November 21st, 1990. The day that the Super
Famicom launched in Japan. It was Nintendo’s step into the new generation of 16 bit gaming,
back when game companies openly dissed each other in their commercials. With variants being
released all over the world, it would end up being the king of the fourth console generation.
There were two titles initially released in Japan: F-Zero & Super Mario World. Today, I would
like to talk about the latter. With Super Mario World giving an entirely new spin to the
classic plumber adventure thanks to the likes of Yoshi and the Cape Feather, this title
has become one of the most beloved in the Super Mario series…and for good reason.
Over the last 30 years, this game has been torn apart more than any other Mario
title. With the game’s less linear approach, people have repeatedly found new
challenging ways to beat the game, but there’s one specific goal I have in mind.
Today, I want to dive into something people have been trying to piece together for
years: the entire history of beating every single level in the game at once. This
is the history of Super Mario World 96 Exit. With Super Mario World selling well over 20 million copies, it’s fair to say that a huge percentage
of people watching are familiar with this title to some degree…but I think it’s best
if I give you a brief rundown of the game… Super Mario World is the flagship Mario
platformer for the Super Nintendo that spans across 9 different worlds and 72 different
levels. Featuring capes, fireflowers, and Yoshi, most worlds also house alternate secret exits.
Many are completed by putting a key in a keyhole, but there are some exceptions such as in
Ghost Houses. With there being 24 secrets, this leads to a total of 96 possible
exits to complete, hence the run I want to talk about today: 96 Exit, being
the 100% category in Super Mario World I already know I will get a few
people trying to pull a gotcha, so let me quickly get some things out of the way.
*Storter, what about the dragon coins and moons?*, Well, if you want to go down that route,
Lunar Dragon is a category which is 96 Exit, but collects every dragon coin and moon in
the game, but that’s another discussion. There isn’t nearly as much to talk about between
its smaller history and the banning of glitches. Two more things:
1. Both Front and Back Door of Bowser do not count as it doesn’t
go towards your exit counter unless using an unintended glitch…which also leads me to:
2. It is possible to get way more than 96 exits thanks to how broken this game can get with
glitches, but that is an explanation for another video..I could ramble about things all day,
please let's talk about the actual game more.. Before getting into what 96 Exit actually entails,
I want to get some details out of the way. I feel like I should give basic technical explanations
about how many things in this game works. Like most standard platformers, the two basic
mechanics of Super Mario World are running and jumping. Once you become Big Mario thanks to a
midway tape or mushroom, you get one huge bonus: being able to break blocks via spinjumping.
This mechanic is huge, as multiple exits in the game require you to do just this.
One step up is the fireflower. Besides the obvious fireballs that kill certain enemies,
it can also be used to finish certain boss fights quicker. Morton, Ludwig, and Roy can be
defeated in one hit instead of 3, thanks to two fireballs counting as said hits. This mechanic
has been used in runs since the very beginning. The final important powerup is the
cape, which is possibly one of the most broken Mario powerups ever. It gives
you the ability to cape pump and spin fly, which makes many stages easier than ever before.
Don’t get it twisted though, there is a lot more than simply flying at the top of the screen to
beat the level. There is a whole science to this. If cape pumping, there is a very obvious variance
in flight speed if you pay attention to the ingame timer at the end of a level. Mario’s speed while
flying can alternate between (and including) 47 and 51. Players can manipulate and lock in
a new speed by briefly tapping right while mid-flight. Ideally you want to lock in 51 speed,
and players primarily do this by paying attention to how much the screen jitters while in the air.
It is possible to distinguish if you’re going slower in the 47-49 range, or faster in the 50-51
range. IsoFrieze has a short video on the more technical side of this, which I will link below
You may wonder how much this matters, and well, take a look at one individual level. Some can be
completed 3 in-game seconds faster with a cape, and for reference, a full in-game second
is roughly two-thirds of a second. This is thanks to the normal run speed averaging out
to 48. (47.8). Saving a second or two may not seem like much, but multiply that by the amount of
levels you fly in, and it really starts to add up. Alright, are you still here? Good! I could
ramble more about details in this game, but I think it’s best if we finally dive into:
Nine worlds, and 96 exits to power
through, where do we start? Well, there’s quite a variety to sift through. Between
fortresses, castles, ghost houses, switch palaces, and much more, beating every single exit is
no simple feat…nonetheless in one sitting. The earliest documentation of anyone documenting
a 96 Exit time spans back to October 21st, 2004. Twin Galaxies, which used to be the
primary source for gaming leaderboards, reported a person by the name Kelly
Flewin achieving a 3 hour, 8 minute, and 34 second “96 Gate Record” Unfortunately there
is zero footage to back-up this claim, but luckily that’s not the biggest issue because an even
greater announcement was right around the corner. On February 2nd, 2005, Jason Baum, or GameCube04,
uploaded a complete deathless playthrough beating every single exit possible clocking in at 1
hours, 31 minutes, and 45 seconds. Time starts when Mario appears in the intro screen, and ends
when Peach appears after defeating Bowser. This cuts the first claimed time in half, and
it’s obvious a lot of work went into this. Gamecube stated that he attempted the run a
few hundred times over the span of four months, and took the time to develop some level of
consistency across each level. Additionally, he came up with a route to best tackle all the
worlds in the most optimal way seen at the time. Be aware, this is 2005. This run was
completed two months before the first ever YouTube upload, so good luck easily
finding someone else’s gameplay online. In fact, by the time Gamecube uploaded this run,
there were only two other publicly documented Super Mario World runs by Scott Kessler. These ran
the category that is now known today as 11 Exit, the fastest intended way to beat the game.
If you’d like to know more about that, I suggest checking out my Quest for Sub One Minute
video, but that’s not the topic of today, 96 Exit. The route for this first ever run goes as follows: Complete all of world 1, carve out a path
through world 2 which defeats the Green Switch Palace along the way, taking the right
path in World 3, finishing all of bottom bridge and entering Star World, cleaning up half the
levels to get to Special World quickly, cleaning up the rest of world 2 and then re-entering star
world after defeating Big Boo, finishing the rest of the world and warping back to world 3, and from
that point finishing every world going forward. For a first 100% run of the game, it’s quite
solid. The simple fact that it features zero deaths over the course of 90 minutes makes
it a very strong starting time. Additionally, it sets up many things that would continue to
be used in future runs for quite a while. The most notable being the World 2 Green Switch
route. The advantage of grabbing this switch early is getting access to more capes which
are housed in green switch blocks. This would go on to be dubbed “Early Green Switch Route”
The coolest strategy by far which surprised me was how the special world level “Tubular”
was handled. The intended strategy is to use p-balloon blocks supplied throughout the level
in order to float across, but you actually don’t need those. Gamecube very casually was
able to hop block to block, and even uses a chuck football to bounce off at the very end.
In Chocolate Island, a yoshi was grabbed in Chocolate Island 2, which was then used
in the following level thanks to a blue koopa giving you flight ability. This yoshi is
then kept all the way till later in World 7. Speaking of World 7, the fireflower is used one
more time to help in the Larry fight, which is then followed by something I was not expecting
to see at all. When returning to Valley of Bowser 2 to complete the secret exit, Gamecube both
ditches the blue Yoshi and intentionally takes damage to become small for the sandbar section.
The only possible reason this was maybe done was to make getting through the sandbar
section easier? I want to make it clear that you very much can get through this
section with any powerup, which is why I was shocked to see this in the first place.
Overall though, this was a great run for 2005 Speedrun Standards, and I don’t need to talk about
every little bit of this run because well..it’s about what you’d expect. For both your and my
sanity, I’m not going to be overly analyzing every detail in every run since there is no
need to. Since day one a handful of levels simply are flown over with a cape, but trust
me there is much more in store going forward… Over the following handful of years
multiple more people would take a stab at Super Mario World including
Super Mario Bros legend AndrewG, but all of this action was happening
with the shortest completion of the game. It’s not until 2010 that we can find what would
be the next competition in 96 Exit. A Japanese player by the name Menboo93 started streaming
and uploading runs of Super Mario World onto the Japanese site nicovideo. Livestreaming
back in 2010 was quite a messy experience, but fortunately Menboo did also locally
upload personal bests to his channel. One of his first was a 96 Exit video claiming
a 1:30:30 which is a solid minute faster than the only run notably published before.
