The History of Super Mario Bros. 2 World Records

[Music] super mario bros 2 has been a speed running classic for years it was one of the most popular games back in its era but in order to beat the game as quickly as possible you need to master precise platforming a variety of mechanics and some of the craziest tricks on the nes the history of mario 2's world record spans back over a decade and a half during that time some of the greatest players to ever pick up an nes controller had their turn with the record for at least a period of time they could say they were the best in the world at a nintendo classic this is the world record history of super mario bros 2. [Music] as with most games it's nearly impossible to determine the earliest world records for super mario bros 2. it's likely that people beat the game in under 15 minutes in the late 80s and 90s but with no video proof it's hard to determine that for certain however as far as recorded runs go some of the earliest ones on the internet seem to date back to 2005 a trio of runs by some of the best speedrunners of the era the fastest one was from august 2005 clocking in at 9 minutes and 42 seconds performed by scott kessler [Music] as far as speedrunners from the mid-2000s go the early ages of speedrunning scott kessler was simply legendary he held records in super mario bros super mario world metroid and various other games his super mario bros 2 record was just one of many but it was a really good one here's how it went [Music] you're given a choice of 4 characters for each level in mario 2. peach and mario are never used since they're slow and can't jump very high scott kessler chose luigi for 1-1 since he jumps the highest which allowed him to reach platforms high in the level and make it into the underground quickly once he used the bomb to get through the door he arrived at the birdo fight that appears at the end of most levels you've got to hit birdo with three eggs and an egg is fired every 256 frames from when the stage begins that means that you can arrive at birdo anytime within a 256 frame window or about 4 seconds and not lose any time there's an analogy for this involving a particular 4-wheeled vehicle transportation if this vehicle leaves from a station every 256 frames then it doesn't matter if you arrive there a frame before it leaves or 255 frames before as long as you're within that window you'll catch the same four-wheeled vehicle of transportation kessler was able to barely make the cycle and arrive right when the first egg was fired then quickly threw the other two to defeat birdo up next was 1-2 where luigi was once again picked to jump across large gaps at the start of the stage kessler pretty much never stopped holding the run button just tapping a at the right times to jump without slowing down the birdo fight was more of the same waiting for three eggs to be shot then throwing them as quickly as possible in 1 3 kessler switched to toad because he has a very bizarre but useful mechanic if an enemy or other heavy object is picked up with toad he runs much faster than normal he's the only character in the game with that property so he can be incredibly useful for running through levels quickly kessler ran through much of the level with a shy guy above toad's head then threw a potion on top of the vase to warp to world 4. world 4-1 was pretty straightforward kessler picked up an enemy and ran with him jumping to avoid enemies in his way there's a rocket in the middle of the stage that operates on a similar global timer to birdo's eggs it can only take off to send you to the next part of the stage every 64 frames as long as you arrive within a 64 frame window you'll never lose time here 4-2 is similar picking up an enemy with toad and dodging everything else he picked up a potion again in this stage to warp to world 6 although he had some slowdowns along the way world 6 is where the game really takes a big step up in difficulty in one kessler used toad to pick up a cobra and run through the stage as best he could it was really hard to do so quickly given the placement of the other enemies he then went underground and had to dig to pick up the key digging quickly required precise rhythm to not lose time as did jumping out of the sand once he had the key virto was quickly defeated with a mushroom block then it was on to 6-2 kessler went back to luigi here and then slowly rode on that albatross over part of the gap it took a long time but it was safe he then jumped on other enemies to get across the rest of the pit to the birdo fight at the end kessler went back to toad for 6-3 and at the start he waited until he was under the sand to run under the wall to get to a door he then made it to birdo whom he quickly defeated with mushroom blocks and then the world's sixth boss tri-clyde where he jumped up and threw a mushroom block 3 times to defeat him on to world 7 the last world in the game 7-1 features a lot of large jumps so kessler used luigi again he caught a rocket to go to the next screen then climbed up a series of ladders and platforms it helps to have luigi here to gain vertical distance quickly but kessler still had to hesitate a fair amount after yet another bruto fight it was on to the final stage 7-2 this is the longest level in the game featuring an outdoor section a long indoor section and a few boss fights however kessler is able to skip over much of the level by performing a trick where you jump off a ladder to the ceiling and run across the various rooms he made his way past alberto to the hawkmouth fight where he hit him with a mushroom block three times then he was on to the final boss wart vegetables are shot every 256 frames sort of like how the eggs work on birdo you