Mario Kart 64: The Quest for World Record Perfection

In Mario Kart 64, being the

world

champion is the highest achievement you can obtain. It is a community of thousands of players with 16 routes. You can get a

world

record

without shortcuts. There are

record

s for both the fastest lap and the three fastest laps. a total of 32 world records over the years, various champions sometimes appearing with a fairly large share of the 32 records. Players like Kevin Booth and Alex Penev were at the top in the late '90s, usually holding about half of the 32 records in the early 2000s. It reached new heights for a champion who at times amassed more than 20 of the 32 records at once and that was incredible considering the number of high level players who were actively playing with about two thirds of the records was surprising, but in January 2011 an increase The promising German player recorded his first world record.

His name was Matthias Rustemeyer. Two years later he would become the champion without shortcuts with 12 of 32 possible records, but as the months passed it quickly became clear that Matthias' reign as champion was going to be different to all those that preceded him in October 2013 , Matthias had extended his lead to 20 out of 32 records, a week later he was at 24. In November he reached 26 and at that time he clearly explained that he was going for 32 out of 32 possible world records that had never been achieved before, no one had been even close before and it would be a shame to the rest of the community if it actually succeeded so that the other players formed an alliance that was made up of the The last few players were holding on to records not shortcuts and other high-level contenders.

Their goal was simply to stop Matthias from going 32 out of 32. The only problem was that the man they were trying to stop was perhaps the greatest Mario Kart 64 player of all time. And what happened in the years that followed, no one could have predicted that this was his

quest

to stop Matthias. Now there are a couple of things that need to be clarified first. Mario Kart 64 is known for having large jumps or oversights by the developers that allow the player to skip large portions of the track shortcuts, such as the weather tanko on Shaco Mountain, the big jump at the start of Rainbow Road, or the jumps.

Wall in Wario Stadium, however, the Mario Kart 64 community has separate leaderboards for time trials with shortcuts and time trials without shortcuts, the shortcut. Records have their place in history, but we will focus on the 32 records that are not direct access. It's also worth mentioning how times are converted between ntsc and pal. The versions of the games are released in most regions of the eastern hemisphere, while the ntsc versions come. Available in North America and Japan, POW Mario Kart 64 runs at 25 frames per second, while NTSC runs at 30 frames per second, meaning the PAL version runs in slow motion at 5 6 the speed of NTSC, a identical race would be 17 slower on pal than ntsc the

mario

kart

64 community created the combined leaderboard to account for this, adjusting the timing of ntsc and pal so they could be compared to each other. matthias and most other high level players play in pal as playing in slow motion makes driving a little easier. so all the hours you see in this video will appear as friends equivalents, which may be slower than the hours you're used to seeing if you live in North America or Japan.

Anyway, let's go back to December 5, 2013. That was the day. the a1a alliance was born from a forum post by zorin one of the best

mario

kart

64 players around a1a represented the anti 1.0 alliance with 1.0 referring to matthias's average ranking if he got 32 out of 32 records on december 5 matthias had just to take mj's squid desert lap record, meaning he now had 28 of a possible 32 records, the only four he was missing were moomoo farm lap, moomoo farm lap 3, lap 3 of dk jungle parkway and the turn of the toad turnpike, which was just four records out of 32 out of 32. enough to mobilize a1a into action, one member in particular saw a weakness in one of matthias's times, so who set to work to defeat him.

This runner's name was vaj, yes, yes, yes. 48, that's right, Stokie, one of the reasons Vaj is legendary. It's because of his epic celebrations, but the other reason he's legendary is because he's really good at Mario Kart 64. He's held dozens of world records dating back to 2006 and still plays to this day. On December 5, 2013, he was tied with Matthias on Koopa. return from troopa beach, so he tried to break the tie and sent matthias back to 27 records and on December 8th he did it, he beat the tie by .02, putting matthias at 27 of 32, however, later, the Same day, matthias tied vaj again to return. to 28 and then he got the lap record on the toad turnpike and then the moo moo farm 3 lap record matías had 30 out of 32 possible records the a1a was floundering apart from vaj's one record they had done nothing to stop Matthias but he had a big advantage, the last two he was missing were two of the most difficult to achieve in the entire game.

