Super Mario Bros. speedrunner Niftski has set a new world record for the NES game, clocking in 4:54.565 in the 'any %' category.
The 8-bit classic has been so comprehensively mined by speedrunners in recent years that gains are now made in individual frames rather than seconds.
"Although the 8-4 could have been a few frames faster with my strats, I am still extremely happy with this time," says the speedrunner, who has made it his personal mission to push the game to its limit. "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!"
Niftski tracked his heart rate during the attempt, and it spiked to 188 BPM at the conclusion of his record-breaking run.
"For those concerned about my heart rate being high, my normal resting heart rate is ~70 BPM average," he explains. "When I am doing runs and constantly getting some of them far, drinking caffeine, and streaming, it can occasionally linger over 100 BPM. Compared to my normal resting heart rate, this is a whole different thing, and doing speedruns isn't a resting heart rate when nerves can skyrocket at any given time due to the pace. Hopefully this clears up any confusion, I am completely healthy and do not have any heart condition!"
The speedrunner also explains that he uses emulation for his attempts, along with a keyboard – but stresses that emulation is "100% accurate".
As for his choice of interface, he says:
Keyboard offers no advantage, and it is actually debatably worse for speedrunning this game. I use keyboard over controller for personal preference reasons, I have been playing games on keyboard since a little kid, and I have a very good feel for it compared to controller. For speedrun.com, emulator has been allowed since the beginning of time, and no rules were ever changed just to allow emulator. Another misconception is that some people think I am able to input L+R using a keyboard. It is possible to do so, but since it isn't possible with a standard NES controller without it being broken or modified, inputting this is banned. I have to have an option in my emulator settings that makes L+R input nothing, so no invalid input was done during this run.