This run does a lot of the same things Gamecube did, except better…obviously.
The route is a bit more optimized in a few different places such as only visiting Star
World once instead of twice, and deciding to clear the left side of World 1 after Special
World, since you warp back there anyways. There’s also some similar strategies such as
using a Yoshi throughout Chocolate Island, and the same exact intentional small
mario approach to Valley of Bowser 2. Seeing this suggests Menboo probably studied
Gamecube’s now 5 year old run at this point. This run still isn’t close to clean with Valley
of Bowser 1 being the most noticeable timeloss, but there’s a handful of really cool levels
to watch. To access top secret area he did a tight quick fly around the Boos, which is an
early version of a strategy still used today, Donut Secret 1 Menboo accidentally double
grabbed the shell and pswitch while swimming, had one of the most unnecessarily risky
jumps in Wendy, and showcased a visual glitch in the Bowser fight by killing
Bowser’s balls with a ground cape slide. Last of all, the run features one of the first
ever notable level skips, with it taking place in Forest Ghost House. After leaving the
tightly enclosed space starting the level, you can immediately fly to the left and get above
the wall. This allows you to get to the same exact place you’d be if taking the intended
doors. With this level being played twice, it’s a very notable timesave.
—- Menboo would continue to post a multitude of runs
throughout 2010 including in the American version of Super Mario Bros 2, multiple improvements to
the 11 Exit World Record, and most importantly for this discussion: another 96 Exit time.
And that time was 1:28:55 - This consists of many of the same strategies seen before such as small
Mario in the sandbar section of Valley of Bowser 2. There’s also some other familiar sights such
as the sketchy jump at the beginning of Wendy. I really thought that was a mistake the first
time, but apparently that was an actual strategy. Another strategy I'm not sure about was in
Vanilla Dome 2 where Menboo clipped inside the wall in the middle of the level. For what
he was going for it ended up being faster, but this is one of the easiest
places to accidentally clip into, and it may have not been intentional. While this
run did shave off a significant amount of time, there were still obvious spots of time loss with
a few cape powerups being lost along the way. Before I go forward, I also want to
make it clear that around this period, leaderboards were still not established in the
way we may think of them today, and it was not a simple task to piece together history before 2013.
A huge reason for this was due to how segmented speedrun communities used to be in general.
While players such as AndrewG and Scott Kessler were sharing times from North America,
there was equally activity going on across the other side of the world - most notably, Japan.
While there very much may be earlier history, by 2009 we start to see the earliest easily
documented runs revolving around the game with people such as yotsuba. Regarding 96 Exit, Menboo
who we already mentioned is the one notable player from Japan who tackled this category early on.
On the American side, there was equally as much going on, with the most notable player at the
time being dram55. With Japanese and American communities sometimes acknowledging each other
but not fully interacting, the world record history can be confusing to piece together - but
I believe I have put together what is publicly documented. If this is somehow wrong feel free to
whine at me, but I was able to create a timeline using Youtube and Twitch uploads, as well as
forum posts on the forum SpeedDemosArchive. Dram in March of 2012 posted that he had
finished a 1:28:57, which was only two seconds slower than menboo’s 2010 time. He
pointed out that this would have been record if he was using a Japanese Cartridge instead of
an American one. This is due to two things that are faster on the Japanese version: Save boxes
on the overworld, and switch palace cutscenes. The Japanese text leads to
quicker overworld text boxes, and the switch palace cutscene fade out earlier.
With tons of save boxes and multiple switch palaces, this time difference comes out to
roughly 20 seconds, which would’ve been more than enough to give dram a new record.
Fortunately for Dram this wouldn’t be his last stab at 96 Exit, but before we talk
about that, Menboo was still going strong. Menboo had started the year with a
healthy mix of games and categories, but on July 16th, he would come back
with his biggest time cut yet in 96. 1:26:45, a close to 2 minute improvement
- quite significant for something that had already had a lot of time chopped off of.
This run deserves to be analyzed heavily. As early as World 2 we already see a myriad of
improvements versus before. In Donut Plains 2 he takes advantage of spin flying and gets in the
pipe as soon as possible for both exits. In Donut Plains 3 he immediately runs and jumps right
to get flight instead of going to the left, and the biggest by far was in Morton’s Castle
where he spin-flew throughout the second half. This is the earliest documented version of what
players would eventually name “Morton Fly”. In both Vanilla Dome 1 and 2, he performed
a trick where if you time a cape divebomb at the right time against the ceiling, you can
stick to it. This would end up being dubbed “Sticky Fly” - I know, real creative here.
Vanilla Dome 3 finally saw the usage of the top route at the end instead of
squeezing through all the piranhas. Moving to Star and Special World,
a completely new route using Yoshi started to be used. When finishing
the final exit of Star World 2, the blue baby yoshi you can grab is fed the
powerup in your reserve box, and is used to make special world a lot easier. Even in Star
World 5 you can simply grab a koopa to fly. This made levels such as Tubular and Awesome
way easier than ever before. Menboo would then ditch this Yoshi in Mondo since the
rest of Special only required flying.
After cleaning up World 2, Vanilla Secret 1
was done faster than ever before by carefully maneuvering via spin fly for both exits.
After clearing top bridge, Ludwig had heavier cape usage and took advantage of cape
canceling against spike balls and podoboos. The item usage in Forest of Illusion 2 was
thought out a bit more than previously and aimed to keep a cape at all times. Starting the
level Menboo switched to a fireflower, used it to power through an urchin, grab the floating
cape, grab another fireflower in the level, and lastly scroll the screen to manipulate urchins
later in the level. When playing the level to grab the second exit, the cape is switched back to.
Similar to Ludwig, similar cape canceling was also done in Forest Ghost House, making
for a really quick level both times. Chocolate Island had some new things in store
as well such as Ghost House having a simple spin fly maneuver to quickly beat the final
room, but more importantly did not grab Yoshi in Chocolate Island 2 anymore. In Chocolate
Secret they used the slopes in room 2 to get p-speed which is exactly what is still done
now, and Chocolate Island 3 became a fly over level with the only thing to be aware of was
not scraping against the pipes mid-flight. This run became the first to attempt
getting p-speed entering Chocolate Fort which was successful for the beginning
of room 1. If it wasn’t obvious already that the cape was understood more, Chocolate
Island 4 became visually more interesting, with Menboo keeping flight
through the very tight level. We get to see another attempt at the sketchy Wendy
strategy which fully demonstrates why I thought it was oddly risky to go for in the first place.
Valley Ghost House is the most impressive level considering how old this run is, and uses
strategies that are optimal to this day. It starts with spin flying in room 1, and if
you time your flight entering the door, you can preserve your flight, and immediately start
flying. This allows you to skip having to press the intended p-switch which gives you a platform
to run on. Lastly in the final room, a spin fly is timed where if you’re in the right position,
you can hold down and slide through the tiny gap where the key is. The two strategies done here are
Door Flying and Sexy Slide. The most interesting fact about the Door Fly here is that this strategy
was very before its time, and wouldn’t be heavily messed with in world record runs for this specific
level again until 2015. I honestly had to make sure I was watching the correct run multiple times
cause I was shocked to see this used so early on. Larry was possibly one of the sloppiest levels,
but to make up for that he finally wasn’t intentionally going small for Valley of Bowser 2.
Additionally a trick that was being done in Bowser for 11 Exit was seen here as well. By hitting
Bowser with a Mecha Koopa right as he is about to throw down one of his balls, you can completely
skip this cycle. This is called “Ball Skip” On top of this, you may notice the
cape is being fully utilized here to get constant quick hits on Bowser, with
this concept being dubbed “Cape Kill”. With everything I have just mentioned, you may
see why the record was beaten by so much now. Dram was eager to officially get
record, and when grinding more 96, he had switched from the American to the Japanese
cart in order to get that 20 seconds of timesave. Fortunately, Dram was in a pretty good position
since he was going for a handful of strategies that Menboo had yet to use in his record.