Let's break them down. We will start with Moomoo Farm. This record was 27.82 by tjl set in March 2013. First the obvious, everyone played as Yoshi, the three fastest characters in the game are Yoshi Toad and Peach, with no major differences in gameplay between the three, so that every record you'll see in this video will play as one of those characters. Tjl also did mini turbos all over the place when drifting. Using R and moving the joystick back and forth twice, you can charge up a boost that can be released for a burst of speed when the smoke turns orange.

By performing this in specific places around the track, you can move through it much faster than normal. The mini turbos and character selection are valid for all 16 fields, but Moomoo Farm has something in particular that makes it unique. It has the only random element in any of the time trial fields. The moles randomly emerging from their holes imply the optimal path around the field. passing through the holes and if one appears while your card is on top, it will hit you and force you to reset the record holder. Here was the record holder. He is what you might call a core specialist.

He set a total of 19 records from Mario Kart 64. Approximately five years ago, 14 of those 19 records were improvements to Moomoo Farm. He was able to master this field in a way that no one else could subconsciously understand the technicalities of ways to drift and angles to take after years of intermittent attempts. He scored a 27.82 each time. He described it as a once-in-a-lifetime record when Matthias tried to replicate it this time. He found himself unable to emulate many of TJL's subtle strategies. He had trouble getting close to the slope where he used the first mushroom and generally lost time there, the other record holder Matthias did not.

He didn't have dk Jungle Parkway. William Lacy had three laps. Lacy was even more dominant on this track than tjl was on Moomoo Farm. He had held the record for over 10 years, lowering the record 14 times in a row and finally finishing with 213.08 dk. Jungle Parkway is a strange course to break records. You have to drive through the jungle while twisting and turning through the grass near the start. There is a big ramp that you have to jump off with precision. The further to the left you go, the faster. However, if you go too far to the left you will fall into the water.

There's also a cave at the end where the quickest way to get to the top is to mash r to jump down a steep slope. Doing this quickly is incredibly accurate, but after years of playing snap. He was an expert at that, as the record holders for Moomoo Farm Lap and DK Jungle Parkway Lap 3 were so dominant in their respective fields, Matia struggled to catch up while also maintaining his other 30 records, so the alliance was finally able to make a dent in his total record in late 2013 and early 2014 players like jaime zorin and mj were able to reduce and take away some records from matthias, they were not on the same level as him, but each had the potential to set a record if they tried hard but unfortunately for the alliance every time someone took one of Matthias' records, they almost always surpassed it in a matter of days, so with their record total of 29 it was unclear if the alliance's plan alliance was sustainable, they had players they could compete with. matthias, but no one could keep up with him, but then in May 2014, a new player came to join the alliance.

His name was dan burbank, who may dan earned his first world record by breaking matthias's snowland frappe lap record, of course, matias quickly beat him. a week later, but then dan did something that everyone else in the community struggled to do, he beat matthias, there were no new strategies, there were no revolutionary new mechanics, dan simply drove better than matthias, this pattern continued for the next few months and It soon became clear, they actually give. He had the ability to keep up with Matthias in certain fields, so as 2014 progressed, even though Matthias was actively trying to defend his records, Dan was able to help bring Matias to a total of 20 with as many players in the community actively working against them.

Now getting 32 out of 32 seemed almost impossible. The field where he really needed help was DK Jungle Parkway. If he could get those two records, he felt confident that he could get the rest to get closer and in July 2015 he would get some. help from a new dk jungle parkway strategy by laci the old turnaround strategy involved using two mushrooms shortly after the ramp to cut a section of the grass. Lacy acknowledged that it was actually faster to just use one mushroom here and save the second mushroom to use. On a later patch of grass, improvements to no-shortcut strategies are often similar to this.

