted it wouldn't be considered a world record due to this discrepancy but one of the most important factors was lakuki's history outside of speedrunning super mario bros in 2018 he claimed multiple world records in mario kart ds which were later exposed as cheated runs he essentially created tool-assisted speed runs and tried to pass them off as legitimate speed runs as a result he was banned from the mario kart ds community it just so happens that speedrunning is such a huge niche that it's possible for a player to be banned in one game and then quietly move on to another without that new community having any idea about that player's past which is exactly what happened here the super mario bros community had no idea luke was banned from competing in another game and it only came to light after he claimed the world record so this begs the question what should communities do about players that were caught cheating in a completely different community should there be an outright ban from every game when the first instance of fake runs if that is the case it would be pretty difficult for one game to keep track of what's happening in every other game it may even be impossible in this particular case lakuki kept his name the same so it was much easier but in theory a player could simply change their handle and sneak into a different community unnoticed i don't want to name names here but there are plenty of examples of speedrunners getting caught cheating in one game and then simply moving to a new community some of them even becoming very highly ranked in their new game and thus far there appears to be no universally accepted rule about what to do in those situations i have never found a community that explicitly outlines what to do in this situation in their community guidelines to summarize after lukuki was banned from mario kart he almost immediately moved on to super mario bros and started submitting runs there he then claimed the world record for the lost levels on his very first ever speed run leading to a very involved investigation resulting in his time being rejected the moderation team then placed very stringent requirements on further proof insisting that a hand can be used as well as showing the console and controller attached but after these new rules were put in place lukuki never touched the game again and he still doesn't even have a single run submitted on the rankings which in my opinion is strange for someone who is capable of achieving the world record on their very first completed run everything about lukuki's claimed records are strange but alas there is no direct evidence of cheating on top of this all of these circumstantial evidence doesn't lean in his favor and there was one critical moment after his most recent super mario brothers world record that really stood out to me as well as the other moderators oh yeah by the way you can press any button except for select and the pad to start the game in the triple corpse yeah that's pretty cool i don't know if people know that so i've shown cables oh yeah um the cable is going to tv how do you even show the cables going to the tv i don't think it can that's going to be too hard of a task but yeah at this point i think you're not you can't really kriller 37 who's one of the super mario brothers moderators told lukaki to show the cables running from the nintendo to the tv lukuki tries for about two seconds before covering up the camera and claiming that it would be too difficult this seems incredibly suspicious imagine you have just tied one of the most popular and respected world records in all of speedrunning the moderator of that game asks you to do something that seems pretty simple but you refuse this is after you've already had another world record rejected due to past cheating if i were in that position i would be jumping through whatever hoops were put in front of me in order to remove all doubt that my record was legitimate at the end of the day though this is all circumstantial i honestly don't know if there was any foul play involved and until hard evidence is revealed no one does the moderators still haven't made any public statements regarding the record which was set almost two months ago we might be in a situation where the record is permanently trapped in limbo with no obvious way to escape either way it seems as though lukuki was never fated to hold the world record for long with the moderators and the speedrunning community fixated on this ongoing investigation another player was quietly working on his attempts and on the 13th of november 2020 this happened just focus [Music] no way bowser please holy cow yes yes 4-3-0 oh my god i lost the frame on axe i don't care 455.430. oh holy cow dude i did it i did it i did it world record world record the speed runner nifski obliterated the existing world record with a new time of 4 minutes 55 seconds and 430 milliseconds this beat the record that cosmic had set by over 0.2 seconds which in the world of super mario is gigantic now i do want to address the elephant in the room why is he playing on a keyboard well for super mario bros emulation is an accepted and viable way to play the game there is no discernable difference in the way the game plays between original hardware and emulation so you are free to use whichever version you like i know that many people will value the speedrun less if it isn't on the original console but consider this the nintendo entertainment system stopped being produced 25 years ago as consoles and cartridges degrade break and are thrown away the availability and reliability of such consoles is greatly reduced this is a problem that is only going to get much worse so restricting competition to only original consoles creates a huge barrier that is very short-sighted in the event that emulation differs from original hardware leaderboards can be split which is what they did for super mario 64. but in this case super mario bros really does play the same through an emulator as it does on console so it's reasonable to lump them together that being said playing on original hardware is still the preferred method and it's the choice that most speedrunners use and is what i personally favor as well if you are familiar with super mario bros speedrunning you will have heard the term frame rule before a frame rule is the set amount of time that each level checks to see if you have reached the end before sending you to the next in this case each frame rule is 0.35 seconds meaning that you can only gain or lose time in increments of that size the exception to this is the final level because timing stops on the exact frame that mario connects with the hammer saving a new frame rule is a massive deal as it's essentially the only way a player can save significant time usually it involves introducing a much more difficult strategy and in the case of nifski's new record it was 8-2 that allowed for a quicker frame rule it really doesn't look like much but the different technique used to jump over this pipe was the crucial change the difficulty of this jump is extremely deceiving it requires multiple frame perfect and pixel perfect jumps on top of this in order to save enough time because these new jumps alone aren't enough you need to execute an even more precise bullet bill glitch at the end of the stage landing on the very front of the bullet bill therefore completing the level on the earliest possible frame saving this extra frame rule on 8-2 is nothing short of amazing and it was actually nifski's first ever run to do so he just so happened to clutch the last two levels to finish it out people are now wondering i'll be close enough to 454 for it to be a realistic target i think for a long time 455 was seen as the last milestone that would ever be achieved but now that the record is closer to 454 than 456 it's actually seeming pretty reasonable there is another potential frame rule to be saved in 8-1 by using an extremely difficult fast acceleration at the start combined with a flagpole glitch at the end and if you pair this with an almost perfect final level you can save just enough time to get below 455 nifski has performed a sufficiently fast run in practice starting from 8-1 to result in a 454 all he would need to do now is do it in an actual attempt i predict that because this new barrier is as close as it is we will see more players starting to put serious effort into making it a reality in this video we covered a couple of very contentious issues we looked at players cheating in one game and then moving straight on to another we also highlighted the use of emulation for speedrunning i am really curious to know what the general public thinks of this so please put your thoughts in the comments also if you've reached this far in the video please do me a massive favor and follow me on twitter i am really trying to increase the reach i have on social media and it would be greatly appreciated the link will be in the pinned comment as always thank you so much for watching you absolute legends i hope you are having a fantastic day and i will see you in the next video you