This starts as early as Donut Plains 2, where he used the same concept done by Menboo in
Valley Ghost House. He was able to immediately get flight in the 2nd room for both exits.
His World 3 was faster than ever with two flies in Vanilla Dome 3 that skipped
having to fully wait on the rafts, getting flight speed quicker in Vanilla Dome
4, and spinning at the beginning of Lemmy to manipulate where the magikoopa would spawn.
In Star World 1 Dram took advantage of a strategy being done in 11 Exit called zips. Only four
yellow spin blocks can actively spin at once, and by exploiting this, you can simply
“zip” past most of these blocks. A completely different approach to Forest
of Illusion 2 was done versus anything seen before. First off, dram switched
to fireflower in the previous level, and then did a damage boost at the beginning
while ditching Yoshi. Further into the level, he goes to a lower spot not previously used, and
is able to use a raised corner in the ground to jump off yoshi, and then re-grab him halfway
through the wall - which gives you a clip. That’s just the beginning though, because on
the second visit, Dram immediately does the same idea but at the very beginning, which allows
him to skip the entire level. These two clips he did have been dubbed “Easy Clip” and “Hard Clip”
Both clips save the player the hassle of having to navigate the maze of fish and urchins, and
the time-save you can get out of these really varies on how fast you can complete the level
normally. Doing so optimally is very hard, so having these clips is very useful. Easy clip
tends to not really save time due to how out of the way it is, but hard clip if done twice can
easily save you a double digit amount of seconds. With this clip being new and not understood too
well, dram seemingly only wanted to try it once for this run, but it was still very much
worth it since he immediately clipped in.
You can see that leaving World 5 he was on a
pace that would put him very close to a 1:25, but unfortunately he had a very costly death in
Chocolate Ghost House. Fortunately he was able to maintain most of his later timesave thanks to the
slide in ghost house, and doing a faster beginning to Larry room 2 which was done by scrolling
the screen left. While he did lose a cape here, he still ended the room on a pretty good note,
easily proving that he could still destroy this even more.
– With a death that cost 30 seconds sitting halfway
through the run, Dram very much knew he had more to do in the category, and fortunately that
gave us more activity for the end of 2012. Besides not dying in Chocolate Ghost House
this time, Dram’s next run on October 6th cleaned up a lot of the slop from before.
Between not losing powerups left and right, as well as minor optimizations such as
skipping under a crusher in Valley Fort, he was able to achieve a 1:25:43:
A nearly one minute improvement. While there were still some glaring mistakes
such as losing upwards of 8 seconds in Star World 1 and getting kicked off Yoshi
multiple times in Sunken Ghost Ship, this was the exact kind of run that
Dram was trying to achieve the month before…but hold onto your seats, because
he wasn’t completely done for the year. Only a month later on November 18th, Dram came back with a 1:25:19, and
was back with completely new strats. The first was in Vanilla Dome 1, where
he entered the level with a Yoshi, and used a blue shell to fly under the level.
He was able to skip the entire second room, but he ultimately was a bit
slower. It didn’t help that he bonked while trying to stay under the level.
Following that up, he performed a Yoshi clip in Vanilla Dome 2 that is similar to Forest
of Illusion. This allows you to immediately reach the area with the key and keyhole.
This can save you around 10 to 15 seconds. In other places he balanced out his timesave such
as having a way faster Star World than before, but then losing a little bit of that to things such
as falling off Yoshi right away entering Mondo. What saved even more time was Dram going
for Hard Clip in Forest of Illusion 2 both times finally, but he switched
between fireflower and cape anyways, so the timesave may not be as much as you’d think.
Additionally he was the first to keep his flight through the entirety of room 1 in Chocolate Fort,
and had a still sloppy but faster room 2 in Larry. Honestly, at this point the run was looking
overly clean and it felt like the main things to do at the moment were to clean up some of the
silly mistakes inbetween. What was Dram supposed to do from here?
— Inching towards 2013, Super Mario World
specifically started to become more properly recorded as a speedrun due to
some of the oldest surviving leaderboard documentation appearing around this time.
In January 2013 we can see a handful of goals were sprawling with competition. The most notable
being any%, or what would be renamed “11 Exit”, but on top of that there was a slew of
categories such as beating All Castles, finishing without using Star World,
and Low% which was using zero powerups. This does fortunately mean that going
forward, the record history is very well documented and I am very confident of the
accuracy of everything from here on out. Only a month later on February 1st
Dram would replace his 1:25 time on the leaderboard with another major improvement.
The newest major trick added this time was spawning Yoshi Wings early in Vanilla Dome 1.
It’s quite easy to duplicate blocks in this game, and it was finally figured out this could be used
to further glitch different levels. In this case, if you duplicate a block over a
yoshi coin, and then collect said coin, you can then go for another duplication
to the right, which will spawn in Yoshi Wings. All that is left to do is simply collect the
wings, and it works just like Yoshi Wings in levels where it is intended. You immediately
move on to the next level! Unfortunately Dram had a lot of trouble doing this fast, but he
still finished 8 in-game seconds faster than his previous run, and additionally you don’t
have to go through the level-ending fanfare. The only thing this glitch changed to the routing
was the fact that you had to pick up a Yoshi in Donut Plains 4, which fortunately is not too hard.
This was followed up with another quick Vanilla Dome 2 clip, and later on he did both
Forest of Illusion 2 clips, this time not randomly switching powerups in between.
One more really cool trick was in Sunken Ghost Ship where Dram was able to despawn
one of the Boo Rings which makes it less of a hassle to finish the room.
The way this is done is by spawning in the boo ring while the boo cloud already
on screen is despawning. At the beginning of the room Dram briefly got stuck, but was still
able to barely time it by scrolling the screen. With all of this, he finished with a 1:24:35,
doing way more than simply breaking into the next minute barrier. This run still had some
sloppy segments such as a close call in Roy, and struggling in Chocolate Fort, but that didn’t
matter. Dram was able to pick up extra time with minor optimizations between many levels such
as a quicker takeoff in Donut Ghost House, cleaner swimming in Vanilla Dome 2, jumping
off the head of a blargg in Vanilla Dome 3 to skip part of the raft section, and using a cape
cancel to spin jump off a boo snake in Chocolate Ghost House.
— Dram continued to be on a hotstreak in
the category after just setting another monumental time, and was still doing attempts
right after his 40 second improvement. In fact, just three days later he
had another impressive run. He was able to get wings in Vanilla Dome
1 about 10 seconds faster this time, had the fastest room 1 in Chocolate Fort
yet, and didn’t need to scroll for Sunken Ghost Ship Boo Ring despawn. This netted
him a 5 second improvement with a 1:24:30. So why was this only 5 seconds better
with so many major improvements? Well, the rest of the run had a lot of mistakes. Most
notably Dram struggled to clip three times in Vanilla Dome 2, and lost his cape three times
between Vanilla Secret 1, Forest Fort, and Larry. Fortunately he was able to minimize some of
this timeloss thanks to some other timesaves such as having the best Star World 1 zips
in any of his personal bests to date so far. The last interesting thing to note is that every
run up till now stopped to grab a fireflower in Vanilla Dome 1, which is used to have a quicker
Ludwig fight. Dram this run experimented and picked one up quickly at the end of Yoshi’s
Island 1. This wouldn’t be done going forward but I thought that was cool.