Very small changes in the precise paths to take while driving. This new mushroom spot meant there was now more time to save on the lap record. Matthias had a realistic chance of making it. and by October 2015 he had achieved it. Matthias had beaten Lacey in both the three lap and lap records. Two of the most problematic world records were gone. Now all he had to do was keep racing to get the rest on November 20, 2015. Matthias recorded his fifth record last month, a lap of 27.68 at Mario Raceway, which meant that for the first time in history a player He had achieved 31 of 32 possible records, the only record he was missing was the lap of Moo Moo Farm, TJL's 27.82. the only record in the game he had never had before and we have already gone over how much he struggled with it in the past, but now that he had no other records to worry about, Matthias could focus all of his efforts there, the A1A.

He was in the last stages of it, they had put up a good fight over the last few months, but in the end Matthias had just been able to outrun them all. Matias is a really nice guy and no one in the alliance had anything personal against him, but almost no one wanted to do it. seeing someone hold all 32 records at once would be an embarrassment to all the other record contenders. Matia said in a forum post that he wouldn't be able to play until November 23rd, so the alliance at least had until then to try to get a record of him, so over the weekend the alliance got to work dan zorin Vaj and others were trying to take at least one of Matthias' records, but as the days went by no one was passing any, even with the alliance members spending hours each day taking courses that no one could take. any of Matthias' 31 records, that's how good he was, that's how advanced his records were, and sure enough, on the morning of November 23, 2015, the day Matthias returned to try to match Moomoo Farm's lap time tjl, a new record was published.

This is Abney 317. He is one of the best in the world at Mario Kart 64. But his area of ​​focus is not non-shortcut records, but rather he has held dozens of shortcut records and the coveted speed race record of 150cc big jump for years, but he has had the ability to also take some records without shortcuts and on November 22, 2015 he came to the community's rescue with a 212.61 at Bowser Castle, a new record of seven hundredths As a second, Abny went after this particular record because it was one of Matthias' oldest records and it was more than two years old.

The quality of the game had improved slightly since then, so Abny perceived it as weaker than most. of Matthias' other drives and apparently he was right: he could use different paths around the swamps to go faster, but unfortunately for him that also meant that the next day Matthias was able to beat Abney's record to get back to 31 out of 32. all What he needed was to shave 900 seconds off his lap at Mumu's farm to get 32 ​​seconds.32. was very close and kept pushing but then it was aveny to the rescue again this time on lap 3 of the calamari desert this record wasn't as old as bowser's castle it was set just a week before but it wasn't optimized just a year ago month a new strategy called hill jumping was first used by a player known as dot man by jumping off hills in the arena at specific points you get more time in the air and don't slow down as much as normal ebony used this to his lead and for the second time in just two days he was able to stop Matthias dead in his tracks at 31 of 32, but that wasn't enough to feel confident. matthias could casually pick up new records seemingly whenever he wanted and abney didn't have as much experience with records without shortcuts. so to be safe, abney thought he should probably attack.

Abney was actually facing Matthias. He wasn't just looking to defend his own records, he was actively looking to take records he didn't have and was running during a crazy stretch in January 2016, setting four new records in five days, putting Matias in 27th place out of 32, his total. lowest in months. Abney had proven once again that Matías was beatable, but as always, Matías competed again later that month, with 4 fewer records. From where he was just a few weeks before, but instead of being intimidated by what Abney had just done, he saw 4 records that were within his abilities to beat, two of them were on long courses with room for optimization in Wario Stadium and Rainbow Road due to Matías's ability.

To take slightly better lines and optimize his driving, he knew there was room for improvement over Abney's track record and he was right to acquire them both in a matter of weeks. The other two squid desert and Bowser's castle each had new strategies that Matthias had not yet implemented. Jump hills in the squid desert and different swampy paths in Bowser's castle once he did it. two more fast world records, bringing his record total to 31 out of 32. The third time he achieved that total, it was miraculous how he was able to do this. If someone took Matías's records, he would immediately strive to beat them.