need to hit him with a vegetable when his mouth opens six times kessler got the first four hits had to retreat and delay the fifth hit a cycle then got the sixth hit to finish him off and just like that he had completed super mario bros 2 in just 9 minutes and 42 seconds the route was simple enough start in world 1 work to world 4 then warp to world 6 and play world 6 and 7 to finish the game kessler submitted the run to both speed demos archive and twin galaxies the two leading speed run websites at the time and that's where the recorded record stood it was an imperfect run with small slowdowns in nearly every level but it was a start and it stood as the world record unchallenged for months but over the following two years you would be beaten twice the first guy to do it was a runner named chris knight better known as kak in august 2006 he got a 919 a 23 second improvement most of the time saves came in the back half of the run he picked up a couple of seconds of world 4 from hesitating less while carrying the potion and in 6-2 rather than slowly riding the albatross he sped it up by jumping across however the bulk of his time save came in the last stage 7-2 he used toad instead of luigi so he saves some time by picking up enemies and running with them the rest of the stage was improved too less hesitation a faster hawk mouth kill and a faster wart kill so that was a pretty big improvement but a year later in june 2007 the record would be lowered again the runner's name this time was andrew g a guy who would go on to hold the super mario bros super mario bros 2 super mario bros 3 and super mario world world records in some cases for years just a legendary mario speedrunner his super mario 2 time was 9 15 a 4 second improvement over kak's run but there was something different about this one three years later it was still standing strong at the top of the leaderboard what made this run so good well in world 1 he matched kak's fast execution and added in this potion throw in 1-3 instead of carefully placing the potion on top of the vase andrew went for a throw from far away to avoid slowing down he timed it perfectly and it worked although he accidentally got hit in 4-1 he made the time back up in 4-2 from jumping off the first ladder by precisely jumping off the side of a ladder to go higher you can get to the top faster than having to slowly climb it in 7-1 he used this trick to his full advantage flying up the long vertical section in the middle of the level after a 7-2 that matched kak's run andrew had himself a 915 he celebrated in the speed demos archive forum thread and then the record just sort of went dormant this was still in the pretty early ages of speedrunning so games having big gaps between records was still pretty common but for a game like super mario bros 2 a record standing that long was a big deal however in october 2010 the run was finally beaten the runner this time was menbu93 who's best known in the speedrunning community for his legendary super mario world record from 2013 three years prior however he managed to beat andrew's mario 2 record but only by one second with a 9 14. interestingly this run was slower than andrews in a lot of ways there were a handful of sloppy mistakes and he wasn't able to perform the fast ladder jumps in 7-1 like andrew was but where men boo's run shine through was with a couple of major new strategies one was his birdo kill in 6-2 where he was very aggressive and stacked mushroom blocks to hit birdo quickly the other big one was in 6-3 instead of slowly sinking into the sand and running under the wall menbu did this [Music] he threw a shy guy to have him rebound and jumped off of him at just the right time to make it over the wall it saved four seconds over the older slower route and ultimately was enough to just barely beat out andrew's 915 and that was the state of mario 2 speedrunning in the early 2010s you might be noticing a pattern here a record would be set and then a couple years would pass without any activity by 2012 the only record from the past five years was men boo's 914 it was a bizarre dilemma rather than speeding up the community's growth had drastically slowed down they needed something new so in 2012 a group of players decided to shake things up before then most players were submitting their mario 2 runs to twin galaxies and one of twin galaxy's staple rules was that glitches aren't allowed which severely limits the possibilities for many speedruns so that summer mario 2 speedrunners decided to just ignore that rule and start doing runs with glitches and it's a good thing they did because as it turns out super mario bros 2 is one of the most broken games on the [Music] nes [Music] once this decision was made mario 2 runner suddenly had a bunch of new material to work with some of these tricks had been known about for years but were specifically forbidden by twin galaxies like the double jump by running off the corner of an enemy and jumping the game thinks you're still standing on it even while you're in the air so if you press a again you'll be able to jump once more and gain additional height this trick had a few uses across the run but was most important in world 1-1 by using the double jump to get to the top you could use toad instead of luigi and run through the rest of the stage faster other tricks were a bit more complicated like this warp in 1-1 [Music] so what happened here well it was andrew g's variation of a glitch that richard uretta first used in a tool assisted speedrun all the way back in 2005. mario 2 has a very strange property where if you're in an invincible state and are climbing a ladder an enemy landing on you automatically reverses your direction [Music] so what