New Super Mario Bros. World Record Raises HUGE Questions

hello absolute legends on january 18, 2020, speedrunner cosmic set a new

world

record

for

super

mario

bros

with a time of 4 minutes, 55 seconds, and 646 milliseconds. This was a monster race, executing every strategy perfectly and finishing the race with one of the fastest finishes ever, this

world

record

was a big deal when it was achieved. Cosmic had been working on the game for over eight years, and while he already had a long history of breaking historical milestones, this most recent record seemed to be on the brink. than human players could achieve, Super Mario Bros is so ridiculously optimized at this point that the only way to save more time is by introducing strategies that for many years have been considered simply out of the question in Cosmic's Run, as is tradition with Los New Super Mario discs garnered a lot of attention, the video has over 2 million views on YouTube, and very few games in the speed racing space could compete with Mario in terms of overall mass appeal.

The Super Mario brothers reside in the upper echelon of gaming. Where world records are universally appreciated every time they happen, so you might be surprised to know that on October 23, Brazilian sprinter Lukuki surprised everyone when he tied the cosmic record. This was truly shocking as it was only a week before his personal best was still complete. three seconds behind, I don't think anyone expected this to happen so soon and if it did you would assume he would be one of the best players in existence who had been working hard. Lukuki seemingly came out of nowhere and accomplished this incredible feat after only several days of attempting, however, weeks later, Lukuki's record still did not appear in the ranks even though there was no clear evidence of cheating.

The only evidence that the race happened was the video itself and a post about our sprint under any other circumstances. A race like this would essentially be accepted and verified almost immediately, but this is no ordinary circumstance and Lucuki is no ordinary sprinter. The context in which this record was achieved is nothing short of bizarre and no one has a clear idea on what should be done. The problem is not only the strange way in which the time was achieved but also the history of the runner himself. To know the best way to proceed there are a couple of very important

questions

that need to be answered.

I am going to try to present the entire story in an unbiased manner and want you to come to your own conclusion and let me know in the comments how you think this situation should be handled. Let's start now before continuing. We are only a couple of weeks away from 2021. and one new year's resolution I want everyone to have is to learn a new skill and what better place to learn than Skillshare Skillshare is an epic online community that hosts thousands of classes where you can learn practically anything you can think of, whether you want. Tackle something completely new or take your existing talents to the next level.

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super

mario

brothers it was amazing race As was Cosmic's run of the same time achieved earlier in the year, this world record tie seemed to come out of nowhere and the cookie's previous personal best was relatively far from the top performers sitting at 4 minutes 56 seconds and 878 milliseconds. technically he's simply more than a second slower, which doesn't seem like a

huge

amount of time, but it put him in 21st place and overcoming that extra second to join the exclusive group of top players is extremely difficult.

Lukuki had some experience with the game although he competed in the much less popular Super Mario Bros. category extensions, which are random challenges in which speedrunners compete for fun, such as trying to beat the last level as quickly as possible or Collect 500 coins. These fun categories aren't as contested but they give players a novel way to practice specific skills and since Lukuki has the joint record of completing 8-4, he obviously has some skill, but it doesn't really matter how much skill you have if you want to compete. for the world record of any percentage you aspire to.

Having to work on the game for many hours, each of the best players has taken thousands of attempts to get to where they are. Lakuki's progression is not typical at all, in fact, it is atypical enough to raise concerns about his legitimacy. They largely revolve around confidence and new records are always met with skepticism when achieved by lesser-known players. Lakuki certainly did not have a high-level playing history and had in no way developed the community's trust as a top player on his previous record. The presentations only included two races: 458 achieved more than a year ago and 456 achieved a week before his new record.

This always leads to races being highly scrutinized and this world record is no exception. However, Lakuki's run has a lot going for him and the proof is that he provided is above and beyond what is normally considered acceptable, his hands are visible throughout the run and then he shows the controller cable connected to the console, even going so far as to enter the second mission and perform some jumps to establish that you have control. Try as Mario might, no one has been able to establish any evidence of foul play, and yet the race has yet to be verified as I mentioned before.