People could beat him temporarily, but. he would always prevail in the end, the only exception of course was moomoofarm, for the third time he only needed that record to get 32 ​​out of 32 and for the third time abney took away his chance, this time it was squid desert beating matthias. In a 600th of a second, Matthias only had a chance to grind Moomoo Farm for about 12 hours because that's how long it took Abny to get the record that made Matthias three times 31st out of 32 with just Mumu Farm in foot. the road only to be stopped by abny at the last minute simply remarkable matthias normally plays mario kart less in the summer so in mid 2016 he took a step back from the game, who could blame him after coming so close so many times For several months he made no progress in his pursuit of 32 out of 32.

Summer came and went. In October he returned and when he did, this is what he saw. Dan had just made an important statement. Matthias was down to just 24 out of 32 records, his lowest total in three years, this is what the community was able to do in just a few months if Matthias wasn't there to aggressively defend his records in the past, dan had focused his efforts on achieving world records at fraps snow land and mario raceway, but since he had time in mid-2016, he also improved a lot on other courses and took records at courses like Wario Stadium and Yoshi Valley again.

It was nothing revolutionary to simply learn the correct lines to take each turn. and other little driving mechanics, but regardless of the final result, Matthias was far from perfect and it seemed like maybe the community could take it easy and not have to worry about 32 out of 32, but then in October, Matthias did this, Yeah. 212 67 grabbed it with the cave it was good, yeah 23. Can you believe it? Over the course of just four weeks in October 2016, Matia set seven new world records. All the months of work throughout 2016 by Dan Abney and others came undone in one matter. of weeks of world records at Wario Stadium Mario Raceway DK Jungle Parkway Calamari Desert Yoshi Valley all by simply beating the other record holders and that meant that for the fourth time Matías was at 31 of 32 records, once again the one missing was Lumu. farm lap, let's take a closer look at that record, it was 27.82 by tjl, while matthias' best time was 27.91. -champion shortcut moomoo farm is a unique field with slopes that you must climb and a fence that you must get as close to as possible.

There are three very particular places you should use your mushrooms hugging the inside fence and stepping over the moles while Yes, I had been able to completely master it in 2013, but since Matthias had 31 other records to worry about, he just couldn't figure out how to do this course optimally so far. 87 I felt the pri. I felt like it was a personal best of 400 of a second, meaning Matthias was now one-twentieth of a second away from 32 out of 32. His other 31 out of 32 only lasted a day or two at most, but this one was different five days later, on Halloween night. he was still alive in 31 of 32. abny wasn't there dan wasn't there the alliance had gone radio silent all there was was matthias getting mumu farm closer to the record than ever and then lacey came to the rescue on october 31st 2016 Lacey got a 2 12.50 at DK Jungle Parkway 3 laps on this course, especially on the 3 lap side, it really was Lacey's specialty, it was her 23rd world record there and this one couldn't have come at a better time, the thing is that Matthias was definitely the better driver of the two, Lacy, he knew this circuit inside and out and was still a very good driver.

He knew exactly where to go on the ramp, exactly how to take the tracks through the jungle, exactly how to step into the cave in the In the end, this course took up a ton of his Mario Kart 64 playtime, while for Matthias it was just a small fraction, as expected, the community was elated four times, now Matias had been at 31 of 32 and four times he had been stopped at the in the last minute and you may be noticing a pattern at this point, matthias would approach much to 32 out of 32, then someone would stop him at the last minute, matias would stop playing for a while and then the community would come together and take his total.

In a lower pot, that would happen again now in 2017, but this time the community went one step further for November 2017. Matthias was ranked 21st out of 32 records, his lowest total in four years. There were two reasons why his total reached this low level. The first was Matthias' usual period of inactivity, he didn't stop playing completely but he didn't aggressively defend his records with no shortcuts and the second dan took his game to the next level at one point in July 2017, he had 11 world records the first time anyone other than matías had held so many records in years, this was matías' lowest point since he began his

quest

for 32 out of 32, he knew he could make up most of those records, but what would it matter, we've seen it time and time again Again, Matias got his total up to 31 out of 32 with some effort only to be stopped by one particular circuit.

