It only took retro game speedrunner Blubbler 4:57.69 to beat the NES classic Super Mario Bros, and if the video below is to be believed – without Blubbler using cheats nor hacks, the aforementioned time is a fraction of a second faster than the previous Super Mario Bros. world record of 4:58.09.
To the untrained eye, the video looks legit, with Blubbler exploiting the preset enemy movements and character animation frames. In a detailed image, he explains how he managed some of the trickier feats seen in the video, like avoiding the Bullet Bills and seemingly passing through some of the plants coming out of their pipes in Worlds 1-2, 4-1, 4-2, 8-1:
“While the sprites of Mario and the plants do overlap, the hitboxes (indicated by the green rectangles) never do. The part in 4-1 is actually not even close.”
For those of you unfamiliar with the terms, “sprites” refers to the character as animated on the screen (Mario’s body, essentially), while “hitboxes” are what the game registers as the area that will come into contact with enemies, flags, and other elements within the game’s environment. This kind of thing becomes really important in fighting games, where sprite-based titles like Street Fighter II and King of Fighters are based on the smallest frames of animation, and scoring precise hits based on an almost superhuman knowledge of opposing player position.
Note that Blubbler’s time includes the copious use of warp zones – player andrewg was able to beat the game in 19:12 without using any warp zones or cheats.
8-4: How did he jump into the pipe when there was no brick there to bounce off of? He also went down pipes before the piranha plants disappeared, and that’s not usually possible.
The world record for Super Mario World on the SNES was broken by almost half a minute, just a couple of weeks ago due to a new glitch being discovered by a speedrunner. The new record is 9:59 using the star road shortcuts.
If you wanna see how the glitch works, look up “cloud glitch” for more info, or “orb glitch” for the slower method, which probably has better coverage since it was around for longer
Very well done. That being said, at 4:24/4:25 on the video, the piranha plant disappears instead of lowering slowly as it does every other time as he jumps onto the pipe to port downwards. After rewatching multiple times, I’m suspicious.
ya i noticed that and another part, in 8-4 he jumps on am invisible block. normally it has to be hit to appear.
It’s been a while since I’ve played the original Super Mario Brothers, but I’m not sure he should be able to jump through the pirana flowers like he was… I could be wrong.
yea, you can’t touch the flowers like that.
http://i.imgur.com/DpY0WaS.png
Childhood wrecked? Welcome to speedruns 😀
WHY DIDN’T HE GET ANY MUSHROOMS? GAAAAAAH!!
After watching it I see why he didn’t, but still! Gah!! Like Greg Hein said, I had so much anxiety watching this. Still was awesome though.
Watching this gave me the same anxitey i had playing it as a kid
But, this was my entire childhood. Suddenly i feel sad.