There is much more to this story and there is a reason why Lukuki has such a high level of testing for this time it is a requirement for him specifically this is not the first time that lakuki comes out of nowhere to achieve an incredibly difficult world record, It's happened before and it didn't happen that long ago in May of this year bowser, it's up to you man, it's up to you, no way, no damn dude, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, on the 4th May 2020, Lukuki claimed a new world record in Super Mario Bros., lost levels with a time of 7 minutes. 56 seconds and 515 milliseconds.

The crazy thing about this race is that it was the first time he showed up for the game. He even claimed that it was the first time he had completed a single speed race for the lost levels I've been on. speedrunner for over 20 years and I don't remember a single case where this happened in a highly contested game. This claim is so strange that other members of the community had no choice but to immediately become skeptical again. There was no direct evidence of cheating, but the race was ultimately rejected and would never be seen in the ranks.

The missing levels moderation team provided a lengthy and detailed document outlining all the factors that were considered when making their decision. One of the biggest oddities was the fact that the console used runs a little slower than should be expected. Super Mario Bros is timed in part using Bowser's pattern to determine how many frames have passed and using this metric the run was at a world record pace, but in real time it was actually half a second slower. Even if accepted, it would not be considered a world record due to this discrepancy, but one of the most important factors was Lakuki's history outside of Super Mario Bros speedrunning in 2018, he claimed multiple world records in Mario Kart DS which were later exposed.

As cheat racing, he essentially created tool-assisted speed races and tried to pass them off as legitimate speed races, as a result he was banned from the Mario Kart DS community. It just so happens that speedrunning is such a niche that it's possible for a player to get banned from one game and then quietly move on to another without that new community having any idea about that player's past, which is exactly what happened here. . The Super Mario Bros. community had no idea that Luke had been banned from competing in another game and only came to light after claiming the world record, so this

raises

the question of what communities should do with players who were caught cheating in a completely different community, in case there was an outright ban on all games when the first instance of fake racing occurred, if that were the case.

It can be quite difficult for one game to keep track of what's happening in all the other games; It may even be impossible, in this particular case, Lakuki kept his name the same, so it was much easier, but in theory, a player could simply change his name and sneak into a different community unnoticed. I don't want to name names here, but there are many examples of speedrunners who were caught cheating in a game and then just moved to a new community, some of them even got a very high ranking in their new game and so far there.

There seems to be no universally accepted rule about what to do in those situations. I've never found a community that explicitly describes what to do in this situation in their community guidelines to summarize after Lukuki was kicked out of Mario Kart, he almost immediately moved on to Super Mario.

bros

and began submitting races there, then claimed the world record for levels lost in his first sprint race, which led to a very complicated investigation that resulted in his time being rejected. The moderation team then imposed very strict requirements on further testing, insisting that one hand can be used in addition to showing the connected console and controller, but after these new rules were implemented, lukuki never touched the game again and He still doesn't have a single race submitted in the rankings, which is strange for someone in my opinion. who is able to achieve the world record in his first full race everything about lukuki's claimed records is strange but unfortunately there is no direct evidence of cheating, on top of this all these circumstantial evidence does not lean in his favor and there was a . critical moment after his most recent Super Mario Brothers world record that really caught my attention, as well as the other moderators.

Oh yeah, by the way, you can press any button except Select and the pad to start the game on the triple corpse. Yes, that's nice. great, I don't know if people know this, so I have shown cables, oh yeah, the cable goes to the television, how do you show the cables that go to the television? I don't think it's possible. That's going to be too difficult. a task, but yeah, at this point, I think you're not, you really can't, kriller 37, who is one of the moderators of the Super Mario brothers, told Lukaki to show the cables that go from the Nintendo to the television.

Lukuki tries it for about two seconds before covering it up. in front of the camera and claiming that it would be too difficult this seems incredibly suspicious imagine that you have just tied one of the most popular and respected world records in all of speedrunning the moderator of that game asks you to do something that seems quite simple but you reject it is after you've already been turned down for another world record due to past cheating. If I were in that position, I would be jumping over any obstacle put in front of me to remove any doubt that my record was legitimate at the end of the year.

