Super Mario 64 remains one of the most exciting, popular games to speedrun, and one streamer reminded the community why that is this weekend. Drozdowsky, who’s been sharing his record attempts on Twitch since earlier this year, became the first person in more than three years to set a new world record in Super Mario 64’s Any% 0-star category, a notoriously tough feat.
Drozdowsky spent four hours this weekend streaming his attempts to finish Super Mario 64 in under six minutes, 44 seconds. That’s how long it took Japanese player Akira to finish their playthrough back in 2015, a record that remained unbroken ever since. Now that world record is six minutes, 41 seconds — a seemingly tiny differential, but even three seconds is a huge difference when blazing through Super Mario 64.
Beating a game like Super Mario 64 without collecting a single star looks as difficult as it sounds, which is why no one had managed to overthrow Akira in the years since their impressive game. Like many of these Super Mario 64 speedruns, players have to use the Japanese version of the the N64 classic (which runs a little bit faster than other regions’ versions) in combination with precise glitches and button presses to complete a 0-star run. It’s easy to mess up in just a second, and Drozdowsky nearly did: He accidentally “bonked” a wall right toward the final boss fight, which adds a little extra time right when you least need it.
Watching the nearly five-hour archive of Drozdowsky’s playthrough is a perfect display of how tough playing a game in this mechanical, hyper-specific way is. But there’s nothing like hearing the pure elation at accomplishing that goal after so many repetitive attempts. Not only is this Super Mario 64 run Drozdowsky’s first number-one world record in any of the game’s categories, based on the Speedrun.com leaderboards, but it’s also an emotional journey for all of us watching along.
“Dude, I’m so happy,” Drozdowsky’s says toward the end, in between huge sighs of relief. “I’m so happy, dude.”
If you just want to see the complete six-minute, 41-second run, fast-forward to the four-hour mark on the archive below. A truncated version’s up top.