The Super Mario 64 speedrunning community has seen a great bit of upheaval in recent weeks after players discovered a viable way to use the infamous "carpetless" exploit to skip one of the game's most tedious moments. This discovery was eventually used to break the world record to quickly attain all 120 Stars for Super Mario 64, but with just one second saved using a trick that could recover a full minute, that achievement was dubbed the "most cringe world record of all time" by the record breaker.
Now, the record has been broken again by just a single second, and it has already led to a new claim for the cringiest record break in Super Mario 64 speedrunning history.
マリオ64 120枚RTA世界記録出しました！！！！！！色々辛いときもあったけど、みなさんの応援があったから頑張れました！ありがとう！いつ抜かれるかはわからないけど一瞬だけでも世界一位だと言わせてくれ！！！！ pic.twitter.com/7QAbdXoA9BOctober 17, 2023
During a recent livestream, speedrunner karinpune broke the recent record set by puncayshun just days earlier. Karinpune used the same "carpetless" trick and shaved off just one second off the earlier record break. The record was then posted on the Speedrun subeddit for the community.
What made these recent record breaks so significant is that they both used an exploit discovered very recently - and neither really take full advantage of the potential time save. The "carpetless" trick allows speedrunners to skip over one of the game's most tedious sections in the Rainbow Ride, which sees Mario using a slow-moving magic carpet to traverse a large section of a level. In theory, that trick has the potential to save anywhere from 45 seconds to a full minute, but nobody's yet been able get a run going that makes the most of that potential.
Now, being able to skip the carpet ride reliably, speedrunners have been at work trying to shave off time from the world record, and now karinpune pulled off the second one-second time save. Given how competitive the Super Mario 64 speedrunning community is, and how much new life has been brought about by the carpetless trick, it'll be no surprise to see the current record be broken once again sometime soon.
For more on how the previous speedrun for SM64 was broken, read our previous article on the earlier record and how they pulled it off.