– With Dram riding the high of pushing
the category to unforeseen limits, there didn’t seem to be any competition to keep
up. The closest person was still Menboo, who unfortunately seemed to stop playing around 2013
and was only doing 11 Exit and All Castles runs. I will say that one of the biggest
headaches I dealt with while researching was trying to piece together menboo’s
last possible personal best in 96 Exit. If you go to the Super Mario World leaderboard
you will see a 1:24:23 by menboo with no video or date. So how did this get here? Honestly,
I’ve been trying to figure that out. No such video exists on his nicovideo, nor a
linked twitch account I was able to find. Menboo did seem to have another twitch account under the
name “Menboo93”, but that account has been shut down. He does have a twitter but that account
has been completely locked and many mid 2010 Mario World runners even reported being blocked
by him for no reason. I even spent way too much time digging through a Japanese leaderboard
I was able to find and menboo doesn’t even seem to exist under 96 Exit. I do feel pretty
confident that Menboo never got the record again, but I had to vent my frustration sifting
through this. Where did this come from!?! Oh uh dram…Yeah. He pursued this run more and
had a slightly bigger improvement on April 26th. He was two seconds faster in Vanilla Dome 1,
didn’t mess up Vanilla Dome 2 clip this time, and this time decided to pick up the Ludwig Fireflower
in Groovy which was definitely the best strategy yet since you virtually didn’t have to slow down.
1:24:18 was the new best time to beat, with this being well over 2 minutes
faster than what dram was able to set not even a year prior. He did have some glaring
mistakes such as a slightly slow Star World 1, and lost a ton of time with a missed hit and cape
loss in Bowser, but dram seemed to finally have a time that he was proud to let sit at the top.
He would over the following two years tackle other runs such as 11 Exit and Low%, but besides that,
it was time to let someone else put in the work. By the middle of 2013, there were a handful
of promising new runners, and one that I very much need to introduce you to is Linkdead.
Rocking the Super Mario pajama pants since day 1, Linkdead started heavily running Super Mario
World at the beginning of 2013, and by May had already achieved a 96 time that would’ve
been record if done only half a year earlier. Entering June he got a 1:24:33
which was his closest yet, and with 96 being one of those categories
where you can always save time everywhere, he kept pushing to see what else he could do. Only a month later on July 6th, he finally pulled
off a run that was able to compete with dram. A new trick he added was in the special
world level Gnarly where he went for wings with the idea being the same
as Vanilla Dome 1. Unfortunately he struggled quite a lot here and very
much did not save time with it. Special World also saw a different spot to grab the
fireflower for Ludwig: this time in Awesome. He also did a trick in Chocolate Island 1
where with the right spinfly timing into a pipe mid-level, you will be shot out of the
pipe and fly way faster. How much faster? Well, if you remember me saying earlier, the
fastest normal flight speed is 51, and this pipe here will shoot you out with a speed of 64.
This isn’t faster by much since you have to deal with a pipe transition, but with the drastic
increase in speed it still nets you a second. There was also a slight route change
in Forest of Illusion where instead of doing both Forest of Illusion 2 clips back
to back, he instead did the first clip, went back to Forest of Illusion 1 and
got a yoshi while doing the secret, did one of the ghost house exits, and
then came back down for clip number two. Besides that he was mostly able to play just as,
if not better than dram. With not having a nearly as slow Bowser fight, he got a 1:24:17,
a one second improvement to the record. This really ended up being a case of shifting
around where the timeloss was. Besides Gnarly wings, he also lost his cape in Lemmy, had not the
most ideal Star World 1, and slightly struggled with Valley Ghost House.
— The second name I have to tell
you about is xpaco5, a player that started right around the same time as linkdead.
By the time linkdead had set the new record, Paco had already achieved a 1:25 time, and also had a
respectable Any%, or now 11 Exit, personal best. Later in 2013 he got two more improvements to
his 96 best, with his 2nd one being a 1:24:35, what dram had achieved earlier in the year.
He clearly had already thrown up some really great times, and his last one I mentioned
lost 20 seconds in the final split. This meant that he very much could have just
beaten the record if it wasn’t for that. Only a day after this run on October 2nd, Paco did even more runs, and did what
he wasn’t able to do the day before. He was able to keep up the pace in earlier
worlds with really great wings balancing out a failed clip attempt, and was able
to do what linkdead couldn’t before: Paco was able to finish 11 in-game seconds faster
than linkdead in Gnarly thanks to a way cleaner execution. This time Paco very much saved time
doing this versus normally beating the level. For the rest of the run, most strategies were
the same such as opting for the new Pipe Fly, but there were still some glaring issues. There
was a mix of minor mistakes such as a slight slowdown in Chocolate Fort, as well as
major blunders such as room 1 of Larry. Nonetheless, it was still enough to edge out
Linkdead, finishing with a 1:24:11. He more than proved that breaking into the 1:23 range was more
than possible, and if Larry hadn’t thrown him off, it would’ve happened. Unfortunately though
that was meant for another day…and also another person.
– The third, and final new face of the 2013 era I
need to introduce you to is Kakusho. He started playing the exact same time as the previous
two players, and dipped his toes into a mix of different series such as Final Fantasy and
The Legend of Zelda. His most prominent game by far though…I don’t think I need to say.
His most prominent category by far was 96, and by the very end of 2013…had
gotten the record for himself. Kakusho displayed one of the highest levels of
consistency so far in regards to the tricks in the run. Awesome Vanilla Dome Wings & clip,
the fastest gnarly done in a run yet, and the only notable mistake in this regard was having
to wait a cycle for one of the Forest Clips. There’s one trick he did
that I didn’t mention though, and that was in Valley of Bowser 2 -
In the sandbar section, Kakusho performed a trick which involves ducking and spinjumping at just
the right time, which allows you to clip inside, and skip an entire cycle of waiting.
This is quite risky to do at the very end of a run as if you spin jump
too early, you will get crushed, and is only a 2 frame window. With it saving
roughly 12 seconds, the award outweighed the risk. Sure this run had some struggles towards the end
such as falling off of Yoshi in Sunken Ghost Ship, and struggling in Valley of Bowser 1, but the
overall clean execution across the board and the new sandbar clip was more than enough to
break a new barrier: 1:23:52. What a way to end the year!
- After a new minute barrier was pushed
using a huge level-breaking glitch, the category was in an interesting
situation. There were now a handful of people more than capable of taking it
back if they wanted, and it really came down to cleaning up the run even further.
Exactly a month later on January 31st, 2014 one person was able to do just
that: our pajama’d friend linkdead. This run took Kakusho’s lead by adding
in sandbar clip, and minimized all the struggles he had. Sure linkdead did have a slight
hiccup in Donut Secret 1..and Larry….as well as missing a cycle in Forest of Illusion 2, but it
still wasn’t nearly as much as he was able to end with a 1:23:37 - already pushing towards
the halfway mark to the next minute barrier, 1:22.
— Linkdead’s run proved to be something that
finally calmed down the category as the rest of 2014 saw nothing new at the top, and it
would take about 18 months for that to change. By the middle of 2013 a new runner by the
name GreenDeathFlavor started to upload some runs across different categories,
but it wasn’t till the very end of the year that they finally tackled 96 Exit.
Their first run ever was just over 2 hours, and wouldn’t touch 96 too much
more for a bit. He mostly focused on the Any% category that would become
modern 11 Exit using the cloud glitch, and then in July 2014 we start to see him really
start chomping down on his 96 Personal Best. By the end of the year he was able to pump
out a lower 1:25 time, and we can see further improvements into the new year. In fact, the
improvement was quite drastic because by March he had already slipped all the way down to a low
1:24, comfortably putting him in the top 5. With the runners sandwiching him not improving
since 2013, it was the perfect opportunity for him to continue climbing up the board.
Bit by bit he continued to chop off time. In May he got one of the lowest 1:24 times you could
imagine, and in June followed that up by squeezing out a 1:23. This easily put him in the top 3.
If he added in sandbar clip, and cleaned some other things up, he very
comfortably could be the new king of 96. He would continue this journey further into the
year, and in July had a run that struggled with Vanilla Dome 1, missed two cycles in Forest of
Illusion 2, missed flight in the following level, and didn’t do sandbar - yet he ended with a
1:23:28 - a new record. How was that possible? Well, outside of the few mistakes I just
mentioned, this run is quite pristine. Levels that most records previously may have
been sloppy with such as Vanilla Secret 1, or Chocolate Fort, were perfect here.
Combine that with two new tricks here, the most notable being in Tubular. It
was found that you can use the p-switch in the level to spawn Yoshi Wings. By
chucking it inside the p-balloon block, it’s simpler than you may expect.
