Super Mario 64 speedrunners are continuing to make massive new discoveries even now, nearly 30 years after the launch of one of the best N64 games ever made. As of this past weekend, one of the game's most notorious speedrunning tricks – a massive roadblock for new runners and a thorn in the side of even the most experienced players – has been rendered absolutely trivial to pull off.
Many speedrun categories of Super Mario 64 require what the community refers to as a backwards long jump, or BLJ. If you do a BLJ on a sloped surface, you can build up Mario's speed to near-infinite levels, which you can use to bypass certain doors with minimum star requirements. This makes it an essential tool for the uber-fast any% categories like 1-star.
The 1-star category hinges on a side backwards long jump, or SBLJ, to bypass the 30-star door in the basement of the castle overworld. This is "one of the hardest tricks in the entire game," as blindfolded speedrun legend Bubzia explains in a new video. It's extremely precise to the point where even top speedrunners struggle to execute it consistently. For the best players in the world, it can feel like a coin flip to get it to work correctly. For brand-new runners, it's a massive roadblock that keeps many from even attempting 1-star speedruns.
That's where a new trick called crackslide comes in. As Bubzia explains in the video above, titled "This New Discovery Will Change Super Mario 64 Forever," a pair of speedrunners named Crackhex and FramePerfection discovered a whole new technique to bypass the 30-star door without needing to do the notorious SBLJ.
While the initial demonstration of crackslide was made with emulator tools, within minutes another runner known as haribo39 had demonstrated that it's easily doable in real time with human hands on a regular controller. You can get a full demonstration of the trick in the video, but it requires only a simple setup against the wall, a couple of backflips to get into position, and a C-up butt slide across a railing to build up speed to get through the door.
It's not totally effortless, but it is much, much easier than the old SBLJ, and almost as fast. The absolute top-level speedrunners will likely continue to set world records with the SBLJ, but the crackslide opens up Super Mario 64's fastest categories to a ton of new runners who might've been intimidated by such a notorious trick.
Crackslide is especially appealing for blindfolded speedrunning since, as Bubzia explains, it makes a sub-10 minute blindfolded completion of Super Mario 64 – something that's never previously happened – achievable. "Like, imagine telling someone that Super Mario 64 can be beaten without sight in under 10 minutes. That would be like one of the biggest milestones in gaming history," Bubzia says.
"I woke up, saw the video by haribo, and my only thought was like, 'Oh f***, blindfolded 1-star is dead.' I got up to my console, booted up the game, and around 5 minutes later, it was done," Bubzia explains, showcasing how quickly he managed to do the trick blindfolded. "The entire thing is normalized. Easy beat count for the C-up slide. This strategy is nuts."
