Gaming News This video game has been driving them crazy for over 25 years… This new record in Mario 64 goes from 25 hours to 1 minute, that’s unprecedented!
There are always some crazy exercises going on in the Super Mario 64 speedrunning community. Due to a certain challenge, a level took up to 26 hours to complete. Luckily, speedrunners have just found a technique that allows them to do it… in under a minute.
Originally released in 1996, Super Mario 64 is certainly one of the fastest games in the world. Beyond the popularity of the base game, Mario’s first 3D adventure is particularly good for practice, which explains why it’s so popular with speedrunners. In addition to completing the game as quickly as possible, players have imposed additional restrictions on themselves over time
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The most absurd challenge in Super Mario 64
The “A Button Challenge” is a category of Super Mario 64 speedrun that aims to complete the game as quickly as possible… without ever jumping. Suffice it to say that this is a deviation, since jumping is the basic movement of Mario and even the basic movement of the platform game genre, without which it is usually impossible to do anything. And yet, Players managed to complete the game this way and now they want to get there as quickly as possible.
Well obviously, This completely absurd challenge is unattainable in real life, which means it’s a playground for TASers, i.e. those who do TAS. As a reminder, TAS (Tool-Assisted Speedrun) consists of creating a speedrun using a tool that allows you to define the controls frame by frame. In other words: This is not possible with the controller. And yet, despite all the tools at their disposal, Super Mario 64’s “A Button Challenge” took a particularly long time to complete, particularly due to the “Lethal Lava Land” level. to collect the star called “Elevator Tour in the Volcano”.
Be successful, TASers had to push an enemy into a position outside the map boundaries for 26 hours until the enemy reached a certain speed that allowed Mario to advance so that he achieves his goal. In other words: a huge waste of time, but a solution has finally been found recently.
Now TASers trap an enemy in a specific wall to propel Mario to a conveniently placed post, causing him to jump into a lava waterfall that takes him to the star. An absolutely spectacular sequence that allows you to go from 26 hours of manipulation to just one minute, a big step forward in this completely crazy project. Super Mario 64 remains a fantastic playground for speedrunners almost 30 years after its release.
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