As a youth, Super Mario Bros. on the NES was a big game, with lots of people to see and lots of places to go. It wasn’t MASSIVE to me the way some RPGS or other platformers were but it was not a simple game that could be completed in a few minutes… at the time. My first time beating the game without warps or continues happened after a month of practice; a monther after playing the game every day.
That was 21 years ago. From Mega Man X, Super Metroid and even Ocarina of Time, speedrunning now has a surprisingly big following and encompasses all kinds of games. What game designers and programmers intended to be big digital worlds… trampled in less than an hour. Including Mario. Seeing a warpless Super Mario Bros. run being finished in half an hour made my inner child screen. The warped runs go as low as 5 minutes and eventually dropped to 4 minutes and 57 seconds. And now, Super Mario Bros. 1, at one point the best selling video game of all time, has been reduced to a less than 5 minute run (with warps).
YouTube user Kosmicd12 has broken the world record for a warped run and has completed the game in 4 minutes and 55 seconds. See the run for yourself above!
