Speedrunner Beats Super Mario Bros. In Under Five Minutes, One-Handed
Super Mario Bros. has a bunch of different speedrun categories. Glitchless, with glitches, 100% completion, any% completion, hell, even blindfolded. But it turns out there's another way to challenge yourself if these just aren't hard enough for you: playing through the retro game with one hand.
Speedrunner JeremyMKW has done just that, and nabbed the world record in the spin-off category. The runner managed to get from the first level to the end of Bowser's castle in just 4 minutes, 57 seconds, all with just one hand. Despite the handicap, JeremyMKW made every precise jump, dodged every enemy, and even navigated the notoriously frustrating water level with ease. The record isn't even far from the top two-handed time, which sits at 4m 54s.
Related: We Need A New Princess Peach Game Already
As you can see in the video, it's hard to notice if being limited to one hand harms JeremyMKW's performance at all. The runner moves with ease, showing what's possible when a speedrun has been as well optimized as every category for Super Mario Bros. is.
This record beats the previous winner by a full second - which is a lot when a speed game is this well optimized. The oldest record on the leaderboard is a time of 5m 23s from four years ago, so the route has come a long way since then.
Another interesting side note is that this is only a second shy of beating Jeremy's normal any% world record. When runners know a game this well, they certainly pull of some wild feats.
Case in point, we have fellow Mario speedrunner Bubzia. As we've covered in the past, he's been running various Super Mario 64 categories blindfolded, and scooping up a bunch of world records in the process. In the one star category, he got the time down to just 24
Read more on thegamer.com
