The Greatest Super Mario Bros Speedrun Ever Just Happened

hello you absolute legends it finally happened for the last several years the super mario speedrunning community has had its eyes focused squarely on a single moment the destruction of what is quite possibly the final second barrier to ever be broken in the competition to beat the game as quickly as possible on the 8th of april the speedrunner nifski completed super mario brothers in 4 minutes 54 seconds and 948 milliseconds finally breaching the 455 milestone super mario brothers is a very old game it's only a few years away from celebrating its 40th birthday and due to its age it's relatively optimized 14 years ago the world record was five minutes flat and since then only around five seconds have been cut finding any amount of time to save in this game is a huge task and therefore each individual second that can be shaved is a really big deal honestly it wasn't too long ago that this recent record was thought to be humanly impossible and it's pretty crazy how much progress was made in such a short time in celebration of this historical achievement we are going to take a quick stroll down memory lane and revisit the legendary runs that broke each second barrier since the record stood at five minutes all those years ago i hope you enjoy at the beginning of 2006 the super mario brothers world record stood at five minutes and five seconds held by scott kesler this run was extremely basic at the time speed runs of the game were adjudicated by twin galaxies who didn't allow glitches of any kind but around this time the speedrunning hub speed demos archive was entering its prime and had begun hosting speedruns for the most popular games unlike twin galaxies sda did allow glitches to be used and therefore speedrunners of the time made the switch in order to optimize speed runs further enter andrew g who was extremely influential in those early days on the 10th of april 2007 he would crush kesler's record with a run of five minutes flat this introduced the first major exploit the wrong warp on 4-2 this saves around 5 seconds because you no longer have to wait for the beanstalk animation andrew also used a wall jump in 8-4 another trick that was previously banned this run would mark the true beginning of modern super mario speedrunning over the next seven years it would essentially be a one-man show with andrew g setting record after record in a streak that would never be matched of course at this time the barrier that everyone was anticipating was the 5 minute barrier which andrew would break on the 24th of december 2010 this run was similar to his previous records but was much cleaner many things that we take for granted today were still unknown at this time like the fact that it's actually faster for mario to touch the flagpole as high as possible gaps in knowledge like this caused runners to lose time in easily avoidable ways without even realizing it small details about how the game worked would start to be figured out though and this allowed andrew to break the next second barrier with a 458-89 on the 15th of december 2011. in his eyes the run was already becoming extremely optimized and by his own admission he believed that taking the record down another full second may not be possible however his opinion slowly began to shift and by mid-2013 he was already close to making it a reality with a 458 34 in may the following three world records all by andrew g were all heartbreakers each of them on pace up to the very last level for a 457 but each time small mistakes cost barely enough time to deny him the milestone after a year and a half of steady improvement andrew would land on a 458.09 in march of 2014 which would be the final world record he would ever set in the game ultimately it would be a player by the name of sarudak that would have the honor of setting the very first 457 several months later in june this run was interesting for a couple of reasons it was the first official world record set that was played on emulator emulation has always been accepted in competition due to the fact that it's essentially a perfect representation of original hardware secondly this run implemented the bullet bill glitch on 8-2 and this was the first time i watched a speed run of super mario bros and said to myself what on earth is going on the craziness of the glitch aside at first glance it looks slower because mario has to wait for the bullet bill to be in the right position but it actually saves a full 0.7 seconds which is massive i'm unsure why andrew g didn't use this trick but once this new record was set it became absolutely essential and thus began the age of crazy tricks the vast majority of super mario speedrunning is very simple just hold right on the controller and to jump when you need to generally there is no time to be gained during normal movement so it's the key moments that decide how fast a run is going to be at this stage in history every obvious strategy was in use so it was time to think outside of the box and start incorporating tricks that were previously thought to be humanly impossible the tool assisted speedrun of the game was still well below the record standing at 454.03 this incorporated every known theoretical trick and much of that time save was from an exploit called the flagpole glitch unlike the bullet bill glitch which obviously requires a bullet bill to work the flagpole glitch can be performed on every stage with a pole but it was considered a task only trick something far too precise to be reasonably performed by a human however humanly viable setups were slowly found starting with 1-1 and 4-1 this allowed the speedrunner derbian to crack the next second barrier with a 456-878 on the 5th of october 2016. please please please please please that was it that was it that was it that was it did i break the camera i kind of broke the camera that was it this record happens to be the most viewed super mario brothers speedrun ever with 12 million views unless of course you want to count butterborne's historic 512. despite the fact that the flagpole glitch is also doable on 8-1 and 8-3 it wasn't incorporated as the odds of doing it in a single run were far too low derby in success rate was around 10 so disregarding every other trick those two flagpole glitches alone were a one in a hundred occurrence over the next two years a couple more glitches were brought into the run wall clips were introduced on both 1-2 and 4-2 and players were getting more consistent with the flagpole glitch which allowed the top runners to include it in 8-3 with these time saves combined it was cosmic who broke the 456 barrier with a 455 913 in september of 2018. please finish i cannot believe it that was my first run ever [Music] the general consensus at the time was that this was likely to be the last second barrier to ever fall in the game even cosmic stated as much in the description of his record this run incorporated most of the known tricks but contained a relatively slow final stage cosmic would rectify this in january of 2020 by performing the same run with a better end resulting in a time of 455.6 from here players only needed to save two more frame rules to reach 454 but the run was already insane they were already doing a flagpole glitch in 1-1 a clip in 1-2 a flagpole glitch in 4-1 a clip in 4-2 the bullet bill glitch in 8-2 and another flagpole glitch in 8-3 each of these tricks is extremely hard to perform so the fact that they were already seen in a single run was incredible if someone was insane enough to try to save two more frame rules it would be done on two stages 8-1 and 8-2 8-2 was the easier of the two it would involve an extremely difficult jump followed by a slightly faster bullet bill glitch this was incorporated into the run first by nifski with a 455 430 in november of 2020. the extra trick was included but the end was slower than cosmics resulting in a time less than a full frame rule quicker the speedrunner miniland would repeat the run with a better ending landing on a 455 230 in february of this year from here it was clear the 454 would be achieved the final reasonable frame rule to be saved was sitting in 8-1 but it would be the toughest yet it requires a fast acceleration at the start which is ridiculously hard to time along with a flagpole glitch at the end the thought of adding this to an already stacked cast of complex tricks is mental but the prospect of breaking what is likely to be the very last barrier ever is incentive enough to inspire hope and on the 7th of april 2021 the speedrunner nifski would achieve this run [Music] a.d i think holy cow wait what adaf oh my god yes dude what oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god i clutched it out it's quite clear by now that in speedrunning you should never say never but this might really be the final second to ever be cut from the game as i mentioned earlier even if you do inhumanly difficult techniques we still can't get to 453 it's a relatively short run and the game has been broken apart to such an extent that it would be truly truly shocking if something game changing was ever discovered stranger things have happened though i guess all we can do is give the game another 36 years and see where we lie as always thank you so much for watching you legends i hope you are having a fantastic day and i will see you in the next video [Music] you

Channel: Karl Jobst

Views: 2,011,792

Rating: 4.9350171 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: -G8x-KiBLfw

Length: 12min 40sec (760 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 23 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/towermaster69]

Hello you absolute legends.

[u/gpranav25]

Neat video, covered the entire history.