The moo moo farm lap was always in his way, tjl's 27.82 was his nemesis and he was too good to beat, but then he did it on November 27, 2017, matthias tied the legendary 27.82 by tjl. The key to achieving this was playing a lot on the field. He came at the end of a multi-week routine in which he did dozens of laps on the 2780s. During that time, he mastered everything there was. to know about moomoo farm and finally everything came together in a magical race his mushrooms were clean his mini turbos were perfectly synchronized on the tracks his driving was precise in March 2013 tjl established a magical race with his 27.82 it took matías four and a half years, but he had finally replicated it and changed everything.

This was the only world record. Matías had not been able to maintain the only record that prevented him from obtaining 32 of 32 during the last two years. He now he had removed it from the form of him. 22 of 32 records I had obtained each of the remaining 10 records before and knew I could obtain them again, it was time to obtain once and for all 32 of 32. oh yes, that should be enough yes 4 25 sure, three months Later , despite some resistance from Dan Matias, got back to 31 for 32. The last record he needed was DK Jungle Parkway, 3 laps on a course he had had trouble with at times, but it was still a record he had held in four different occasions in the past.

The time was 212.58, the record was 212.35, Lacey was behind, but this record was certainly within reach for him to finish the job and then on March 13, 2018, Matias made history. Abney beat him in the Calamari Desert in the last minute for the third time. It was starting to get absurd, it was the fourth time Abney had avoided 32 out of 32, the third time in the squid desert, and of course Matías congratulated Abney on the Mario Kart 64 forums only to beat him the next day and come back at 31 of 32. with no chance for the alliance to gain ground so matías returned to play in dk Jungle Parkway 0.19 behind the record and once again got results immediately obtaining a personal best that pushed him to only .15 behind the record of Lacey this alliance strategy was clearly not working, even if someone broke one of Matthias's 31 records, he could usually recover it in about a day.

That was not a good long-term solution. Dan recognized this problem, so he began to implement a strategy that few dared to implement. He passed DK Jungle Parkway three laps alongside Matthias. This method certainly had its positives and negatives. If he passed Matthias, he could make it harder to finish the job and get 32 ​​out of 32, but Dan had only held this record once. before and matthias certainly had the upper hand if he didn't manage to beat him it would be a huge waste of time that could have been spent on any of the other fields. This was certainly a gamble, but it paid off because on March 16, 2018, Dan set one of the clutch records in the history of mario kart 64 this beat the record by almost two tenths of a second and put matthias back to . 34 behind the world record, but its true dividends would be paid the next day when matthias achieved this time and it was not the The world record for 24 hours, if he had obtained it the day before, it would have been 32 out of 32.

But thanks to the new record Dan was just behind by a matter of 0.08, but they were clearly playing with fire. Matias was less than a tenth of a second off 32 of 32 and showed that he was able to take time off of his time at dk Jungle Parkway quite easily. This wasn't Moomoo Farm. Any day he could take this record and he was constantly trying. The community watched with anticipation, waiting. to see when they would have to crown matías as the definitive champion, but on March 23 they gave a collective sigh of relief because sub oh man, how could abney continue doing so well?

The record had not yet been fully optimized from mountain jumping. but in matías' last record in the calamari desert, he was able to go under the first train gap on lap 3, while all the previous records were too slow and he had to make the second one, so aveny's goal was to climb the hill efficiently enough and drive fast enough to match. matthias and make the first gap on the train, he was able to do it and thanks to slightly better driving overall he shaved off enough time to beat matthias and once again send them back to 30th of 32, but with how close matthias was, abney He thought he might as well move on, so he set his sights on a new goal: the three laps and lap records at Rainbow Road.