you can do is intentionally get hit by the shy guy to enter an invincible state then pick it up run over to the ladder and throw it once you're at the bottom of the ladder you really quickly grab it to start climbing and when the shy guy hits you your direction reverses and you climb through the bottom of the floor the game thinks you've legitimately moved on to the next screen so it puts you right outside the birdo fight as if you'd gotten there normally compared with the old method of picking up the bomb and blowing up the barrier to the door this glitch was certainly faster than before and it was enough to reach birdo an egg cycle earlier to save a full 5 seconds finally in 1-2 there was one last glitch this one was discovered by control-alt-destroy in november 2009 if you hop on the carpet then move to the left to respawn another one when it appears you can approach it from the side and pick up the pidgey the combination of two carpet sprites on screen and the fact that toad is holding the pidgey means the carpet will then move in hyperspeed you can fly to the end of the level and potentially get to birdo a cycle sooner these glitches combined could save over 10 seconds and the other stages weren't entirely optimized either so a final time under 9 minutes was conceivable given the current record of 9 14. the question was who was going to get there first well in august 2012 a player named sven was able to get closer beating men boo's run by three seconds unfortunately although this run was live streamed on twitch he never saved the broadcast so video of it no longer exists however this run wouldn't stand for too long anyway because later that same month an old school runner came back on august 25th 2012 andrew g posted this time this was the first ever recorded sub 9 minute run of super mario bros 2 and it was legendary he built up a 7 second lead over the record in world 1 from the new glitches and cleaning up mistakes from men boo but the time saves didn't stop there men boo fell down the ladder in 7-1 and had a relatively slow hawk mouth kill in 7-2 allowing andrew to save another 9 seconds between the glitches and the world 7 time saves it was enough to get him an incredible 858 this run would end up standing for a few months it was daunting to try to get out of world 1 with all the tricks needed to hit and even if you did the next 7 levels weren't much easier but in november 2012 somebody else came back this time it was kak and on november 18th he managed to get an 852 beating andrew by 6 seconds most of his time saves came in the back half of the run like when he successfully executed a throw on warts that andrew missed it was the first time in five years that kak officially held the mario 2 record but there was something very special about this run remember how in andrews 858 the run that kak beat he double jumped in 1-1 clipped through the ground with the shy guy and did the carpet trick in 1-2 well cack didn't do any of that he beat andrews 858 with a glitch free 852. so how did he do it well kak lost 5 seconds in 1-1 because he didn't do the warp meaning he got to birdo and egg cycle later but in andrews 1-2 he was actually barely slow enough to miss making it to birdo a cycle earlier meaning he didn't save any time over a glitch-free stage so kak managed to not lose any time there even with a glitch-free world 1 he was only 5 seconds behind andrew and from there cack had some time he knew he could save andrew had hesitated a bit in 6-2 while jumping across the gap and had a slow birdo kill where he missed the throw kak was able to improve in both areas and save 4 more seconds but the biggest time save in the entire run was in 7-2 as was mentioned before he saved 5 seconds from hitting a throw on wart that andrew missed however he saved another five seconds from arriving at work fast enough to catch an earlier vegetable cycle just like birdo's eggs wart's vegetables are shot out every 256 frames by tightening his movement in 7-2 he was able to scrape just enough time save together to arrive at wart a couple seconds sooner catching the early vegetable in total he saved 10 seconds in the last stage allowing him to beat andrew's record without glitches as it turns out cac reportedly had gotten times as low as 854 back in 2010 but didn't always record them so that begs the question if cat could get times in the low 850s without glitches what could he do with them as you'd expect messages of congratulations poured in from across the community this was 20 seconds ahead of his glitchless run it was by far the greatest run of super mario bros 2 ever performed just like andrew's run he saved 5 seconds in 1-1 from doing the warp in 1-2 he added in an additional trick to save even more time after riding on the carpet he threw a potion on top of a veggie and went in the door he then immediately left and on the first frame possible after leaving he picked up the veggie beneath him this caused it to get stuck in his head rather than being carried like normal typically veggies can't be carried from room to room however since it was stuck in his head this didn't apply so he was able to take it into the boss room and defeat birdo with it extremely quickly saving a whopping 6 seconds over the glitchless route that meant that coming out of world 1 he was 11 seconds ahead of his record but it didn't stop there in 4-1 he did another double jump to avoid having to hesitate in 6-2 he did multiple double jumps over the long gap to prevent slow downs in 6-3 instead of going all the way over to pick up the shy guy to jump over the wall kak used a strategy invented by jeff sledge where he threw a potion and jumped off of that and in 7-1 he was able to successfully pull off