Speedrunner Niftski has set a new Super Mario Bros. world record of 4:54.332, a time that sits four frames away from what the game’s community believes is the fastest run the NES original can produce.
The run takes the record back from LeKukie, whose previous mark was six frames short of that theoretical ceiling. Niftski’s time is exactly two frames quicker, which is the margin the category now moves in: Polygon reports that records in Super Mario Bros. have been chipped down over the past year to the point where they are decided by frames rather than seconds. Speedrunner Kosmic published a video breaking down the previous record last week.
Where the last four frames went
Niftski is a former record holder reclaiming the position, and the run executes almost the full catalogue of pixel-perfect techniques the category depends on, including backwards-jumping fast acceleration. The losses that keep it off a perfect time all land in the final level, 8-4: a mistimed pipe entry, a jump that went too high, and a skipped acceleration boost in the last room together account for the four frames.
Niftski streams with a live heart rate counter on screen. It reached 176 during the run and spiked to 191 in the celebration afterwards, high enough that viewers raised it with him; he used a paragraph of the YouTube VOD description to confirm he does not have a heart condition.
The keyboard question
The record arrives after months of argument in the Super Mario Bros. speedrunning community about Niftski’s setup. He plays an emulated version of the game, controlling it mostly on keyboard and switching to a controller for 8-4. That switching method was ruled illegal earlier this year and then reinstated last month after further community feedback, with new ground rules attached.
Niftski maintains there is no advantage to a keyboard here, writing in the record video’s description that it is “actually debatably worse for speedrunning this game.” Community members who have examined the data largely agree, but some players still hold that keyboard play falls outside the spirit of the category, which leaves room for a parallel chase for a perfect run on original NES hardware.
With four frames left on the table, the perfect Super Mario Bros. run is now a question of when rather than whether, and of who reaches it first.
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