Could you finish Super Mario Bros 3 in less than fifteen minutes? Of course, you couldn’t. Maybe you’re a rather skilled speedrunner and 15 minutes is not that challenging to you.
Maybe you’re a very skilled speedrunner and an unknown niche celebrity on Hive. Your Super Mario Bros. 3 time hovers just above 11 minutes.
Speedruns are something which occasionally cross my path and catch my attention. One major component to said attention is that many popular speedruns tend to be older, often retro, games and I may have played several of those. I’m a little older than many gamers, you see. Not really old, not at all, but I have been part of the evolution of gaming consoles and played quite a bunch of those games. I remember when the Super Nintendo (SNES) was huge, but before that was the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). Oh how awesome was that Playstation, the first one of course. The XBOX next.
Did I even mention the Sega Mega Drive (or Genesis depending on where you lived?
But for me things go back further. Much further. You see, my father was a bit of a closet nerd, a closet nerd in total denial. Not only did we have a C64 first gen, but he even had a barely used VIC2.0. And to top it all off, the old man also had a Magnavox Odyssey², which is where I enter the fold.
Truth to be told, that membrane keyboard sucked. So did the games btw even though we only had one: Baseball. But it was sufficient to decide this wasn’t it... yet. Even to me little kiddo who was only 5 then and could just type enough to enter the game levels. I don’t think you could type more on that device anyway. Add least not without considering hara-kiri the more honorable, and probably also less painful, thing to do.
The real fun started later though for me, with the C64. While my father was usually obsessed by confirming the title of “Impossible Mission” to his skill set, I excelled much more at destroying Quickshot II joysticks playing Summer Games. I would eventually go more mellow on those joysticks as Winter Games, Rambo II, and Extreme Games (?) made their way to our floppy drive.
And then, then came the consoles. Although we already had our 486SX, which was upgradable with a not yet released Pentium chip FTW! #nerdgasm
Test Drive, Prince of Persia. I think also Flight Simulator IIRC already. But it all didn’t feel too great compared to the games available on consoles already. Super Mario Bros. was, of course, what things were about. And that’s a part why speed runs attract me. But not the only part.
While many may think that speed runs are something ultra-nerdy — they are — and played only by so-called basement dwellers, there’s much more to speed runs than meets the eye. Than that baffling performance you see celebrating the next world record.
How the heck do you finish Super Mario Bros. 3 in barely 3 minutes?
As mentioned in my previous speedrun post, speedruns aren’t just about the player making awesome happen with a near perfect performance. Of course, that’s one part of it and probably the most important part: the athlete who clocks that 9”53 on the 100 meter dash - or in my youth yet another Quickshot II destroyed to hit that below 9 seconds in Summer Games.
...if you forget the video game part of it and all the negative connotations you might have about that, you get to see the collective effort of thousands of people over more than three decades who have studied a thing right down to the bare metal so that one person, standing on the shoulders of giants in a near-perfect performance, can do something no one has ever done before.
—Jason Kottke, A World Record Super Mario Bros Speedrun Explained
Many speedrun world record do exploit bugs in games. Some may have been Easter Eggs, many are genuine bugs and vast communities, with genuine longevity, have documented these bugs and continue to do so.
Until it leads to the next world record. Until Super Mario Bros. 3 is beaten in barely more than 3 minutes. Where you would sweat for weeks, months to achieve it in 15 minutes or less, which you would probably call a “perfect performance”.
To beat the game in less than 200 seconds you will need to miss only around 10-15 frames and not merely have an advanced understanding of the game but an understanding beyond that of the core devs of it, most likely.
So how the frak do you beat Super Mario Bros. 3 in less than 200 seconds as Zikubi did?
Explaining it would take close to 15 minutes and may get rather nerdy. But it’s definitely an interesting watch, even if just because you love having a general knowledge an inch deep but a mile wide.
Or maybe you’re just like me and remember those good old days and now watch those performances with a little degree of envy. Because you were more than happy to just finish the worlds already. How fast did you manage that? Was that even relevant?
Today’s speedrun world records are just great and awesome nostalgia to you. Independently of your time and performance. But, nevertheless, you drool a little over those amazing gamers and their collaborative communities. Of course you do.
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