Famed speedrunner Suigi has claimed all five major records associated with Super Mario 64, effectively enshrining himself as one of the greatest speedrunners of all time (thanks, GamesRadar).
There are five categories when it comes to completing Mario's 64-bit debut really fast: 120 star, 70 star, 16 star, 1 star, and 0 star. Suigi has spent years perfecting his skills in the game, and on November 17th, he secured the world record in all five – something that many people assumed was simply impossible.
According to Summoning Salt, an account which follows speedrunning world records, Suigi's stranglehold on those five categories might hold for some time yet. "Not only does Suigi hold all 5, but he holds most by a huge margin. Nobody else can even get close to some of these. His 16 star record in particular, maybe the most popular category in all of speedrunning, was set over a year ago and still leads by 6 full seconds."
"He's the best player in the game's history by far," Summoning Salt adds. "Others have been dominant in one category for a while, but being able to do it in all 5 is completely ridiculous. A definite candidate for the greatest speedrunner of all time."
Suigi himself doesn't know how long it will take for his latest record to topple, but says "1:34 could take a month or a couple years plus, we don’t know."
The speedrunning community has been quick to celebrate this event:
[source gamesradar.com]
Comments 36
“I wasn’t aware other Mario games existed,” said Suigi at press time. “Hell, I didn’t even know about the other consoles or video games until a few weeks ago. I thought Mario 64 was the only one they made. Cool, I guess.”
Could someone explain the difference between the star runs?
@Spider-Kev The 'star' count refers to numbers of stars collected in the game.
@Spider-Kev Different skips. You can use glitches and collision bugs to skip all the stars in the game, so the different categories just skip more or fewer of the stars. 120 is all of them, 0 star is obviously none of them.
@Damo
Yeah, I know that. I've played the game since it came out!
@mariteaux
Didn't know that many stars could be skipped. Thanks
@mariteaux @damo i understand that, but not really sure what are the different skills for each record..
@romanista The runs are very very different. Shorter categories mean you can use riskier and more optimized strategies for each star, because if you fail, the barrier to restart is much lower. Longer categories require more in the way of nerves management--if you're an hour into a 120 star run and you're on world record pace, the stakes are going to be a lot higher than if you're playing 0 star and you're only three minutes into the run on WR pace.
Staggered that anyone cares this much about it to be honest.
Greatest Mario 64 speedrunner for sure, but greatest speedrunner of all time is silly. That's like saying Tiger Woods is the greatest sports player of all time because he's arguably the top golfer. Or that Diddy is the greatest musician.
@bluemage1989
More than anyone cares about anything you've ever done, that's for sure.
This is an incredible achievement. Now it's time to do it all blindfolded and using a DDR pad.
@Spider-Kev
To give a bit of context.
70 stars is the normal requirement to reach the final level and complete the game, whilst all 120 stars would be the 100% goal.
Historically though, players figured out ways to beat the game collecting only 30 stars, and then later 16 stars. Eventually, ways to beat the game collecting only a single star, or no stars at all were figured out too.
The 30 star run was due to how access to the second Bowser level required 30 stars, which in turns unlocks the upstairs portion. Use of the backwards long jump glitch then makes it possible to skip the 50 star and 70 star requirements.
The 30 star requirement itself was also then skipped because they discovered that you can perform wall-clips through doorways using Mips the Rabbit, a character that appears in the basement when you've collected 16 stars.
That 16 star requirement too eventually fell.
What the 0 star run still needs to do is defeat Bowser in all three Bowser stages. That part is unskippable because defeating Bowser gives you the keys needed to access the basement and the upper floor. Those keys are hard requirements as the doors to each part of Peach's Castle are what loads each new area, as opposed to having loading zones behind the door.
@RupeeClock @mariteaux Thanks, this is helpful context. I wish it was in the article tbh
@Synecdoche
To be fair given the game's widespread fame and history, it's pretty well known at this point by anyone that's followed the game with interest.
There's plenty of good YouTube videos going over the history of how any% speedruns dropped from 70 stars, to 16, to 1, then 0. I think they too are probably by Summoning Salt?
@RupeeClock And what about the millions of people who have played the game and have zero experience with SM64 speedrunning? It's absolutely good context to have in the article, explaining the three different completely unintentional run types along with the intended two and what makes them more or less challenging than each other.
@combywomby if only I had wasted as much of my life as this chap has, who knows where I could have been right now - slow news day article on a niche interest website at the very least no doubt.
@mariteaux
It's something that's unreasonable to explain every time there's a news article about an ongoing subject, however considering the special nature of SM64 and its multiple categories, yeah I think it would really add value to the article in this case.
SM64 world records are rarely broken these days, as there are fewer and fewer discoveries made to break minute barriers that runners strives for.
@bluemage1989 - Just to put it into perspective, most physical “accomplishments” are a “waste of time” as they don’t produce anything meaningful to the world at large. That being said, the accomplishments DO provide meaning to those performing and those interested in it, which I would argue is a benefit to the society.
Did he do this with a traditional cart or was it one of those emulators where they pause and move a frame at a time and act like they did something legit? Once I saw that’s how many speed runners get their records I stopped being impressed.
If this was with the legit game though, awesome accomplishment.
Summoning Salt has extensive videos on the subject
16 stars
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_wscUcbynk
any percent
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7ePi38LnrA&t
120 stars
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2etSAWJKTs&t
And if those vids aught me one thing it's that speed running will see this a challenge to rally under, and do something even more insane.
@AG_Awesome
Played on original hardware with no modifications.