Sometimes you have to scroll the screen to get the p-switch in the right position,
but in this case it immediately worked. All of what I just said really tied together
a clean run, and the category for a bit sat in a similar situation as before.
A month later Truman notably became the 4th person to ever get a 1:23, but the
rest of 2015 was pretty quiet…or was it?? Jumping back to 2013, another player across
different categories popped up on the leaderboards by the name Akisto. Unfortunately
their history pre-2015 is basically wiped, but starting in mid 2015 we do at
least get a few miscellaneous clips. One in August shows 96 exit splits
on the side that show a 1:24 time, which demonstrates that within the past
year he majorly grinded the category. His first earliest still available
96 Exit recording is in December 2015 - and would you look at
that - it’s a new world record. This run is completely different from any
run seen before as Akisto completely came up with a new route for the whole run. Dubbed
“Akisto Route”, it aims to get annoying tricks such as the clips in Vanilla Dome and Forest of
Illusion out of the way as quickly as possible. To do this he takes a route through world
2 that beats both ghost houses, presses the red switch and then goes to the left in world
3, completes top bridge and Worlds 5 and 6, beats Larry’s Castle, Enters Special World, cleans
up the rest of worlds 1, 2, & 3, get through bottom bridge and star world, and finally warps
back to world 7 to finish the last few levels. This route has been calculated
to be roughly 5 seconds slower, but Akisto has stuck with it. In fact he has
been the only top runner to properly grind out runs with this completely different path.
Using this route, he got a 1:23:24. The route change led to a few different strategies such
as using a springboard at the end of Morton, and using a blue shell to fly over the raft
section in Vanilla Dome 3. We also see Akisto finally bring back the doorfly in Valley
Ghost House that was abandoned since menboo. The biggest controversy here may be the fact
that over 5 minutes of this run is missing due to the capture card feed disconnecting
during part of World 7 and Special World. In fact, there is further questionability
with Akisto’s runs since his next two records he achieved in 2016 do not have any
surviving footage. It does seem that at one point YouTube uploads existed but are now
unavailable. Even asking the source himself, he states he does not anymore have footage of
his 1:23:17 on May 7th, or 1:23:10 on July 14th. Fortunately he would get one more record on
November 10th, and of course once again uses his new route. Moving from his 1:23:24, he cleaned
up a lot of things such as Vanilla Dome 2 clip which he previously had a brief struggle with.
The most notable new addition here is a new set of wings, this time in Forest of Illusion 1.
While on Yoshi you can tongue a green koopa, and use it to duplicate a p-balloon block. It’s
the same core idea as the block in Tubular. Akisto had actually tried this in his last run
with footage, but failed it. This one came out to a 1:23:04, and would be short lived,
as prior competition was still lurking. I may have been talking about Akisto for
quite a bit, but don’t get it twisted: GreenDeathFlavor didn’t spontaneously disappear
after getting his 1:23:28. In fact besides continuing to run Super Mario World, he also was
running Mario 1, and 2. At the start of 2016, we can see a ton of highlights from his
sessions, with some being a really funny walljump in Special World, and losing a potential
world record all the way in Valley of Bowser 2. Possibly the biggest thing he did in
this time period was a new trick dubbed “Groovy Boss Kill”. To sum this up: You can
spawn a Koopa boss sprite inside the level, and defeat it to end said level immediately.
I will leave links to a full technical explanation of how this is possible
in the description, but two very important components to be aware about are:
The double tongue glitch, which requires Yoshi to release his tongue on the same exact
frame the game freezes from grabbing a powerup. Stunning a sliding koopa, which can
be used to spawn the boss sprite. This was one of the first times anyone
ever did this in a proper run, and going forward this became a trick many players
started to mess with in their attempts. With all those achievements, on December
16th, GreenDeathFlavor finally got what he wanted after many personal bests, and got
a new one second world record of 1:23:03. This run introduces yet another new route, which
is a lot closer to Early Green Switch. The route is actually the same, except you do what Akisto
route does in World 2: complete Donut Secret House. What’s the purpose of this? Well…watch
any 11 Exit speedrun. You may notice that the boo-ring position is always exactly the same.
This is because the boo-ring position is based on a global timer running in the game, and is based
on the position of wherever the last boo-ring was that you went past. This is why previously with
Green Switch Route, every runner's ghost house here was just slightly different. You may notice
some runners having to briefly adjust on the fly to prevent getting hit. This is due to the
position being based on how you played Vanilla Ghost House, which also features boo rings.
Getting that out of the way, this run features some other tiny optimizations such
as item-flying with the p-switch in Vanilla Ghost House, and also tried
to go for the new Groovy Boss Kill, which unfortunately didn’t happen.
He also got Forest of Illusion 1 Wings, but earlier in the level was trying to
go for a quicker Yoshi grab and lost his cape in the process. Additionally Sunken
Ghost Ship saw another hiccup with Yoshi getting stuck preventing a boo ring despawn.
Having these mistakes prevented the 1:22, but at this rate it was very likely going to
be the next record time, so the only question was…Who would it be?
— Sooo…would it be GreenDeathFlavor
again? Maybe Akisto once more?... or maybe even one of the other 2013
runners? Nope. Let’s rewind to 2015. In 2015 No Starworld became a pretty popular
category to run since there was a tournament being hosted for it starting in June. Heck,
that’s how I started running the game, and Sten was the same. His initial history
is completely littered with the category, but eventually he would touch some of
the other runs this game has to offer, and of course 96 was one of them.
You can see one of his oldest attempts being over two hours, but by
the end of the year was already a 1:25. He did mix in some other runs
such as Mario 3 and Sunshine, but would continue to lower his 96 personal
best in April 2016. In April he got a 1:24, in August he got a 1:23, and then in December….
He had a run similar to GreenDeathFlavor. Early Ghost House was the go-to route at this point, and
he failed an attempt at Groovy Boss Kill as well. A huge new trick was in Vanilla Dome 3: being able
to skip the entire raft. Sure Akisto was able to easily do this with a blue-shell on his route, but
that’s actually slower than what can be done here. By dismounting Yoshi against the ceiling
and immediately getting back on him, you can stick out his tongue to do a cape-fly
while riding him. Besides needing to stick out his tongue constantly, you cape pump the same way
you would without a Yoshi. This can save you a few seconds versus the blargg skip strategy that
had been used for quite a while at this point. His run also featured other things you may expect
at this point such as Forest of Illusion 1 wings, but sadly did have some choke points such
as having a minor mishap in blue-switch, and accidentally normal flying instead of
spinflying in Valley of Bowser Fort. Nonetheless, all of this combined together was just enough
for a 1:22, getting it by half a second. The ways this category had been stretched
really show if you think about how it took less than a year to go from a 1:24 to a 1:23,
but nearly three years to go from a 1:23 to a 1:22.
—- While the first ever 1:22 was heavily celebrated,
this didn’t mean that competition or the category itself was completely settled.
Sten’s 1:22 would only last for a month because on January 27th, we got this:
The first ever record to successfully pull off Groovy Boss Kill. In fact, by this
point the same concept was known to be possible in Cookie Mountain as well, which is why
GreenDeathFlavor tried to execute it, but failed. Additionally, he still went for blargg skip,
instead of skipping the raft in Vanilla Dome 3. On top of that, he had a handful of mistakes in
the late-game. He lost a cape in Chocolate Fort, missed sexy slide on his first try, and lost
flight in Larry. To end it off, he didn’t even do anything in the Valley of Bowser 2 sandbar.
He simply wanted to squeeze out a new record. With his early game being really strong with
things like amazing zip execution, and of course the new boss kill, he was still able to squeeze
out a new best time with a 1:22:58 - being not even a full second faster than Sten.
—-
In the span of three months, three
different people had held the record here with GreenDeathFlavor being the latest. With
constantly grinding the game the month leading up to his 1:22:58, he decided to keep pushing.
The following month, he would improve his record two more times in the span of a week: first on
February 10th, and secondly on February 16th.
