Super Mario Bros. Speedrunner Beats World Record By Just Five Frames

thegamer.com:

Super Mario Bros. now has a new speedrun record. With a new time of 4:54.798, prolific Mario speedrunner Niftski just shaved off 0.083 seconds from their previous world record run of 4:54.881--a difference of just five in-game frames.

What’s wild is that Niftski didn’t even know he’d broken his older record AND broken unto the 0.7-seconds era until after analyzing his record-setting run through video software. "I thought I didn't get it! I thought it was .82," Niftski shouts at the end of the video. "Oh my god, what?!"

Related: Elden Ring Is Further Establishing Speedrunning As An Art Form

The ideal path for completing Super Mario Bros. has been known for quite a while, so players are now focused on completing the theoretical "perfect" run. That’s jumping at precisely the right moment and performing the perfect "fast acceleration" maneuvers at just the right time. Even a single misstep will basically cost you the entire run, although thankfully, a competitive run is now less than five minutes long.

"This is just the beginning of how incredibly optimized speedruns of this game will be, especially very soon once lightning 4-2 gets implemented into runs," noted Niftski in the video comments. "This will POTENTIALLY BE THE LAST WR without lightning 4-2, and with that being said, let the lightning 4-2 grind in runs commence..."

As noted by Kotaku, the best tool-assisted speedrun for Super Mario Bros. currently sits at 4:53.265 and represents the best possible time a human could theoretically complete the game. That means speedrunners are just a second-and-a-half away from achieving perfection.

And once that happens, speedrunners are going to have to come up with new ways to challenge themselves. Thankfully, it seems like many