Channel: Karl Jobst

Views: 2,782,811

Rating: 4.8997021 out of 5

Keywords: super mario, super mario bros, nintendo, NES, nintendo enterta, super mario speedrun, badabun, karl jobst, speedrun cheaters, cheater caught, fake speedrun, fake speedrun exposed, nintendo speedrun, speedrun, speedrun news, retro gaming, classic gaming, gaming documentary, kosmic, super mario bros world record, speedrun world record

Id: 3tIcfaBs6TY

Length: 18min 5sec (1085 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 16 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Zellion-Fly]

The controller being in view of the console doesn't add much tbh to his credibility of a legit run.

Much like "cheater who should not be named in case he sues" it could be a hacked console/cartridge, heck, even a Pi or a full on PC in the machine.

Cheaters go too long lengths to cheat. He's probably happy this is even getting attention in a negative way tbh.

A lot of speed running is getting the muscle memory down, and no matter how talented you are, that will take years to grow to the length of a WR for this run. There is no way he got that good in such a short period of time. I wouldn't even give the cheater a second of belief of this being legit.

[u/BkOttr]

Oh gosh I thought this was going to be about Kosmic at the start of the video

[u/Pingk]

I'm fine with making runs using an emulator, but the requirements should be stricter than original consoles. I'm only a casual speedrun viewer so I don't know what measures are currently in place, but I've thought of a couple of things that might be useful?

For example, I think it should be mandatory for the livestream to clearly show the emulator settings at the start of every stream, with no discontinuity between setup and play.

Showing live keyboard footage and/or on-screen key activation widget should be recommended for normal runs, and probably required for WR attempts. Thus preventing the usage of macros and input-related tomfoolery.

I'm sure there are other measures which can be implemented, but then the burden on the runner starts becoming quite annoying.

[u/mindbleach]

• Cheated in one game

• Super suspect in another, refuses trivially showing hardware while showing off setup

• Super suspect in a third game

Yeah, fuck off. Trust can be recovered but it's no longer owed.

[u/[deleted]]

[removed]

[u/haykam821]

This video is about Super Mario Bros., not New Super Mario Bros. /s

[u/ChunkyLaFunga]

Convincing stuff, if you've never seen a kid trying to fool adults, or been one.

[u/JohnnyLeven]

I remember when that record was posted here. It did feel off when I watched it, but after seeing him prove inputs after the run and the fact that he's showing the game and his hands clearly throughout the run, I was convinced enough that it was probably real. Now, after learning of his previous cheating history and short time playing the game, I can see why this is a really tough call to make.

[u/e1m1]

Damn, tough call IMO. My initial thought is, if he really met all of the additional standards for evidence that was asked specifically of him, then he should be treated as innocent until proven guilty. I mean, what more could he do to appease the mods in that situation? If he didn't meet all those particular standards, then treat him as guilty until proven innocent.