In April, “Darbian” lowered the World Record “Any Percentage” speedrun for Super Mario Bros. to just four minutes and 57.26 seconds. In the aftermath of his achievement, he retired from speedrunning, saying, “I have reached my potential in this category.”
But some records were made to be broken… and even the slimmest of margins can mean the difference between Silver and Gold.
On Thursday, “Kosmic” set an unbelievable new “Any Percentage” record for Super Mario Bros. of four minutes and 57.244 seconds. The minuscule difference between the two runs, just 0.016 seconds, is actually equivalent to a single frame of animation in the game. So how did he do it? “Kosmic” has a pretty extensive FAQ up on YouTube, and a desire to get his World Record down to four minutes and 56 seconds.
If you’re interested in watching him try, you can follow his Twitch Channel to see all his attempts.
UPDATE (10/4/16): Believe it or not, but Kosmic has already set a new Super Mario Bros. “Any Percentage” record. He posted to Twitter that his new best time is 4:57.194, an improvement of 0.05 seconds (or three frames) over his previous record-setting attempt.
