I’m not one to care too much for speed runs in games – while there are ardent followers of these record attempts, I find them an interesting curiosity at best. That being said, the ways in which players figure out nuances of the games in order to shave off fractions of seconds and achieve new records does interest me, since when these speed runs are broken down into individual elements it allows me to understand more how some of my favorite games actually work!
In this case, we’re taking a look at a video YouTube user Bismuth produced explaining how “Kosmic” got his current 4:56.462 world record speed run in Super Mario Bros. It’s amazing to see things broken down in to-the-screen-frame timing, and how the very time you even start the game can set up events much later which you need to trigger even more strange glitches.
It’s all rather amazing, and while there are a few elements about this video (like the “bus” analogy which seems more confusing to me than it should be) that I don’t like, overall it’s more than solid enough to share here.
Enjoy!