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."

Comments

Her?

[sahrss]

"Bowser" lobs up a whole slew of axes, each of which is deadly to Mario if she should make contact with any of them.(emphasis mine)

That adds new perspective to Mario's reasons for rescuing the princess, doesn't it? ;)

Re:Her?

[kurosawdust]

People do strange things when they eat mushrooms.

5 minutes?!?!

[AuMatar]

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?

Re:5 minutes?!?!

[Mr. Piddle]

His half-human half-wario empathic abilities give him awareness of a hidden third dimension in SMB. He is able to step outside of the 2D world we all see and nearly-instantaneously jump to the princess' chamber.

Really, it is so simple that you should have thought a bit before posting.

Speeding up the video

[Sensitive Claude]

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?

Re:Speeding up the video

[Gothic_Walrus]

I've got a feeling that they compared the speed of the timer in the video side-by-side with a copy of the game running in an NES. Any difference in the timer speed would have been noticeable.

After all...this is the world Super Mario Brothers record. They can't screw up something as important as this. :)

Extreme gaming ;)

[geggibus]

Why don't they just turn up the fps in the emulator? Saves a lot of time.. ;)

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)

Quake Done Quick

[jrivar59]

A great site. And you can download in game recordings so you can actually see the game run through in real time.

http://www.planetquake.com/qdq/

Hoax?

[hambonewilkins]

I thought the last one was shown to be a hoax.

The person had played the game in emulation on his PC at an incredibly slow speed so that he could hit all the jumps perfectly, kill the enemies in a line, make all the warps, etc. Then, he sped the video up to normal speed to make all the timing match.

It's really cool but when you watch it it is obvious that no human (honestly) could be that accurate and perfect the entire game.

Re:Hoax?

[Kevin143]

Yes, the last one was shown to be a hoax. The author himself came forward and admitted that it was never intended to be taken at face value.

See this poor, but understandable translation of the guy's webpage.

How about one that doesn't require an illegal ROM?

[Radix37]

http://planetquake.com/sda/other/supermetroid.html

100% in 1:00 in mp4 format, recored on the real game.