Super Mario Bros. speedrunner Niftski is continuing to push the game ever closer to perfection. 490 days after setting his last world record, he’s now achieved a new best time of 4:54.56, which means that human runners are now just 18 frames away from a literally perfect run.
Tool-assisted speedrunners, programming precise inputs and using tricks that are typically impossible for humans to replicate, have established that the theoretically perfect Super Mario Bros. time is 4:54.26. Niftski is now just .3 seconds away from that time, which comes out to being exactly 18 frames away from perfection.
You can watch the new world record in full through the video below, which includes an all-timer of a pop-off, where Niftski says he resists the temptation to rip his shirt apart in celebration only because it was a recent Christmas gift from his mom. In the video’s description, he assures viewers concerned about his heart rate – which is displayed throughout the run – that he is “completely healthy and [does] not have any heart condition.”
Super Mario Bros. operates on a timer that runners refer to as the “frame rule.” The game only checks to see if you’ve completed a level every 21 frames, so there’s a very precise minimum time in which each stage can be beaten. This Summoning Salt video is probably the most complete, concise explainer of it all that you’ll find, but in short, the community has managed to find setups that allow human runners to execute these machine-level tricks with some consistency.
Niftski’s former world record, set in 2023, was the first human-controlled Super Mario Bros. speedrun to match every frame rule through the first seven levels that are played in a speedrun. The only level that doesn’t obey the frame rule is the final challenge, 8-4, which doesn’t have the buffer window of 21 frames that the other levels provide, so the inputs required for a perfect run through that stage are even more precise. That’s why it’s taken Niftski 490 days to improve on that record.
“Although the 8-4 could have been a few frames faster with my strats, I am still extremely happy with this time,” Niftski says in the video description. “This run is now 18 frames / 0.3 seconds off of absolute perfection! I will push this to 4:54.4xx and lower in the near future, but for now, I am very satisfied with this run! Huge thank you to everyone who supported me throughout this grind, you’re all the best.”
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