The Most Frustrating Super Mario World Speedrun History

Super Mario World all cut to the chase there's a lot of ways to explore and beat this game I've already covered some of the shortest and longest completions of this 16-bit Mario experience but that still only scratches the surface of the things you can do in this title to make gameplay easier to manage both casually and competitively Mario Platformers have been known to have a consistent set of powerups such as mushrooms and fire flowers with Super Mario World also introducing the Cape Feather some of the videos I just mentioned already touch upon the harder challenge of not grabbing a cape but what if we took it one step further over the years people have endured the challenge of trying to beat the game as fast as possible with zero powerups which means no capes no flowers no mushrooms no Yoshi this category is called Low percent sorry low percent small only I guess actually small only yeah the name of the fastest completion of Super Mario World Without powerups has had quite a unique and very split history this has had dire consequences for their run as a whole with the biggest notably being a handful of Records being completely deleted you may wonder why something as silly as a name of a speedrun category would even be controversial at all and it's quite a bit of a heated story in fact this run as a whole has so much to explore so strap yourself down because today let's talk about the entire history of small only low percent or whatever the heck people want to call it now to start the story let's rewind back to 2005 pretty much every form of modern social media was get to be made heck YouTube itself was getting its start around this time due to this most communities tended to gather around online forms and speedr running was very much a perfect example of this for a handful of years at this point there was already Twin Galaxies which kept track of General gaming high scores but speed Demo's archive would also come along and had a greater emphasis on specifically the slowly but surely growing speedrun community thanks to sites like these we know that Super Mario World had two notable speedrun categories by 2005 the first was simply a fastest segment completion of the game at the time Scott Kesler was the only person to document any runs sporting a low 11-minute time in 2004 eventually this would be dubbed any percent and nowadays would be labeled as 11 exit referring to the fastest intended route to get to Bowser the second was 96 exit which is beating every single normal and secret exit in the game the first ever documented run of this was a 1 and 1/2 hour time by GameCube 04 at the very beginning of 2005 these two runs are great and all but what if we look at modern Super Mario World looking at the leaderboard there's clearly more than just two main categories well most of these others were not established till later years small only is a third category out of this batch that started back in 2005 most people may not realize how far this run goes back but thanks to speed Demo's archive we were able to dive into the earliest Origins of what is now today called small only on August 12th 2005 user Jim's friend made a post asking I've been playing Super Mario World a lot recently as well as watching Speed videos and Tool assisted time attacks and was just wondering if a separate category would be allowed for beating the game small he immediately pointed out that such a run would have to have a different route in comparison to the already existing fastest completion of the time which for those not familiar goes as follows in World 2 you have to make your way to Star World thanks to two secret exits in the levels of donut secret 1 and donut secret house from here you need to beat the secret levels of each Star World level up to the fourth one and from there gives you a warp leading to Bowser's front door so why would a run with zero powerups need a route adjustment well because of Star World 1 not being possible to clear thanks to the level being full of yellow spin blocks unfortunately small Mario cannot break these this means that the next best option was going up to World 3 where you can then take the second Star War which skips Star World 1 Jim also shared that he was relying on a few Yoshis to beat multiple levels that look to be impossible without such Donut Plains 1 vanilla doome 1 and starw 4 all of these have secret exit key areas that are tricky to access without a Cape Feather on top of this the possibility of using different colored switch palaces came into play when pressing these corresponding colored blocks will become active which makes tons of levels easier between extra powerups and allowing easier access to different secrets with this second Factor being the most important here with this being Ground Zero for planning out such a run there were so many proposed routes within a certain period of time but by the end of the same day it seemed like there was a clear route to try and Tackle this it was eventually pieced together that Yoshi wasn't needed at all with the plan instead to use the green red and then blue switch palaces this meant taking a slight detour in World 2 for green taking the right path in World 3 to get red switch which would then take you to force of Illusion to pick up the final switch to the bunch blue doing this Jim then mentions going all the way back to vanilla secret 1 with Blue switches making the secret exit really feasible of a spring from here the only other major concern Star World 4 can easily be accessed with switches making a platform next to the key when everything was said and done this route was estimated to be around 33 exits three times what it took with a cape fortunately the amount of required exits rapidly went down with Jim only 2 Days Later coming back to say that the blue switch in Forest wasn't needed anymore he discovered that he didn't need this colored switch for vanilla secret 1 due to him quote unquote figuring out a trick that will save tons of time while he may not have footage to accompany what he discovered on the forums nowadays it is pretty easy to piece together that he found a way to reach the pipe with only the springboard and with that the Run was now down to only 20 exits with there being so much work to piece together such a run this form post steadily got more and more attention and within the first week a decent set of eyes were year to see how this developed things did suddenly go quiet for a month but then in the middle of September things revved up once again Jim came back on the 17th and said after much trial and error and trying over and over to find faster ways to beat the levels I believe it is possible to beat it without getting any switch palaces I have not actually successfully completed two levels without the switch Palace but I believe it is possible and we'll keep trying to do it these two levels were the secrets for vanilla dome 1 and starbolt 4 we see at the end of this