Another world record in Super Mario Odyssey has speedrun fans eyeing one-hour barrier

Less than two weeks after it launched, Super Mario Odyssey’s Any% speedrun world record was 1:11:48. Nine months later, it’s more than 10 minutes faster, and the community appears to be closing in on breaching the one-hour barrier.

The inspiring underdog story of LilKirbs14 notwithstanding (and it withstood for five days), veteran Odyssey speedrunner Suisaiga today turned in another world record Any% run — 1:01:34, taking another eight seconds off the game’s premier category.

In the past month, Suisaiga, LilKirbs14, NicroVeda and Chaospringle have taken almost a minute off NicroVeda’s old record of 1:02:19, set June 9. And while no one knows really what the theoretical fastest possible time is here, elite runners seem to discover new routes and methods, and just plain get lucky, to keep bleeding time off the overall mark. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time just saw its world record 100% time plunge by almost 14 minutes, below four hours, over the past year, 12 minutes of that coming in the last two months alone.

Those on the r/speedrun subreddit expressed an uncertain certainty that the one-hour mark is a reachable goal.

“It astounds me that the execution has gotten to the point where Suisaiga could have what looks to me like a perfect kingdoms (for example, Wooded Kingdom) and still lose time,” said semicorrect. “The record will get under an hour someday but I have no idea how.”

Commenter mr_tolkien cautioned that “new tech” would be needed to get there. “You don’t shave a minute off the most speedrunned game ever by magic.” Fair skepticism.

Others were more sanguine. “Every time we get a wr since the [one hour, two minutes] barrier was broken everyone claims that the category is dead, and yet we get 2 wr’s a week,” said dariovaccaro.

“People are still finding new techniques in 20+ year old games, this game could be sub 40 a year from now and it wouldn’t even be that unusual,” said Sabin10.

Looking through speedrun.com, the world record progression through recent milestone times is (dates are when they were recognized on speedrun.com):

• Current world record: 1:01:34 by Suisaiga on Aug. 5.
• First sub-1:02:00 run: Suisaga on July 13.
• First sub-1:03:00 run: NicroVeda on April 20.
• First sub-1:04:00 run: nedeahS on March 2.
• First sub-1:05:00 run: Vallu on Jan. 10.
• First sub-1:06:00 run: nedeahS on Dec. 9.
• First sub-1:07:00 run: nedeahS on Nov. 30.
• First sub-1:08:00 run: Iwabi74 on Nov. 25.
• First sub-1:09:00 run: Samura1man on Nov. 16.
• First sub-1:10:00 run: Vallu on Nov. 11.
• First sub-1:11:00 run: Vallu on Nov. 9.
• First sub-1:12:00 run: Vallu on Nov. 7.

So you can see some tightening (or, perhaps, lengthening) in reaching the milestone times from 1:05:00 on but still, in a little more than three weeks, Suisaiga, pushed by LilKirbs14 and NicroVeda, has taken 23 seconds off the top time.

Who’s to say when the 1:01:00 or one-hour barriers fall, or if they do. All that’s certain is Super Mario Odyssey is still one of the most-run, and most-watched speedruns, in the community.