The first of the pair sees GreenDeathFlavor
getting a slightly faster Groovy Boss Kill, cleaning up many of his mistakes
from his last attempt, and adding back in sandbar. This led to a ginormous
improvement by 15 seconds with a 1:22:43. Another subtle tidbit you may not notice
being done now is something revolving Sunken Ghost Ship. This run gets a score above
1 million before entering the last room in said ship. Why is such a specific thing important?
Well, you may notice that the very last room in particular is very laggy due to the sheer amount
of enemies popping up around you. Additionally, people were able to put together that game lag
can change based on the digits in your score. The higher the digits, the more likely there
will be more lag you’ll deal with - especially in already laggy sections of the game such
as Forest of Illusion 2 or Sunken Ghost Ship. The idea now was to reach a score of at least
1,000,000 some point before entering the ghost ship, since that is a pretty reasonable
thing you can do with how late the level is into the run. A score of 1,000,000 is
going to cause way less lag than a score of 999,999 due to the way lower digits. It
doesn’t completely matter when you do this, but the exact score of 1,000,000
is technically the most ideal. Moving to the second run, he lost some
considerable time between fighting Vanilla Dome 2 clip, and having troubles with both
wings in Special. Things quickly picked up after that with a faster boss kill, and doing a
new strategy in Mondo which allows you to keep running right to grab p-speed quicker. Previously
everyone got speed by doing a left right movement. With wings and first try clips in forest,
he was able to put himself back on a pace ahead of record, which sadly weakened after he
accidentally spinjumped on the yellow blocks at the end of Larry. Nonetheless, it was still
enough for a small improvement with a 1:22:41. At this point, the top 10 was full of
completely new times, and even some new runners. — The top 10 is nice and all, but no one
here is necessary going forward - at least in terms of the world record. In fact, we need
to move all the way down to 77th to find that. Why is Lui with a 77th place time clocking
in at 1 hour and 47 minutes important? Well, he started to quickly become a promising player.
He ran a healthy mix of categories between 2016 and 17, spanning from the multiple variants
of 11 Exit, all the way to 95, No Cape..which yes is the no cape version of this category.
Lui also would keep working on his 96 Exit time, but before I do that, let me emphasize how much
potential he had from the beginning. His 1:47 was able to achieve the same Cookie Mountain boss kill
that GreenDeathFlavor had previously tried to add, but failed. He chopped his time quite quickly
and easily went into the 1:20s. By July he was already able to nearly approach the top 20.
By this point he was also mixing in both Mario 1 & 3, but was still continuously lowering
his Mario World times as well. By September he was able to breach into the 96 Exit top 10.
Back in April a new top 3 had already formed thanks to Akisto and Truman, but by November Lui
would be able to sneak into that as well. In the span of a year, he went from not having any times,
to already being a record contender. In fact, at this point he had already beaten the world
record in All Castles by three seconds. With how high up he was on the 96
board, he kept going, and on December 3rd bumped himself up to 2nd…and then on the 9th…
1:22:21 - A 20 second improvement to the category. How did so much time get saved? Well - he had a
new arsenal of strats versus GreenDeathFlavor.
First, is a minor optimization in Red Switch.
Instead of simply jumping over the brown blocks, Lui decides to immediately press the p-switch
and navigate past the enemies. He also goes for a pipe fly in a similar vein to how
Donut Plains 2 works. I should mention by this point it had well been normalized to
use pipe and door flies in a handful of places such as Switch Palaces, Chocolate Island
2, and exiting a handful of other levels. Additionally, Lui added back in Raft Skip unlike
the previous record, and had a way cleaner special world between wings and boss kill.
His sloppiest split was in forest where he failed to even setup wings, and missed clipping
right away, but then went for a backup. At this point he still had managed to keep a majority
of the timesave he accumulated in special, but leaving Wendy is when the lead started
growing more than you could ever imagine. To end it off he went for a strategy in the
last room of Larry that scrolls the screen three separate times, and of course went for
sandbar. This gave him the 20 second timecut. For the first few months of the new year in
2018, Lui mostly took a break from Super Mario World and was primarily running A Link to the
Past, and mixing in other games like Mario 3. By the middle of the year, the top
of the 96 board included Paco peeking into the top 3, and Sten slightly improving.
In fact in the months after, it changed rapidly with having a 1:22 now being a requirement in
the top 7. On July 30th…we also saw a new record. One of the biggest additions by far was including
the previously messed with boss kill in Cookie Mountain, but the most important was probably a
route change in Star World. Instead of feeding blue yoshi in Star World 2, Lui went slightly
out of his way to grab a yellow Yoshi in Star World 5. This route involved Lui doing the normal
exit of Star World 1 on the way to Star World 5, instead of doing it before approaching Star
World 2, which saves a slight bit of time. With wings in Gnarly turning Yoshi blue,
grabbing blue Yoshi was not necessary in Star World anymore. This route change has mainly been
dubbed with the silly name “Yellow yossy chan”. In Awesome, you’ll see Lui grab a fireflower early
in the level, and try to do something with the red shell. This may make no sense simply watching,
but if we rewind to 2 weeks prior, it does. A Super Mario World Tool
Assister by the name Bruno Visnadi had been working on an updated run for
96 Exit using updated knowledge and glitches, and on July 18th had posted a snippet showing
his progress in Star and Special World. The biggest thing that stood out by far was a
new way to finish the level Awesome. This is a similar concept to spawning a Boss for
boss kills, but instead spawns a reznor. While obviously no human in real time would
execute this the same exact way as the Tool Assist, runners immediately took interest since
boss kills were already normalized at this point. It only took a few days, and by the 22nd
IsoFrieze, who you may know for a plethora of things such as making the SMW Practice Cart,
became the first human to execute this live, and was able to quickly put together an
explanation that was easy for others to replicate. This immediately proved to be
roughly 7 seconds faster when cleanly done. Unfortunately for now this was yet to be
added into 96, as Lui struggled a little in special. He most notably failed
the flight takeoff starting way cool. While he was behind exiting special, he gained momentum afterwards. He had a new
best Ludwig segment, and had a clean forest, getting wings and perfect clips. This led him to
being very close to a 1:21 pace leaving the world. He unfortunately cut this lead by a considerable
amount with mistakes such as accidentally doing a normal fly in Wendy, and having trouble
killing the final chuck in Valley of Bowser 1. Additionally, instead of going for the sandbar
clip you may expect, he went for a backup right after that to save the run. This was enough to
still give him an 8 second lead, finishing off with a 1:22:12.
— After lowering the 96 exit record by
over 30 seconds total, Lui spent the rest of the year mostly grinding out Donkey
Kong Country 2, and more Mario 3. Regarding the very tippy top of the leaderboard, the
end of the year was similar to the last. The top 3 saw an immediate shift with Sten
and Akisto both getting 1:22:30 times, but it still couldn’t rival the
large improvements Lui cemented into the run. 2018 saw two other 1:22’s with
another from Truman, and a completely new challenger - maiba.
- Unfortunately, maiba is the type of runner who
tends to not properly submit times until they get really good…which happened surprisingly quick.
We can see in October they had a high 1:23 time, which then rapidly became the 1:22 I just
mentioned. In the category No Star World, he had already poked into the top
3, easily capable of record there. Already rapidly climbing every leaderboard,
2019 started off on a high note and Miba scored top 3 in All Castles, 6th place in Small
Only, and probably the most important - 1:22:16 in 96 - only 4 seconds behind
Lui. Maiba became the first person in a year that truly seemed like they had
what it took to finally dethrone the top. Looking at his splits for the run, he
was actually ahead of Lui exiting World 6. Unfortunately due to failing sexy slide
in Ghost House, and losing cape in Larry, it was just enough to keep the record in Lui’s
hands for even longer….and how much longer? Well, another 1:22 was added
to the already growing list, but it wasn’t until May 3rd till
truly exciting things happened ~ Entering May, Maiba was already adopting many of Lui’s newer strategies such as
faster red switch, yellow yoshi, and Awesome Reznor Kill. He also went for
a faster setup in Groovy for the boss kill. Exiting Wendy, he once again was on a pace that
could’ve netted him a 1:21, but unfortunately he lost a bit of time in the last couple splits
against Lui. The most notable being not doorflying in ghost house, and accidentally rubbing against a
pencil in Larry. This still resulted in a 1:22:03. In the same month, Lui had made a more proper
return to the game, and pretty quickly was able to chip down his own time again.