same post that he came back and edited it sharing that vanilla d 1 very soon after was cracked this was thanks to figuring out that Buzzy beetles here could help assist to gain height well there is zero footage from the time we now know that the strategy he was eventually able to piece together for runs looked like this using one Buzzy Beetle to bounce off of and a second to jump off of midair by this point there was also a second notable person that was helping to assist Jim's friend soos both him and Jim were mostly at this point trying to crack star 4 and you can see that Jim had initially lost hope with what was known at the time there was also an eagerness to try and beat the secret of donut BLS one small only because this would allow you to avoid the long dut Planes 2 Auto scroller level while Star World 4 was still being pieced together over the following months in November Jim pursued further with trying to make this run a reality and on the 17th had some really exciting news to share he finished a run that was just over 20 minutes long a 2049 to be exact unfortunately at the time it seems like Jim did not properly record and upload footage with this still being 2006 obviously there was less options to do such to really truly contextualize the ERA this story takes place in we can see previous posts in this thread discussing what vcr and tapes would be appropriate for recording such a run even with a lack of footage this is still the very first ever documented time in beating Super Mario World Without a single power up at the very least we know that this run had a death that costs around 20 seconds and donut plings 3 also Jim still needed switch Palace blocks to get through starw 4 so no matter what this time could definitely go down a significant amount based on what may be possible fortunately it would not take that much longer to figure out because on January 18th of 2006 new discoveries would completely change this run going forward by this point feian a person who made Super Mario World 2 assisted speedruns in the 2000s started contributing towards the fight of solving starw 4 he originally found a tricky way to beat the level with a jump off Yoshi but later that day it would go an extra step further after having unsuccessful attempts at beating the level without Yoshi he publicly complained about his frustrations and surprisingly quickly another tool assister jxq uploaded a file that held something really important this file is a smmv which is used to playback recorded inputs in the emulator snes9x while such files can still be very useful today for piecing together a tool assisted speedrun back in the mid 2000s this was the easiest way to share gameplay discoveries as the overall internet and specifically video sites such as YouTube were still really Limited in how easy it was to share and record footage so what is this file well after finding a compatible version of the emulator from the mid-2000s I was finally able to play it for myself let's fire it up [Music] yep Star World 4 was finally found to be completely possible with zero switches and zero Yoshi's by making this red Koopa fall out of his shell and walk into an empty green shell you can time walking off the platform with the falling Koopa and get just enough height from bouncing to reach the platform slowing this down you can see how close Mario is to not even reaching said platform having a red shell in hand the key can be accessed well it may seemingly not be the easiest strategy in the world this was an amazing feat the thought to be impossible was now possible and if you thought that was impressive this jxq person was on a roll because only 3 days later he cracked open another major Discovery this time and Donut Plains one using super Koopas and a shell to jump off of midair this was now another success free previously thought to be impossible small only secret exit with all of these discoveries the total required exit count for small only shrunk down to 15 exits within a month Jim was able to execute both of these tricks in real time dlan's one became consistent for him and was still putting in the work to get used to the tricky star for with these tricks being feasible now Jim estimated that once properly putting this run together the time could get as low as somewhere in the 15 to 18 minute range due to being in school at the time Jim Over The Following few months would have very limited time to push forward with his small only endeavors but every so often would give a further glimpse into his work in early June he would make a post stating all of the best in-game times he got in each level so far and the most interesting thing to note here is that he hadn't been able to successfully get past starw 4 in a run yet with his time still not being the most ideal over the following months he would continue to put in as much effort as he could and only a month later on July 25th made another huge announcement he was finally able to finish a run with the star world 4 Discovery his final time was a 1539 a roughly 5minute Improvement versus what he had been able to do the year previously this run also had a death this time in Castle 2 featuring Morton but either way this run was huge sadly though we still have zero video proof from Jim the video was not posted at the time but it's immediately clear he did record this due to him saying we'll Ed it back with details after I finish watching it while things once again did quiet down a lot for a handful of months Jim very swiftly returned once again entering the New Year many people were eager to hear from Jim once more to see if anything new had occurred and on February 27th 2007 Jim returned with this a link to a Google video and uh-oh yeah this isn't available anymore thanks to where this is hosted not to be confused with YouTube Google launched a completely separate video service Google video that predates their YouTube acquisition by a solid year with YouTube being such a hit uploads on this older platform season 20 9 and due to this the service became completely inaccessible a few years later fortunately though only 3 months later this was uploaded to archive.org in quote unquote higher quality and it's still easily viewable today while this was posted in early 2007 this footage is the exact same run that Jim wrote up in 2006 this is the first time such a run has had video proof attached to it how do I know this well this run is actually a 1556 which may not make sense Jim said he got 1539 in 2006 but Jim timed this run completely differently versus how everyone does it nowadays Jim started timing the second he gained control on the Overworld map but runs now start timing the frame Mario appears in the intro if I time this video using gims notes from 2006 I get a 1539 exactly what he said on top of this we can reference his mistakes in the Run such as dorsy missed and even more telling that death and Morton all of these comments match up perfectly to the point that it is not a coincidence and no