Super Mario Bros. has found its new speedrunning champion, and he may hold that title for the foreseeable future.
Kosmic, a streamer who specializes in speedrunning various Mario games, did what many players thought impossible earlier this week. After tying with the previous Any% world record of 4:56.245, Kosmic kept going — and managed to best it, shocking fans as he became the first person to set a record under the 4:56 mark.
Those who watched Kosmic’s Super Mario Bros. run live on Twitch call it an unprecedented achievement, one that will go down as an all-time great. What makes this run special isn’t just that a player set a major new record; it’s that he attempted a previously untested shortcut and, after practicing for more than half an hour, managed to shave off crucial time with it in just one go.
A glitch known as the 1-2 glitch helped the streamer break through to the top of the record charts. It’s reliant on incredible precision, according to fellow speedrunners; while tool-assisted runs may be capable of accomplishing it, it’s much more difficult for humans to land. It requires jumping into a pipe to quickly enter a warp zone; combined with other glitches, players save an extra 0.35 seconds with it. It’s all dependent on the game’s framerules, which stipulate how many frames it takes to perform certain actions and how many you save with certain glitches. The video below explains how this all works in depth:
In short, Kosmic was able to add the 1-2 glitch to the various other tricks that help players speed up their times. His perfect adherence to framerules has wowed longtime speedrun fans.
“99.9% of times, this run would have died to FPG, fast 4-2, BBG in 8-2, or any other glitch of the million that this run requires,” wrote one Redditor, explaining just how tough it is to land this particular glitch. “But no, he carried it all the way through. I don’t think I will ever see something so insane in speedrunning ever again.”
You can watch the tail-end of Kosmic’s run in the clip below; he very endearingly freaks out once he hits 4:55.96, the new Super Mario Bros. speedrunning world record. The full speedrun is embedded up top.