In June he got a 1:22:07, and a 1:22:04. The latter saw a slightly slow
World 3, and also bleeded more time with things such as messing up Forest Wings.
Even with two best segments finishing the run, it still wasn’t enough to beat the
time one second ahead of him now. Forwarding to July, he was able to
improve his own All Castles record, and while he was in the zone,
had this in the same week - Vanilla Dome 1 wings with a 380 grab, the fastest
in a record yet, Cookie Mountain Boss Kill, a failed attempt at Awesome Reznor
Kill, the faster Groovy Boss Kill, and of course ended the run with a sandbar.
This concluded with a 1:21:57 - this was not only a new minute barrier, but
was roughly 50 seconds faster than what the record was when Lui started. He had
really come a long way in such a short time. Even with such a big milestone being broken, this run still had plenty to nitpick, even past
the reznor kill attempt. He failed forest wings, and lost cape in Chocolate Ghost
house, which led to him doing a backup. Following another new minute barrier, the top
of the leaderboards remained really calm for the rest of the year…at least 96. All Castles
was very healthy, with the top 5 all being set during the year. Maiba got 3rd, and besides
that there wasn’t much until 2020 where he started running a bunch of Mario 3. He got
shockingly close to the 100% record there, but let’s talk about the 100% record at hand here.
Lui went a similar route, and did a mix of the games I already mentioned such as
Donkey Kong Country 2. In March 2020 we did see him touch Mario World again,
but Maiba was also putting in some work, and 11 months after Lui had a clean world 3,
a couple boss kills, cleaned up some previous mistakes in Chocolate Island, and finally added
in Door Fly to ghost house unlike his last run. This was enough to edge Lui out by 5 seconds
with a 1:21:52. While it was a nice improvement, he also wasted time failing Awesome Reznor Kill,
struggled slightly in Star World 1, and failed Forest wings. He also had a couple close calls
between the endings of Forest Fort and Larry. At this rate, Lui was already back with full force
in Super Mario World. He achieved the 95 Exit, No Cape record after losing his 96, and immediately
focused on getting said record back afterwards. It would only take a month and on July 26th had a
similar run to Maiba. He had the decent world 3, the pair of boss kills, and missed
the new reznor kill yet again. He additionally got forest wings unlike Maiba,
but had a couple unsuccessful clip attempts Nonetheless, it was still enough to barely snag
the record back by a single second - 1:21:51. In the same month, multiple people in
the now 1:22 filled top 10 got new times, but nothing that’d challenge Maiba or
Lui. In fact, it may seem weird how extra active 96 got starting in June, but
it’s actually because there was a 96 Exit tournament taking place to celebrate
the 30th anniversary of the game. Both Maiba and Lui were actively practicing for
this which lead to an even higher potential than usual for new times. Lui already proved
this with his 1:21:51, but would cement this further only a few weeks later.
For the first time we finally get to see Awesome Reznor Kill added to the rotation,
with the rest of the typical tricks going pretty well for the most part. He may have missed a
clip, fought a chuck in Valley of Bowser 1, failed sexy slide twice in ghost house, messed
up a jump in Valley of Bowser 4, but after using the backup sandbar strategy once more, he
created a greater gap this time with a 1:21:44. Alright, so at this point we are already
into late 2020 and I want to frame where the entire community is at this point. You
may have noticed with Maiba competing at the top that they were the first Japanese player
in 7 years to dominate the category. In fact only 10 days after Lui he got a new personal
best that kept him only 5 seconds behind.
Starting around this time, many other
Japanese runners started climbing up the leaderboards. While the Japanese community
has had some of their own unique leaderboards, it wasn’t until the tail end of the 2010’s
that more migrated to speedrun.com which most speedrunners were already using. The two biggest
powerhouses at this time became desui and oosui with both of them dominating the top 2 in the
No Starworld category by the beginning of 2021. With Maiba slightly lowering the record in
All Castles at the same time, he was still very much in the mix. He would lower his new
record in the same category only a month later, and just a week after that was finally
able to achieve in 96 Exit what he had been trying to do for half a year now.
He had some hiccups between Vanilla Dome 2, Ludwig, and Forest but this was no issue with
being able to do every Boss Kill on the menu, and having as good of a World 7 as you’d
like to see. His final time? 1:21:43. Now you may recall, Lui’s record was a 1:21:44.
That’s a one second difference, but how far apart were the two times? How much would you guess?
Half a second? A third of a second? A tenth? No! It’s just 5 frames faster! It’s
such a minor improvement but it’s true! No matter how you time it, it was a new
record by under a tenth of a second! It may have not been much, but of course it was
enough for Maiba to reign supreme once again.
Now I’ve already established how prevalent the
Japanese community was becoming once more, but to emphasize it: by this point in the year there were
now 3 main leaderboard categories which had top 10s composed of at least half Japanese players.
All Castles, No Starworld, and Small Only. If you crank it back only 1 year to the
beginning of 2020, this isn’t the case at all, with the only noticeable board being No
Starworld which was already a favored category in Japan versus western players who for
the last few years were preferring All Castles. With 96 Exit, Japanese runners didn’t seem
to be eager to tackle this leaderboard as quickly. Besides Maiba, there was one
other Japanese runner that was able to peek into the top 10. Besides that there
was only one other in the entire top 50. It wouldn’t be that long for that
to flip though as only a few months later in April we see a runner we already
mentioned slip into the top 10: oosui. He was able to very quickly get a 1:22 time.
Similar to some other runners I’ve already talked about, he repeatedly was shaving his
time down and had a couple more 1:22s, and in May became the third ever person to get a 1:21.
At this point it was safe to say that oosui was now a main contender. He had already gotten the
record in both No Starworld, and All Castles - where he got the first ever 33 minute time there.
In fact a day after his 33:59 would lead to something far more relevant to our story.
With his continuous improvement in 96, you best bet he was still doing more.
He had an advantage in Cookie Mountain with a faster boss kill setup, and executed
every other major glitch perfectly. He had a couple minor struggles such as Star World 1,
but it was enough to finish with a….1:21:43. The exact same time as maiba…EXCEPT,
oosui was two tenths of a second faster. It’s quite remarkable in a category as
long as this with plenty of mistakes that this is now the second time we have
seen such an unbelievable close rivalry. Oosui was on a hot streak at this point, improving the No Starworld record
twice by the end of the month. He also ran a mix of other more miscellaneous
categories. His most ambitious was 960 Exit which you may be able to take a guess at -
10 96 Exit runs back to back. He actually took the record in that by a slight margin,
with GreenDeathFlavor previously having it. During this time he was still repeatedly
mixing 96 Exit into his run rotation, and because of that our next stop isn’t too
far away. On August first we see a run very similar to before, with some simple swaps of
where time was lost and gained. In this case he had a slower Cookie Mountain Boss Kill,
and had a slightly slow Gnarly, but maybe up for it by having an amazing Star World 1.
In Forest he had wings and a good first clip, but sadly missed the second clip. He was able
to back this up with a clip on the left side. With the rest of the run being pretty
well rounded, it was decent enough to create a bigger gap from Maiba this time with
a 1:21:39. At this rate the category was in a similar situation to before: optimize the newest
glitches and clean up everything in between. With previously less significant
levels being perfected even further, the run as a whole has visually become
more and more interesting with my favorite from this run being the end of Valley of Bowser 1. Over the following few months the 96 board
remained pretty dormant towards the top following oosui’s last improvement, but that was quite the
opposite in regards to No Starworld which was seeing repeatedly new times towards the very top.
While oosui was a part of this No Starworld competition, it doesn’t mean he 100% gave up on
96 because by the end of the year on December 27th we got another sizable improvement.
