Speedrunning might not be a pursuit you normally associate with Mario Kart 64, but there are plenty of people who do just that – and Beck Abney (better known as abney317) is the best in the business.
However, his recent achievement is incredible, even by his high standards – as spotted by Games Radar, he's managed to smash his own speedrunning world record in the most unlikely way.
Abney held the "all cups with skips" world record between 2015 and 2021 and reclaimed the title with a time of 22:58.680 in 2023. His attempt to improve on that record on July 28th, 2024, didn't seem to be going as planned, and when he was behind by a massive 24 seconds, he decided to throw caution to the wind and try something insane.
On the Yoshi Valley map, there's a point where players can go off-course and collide with a wall, tricking the game into thinking you've completed a lap when, in reality, you've only just started it. The normal process of accessing this skip is grabbing an item box in the hope of obtaining a triple-mushroom boost, which is then used to gain the speed required to hit the wall. It's a hard trick to pull off, to say the least.
This isn't the only way to achieve this skip, though; you can, if you wish, ignore the item boxes and try to hit the spot without assistance—and that's what Abney did three times over, securing a new world record of 22:57.240.
"A new skips WR with one of the craziest comebacks ever," he says in the description of the YouTube video. "At the end, I say the special cup is 26 seconds better than my next best in a run, but actually, it's 17 seconds (didn't take out the menuing to the cup)."