matter what this is 100% the same run well I'm very positive that certain people in the community have already realized that this run is actually from 2006 this run for ages now has been labeled as being said in 2007 what's funny is that the date of this run on speed.com wasn't even listed as the archive.org upload date but the date of a random comment someone made under it with me being the first person to take more than 5 Seconds to piece together when this run was truly set I can confidently say that it was set in July of 2006 and as a moderator let me just fix that real quick all right I may have gotten a bit too passionate about a date about one specific run but hey someone has to solve the questions not being answered sometimes anyways for the first time we get to properly in real time see someone do the strategies that previously were only done in emulator movie files it's crazy to think that about a year prior these things were not fully thought to be possible at least by a human on real Hardware besides seeing the donut PLS 1 and Star World 4 tricks already mentioned we also finally get an insight into what Jim was doing in other levels throughout the run with him being able to access donut secret one he uses the drive room to skip having to swim through part of the level and in donut ghost house does a quick midair left right to immediately spin jump on a boo while preserving PE speed things continue to be really impressive in Donut Plains 3 at the beginning he immediately goes left and then right to gain PE speed and not too long after grabs a blue shell he uses the shell to perform a jump off of it which is done by throwing it against an onoff switch which this is immediately followed up with another Left Right movement to bounce off a Koopa the level after this Dona Plains four grabs onto a yellow shell which is used to swiftly run into a hammer bro at the end while Jim did die to a flimp and Morton his second attempt is mostly solid and shows that he grabs a springboard and bounces off a dry bones to keep it this is used to jump off in order to reach the MN boss door we can now finally see what he was doing for vanilla dome 1 except he actually messed it up he accidentally broke both shells by putting them into one another and had to grab a red shell to get up to the vine he spawned but no secret one goes way smoother and does a midair spring bounce to clear the pipe Star World 2 isn't anything that special just simply keep swimming but the next two levels have a bit more Star World 3 needs you to hop onto the litu cloud to Flo up to the key Jim achieves this by immediately grabbing a throw block to kill aitu the final Star World level Star World 4 is where we finally get to witness what was being discussed for a really long time previously he was able to closely follow what the emulator movie had previously done and this was debatably the craziest strategy ever performed in a real-time Super Mario World run at that time with the previously mentioned 11 and 96 exit runs set by the time Jim uploaded this in my opinion had nothing this intense clearing this meant that all that was left was Bowser's front door for front door he firstly picked door two where he quickly jumps and cage grabs to Traverse and secondly does door five where he waits for The Crushers to go back up and then time a run under them well his dark room was kind of sloppy his bouncer fight was pretty decent at the time which resulted in the first ever small o record with video proof a really impressive feat it's crazy to think that Jim was not just initially deterred from trying to run this to begin with but also held off on posting this run for a while it's pretty easy to piece together that this stemmed from how strict speed Demo's archive was at the time instead of it simply being a leaderboard site like we know today sea instead prefer to Showcase quote unquote highlevel runs for example here's the Super Mario World page at the time very selective Jim thanks to this thought about doing a more traditional any% completion instead but it's great to see that over time cared less and less about this and simply wanted to work on and then share his amazing feat with the world Jim's run was beyond impressive at the time and there wasn't anyone that could rival him in such a run he was the leading force of beating the game with zero powerups in fact thanks to this this 2006 run would sit uncontested for the longest time entering the 2010s this run was still sitting on its own completely different Throne while this record was looking to turn 6 years old while still being on top a new leading force would completely change that the early 2010 saw a new wave of Japanese Runners that were completely destroying every world record set by Americans and one of those names was menu by the end of 2010 menu had improved the records in both 11 and 96 exit multiple times being able to keep up with Fierce competition with small only having none of that going on it was a ripe opportunity for someone in a position like meno to try and learn this run on July 12th 2012 not too long before Jim's record turned 6 years old meu uploaded a video on the Japanese platform Mano video that would finally begin the competition of lower ring small only meno's run has a mixture of tricks and minor optimizations versus Jim to start as early as world one the first is in Yoji silon 4 where he performs a midair shell jump this is done by doing a left right maneuver while dropping the shell and in this level prevents you from touching the water with this saving only around a quarter of a second some of the runs I'll be talking about later don't feature this trick but this is still a notable addition for the time the biggest Improvement in world one by far is in Iggy's Castle which overall was way cleaner than Jim while he did initially miss a door the rest of this level is a textbook standard run through of Iggy that you'll see in any average level run today scooting over to World 2 meimo and donut secret one notably avoids the pipe to enter the dry room and just swims forward every run going forward does the same with the room providing no benefit due to pipe transitions wasting time donut planes 3 here is a complete revamp with this approach immediately running right to gather PE speed and then Scrolls the screen to manipulate moving level elements the most notable of these is this brown platform rotating around an onoff switch using the platform he's able to squeeze in a jump to the second switch and the rest of the level is pretty self-explanatory donut pl's 4 is mostly the same but loses the yellow shell to a slightly earlier Hammer bro and also scolls towards the end of the level to manipulate the final bro position menu in Morton's Castle notably doesn't die here like Jim and at the end does a quicker jump off the spring by flicking it towards the left wall pushing into world three a single Buzzy shell strategy is used in vanilla dome 1 versus Jim's previous two shell which he