"How do you even do this to a leaderboard of a popular game like Super Mario Bros?": Speedrunner beats the platformer's world record by 5 seconds, the biggest jump in over a decade

(Image credit: Nintendo)

Super Mario Bros, the first one, has been around for almost four decades. You wouldn't expect speedrunners to still be one-upping each others' times for a game this old and this popular - like, surely the fastest possible combo of buttons to beat the iconic platformer has been found already - but, alas, one incredible run just smashed another world record by five whole seconds, massive in the speedrunning community.

The feat was achieved by speedrunner Niftski, who was already the world record holder for an Any% playthrough of Super Mario Bros. He recently turned his gaze toward a Warpless run, though, which means players can't take advantage of the game's iconic green warp pipes that skip entire levels.

Super Mario Bros. Warpless Speedrun in 18:49.972 *WR* - YouTube

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And in a new livestream, he saved Princess Peach in no less than 18 minutes, 49.972 seconds. To put that into context, in 2019, the record was 19 minutes and two seconds. Every year or so, another speedrunner would shave off around a second. In 2023, Niftski held the record with 18 minutes, 54 seconds, meaning he just beat his own WR with a massive jump. In fact, it's the biggest jump in well over a decade since 2013.

Speedrun-focused YouTuber and internet historian SummoningSalts even chimed in with shock. "How do you even do this to a leaderboard of a popular game like Super Mario Bros lol?" they tweeted.

Despite pressing all the buttons himself, Niftski couldn't quite believe it either. "Oh my god, that's my hardest world record ever. This is not real. This is not real," he screamed during the stream. "No way… That was full autopilot... It doesn't feel real. It actually doesn't feel real."

Why not check out some upcoming Switch 2 games to see what else is in the (warp) pipline?