the fast ladder climbs like andrew g did in short it was remarkable how close to perfection the speedrun was cack actually calculated that all remaining possible time save could only lower the record by 6 seconds that meant that according to cac the perfect mario 2 speed run would be 8 26 he was that close to perfection but ultimately he didn't want to try taking it down any further cax 832 was from june 2013 a year later it was still the top of the leaderboard with second place nearly 20 seconds behind a year after that nothing had changed 832 was still on top by a mile it was that good of a run but then in september 2015 the record finally got a new challenger the person's name fittingly was i love mario [Music] he was a top level runner of a handful of platformers including blaster master mario 3 and mario world but in september 2015 i love mario started to focus all of his efforts onto super mario bros 2 and lowered his personal best from the 840s into the 830s by september 22nd he was just three seconds behind the record much of where he was looking to save time over the record was with the birdo kills in world 6. in 6-1 birdo actually jumped over kak's first shot in total i love mario knew he could save about 4 seconds in world 6 from faster boss kills alone that took him close to the theoretically perfect 826. on september 23rd he got on a run that was about even with the record after worlds one and four [Music] he knew he had time left to save he was gonna try to take down cax 832 [Music] this run would end up finishing with a time of 832.1 beating cac's record by a fraction of a second i love mario was the new world record holder his biggest notable mistake was in 6-2 when he got caught up on a ledge at the end of the second room however he got most of the birdo kills he was looking for and the vast majority of the run looked clean at the very least it was enough to just edge out kak's record but apparently that wasn't enough for i love mario because the next day he got an 8 30. [Music] it took two years for anybody to beat cax 832 but it took i love mario just one day to beat his own 832 this run was virtually identical to his last record except he cleaned up the mistake in 6-2 to save a bit over a second the world record was now just four seconds away from cax hypothetical 826 the record calmed down for a few months after this i love mario had shown his dominance at the category and a time of 8 30 was good enough for him but by early 2016 yet another runner would come along he got his personal vest into the 830s and by march 2016 he was at the point where he felt he could take the record from i love mario and maybe just maybe take it into the 820s this is bjw bjw's initial goal wasn't to go for the world record but once he got close he found a few imperfections in i love mario's run that he thought he could improve one of the biggest ones was in 6-1 the record's vase room could have been cleaner especially hopping up out of the sand after grabbing a key bjw knew he could be quicker and not take such a wide angle allowing for a smoother trip up to the top there were also improvements to the birdo kills he could get by rapid firing the mushroom blocks quicker with these improvements combined getting an 829 was feasible even if the rest of the run wasn't absolutely perfect so he got to work on march 7th he had a run that gained a second in world 1 from a really fast birdo kill he also gained a second in 6-1 from a faster transition after picking up the key so going into world 7 bjw had a shot at pulling this off as he flew through the last world the gravity of the situation suddenly became very real to him he could do this [Music] guys [Music] yes yes yes yes yes well that certainly was a sub 8 30. as it turns out his world 7 was nearly flawless he dashed up the ladders in 7-1 nailed 7-2 and had the perfect wart kill at the end but as great as it was bjw still wasn't entirely satisfied with this record it's not over yet guys this game needs an 827 at least it's not over but the first hard part's done the first hard part's done so bjw acknowledged that 827 was possible but what about kak's original perfect time of 826 well we have to break down the run and look at what time was left to be saved in 1-3 it was possible to grab the snippet at the start of the stage from below so that max speed could be achieved earlier this would save a fraction of a second over the record it was also possible to be slightly faster at the start of 1-2 when moving on to the second carpet by cutting the turnback tighter you could potentially save another fraction of a second and of course it was possible to be faster on a couple of the birdo fights in 6-2 the orb landed and bounced in the wrong direction for bjw meaning he had to waste a fraction of a second going to get it a few other fights could be improved by tiny amounts as well with faster execution taking all the aforementioned time saves into account it was theoretically possible to take the record down to 8 26 and match kak's theoretical perfect time and when i love mario came back later that month to take the record from bjw he realized that the 826 might not be that unreasonable after all [Music] [Music] on may 27 2016 i love mario made history it wasn't just an 826 it was a low low 826 he got the sniffing grab the birdo kills the ladder jumps the glitches and all the movements kak's 826 had happened truth be told 8 26 wasn't a perfect time anymore since a couple new minor strategies had been discovered since cat came up with it but it represented a time approaching the limits on what was possible i don't think it's an exaggeration to say this was one of the best speed runs in the world when it was performed