Whilst the speedrun community for SM64 does allow people to play on emulators, they're maintained as separate categories from N64, and also Virtual Console, with N64 being the preferred method for conventional play.
https://www.speedrun.com/sm64
What you're referring to with people playing frame by frame in an emulator, is what's known as a Tool-Assisted Speedrun and are instead a demonstration of in-depth knowledge and execution of a game as software, rather than player skill.
Research into TAS runs however inform strategies in conventional speedruns and are a big part of why they've progressed so far, as many human-viable techniques are learnt from them.
If you've got 8 minutes to spare, you can watch Suigi's 0 star run of SM64 in 6 minutes 16 seconds: https://youtu.be/rdx0TPjX1qE
This record was set October 26th 2023 and has stood for over a year.
@RupeeClock Thank you for such an informative post! I appreciate you explaining the difference of the Speedrun types since I only knew they existed but not the terminology. Knowing he did this legit is wild to me. The precision and timing and memorization is borderline computer level mastery!
@bobby_steurer Dude is trolling. 🤔
@RupeeClock Thanks for that! The 70 and 120 were obvious enough, but I was trying to remember what was so significant about collecting 16 stars in particular.
Load up and play Super Mario Bros. on the NES. Someone has beaten it in 4:54.
Load up and play Super Mario 64 on the N64. Someone has beaten it in 6:16.
The fact it only takes someone roughly 1 minute and 22 seconds longer to beat Super Mario 64 on the N64 than it takes someone to beat Super Mario Bros. on the NES is... gross?
@AG_Awesome
TAS runs are often used to perform either a theoretical perfect run.
Or perform a glitch or trick, that's theoretically possible or on the edge of possible.
A proof of concept
Like the weathertenko trick in Mario Kart 64 in this Summoning Salt video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y99Wj-NStok
A real person has to put in thousands of hours and attempts to do anything
They don't just rush through a game
Each speedrun is the result of insane grinds, pixel perfect execution, memorization, glitches and skill.
These speed runs mean nothing to me as they rely on glitches and flaws in the game. As soon as they are used, they are playing outside of the boundaries intended by the game creators. It’s cheating and worthless.
@mariteaux thanx, that is the kind of pundit analysis i was missing!
@X68000
Disagree.
It takes insane amounts of time and skill to pull these glitches and speed runs off.
You don't just sit down and do one in an afternoon.
By that definition combo's in beat em ups are cheating as well. They started off as a glitch in SF II Championship Edition.
@AG_Awesome "and act like they did something legit"
They are legit, but not because they're fast. Anybody can make a fast TAS, but it takes someone extremely disciplined and studied to make a TAS that changes how we understand games.
Look up Pannenkoek2012 sometime and you'll quickly see that, where RTA (the "legit" one you're thinking of) emphasizes the physical excellence of speedrunning, TAS emphasizes discovery and understanding. TAS runs are showcases of what's been learned. The most prolific TASers have deep, intrinsic knowledge of the game's logic and the platform it's on.
And as a life pro tip: if something is popular, seek to understand why it's popular before you attack its community. TASing is a fun hobby for some incredibly smart people and it helps enable achievements like in the article.
@avcrypt I liked what you said til you had to do your little condescending life pro tip. So now I think everything you said is garbage and I actually have no interest in respecting any of what you tried to say. So great job. Pro life tip: learn how to communicate with people. I didn’t attack their community at all. But if people like you are a part of it, I think I’ll just stay out.
And don’t paraphrase me. What I meant by acting like they did something legit was referring to the act of physically making a record on an original cart, legitimately playing the game. Not that the act of TASing is not legitimate. I was referring to people who have in the past done TAS records but passed them off as the real deal.
👍
@AG_Awesome
If you want to see the real dark side of speed running look up SHiFT ( spelled like that ) or @shiftposting on twitch
He is a Spongebob Squarepants speedrunning.
And that's all he does
He has spend the last 8 years and 20,000 hours grinding that game in to powder.
And has held the world record since 2016.
But thats all he does.
He boot the game grinds and flips his ***** when things go wrong.
He has an extremely short temper, and it take s little to set him off.
It's honestly a bit of a sad state of affairs.
Same goes for Cosmo Wright.
Personally I dont have the patience to speedrun, the grind puts me off.
I already dislike grinding in JRPG's , and that eventually yields results.
The weathertenko for example is literally driving in to a wall and executing just the right inputs to make it over the wall and not get grabbed by Lakitu.
My controller would go flying after half an hour.
@KitsuneNight LOL! It is wild to hear he has a short temper and still sticks to the same game! At this stage of my life, when I play something that frustrates or annoys me I just call it quits. Well sometimes at least. I legit have bought over 800 games for the switch and won’t even get to play them all in my lifetime. So I try to keep moving.
It’s funny, when I play a frustrating game that requires memorization it’ll take a dozen, maybe two dozen times of trial and error. Then I usually succeed and continue on, happy that I “just made it”. I never want to look back. The speed runners are the opposite. “I just made it… but now I need to do it again and see if I can do it even better!” I’d never survive that kind of gaming 😂🤣
@AG_Awesome
It gets even worse.
He plays nothing but Battle For Bikini Bottom.
He streams 10 hours a day scoweling because he is anticipating a reset flips his ***** when it happens ( usually with in 5 minutes )
And then starts all over again
Grinding the same 44 min run in to paste, shaving off a single second.
I got way too many games to play as well, ( 1200 on steam 800 on gog ) speed running is not for me.
But its fascinating to peek in that world and see what they can do.
I've never been one that gets into speed running games, but I've always respected it. I've been watching some if Suigi's runs this week and the level of skill it takes to do what he and other speed runners of this game are doing is near mind-blowing to comprehend.
The controls are tricky enough in this game, but couple this with the archaic early 3D camera controls (compared to modern designs), and this is just on another level altogether.
A daring challenge for anyone looking to make a name for themselves
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