had to back up meno instead grabs a beetle above the ending yellow blocks here and immediately hits this Vine with it he then briefly Waits and is then able to directly jump off the Buzzy Beetle this is done by timing a jump when The Buzz beetle starts to shake which if Done Right allows Mario to immediately jump off the beetle once it awakes and leaves Mario's grasp this jump is cleared by continuing to hold down a jump input for maximum height entering vanilla secret 1 this features meno's first really notable mistake going for the springboard jump to clear the pipe he missed the spring and got it second try these minor mistakes continue in the Star World specifically starw 3 failing multiple times to kill litu in order to access his Cloud he finally achieves this with a baby yoshian hand which he uses to open the key block Star World 4 is get another level with an overhaul one immediate difference is choosing to jump off Koopas at the beginning most notably is this one blue Koopa with this causing multiple red Koopas to despawn here while this ises not save or lose time it does make this one jump easier which is something different Runners from this point forward would adopt the more notable difference here is the actual trick performed to reach the keyhole meu first hits and flicks this red Koopa in order to activate the key block which we can then confirm happens through an audio CU secondly he goes far enough left so that when he goes back right the Koopa will respawn he does the same thing once again but this time he performs a jump and Screen scroll that when time properly will allow you to jump off the shell midair to reach the keyhole the reason for the scroll is so the shell doesn't despawn which allows it to shoot back to the right to jump on with front door being pretty much the same the final difference here is in the Bowser fight you'll notice in Phase One meno intentionally Only Hits Bowser once and then waits for a second Koopa to drop before hitting it for a second time this is because he is setting up for a trick called ball skip but hitting Bowser after he stops to throw a ball out but doing it before he actually gets to throw it you can completely skip having Bowser throw one of these this skip can vary in how much it saves depending on how much you want to optimize the fight itself but this fact doesn't matter too much here considering at the end of phase 2 he burns through a Koopa which leads to a slower fight than Jim either way he ended with a nearly 22nd Improvement in 1537 Not only was this a very notable Improvement to the record but was now finally the second person to brag about such a feat by the end of the year there is documentation of at least two other people that were able to successfully tackle this category but neither could compete with the two that I've already spoken about I suppose that's not too shocking with how hard the category goal was to begin with but either way eventually someone else would step up the third name I'd like to talk about is lemongrass yet another Japanese runner from from the early 2010s that can't be ignored well this player may have not been as much of a leading Force as meno by 2013 it was hard to ignore towards the end of 2012 he showed off one video of a comparison in vanilla 1 but entering February of the next year Lemon Grass also put up their own run on the fourth this takes many leads from meno but perfects it a bit more for example in Dona PL 3 where he does more consistent movement which allows him to finish one ingame second faster the Run was far from perfect though with him briefly struggling and a ghost house but also more notably it took three separate tries to land the spring jump in vanilla secret 1 at least he did this cool shell jump towards the beginning unlike meno Lemon Grass at least was able to get through starall 3 a lot quicker with him using a throw block to activate the key from here the only main difference in strategies is opting to go below the tricky Koopas in starw World 4 but then also going for the same shell jump strategy to the keyhole in Bowser lemongrass also rectifies meu's previous mistake in regards to Bowser throws this run achieves ball Skip and misses zero throws ultimately achieving a 1529 an 8sec record with Meo losing his record at small only that wasn't the only record in recent times he had lost if we look over at 96 exit he had first achieved the record in 2010 but towards the end of 2012 there was a very rapid shift meet tram 55 someone who would have a complete grasp over Super Mario World in the early 2010s by this point in time he had not only just conquered 9 6 exit but also briefly had an 11 exit record too pushing into 2013 he would pursue 96 further ultimately pushing himself ahead of meno by well over a minute on his YouTube channel he would periodically not just post personal best times but also individual level strategies but those were all of powerups further into the gear he would pivot into trying small only himself with him being able to put up a 1549 run in August what's crazy is that in World 2 of this run he had a death that cost him close to 30 seconds which means that he was more than capable to compete with meno and lemongrass in the following month of September he would highlight yet another major piece of progress in the category and this was a huge time cut ending in a 1530 not only did this beat the time of his rival in '96 but was also only 1 second away from the record what's especially shocking is that while he was only 1 second away from lemongrass he had yet another death in World 2 in this run all dram really had to do at this point was have a deathless run and the throne was his following this run he was pretty busy chipping away at things over the following week a couple days later he would post a brief tutorial for people interested in running the category and then if we fast forward another 2 days a 1510 yet another world record for Dram to brag about with it being a huge 19 second time cut this run was far from perfect but he finally did what he needed to simply not die that doesn't mean he didn't bring anything new to the table though cuz in donut planes 1 instead of using the Koopa as a shell jump dream instead did a midair shell jump in a similar vein to Yoshi's Island 4 on top of this in donut PLS 4 he notably did a simple Left Right Movement at the end of the level to avoid the hammer Breo instead of the scroll used by the competition his most notable Mistake by far was accidentally throwing the Buzzy Beetle away in vanilla dome 1 which required grabbing a second one as a quick backup overall though this one was really clean for example in the following level he got the springboard jump right away no issue with dram setting a major Improvement to the record but still having visible room for improvement he continued to grind things out even further in fact we really don't even need to go that far to reach the next step of the story because within a week of the new