and it stood on top alone a nearly unbreakable world record but incredibly in october 2017 he actually topped it the time saves were very minimal in 4-2 he was able to get a higher ladder jump at the start to get to the top quicker he also once again saved fractions of a second on the world 6 birdo fights from tighter execution but it was just barely enough to get an 8-25 at this point i love mario's dominance in the category was clear he was essentially in the same position cack was in a few years prior comfortably at the top of the leaderboard having lowered the record several times in a row over the course of years with no real rival but it was at this point in time in october 2017 that the story takes an interesting turn during that month an up-and-coming challenger lowered his personal best to five seconds behind the record and decided he was gonna try to beat it problem was the remaining time saves were getting extremely minimal but if there is anyone who could do it it was this guy he was a super mario world speedrunning champion with records in numerous categories this is green death flavor also known as gdf again there really wasn't anything new gdf could do to help him out the key to beating the record was going to be tiny optimizations cleaner movement at the start of 1-2 grabbing the sniffet that isle of mario had missed and as always small birdo optimizations and on top of that he would have to take five seconds off his personal best to beat the record it took over two years for the record to be lowered by five seconds gdf was going to try to do it in a fraction of that time and on october 28th 2017 he got on this run [Music] it looked like pretty much a tie the world record was 825.81 that meant it was time for a frame count when speedruns are extremely close in length human error on stopping the timer means it's hard to tell if run was actually the record or not so gdf now had to go back and carefully see exactly when the run began and finished to get the exact time of the run the time to beat was 825.81 oh man it's still a 24 now it's at 25. [Music] walk please walk please walk please walk all right no no no [Music] just four frames off of the world record a crushing run but ultimately gdf would never get a run this close to the world record again he stopped grinding and i love mario's 825 continued to stay on top for months over the next year or so there wasn't much movement at the highest levels the record was so optimized it was getting incredibly hard to take any time off of it but in october 2018 yet another old runner came back ladies and gentlemen andrew g had returned only this time he wasn't coming back to do new runs he was coming back to drop a bombshell of a new strategy see back in 2011 andrew g had worked on a tool-assisted speed run of mario 2 with aglar coming up with a bunch of theoretical strategies that were too precise or difficult to be done by humans one of those was an extremely fast way to complete 1-1 for 7 years this trick remained impossible for runners to do in real time but in 2018 andrew g revisited it and came up with a way to do it it was extremely difficult undoubtedly the hardest trick in the whole run but it was possible it started with a potion remember the veggie glitch in 1-2 where you could get a vegetable stuck in your head to carry to the next room well in 1-1 you had to do that with a pow-block it would then be stored in the game's memory and appear when you entered the next room but remember this trick only had a one frame window to work or a 60th of a second then once you're in the underground you jump up to the shy guy and throw the pal block with the pal block throw you have a two frame window to store an enemy if you pick it up at the right time that's what you could do with the shy guy even though it doesn't look like you're picking it up it goes in the game's memory just like the pal block did on the last screen finally to clip through the floor to the next room you had to get underneath two bombs have one land on your head at the bottom then climb up the ladder while the other lands on you just like with the last clip this will cause you to climb through the bottom of the floor onto the next screen when you arrive you'll be holding the shy guy from before by throwing it at the right time it can bounce three times to defeat berto much quicker than normal doing all this could save about four seconds in 1-1 but think of all that has to go right a one-frame trick then some precise movement a two-frame trick careful maneuvering to get the bomb clip then a super precise throw with the shy guy 1-1 would very quickly develop a reputation as being a jail level because hardly any record-paced run would escape it with a 4 second improvement to the first level the world record now had major potential to be lowered when andrew found this setup in september 2018 there were two active runners at world record level the first was the record holder himself i love mario the second was a relatively new runner to mario 2 but a person who had one of the greatest speed running resumes in the world the mega man world record holder the mega man 2 world record holder the strider world record holder top 10 in mega man 3 top 10 in castlevania even 13th place in the coveted pringles all a's percent on sega genesis this runner's name very fittingly was cool kid [Music] in october 2018 i love mario and cool kid were both doing runs with the new 1-1 strats but it would be i love mario who struck initially on october 1st he beat the record by 2 seconds with an 8 23 gaining 4 seconds in 1-1 but bleeding some time in 1-2 and 7-2 the very next day however another massive world record cut from i love mario he managed to gain almost