Focused on these in particular because each one was over two years old, meaning the overall community driving quality had improved since then and they were on the longest field in the game, meaning there was probably room to optimize them. and in a matter of days, he nonchalantly picked them both up, let's go straight to the chops so that Matías would once again have 28 of 32 records in one. Abney's quick strike turned the momentum back in favor of the alliance. Things were looking up for them, so Matthias went back to work and this is what he did for the next week.

Come on, yeah, that's 71 in the last round. Yes Yes. Now it was the seventh time that Matías had 31 of 32 records. He was more determined than ever to finish the job. The record was Dan's 212.14 and I was right behind him with 2.12.24. He quickly found results with a small personal best, but on May 1st disaster struck for Matthias Zorin, the founder of A1A, he broke the DK Jungle Parkway lap record, which meant that Matthias was now missing both records on this route and whatthat occurred throughout May 2018 can only be described as a crazy fight on DK Jungle Parkway. was breaking the three lap record, Zorin was breaking the lap record, and Matias was breaking both, but in the end, even though Matthias was lowering his best times, having to deal with both Dan and Zorin was too much for him, despite be incredibly close, he couldn't. got any of the logs and eventually he stopped trying and his log total started to drop into the 20's.

Months passed and as more logs were taken from Matthias, reality started to set in his window because

perfection

had probably disappeared. He had had seven chances to get 32 ​​out of 32 all were thwarted in the last minute muumuu farm was his nemesis for a long time and tjl's ridiculous return was too hard to overcome after finally conquering that record. dk Jungle Parkway stood in their way. Lacey's experience barely kept him ahead and once Zorin. he got involved in the single lap record, it was too much for him. Matías was probably the best person to ever play Mario Kart 64. but even for him, having all the records at once was too big an attack, I can't believe it's so real.

Guys, is it that real? Why am I dreaming about 1172 out of nowhere? At least that's what everyone thought, but on November 20, 2018, Matías pulled off a miracle on lap 3 of DK Jungle Parkway. It took him almost half a second off his personal best to smash the world record. Matías himself didn't see this coming, no one saw it, but it meant that he could make one last effort now that he just had to collect the rest of the missing disks that took him about two days. A disk was missing. dk jungle parkway lap record was 42.07 by zorin before zorin took it in may 2018 matías had held the record for the past two and a half years, so he certainly knew what he was doing, but to beat the time he had set zorin era It's going to ask a lot, there were two big tricks he had to focus on first, the ramp jump, there is a very specific spot you want to land just to the left of this tree, lining up when you come off the ramp is very difficult, but Zorin's Record did it perfectly and second, the cave jumps at the end, we saw before how important they were, but the lap races add a mushroom here to take them even faster.

There is a very specific way in which you must jump to the top all the way. As far left as you can, but too far left is too steep and you will fall, all of that was a difficult task, but fortunately Matías was the best the world had, this was within reach of his thousands of time trial attempts and his other seven times at 31. of 32 everyone came to this it was time to finish their dream 32 of 32 world records now oh shocking shocking hmm oh not so close oh that's so hard to swallow how close can you get no oh oh god what did he do I do Oh my goodness, a crushing dream.

Abney recorded how close Matthias had been. Well, he fell into the cave because he was just too far to the left, since at half a cart's width too far to the left, if he hadn't fallen, it's almost certain that he would have been tied or ahead of Zorin. . record meaning 32 out of 32. five years of trying and thousands of hours playing mario kart 64 came down to one small failed move: you simply held the control stick a little too far to the left, that was the difference between 32 out of 32 and another failed attempt next. this record total from matthias would never be recovered, instead it was dans and abney's turn to celebrate taking certain time trials to levels they had never seen before yeah, there we go guys, yeah 54. yeah, and that's where it ends this story, at least for now, matias may have done it.

He never achieved his goal, but what he did do is honestly just as impressive: 249 no-shortcut records in total eight different times, 31 out of 32. He just never got the last one to finish the job, but the thing is, he still might not. has finished. matthias still actively plays mario kart 64 to this day his potential is still there he may still be in the middle of his quest for 32 of 32 but wherever he goes in the future we know he will have some tough competition along the way thanks for seeing you