record Another promising run was already Brewing he was going for a cleaner version of The Run he had just set with him most notably correcting what he did in vanilla dome 1 he was also going for a different approach in Bowser's front door this time going for door s instead of door five door 7 is technically faster but the time save that you can get out of this is so minimal and is generally not worth the risk considering all the enemies that can in the run with how unoptimized this run still was it's a surprise to see him go for this but either way he made it into Bowser and by the end was able to brag about yet another new achievement a 1504 while this was a new impressive feat on top of what he already did there was still a greater goal that was tempting him iguana is sub 15 possible if you go balls out like as fast as possible maybe that's the best I could say he was really really close to breaking a major Milestone a time under 15 minutes over the following months he would mix around a variety of related Mario World runs such as trying the category no keep no star world and tackling the infamous kaiso Mario World but small only was still calling his name this takes us into 2014 Fey worry specifically in between his quests to conquer kaiso he was still practicing to see if he could crack the 15minute barrier and needless to say he was more than ready to do this I don't have much going on [Music] but um [Music] he [Music] [Music] a 1458 no matter what this run is not just remarkable on its own but it's also on an entirely different level considering the time it was set doing all the research for this video I seriously think that this is one of the most Monumental records in all of Super Mario World speedrunning the most notable addition to this run is in vanilla dome 1 where you'll see him keep the Buzzy Beetle from the very beginning and use it to immediately reach the key a strategy that you'll see stay for runs going forward want to know an even crazier thing about this entire run dram himself beat this only 2 months later he still wasn't done and in April returned once more straight away you could tell how serious he was about pushing this with him in the first room of ig's Castle being able to squeeze out an extra in-game second thanks to fast cage crabs and releases he follows this with a clean world two split and from here on there's nothing that out of the ordinary sure he did have a couple really tiny hiccups such as missing door two and Bowser but overall he really kept himself together here and thanks to this popped out a 1456 a 2cond improvement over an already Monumental run with dram completely annihilating every other previous small only player it's not a shock to see him comfortably set at the top even if his other records would steadily get taken away in fact both 2014 and 2015 went by and while at this point there was now at least eight people with a 15-minute time or better the sub 15minute time still set at number one and it wasn't even close over the next couple months entering 2016 the small only board may have slightly shifted but to really piece together what would happen next we would need to look at a different leaderboard I specifically want to look at no cape no Star World a run with a pretty self-explanatory goal at the end of February this board saw a new firsttime record holder in the game kco kco very quickly would rapidly improve his skills in the game further and further and pretty soon would become a no Kate master in the game well he notably would go on to dominate other categories including one of previously already covered he also started attacking small only two he had already been putting a ton of work in and on March 20th highlighted his first properly documented personal best a 1559 over the following week he would easily squash this with him one day later getting a major time cut of 1506 with him improving by another 4 seconds only 3 days later it was pretty apparent what Kelco was trying to achieve here to make it fully clear he slapped Ram's record right on his stream layout which completely spelled out that he wanted the record for himself watching his runs calco was going for the same arsenal of strats as dram so besides cleaning up minor hiccups what else did he have up his sleeve well let's skip over to starw 4 in this level he decides to immediately grab a red Yoshi which he uses to clear the end of the level he hits the Red Shell tosses Yoshi up and grabs the shell he then flicks the shell forward which bounces off the key block off screen he does the same kind of scroll as before and then boom all he has to do now is throw Baby Yoshi to get the key kco ultimately saves two in-game seconds here over dram the only other notable difference after this is him once again opting for door 5 versus drams door 7 but I've already discussed how insignificant this is that didn't matter with a clean run this was enough to give him just enough of an edge to shine even further to throning tram with a 1455 a 1second improvement with a new face to the top of the board comes a completely new chapter of this category and now if I were to go forward with the story simply based on what's documented on the leaderboards you may think wow CCO improved this on his own a lot but that's far from the truth he actually had back and forth competition the entire time and his name was Pogo so why is there nothing to be seen from this competition well it's time for a story within a story typical speedrun naming schemes is one thing that over the years has less and less meshed well was specifically the Super Mario World Community you see a lot of traditional speedrun categories are named with the goal of completing some percentage of the game any percent 100% or for today's specific topic low percent these may work in game games like super metroid but when trying to translate to other games such as Super Mario World these really don't mesh too well going down the list any percent became more and more confusing as players found faster and faster ways to break the game all the way to the point of being able to warp to the credits from the very first level this conus there to be two different categories that were considered any percent and pretty quickly the community came up with a pretty good solution to this naming the categories after how many level exits you complete since the traditional any% category took 11 exits to beat after some debate it was renamed to 11 exit and the fastest credit SP method simply got dubed zero exit with Super Mario world's 100% completion for a long time now already being labeled 96 exit this change made quite a lot of sense even the American box art brags about there being 96 levels but then you get to low percent what is this low percent stands for lowest percentage which can easily apply to runs that include percent counters of some kind but Super Mario World doesn't work that way sure the Run know his low percent simply became beating the game as quickly as possible