a full second in 1-1 because the orb didn't bounce far away from him and another second in 1-2 because he fixed the slow start from the last record cool kid was in a pretty tough spot now being five seconds behind i love mario but all he could do is keep trying ten days after i love mario's 8 20 hulkhead got a run going that was a bit behind after 1-1 because he missed a jump after the warp but he made the time up in world 4 from cleaning up a mistake from i love mario and a new power squad jump strategy to go higher on the latter however he'd fall behind in world 6 thanks to a couple of slightly sloppy birdo kills going into world 7 he needed some time safe to have a shot at the record so he decided to go for something incredibly risky a trick known as fast 7-1 remember how rockets can only take off every 64 frames well fast 71 involves playing as fast as possible to catch an earlier rocket gdf was the first player to experiment with this trick the most important part is on the second screen where you have to precisely jump toward the albatross right away rather than waiting then quickly switch to left to make it to the post you can see here how much faster you have to be than the old method if done properly you can barely make it to the earlier rocket and save the 64 frames unfortunately it was incredibly difficult but cool kid had no choice but to go for it if you wanted the world record oh my god all right it's up 820p as it turns out fast 71 was enough for a new record of 820.55 all right i mean not by full second but for the first time in two and a half years mario 2 had a new record holder cool kid was able to add another record to his list and eight days later he'd do it again [Music] that's pretty good so cool kid had one out in the world record battle both he and i love mario stopped playing after this 819 with isle of mario trailing cool kid by just one second and for the next year that's where the world records stood and 819 was incredibly strong and without a new strategy beating it would take a lot of effort but then as it happened so many times in this game's history before that new strategy they were looking for was discovered it was once again in 1-1 but this time it was much simpler than before it turned out that you could throw the pow block sooner in the underground to start the process of the warp earlier this not only saved time from getting to the next screen quicker but also allowed for another time save with the old strategy you used to have to jump into the pole after the shy guy grabbed to slow down because if you reach the end too quickly birdo would actually jump over the shy guy throw because of the point in the pattern you were at the time save in the cave however meant that you were so fast that you'd reach birdo before that point in the pattern so you didn't have to intentionally slow down at the pole and could save some additional time there in total the improvements to 1-1 could save another second and a half that was enough to bring cool kid back in november 2019 he had a run that successfully saved time in 1-1 and although the rest of the run was up and down the new 1-1 strat was enough to knock the record down to 8 17. [Music] thanks for the hggs guys [Music] as you could probably tell from cool kids wild reaction this was a really solid record in addition to the new 1-1 time save he also managed to hit fast 7-1 to save a bit more time so now it was isle of mario's turn and a week later he got an 8-18 to move to one second behind cool kid but he had trouble saving all the time he needed so entering into 2020 cool kids 817 was still on top of the leaderboard that is until january 17th on that day isle of mario had a run going that was about even with the record coming out of world 1. he gained over half a second in 4-1 because cool kid had missed the double jump but lost it back in 7-1 from missing the fast rocket it ended up being about enough to cancel out so when isle of mario stopped the splits at the end of the run they read a time that was essentially tied with cool kids world record once again it was time for a frame count [Music] this time it would go in the runner's favor just ahead of cool kids 817.4 these two guys have been rivals for years now and after all that time their personal bests were separated by just a tenth of a second but there was still a bit more time to squeeze out of this record there was a new strat they could do in 1-2 where they precisely grabbed the pigeon from the side allowing the second one to spawn sooner to get to the end quicker i love mario's ladder movement at the start of 4-2 wasn't as good as it could have been either and in 7-1 the fast rocket cycle was still possible to achieve so there definitely was room to take the record lower and with two competitors at practically the same level there was no telling who was going to take it there but on january 26 2020 cool kids started up a session of mario 2 world record attempts [Music] that's really that's really good this was the first ever 816 in super mario bros 2 history it's also where the world record stands today but as great as it is there's a fair amount of time left on the table here in 6-1 cool kid failed to grab the first sandblock right away and in 7-1 he missed the fast rocket those two tricks alone could push the record down to 8 15. but if more tricks can be brought over from the tool assisted speedrun who knows where this record could go the future of mario 2 speedrunning is unknown but bright thanks for watching hey thanks for making it to the end if you enjoyed it mean a lot to me if you could share this video with one or two other people it really goes a long way on youtube so thank you and happy new year [Music]

