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A Gamer Just Beat SUPER MARIO BROS. Faster than Anybody Ever Has

What makes the classic games classic is their insane levels of replayability, and it’s for that reason that players today are still striving to push these titles to their limits (exhibit A: the Easter egg in Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! that was just discovered, nearly 30 years after the game’s release). The 1985 NES title Super Mario Bros. is the most obvious vintage game that people are still button-pressing through today and Kotaku points out that just yesterday, a gamer broke new ground by beating the game faster than anybody ever has.

During a livestream, a gamer who goes by darbian challenged himself to beat the entire game faster than a time that seems impossible for casual gamers: 4:57.42 (speedrun.com lists the previous world record as 4:57.693). In less time than it might take somebody to get a 31-year-old NES cartridge working on their dusty console, darbian went ahead and blasted through all 32 levels of the game.

But of course, we know that’s not true, because he obviously used the Warp Zones in World 1-2 and World 4-2 to skip a large chunk of the quest. Although there are a few moments throughout his run where it looks like darbian made the slightest of missteps, his precision is near-robotic, which at this point, considering how many times this feat has been attempted, is the kind of exactness he needed every move to have.

In the end, he posted a time of 4:57.260.

So what’s next for darbian? According to him, not much: In the video description, he wrote, “I have reached my potential in this category – I’m done! My quest is over.” Now that the king has retired, let’s practice up and see if we can’t get a sub-4:57 run going.

Watch Mario get down in Super Smash Bros. on Nerdist:Play

Featured Image: Nintendo

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