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Super Mario Bros Record Broken
An anonymous reader writes "A nimble-fingered gamer has shaved three seconds off the long-standing world record for completing Super Mario Bros. for the original Nintendo Entertainment System. Classic arcade site Twin Galaxies reports that Scott Kessler of North Carolina executed a "near-perfect finish" when he took the record down to five minutes and 17 seconds. Twin Galaxies referee Robert Mruczek watched the entire game on videotape before declaring the feat a new world record."
Insanity.
It takes a special sort of person I guesss to devote that much energy and time to perfecting a game. Even the games I love to death I could never play to that level without walking away from it with a foul taste in my mouth.
Still, pretty amazing, i don't think I could get through the first world in that length of time
Ok- so he obviously used the warpzone to 4 in 1-2, and the warp zone to 8 in 4-2. And he must have had the pipe sequence for 8-4 memorized. But how the heck did he beat 8-1 through 8-3 in under 5 minutes?
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Would it be possible to either speed up the video, or record it just slightly faster to shave off a few seconds? Not enough to be noticable, but enough to give you an edge?
Then again, do I really care?
So why am I asking?
Is there a world record for beating Zork in record time?
Promote Sensitivity on Slashdot, make me your friend.
Shameless off-topic plug (though it's not for me in person, so I hope I get away with it): If you enjoy this, you might enjoy Super Metroid speedruns as well. Records: 38 minutes for pure speed, 58 minutes for speed with 100% items. Both by the same player, available here.
:38 :58
Mirrors:
Require ZSNES and a Super Metroid ROM.
I actually got that idea a few month ago and tried it out.
Results for SMB3:
Double speed: (120fps, ntsc)
World 1,2,3,-,7,8.. completion =) (World 7 is NOT fun..)
Tripple speed:
World 1,-,8.. completion =) (those blocks in bowsers castle that falls down when you stand on them for a while is damn hard to pass)
10x: 600fps
World 1,-,8..complete failure.. (i'm happy with finding the flutes)
Notes:
No emulator features like save and load were used.
Controller with turbo were used for flying at 3x speed and above.. (almost impossible without)
If you try this, DO NOT PLAY THE GAME AT NORMAL SPEED AFTERWARDS, (Windows feeling..)
-K (idiot)
I guess I don't mean hoax in the traditional sense, although playing in emu and speeding up the video seems really close to a hoax.
God Bless America. Why? Did it sneeze?
Seeing that video reminds me of another game that looks truely awesome in the hands of a master: Ikaruga
At first glance the game looks like a blur of bullets and enemies, but it is possible to complete every stage of the game without breaking the chain combo (you get a chain bonus if you kill 3 ships of the same color in a row, the whole bonus is lost if you hit a single ship out of sequence) and still killing every single target. I never got that good, but I could rack up a pretty good combo on the first couple stages.
On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
This jostled my memory of an event taken place about 20 years ago, Wal-Mart had a contest where whoever got the most points in Super Mario Bros in their age bracket won a free game of their choice. I was all excited being a nintendo-nerd kid, I would sit and practice at home to get a stratedgy developed so I could win me that game!
After my training regiment, it was time to enter the contest. Well there was only one other person in my age bracket (13+ and older), a woman in her 20's, so I was stoked. "I'm gonna win this" came time to play and I missed a calculated jump and fell into a hole, screwed my chances right there.
It was then I had to say goodbye to my dreams of owning "Skate or Die"... eventually I bought it, but it was the whole glory of it all.
I hope the record breaker basks in all his glory, someone hook that man up with a copy of Ultra's Skate or Die, he earned it!
Sort of, but not quite..
I believe that he actually generated the frames using the games own code, but there was no actual play involved. There were some places in the game where impossible stunts WERE performed, but not because a skilled player couldn't pull it off. It was because the game itself wouldn't throw that particular number or sequence of enemies at the player within a certain amount of time (I'm specifically referring to the airship stages, where multiple 1ups could be had by jumping on the mole guys).
The thing I find really silly with this kind of record is that the timing is different between PAL and NTSC version : indeed, the freshrate is 60hz for NTSC and 50hz for pal, which makes European game slower than American one...
This way, how can an European player hope to do better????