Channel: Summoning Salt

Views: 2,153,216

Rating: 4.9671097 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: V1RO2DUAQ2U

Length: 48min 15sec (2895 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 31 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/HughWonPDL2018]

Sneaky surprise ending to 2020 to get a new summoning salt vid. Thanks as always!

[u/DisgruntledPorcupine]

"4 wheeled vehicle of transportation", lol love it

[u/Atlas_is_my_son]

Summoning salt: "if you like this video, if you could share it with one or two people it would go a long way"

Video: *has 105k views in first 2 hours*

[u/The_Throwback_King]

While I love to see a runtime get completely decimated with new strategies and glitches galore, it's also really cool to see a game get pushed to it's limits through sheer optimization and skill.

Hats off at AndrewG, Iluvmario, Coolkid, Cak, and all the other runners I'm forgetting. The skill and dedication is truly impressive.

And while it goes without saying, hats off to SummoningSalt for yet another superb speedrun storytelling. He's truly one of the best out there.

[u/ManiacMan97]

Nice video to end 2020 with

[u/GodOfEnnui]

Summoning is by far the best Speedrun commentary / documentarist. So many Youtubers have tried and have strayed from their roots and let their fame get to their head. Not Summoning.

His videos are straight to the point, extremely researched, factually accurate and extremely easy to digest for people who are not speedrun savvy.

It's good to see him come from a small subscriber base to where he is now. Great videos.

[u/ThatsFairZack]

I think of the better things this series of videos does, is it never presents older runs as being outdated or obsolete. It preserves the attempts and runs at the time of their completion in a positive way. Despite not being the fastest anymore, but at the time were performed perfectly or as Salt would call it "legendary."

Makes it feel like, even if a run is old, we can still watch it and appreciate what it was for the time. It was the best for its era.

[u/hammerheadlabs]

SUPER MARIO BROTHERS 2 BAYBEE GAME OF THE YEAR

[u/MajoraOfTime]

I always love the "nobody expected the time he was gonna get next" moments that then cut to just a black screen with the world record displayed while ambient music plays. Great video as always and a great surprise at the end of the year!