Although this is all circumstantial, I honestly don't know if there was any foul play involved and until hard evidence is revealed, no one knows, the moderators have yet to make any public statement regarding the record that was set almost two months ago. Being in a situation where the record is permanently stuck in limbo with no obvious way to escape either way, it seems like Lukuki was never destined to hold the world record for long with the moderators and speedrunning community obsessed with this investigation ongoing, another player was quietly working on his attempts and on November 13, 2020 this happened just concentrate no way bowser please holy cow yes yes 4-3-0 oh my god I lost the ax frame I didn't import 455,430.

Oh holy man, I made it, I made it, I made it world record world record speedrunner nifski obliterated the existing world record with a new time of 4 minutes, 55 seconds and 430 milliseconds, this surpassed the record that cosmic had set by more than 0.2 seconds. which in the world of super mario is gigantic, now i want to address the elephant in the room, why does he play the keyboard well? Super Mario Bros emulation is an accepted and viable way toplay, there is no discernible difference in the way the game plays between the original hardware and the emulation, so you can use whichever version you want.

I know many people will value speedrun less if it's not on the original console, but consider this: the Nintendo Entertainment System went out of production 25 years ago. Years ago, as consoles and cartridges degraded, broke, and were discarded, the availability and reliability of those consoles was greatly reduced. This is a problem that is only going to get much worse, so restricting competition to only original consoles creates a

huge

barrier that is very short-sighted. In the event that the emulation differs from the original hardware, the leaderboards can be split, which is what they did for Super Mario 64. But in this case, Super Mario Bros actually plays the same through an emulator as it does on a console, so it is reasonable to group them together.

That being said, playing on original hardware is still the preferred method and is the option most speedrunners use and is what I personally prefer as well. If you're familiar with Super Mario Bros speedrunning, you'll have heard the term frame rule before a frame rule was used. The set amount of time each level checks to see if you've reached the end before sending you to the next, in this case each frame's rule is 0.35 seconds, meaning you can only gain or lose time in increments of that size. The exception to this is the final level because time stops at the exact frame where Mario connects with the hammer.

Saving a new frame rule is a big deal since Basically, the only way a player can save a lot of time usually involves introducing a much more difficult strategy and in the case of Nifski's new record it was 8-2, which which allowed for faster frame rule. It doesn't really seem like much, but the different technique used to jump over this pipe was the crucial change. The difficulty of this jump is extremely deceptive. It requires multiple frame and pixel perfect jumps on top of this to save enough time because these new jumps alone are not enough. execute an even more accurate bullet bill bug at the end of the stage by landing on the front of the bullet bill, so completing the level at the earliest possible frame saving this extra frame rule at 8-2 is nothing less how surprising and it was actually The first time Nifski ran to do it, he just happened to hold on to the last two levels to finish it.

People are now wondering if I will be close enough to 454 for it to be a realistic goal. I think for a long time 455 was seen as the last milestone that would ever be reached, but now that the record is closer to 454 than 456, it actually seems pretty reasonable; there is another potential frame rule that can be saved in 8-1 by using an extremely difficult quick ramp up at the start combined with a Flagpole Miss at the end and if you combine this with a near perfect final level you can save the enough time to get below 455. Nifski has run a fast enough run in practice starting at 8-1 to result in a 454, all he would need.

What we do now is do it in a real attempt. I predict that because this new barrier is as close as it gets, we'll see more players start putting serious effort into making it a reality. In this video we cover a couple of very controversial topics that we analyze. For players who cheat in one game and then move directly to another, we also highlight the use of emulation for speedrunning. I'm really curious to know what the general public thinks about this, so if you've already reached this point, leave your opinion in the comments. so far in the video, please do me a big favor and follow me on Twitter.

I'm really trying to increase the reach I have on social media and I would really appreciate it if the link was in the pinned comment, as always, thanks so much for watching. You absolute legends I hope you are having a fantastic day and I will see you in the next video.