without any powerups but what really is the lowest percentage in Super Mario World does this also mean the lowest in-game score coin count or how many enemies you hit by the mid-2010s we can already easily observe that there was a variance in what people called the run at hand today well yes the leader boards used in the early to mid-20s did label this category as low percent tons of other people were already labeling this as just small only a more accur description of the run some people even used a middle ground by saying low percent small only to make it clear what they were talking about well this em most definitely been brought up previously by 2016 over and over again you can see documented discussions in the Super Mario World Discord that were rapidly going back and forth on arguing what this power up was run should have been this would continue periodically for months and would drag into 2017 by this point there were so many suggestions for new names for the category both serious ones such as 15 exits small only and more on the sillier ends such as small percent well back and forth debates repeatedly happened for quite a while they really didn't get that heated at least not until February with this naming discussion reigniting once again things got pretty ugly quickly in the Discord I would dub this period of time as the smw small category war between and including the days of February 9th and February 15th 2017 a lot and I mean a lot happened to to summarize this let me run you through a water down reenactment of what happened that day warning due to the complexity and sensitivity of everything that went on during this time this is very heavily generalized and summarized for the sake of time and respect for everyone involved also if I seem to get progressively more frustrated from this point forward you're correct and you'll see why pretty soon all right I'm sick of these reoccurring discussions I quite honestly don't care what it's renamed to but can we just change it already cuz people keep clearly asking I don't think it should even though I've never ran the category in my life and I never will which means my opinion doesn't matter in the slightest even though I think it should cuz I'm good at a completely different category in this game I mean I'm not one to fully talk either but shouldn't we at least let modern Runners decide what to call it the name literally came from players in the early 2000s who took the term from games where it made more sense to use this term I don't think we should rename it if if you're an actual speedrunner you should just understand what it implies it's what it's called who cares if skilled players in the category unlike me want it changed well we clearly should at least look into changing it have a proper vote maybe we already had to do some renaming with the split of 011 exit for any percent runs why don't we just listen to the current world record holder P he would the a to stay who cares about anyone else it's the name we've been using for years and I don't know why so many people disagree with me I'm going to start repeatedly saying a word that I should be slinging around and won't be put in this video cuz I am upset that not everyone is just like me oh okay with that logic since I currently have the world record in another category I declare a really outlandish new name for it I have the record I guess I matter the most I don't know and frankly I don't care y'all need to figure this out why are we swinging around percent signs for a game that doesn't use percentages I don't have a proper say or care in this I'm more just speaking up for those who do for the sake of time let's speed this up after much bickering the Category 3 Days Later was suddenly changed to small only also why am I Australian good day mate or whatever I am supposed to say a who change it I'm still angry so I'm just going to believe M we going want for zero reason wasn't me real mature this was the worst possible way to handle this why we should change this back and need to actually discuss things with one another the damage is already done my friend let's talk this out before changing things a second time screw this I'm leaving stepping down and not playing this game ever again I know my opinion is more popular it's not but ignore the fact that this threat is meaningless and I am very easily replaceable by someone that is more relevant in the game I'm on your side of keeping this old name but come on man you're really acting immature we need to talk about this we can't change what individuals in the community do people can call things whatever they want we are simply only discussing how the leader will be labeled as and going over the pros and cons I talked to the record holder and he is threatening to remove everything if you don't keep it as low per. again I'm trying my best to be on your side here but who the hell cares we are going to bow down to one person no matter how good at the game he is so much bickering ensues over the next 2 hours I'm not diving into all of this let us fast forward to when things finally settled also shrimp on the barbie all right I guess we found a compromise low% small only not the most perfect thing in the world but it acknowledges both main sides of the argument uh but what about Pogo he wiped all of his runs wait what oh Anonymous this Runner has been asked to not be named a video of This Record existed and was verified well yeah not the most ideal outcome from this entire situation poo self selfishly erase his entire history in the game and most importantly here all six of his records that he would achieve between 2016 and 2017 and the moderators at least the ones that didn't leave and throw a hissy fit scrambled to do what they could to address that he completely shot the documented world record history of this run in the foot just because God forbid the labeling of the category changed have I repeatedly in the last few minutes been throwing Jabs at people in the community uh yes do I care not really why is that cuz when you're either a throwing around repeated text temper tantrums or B threaten to destroy the entire Rich history of a speedrun goal over something you don't fully have a say over then I frankly don't really give a did I just give my unfiltered opinion for once whoops now that I got all that over let's rewind back to March 2016 this is when Kos hit the 1455 that I've already talked about but where do we go from here well we sure as heck can't scroll through the leaderboard that makes my job a bit harder but what if I told you that I still have a completely accurate piece together history of the Run still I'm not going to let one person get in the way thanks to the Super Mario World Discord once again I scrolled and scrolled through tons of conversations and fortunately every single time Pogo got record someone mentioned it and most of the time even screenshotted it thanks to the server I was able to piece together the times and days pogu said all of his