Right here’s a quick, non-exhaustive checklist of issues that take lower than 4 minutes and 55 seconds. Me devouring a plate of loaded nachos. Me consuming a complete bowl of pasta (possibly a carbonara?). Me writing a lede whereas preoccupied with lunch. And a speedrunner blitzing via Tremendous Mario Bros., setting a brand new time to beat in Nintendo’s all-time-classic side-scroller.

Sure, the preeminent Mario speedrunner Niftski clocked a sub-five-minute run this weekend, shattering the prevailing world report by lower than a second. The “any%” playthrough—that time period means it’s completely cool to skip sections of the sport—got here in at a powerful 4:54.798.

Niftski, who streams on Twitch and YouTube, has picked up a following for finishing all kinds of speedrunning feats in Tremendous Mario Bros., and can be answerable for the sport’s earlier world report of 4:54.881, set final winter. (Right here’s a video of that run.) This newest run shaves a grand whole of 5 frames off Niftski’s earlier run—that’s the extent of precision we’re speaking about right here. It’s really bonkers. See for your self:

All through the run, Niftski makes use of warp zones—hidden areas that help you skip forward to the sport’s later worlds—and is cautious to land instantly on the backside of the flag on the finish of every stage. (Each Tremendous Mario Bros. degree ends once you leap onto the flagpole on the finish; Mario slides down the pole earlier than shifting onto the following stage, which eats up treasured seconds.) You’ll notice, too, that Niftski performs with a keyboard, not a gamepad.

“Emulation for this sport is 100% correct, which signifies that something that may be carried out on an NES is feasible on [an] emulator,” Niftski stated within the description for the YouTube video. “[Using a] keyboard affords no benefit, and it’s truly debatably worse for speedrunning this sport. I take advantage of [a] keyboard over [a] controller for private desire causes.”

This run edges Tremendous Mario Bros. speedrunning nearer and nearer to the precipice of a “good run,” or a dash via the sport that actually couldn’t be improved upon in any respect. The tool-assisted SMB report is 4:54:265, which reveals human gamers are nonetheless a bit of over half a second behind. If an ideal run is ever going to occur, my cash’s on both Niftski or the Mario speedrunner Miniland, who held the world report earlier than Niftski with 4:54.914.

“With this run being carried out, we’re at the moment 0.533 seconds away from the TAS,” one commenter famous on YouTube. “All of those 0.1 second limitations will occur at some point, after which, we’ll attain perfection.”