He had a rough beginning with a missed block duplication attempt for Vanilla Dome 1 wings and
struggling a few times with Vanilla Dome 2 clip, but he kept things well together thanks to making
up for his previous mistakes. His Cookie Mountain boss kill was as good as you’d expect, with his
special world being equally clean this time. The only very noticeable timeloss from
this point was in Valley of Bowser 3 where he briefly lost flight. One cool new
level approach was in Valley Fort towards the very beginning where you can move forward
earlier while preserving your flight speed, it looks quite scary. Anyways, the great middle
stretch of the run was enough for a 1:21:33.
Hold onto your horses! Cause 2021
isn’t completely over yet! In fact, it was maiba’s turn to shine once again!
He was still grinding 96 and only three days after oosui on December 30th had a successful attempt.
His run has an interesting mix of strategies such as opting out of Raft Skip in Vanilla Dome 3,
and in Forest of Illusion 1 getting a quicker Yoshi grab by spawning two Yoshies at once. In
this run it causes a funny visual glitch where Yoshi doesn’t have wings when using a blue shell.
His one huge timeloss here was in Cookie Mountain where he accidentally took damage during
the boss kill. He was able to improv the end and quickly grabbed a cape in the process.
Using similar strategies as oosui such as the newest Valley Fort approach, it led to a 1:21:26,
now being closer to the next minute barrier. At this point Maiba and Oosui became rivals
amongst multiple of the top categories, and like any rivalry - this
would very much continue. Not too far in the year, oosui was
comfortably sitting in first in both All Castles and No Starworld, but the one he
had been missing for over a month now? 96. At this point you may wonder where we even
go. Sure you can just keep overly optimizing individual levels, but that can only do
so much. Fortunately for you, YES you, the viewer - something new was in the works. Remember when sandbar clip in Valley of Bowser 2
started to be used way back when? What if there was even more to it? For quite a while people
knew that when duplicating this wing block you could get a key - and what if I told you that
this one thing would lead to more timesave? For years people already knew that you could
use this key to clip into the sandbar section. This was mostly messed with as small mario
since sandbar clip is impossible in that case normally. Besides that, no one took the
time to seriously investigate if using a key could actually save time - until now.
I should note that this entire time it was known that you could clip through the
sandbar in this room three times, but the sheer difficulty of it in a full run setting
scared off runners from trying it. Oh yeah, on top of this it allows you to clip through
the ceiling in the following room as well, which allows you to access the keyhole
section immediately. This was immediately dubbed “nibna clip” which seems to stem
from a name in the Japanese community. Players immediately were seeing way higher
consistency with clipping when grabbing a shell to duplicate a key. One player
taking advantage of this was oosui, and I think you can see where this is going. Not too far into 2022 on February 21st, he had
a run that very quickly was able to stay ahead of Maiba thanks to cleaning up mistakes
such as taking damage in Cookie Mountain. He did have some slight hiccups such as the world
2 clip, but jeez the rest of this run was really clean. He virtually tied his best ever World 5
segment, and I think you can imagine how World 7 looked now. He used the new nibnaclip trick
which led to him pulling even further ahead than he already was. This not only resulted
in oosui’s best ever World 7 by 4 seconds, but gave him a 9 second world record
improvement, ending with a 1:21:17. It’s crazy that 8 years after sandbar
clip was first used to get the first 1:23, it’d get completely restructured with a low 1:21. With what feels like a flawless second half of
the run, this time was very strong. In fact, it was strong enough to stay the record for
the rest of 2022. It’s important to note that the top of the leaderboard in general became
pretty dormant at this time. If you wanted to see any new times after oosui’s record
this year, you had to hop out of the top 10. I can tell you this was quite the opposite
case for many of the other main categories with oosui improving the records in All
Castles, No Starworld, and additionally now Lunar Dragon which I mentioned before
as being the lesser played variant of 96. So 2022 is over and we still have the same
exact time sitting here…so where next? Well, as of the making of this - I fortunately
still have one more time to talk about. It may have taken 13 months, but on March 26th,
2023 oosui returned with a new 96 time once more. Out of World 3 he pulled ahead of his
record and was able to maintain this lead. Having a way cleaner Gnarly and
Tubular this time around majorly helped, and out of special was on a
pace creeping towards a 1:20. He kept this amazing pace all the
way till Forest where unfortunately he spent 4 attempts trying to get wings,
which unfortunately cost a ton of time. Nonetheless his lead was huge enough before that
he was able to stay on record pace either way. From this point forward he really pulled
the run together. He even got his fastest World 6 segment here by a slim margin. Exiting
Larry he gained about a second of time save, and the main thing at this point
was executing the new nibna clip, squeezing through the fort, and demolishing
Bowser. Doing all of this concluded with a 1:21:10, still a giant improvement
considering how tight the run was getting. While writing this, this is
where the record sits…which leads to the question: Where do we go from here? Well, if you take a peek at oosui’s splits you can
clearly see that a 1:20 is more than possible. In fact if he had broken even on his Forest split,
it would’ve been just enough to get a 1:20:59. Besides just optimizing simple
movement from level to level, this game over the years has kept on giving
in the form of glitches. In fact there are a ton of tricks that humans have already
done, but have been deemed not worth it in runs yet for one reason or another.
The main reason being its difficulty. The first of those tricks I immediately think of
is Forest Ghost House Clip. By dropping a cape feather, jumping into an eerie to shrink, and
then turning around and jumping with p-speed, you can collect this cape against the wall
and do what is an “upward corner clip”. I just described this in a very simplified
way, and it should be very obvious why this hasn’t been done in runs. Besides it being very
precise, the route would have to change in one way or another due to the powerup usage here.
With this level having two exits, this can be executed twice and can save you well in the 10-20
second range. This is a big enough timesave that people since the very beginning have debated not
if, but when this will be added. A cool tidbit I want to throw in is that our friend from earlier
linkdead was the first to do this in real time! If you want a trick that has already comfortably
been done in top level runs, then I can also touch upon Valley of Bowser 1 wings. Oosui did this
in a no reset run a week before his last record. I think I’ll just let the footage explain how
ridiculous this trick is for being so late into the run. This trick is very realistic in potential
future runs, since Maiba during the scripting of this video set a new No Starworld record
using this. This can save you over 10 seconds. There are some other potential spots to throw
wings into runs as well such as Star World 3, which may not be as significant as
the previously mentioned tricks, but are very possible to add down the road. I could probably keep going on and
on about potential future strategies, but the last currently plausible one
I will briefly mention is in Chocolate Island 2. The normal exit requires you to
wait for the in-game timer to go below 250 in order to enter the room that leads you to
the goal tape. This leads to a lot of waiting. Instead, what if you spawn a message block that
activates the switch palace event? To get the most time-save out of this you have to reset the
console so that the message immediately ends the level, but even if not doing that it still
can save a ton of time due to how much you normally have to wait in the level anyways.
Interestingly this can only be done on the Japanese version as this will softlock
without resetting on the American cart. IsoFrieze, who is the person that has
experimented the most with this in real time, has stated that the no reset version of
this can still save you around 20 seconds. Like many things, there is a
whole technical side to this, and I’ll keep it to people like
him to explain it accurately. Over the last two decades, this one specific
run of one of the best games of all time has dramatically been transformed many many times.
For context of how far we have come, the first record with video proof we
mentioned from Gamecube doesn’t even crack the top 100 anymore. To pile onto that,
menboo’s last best time isn’t in the top 30, the first ever sandbar clip run has been pushed
out of the top 25, and the first ever 1:22 times can’t even get you top 15 now. These times will
only get pushed lower and lower down the boards. What really has constantly drawn me into
the category over the years is how dynamic it is. Whether you’re going for a top time or just
simply trying to finish a run, you get to pick the strategies you want to go for. With the constant
discovery of new strategies these options continue to grow, and I really encourage you, even if
just casually, to sit down and beat all 96 exits in one sitting. It is a rewarding challenge
that I suggest everyone should do at least once. This was the history of what I consider to
be Super Mario World’s most exciting run. Thank you so much for watching.