now deleted records due to a lack of information this section of the history will be a little more rapid fire compared to the rest but anyways the first I was able to locate was a 1454 set on May 1st 2016 we can confirm that this time was specifically a 14548 thanks to calco putting it on his stream layout while trying to beat it back this takes us to calco once again going for door 7 this time he has a slightly faster overall front door segment thanks to this and was able to get the record back pretty quickly on May 11th with a 14527 bouncing back to pgo he was able to get a 1452 on July 6 this PE calco by around 700 milliseconds being very close to a 1451 one different strategy we do know about this run thanks to messages is that in donut secret 1 he scrolled midlevel to manipulate waking up fish earlier and also messed with new things in Star 4 but of course we have no footage to back this up we then know that on August 20th 2016 he finally did get a 1451 just barely with a 1451 1.92 calco bit back with a 14505 on the 31st with this run strategy is having a decent overhaul in Nikki we can see him go for a quicker strategy called under ball where he is able to swiftly jump under the poo in room one and then in donut secret one we see him do what Pogo presumably did in his last couple of runs before heading to star world he takes a slightly different approach to maintaining the Buzzy beetle in vanilla dome 1 and then finally we have Star World 4 he instead goes for the Red Shell under this orange pipe and does the same baby Yoshi setup but with the shell instead he easily saved a second versus his previous year in September things quiet down quite a bit but then in October we get two new records from pagio an ultra low 1450 time on October 7th and then 14498 on October 27th these like any proper info we do know on the 27th that calco that same day got a record a 95 exit No Cap which means he was still very active in the game this led to him on November 3rd hitting back once more with a 14484 cleaning things up in general he notably had a slightly faster dark room here besides PG's records we do know that on the 16th he did beat his own time but not the record getting a 14487 the very final record Dimension before things hit the fan was on December 24th not too long before the year was over getting a 14461 it's hard to know the exact strategy used here but multiple people at the same time consider this run really close to properly a izing the category with this run being a 2 and 1/2 second improvement over calco that alone should speak to how huge this run was at the time even if it would get deleted once the dust settled from all the drama in early 2017 this 1446 Anonymous record would sit up here for about 2 months well people out of the loop kept repeatedly asking who Anonymous was and why anonimous had the record the solution to this was fortunately being worked on CCO was still hard at work trying to keep keep his dominance in no cape Super Mario World he had quite a lot to improve on considering his nowas competition beat him by so much well it's hard to know what strategies Pogo had gone for at this point we at least know what kco used to catch up to him and it would only take 2 months to do so like others at this point he was always going for the shell jump in Yoshi's Island for but it's pretty notable to see CCO finish a run with this included considering this wasn't present in some of the previous records we've been able to view with footage his biggest change by far was in Donut Plains 1 or instead of going right and then sneaking back up left to grab the key he simply is able to get to the top right away he is able to just barely cleared this with a left right wiggle well he may have had a scary moment in donut planes 4 by clipping the very ending ledge the Run was still held together when getting to Star 4 he was able to throw the shells more efficiently which allowed him to squeeze out of 262 in game time with a minor block bump in dark room all he had to do was just finish this out and that he did ending with a 14452 he not only put a proper face back up at number one but was able to defeat his redacted rival by nearly a full second a crazy feat considering the previous was already considered very clean this run was so good that this run set for a very long time in fact this would officially end up being the longest held record since Jim's recording in 2006 calco would hold on to this for the rest of the decade and even during 2020 a year where people were very understandably grunning runs more than ever five people during this time submitted their own personal best of under 15 minutes but nothing that could rival CCO so who would even be capable of rivaling such a run well to be quite honest it's Pogo but we aren't going to see more of oh my God a new run with footage that we can actually access yep Pogo after multiple years finally had a change of heart well he didn't revive what he already privated and deleted 4 years later he was still grinding out runs and came back on January 18th 2021 with a publicly published personal best and to add a cherry on top it was a new record too but just like calco Pogo by this point had some maneuvering and different strategies too he notably doesn't do the scroll and donut secret one anymore with that not really being optimal he also amazingly went for an approach to Donut points 3 that completely avoids scrolling which obviously helps avoid the game briefly pausing mid scroll if you thought you'd still see at least one screen scroll in this run then you'd be completely wrong in Star World 4 he grabs the first Koopa in the level quickly regains PE speed and is able to do a scroll as shell jump setup the most impressive Star World 4feet of them all this resulted in a new second barrier broken with a 1444 and also added up to Pogo finally wanting to partake in the leaderboards once again this run once again redefined what a world record run could look like and uh sorry Pogo in 2019 the category was quietly just changed to small only finally dropping the low percent name which people cared even less about by now this run wasn't completely perfect for example there was a struggle in igy but still this run very understandably would sit for a while just like calos with calco worrying more and more about other runs in the following years such as Yoshi's Island Pogo very happily sat here for the rest of the year but in early 2022 we would finally get really another deleted record what the yep you thought six deleted records were bad enough what about seven on February 7 2022 Akim Maro achieved a 14424 deuring Pogo by 2 and 1/2 seconds how is that even possible that is such a huge time cut and it's non-existent now thanks to Super Mario World leaderboard who is Super Mario World leaderboard well this is a generic placeholder for a runner that went by the name akimaru 88318 he had gotten really good at this category he had actually tied the record back in September of 2021 or did he left a long discussion between moderators and scrutinizing pogo's and Akim maro's video frame rate and encoding methods it was agreed that his record was actually a few frames behind just barely missing Pogo I'd love to watch that run too but it's also privated great awesome stuff when getting to 1442 his entire run history was still public up to this point but by September of 2022 he had seemingly erased his entire history without a single public reason what confuses me more is that he is still around and made a new speedrun.com account with him posting some really impressive times in New Super Mario Bros what baffles me more is that he has run Mario World since wiping all of his runs but has not uploaded any time since I know I didn't need to go down this rabbit hole but I'm just so frustrated how broken this history is thanks to not one but now two different people the only thing that will calm me down now at this point is that at the very least the rest of the history is still intact for now at least this now's seventh anonymized record set up here for another year and fortunately this time I can happily share with you proper footage of who would try and rival this the same month akimaru set this 1442 we can see that another Japanese Runner by the name nanus had already sneaked up to fourth place getting a 1445 he would continue to steadily chip away at this in March he would Bop Kelco and then by April would even Bop Pogo not just once but twice if he wasn't already close enough he would minorly improve again in July and needless to say this was a person you could not ignore at this point and it was fairly obvious what their ultimate goal was while balancing out some other Mario World runs nanus would continue to be very active in the game and kept up this activity into 2023 still having small only in his General rotation and putting in nearly 80,000 attempts at this point by April he was finally able to cook something up well he had obviously already been adopting strategies from the likes of poio to get to this point already nanus was pushing to break this to yet another level doing all all the crazy strategies mentioned so far he on top of this just had really clean gameplay I mean look at this run through Morton at the very end he doesn't hesitate at all to go for a really risky spring jump that briefly Clips Mario into the ending blocks keeping on a consistent Pace between World 2 and exiting Star World this run was very easily on a pace that would be just enough to get above aimaro keeping his nerves together through Bowser he ended with a 14423 a five frame Improvement to the previous record with akimaru clearly away from the picture at this point nanus was now in a completely separate League of his own with him being really the only person that could write the immediate future of this category's history following this in may he would repeatedly lower the record in the category no Star World small only but eventually he swung around small only once more and he had some tricks up his sleeve fast forward to October 13th he starts up a run and gets shell jump in Yoshi Island 4 something he failed to do in his record in D PLS 1 he interestingly enough went for the slower shell jump this time and then also lost PE speed in donut planes 4 so why would he continue an undesirable run well this entire time there's been a notable time save talked away in Morton let's flash back to a message from October 1st 2005 from our first friend in the story Jim's friend would wall jumping even be allowed I was thinking in the third room of Castle 2 I could wall jump off the right side wall and get up onto the first left moving platform so I don't have to wait for it to go all the way across and then come all the way back I haven't successfully done it yet but I think it should be possible and with practice it should become easy Jim was actually on to something here over the years Runners have been able to successfully pull off a ball jump at the beginning of this room in Morton but how realistic was this in a run well for the longest of times it definitely wasn't worth trying to grind because there was always easier time saves to pick and choose from but getting into 2023 those options were becoming more and more limited to come back from this run with multiple mistakes none of who say was successfully able to get a wall jump at the beginning of this room doing this he immediately jumps off the spring instead of bringing it and when finishing the level allows him to go from 2 and 1/2 seconds behind to 4 and 1/2 seconds ahead while he would have a minor mishap in vanilla dome 1 he would keep himself together for the rest of the run and because of it not only did he get a very sizable record Improvement but broke past a barrier that had been fantasized for a long time at this point a run below 1440 nus successfully got a 14396 all thanks to a strategy that have been discussed as far back as 18 years earlier someone that was born on the day of this post would have been an adult by the time this strategy was seriously used in a run that is mind-blowing oh but this story somehow gets even better what if I told you that not only did nus be his own time but did it within the exact same day of his first he had some very obvious time save to clean up which he was able to do this time around he was 2 seconds ahead leaving donut planes 4 and three leaving vanilla d one he did accidentally regrab the spring midair and vanilla secret 1 but he had great reaction time and went for a safe backup while this did cost a couple seconds he was able to keep his composure together like earlier in the day and 23 attempts later was able to scoop up yet another record this time with a 14386 as of making this video this is where the record currently stands but obviously things can still amazingly be pushed further there was the obvious hiccup in vanilla secet one and with Super Mario World being a game with hidden optimizations tucked in each level even if only individual frames it see to say that whether it takes a month or multiple years this will eventually get lowered once more going from Jim's friend to the frustrating era of kco and Pago and then to the eventual reign of nanus this category is one of the most fascinating and underrated achievements in Mario speedrunning with this having so much history packed over the span of 20 years select players to this very day are still dedicated to chipping this time down second by second and as it gets optimized millisecond by millisecond well this may have been the most frustrating Super Mario World story so far for me to piece together I am beyond happy with how well I was able to salvage everything hopefully next time we can discuss a history that isn't damaged by Petty arguments but until then thanks for watching [Music]

Channel: Storster

Views: 94,236

Keywords: storster, speedrun, gaming

Id: kA6GpqiJaX0

Length: 53min 54sec (3234 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 27 2024