Super Mario speedrunning world record demolished 5 times in one week

Thanks to an amazing bit of hacking that warps players straight to the end of Super Mario World, the game’s speedrunning record has now been broken five times in a week by a single player.

Ever since Twitch user JeffW356 discovered the glitch and the credits warp, which works by rewriting code from directly within the game play, speedrunners have been lining up to take the challenge. The glitch can be pulled off on a modern console—or, incredibly, an original Super Nintendo without an emulator, which is what gamer SethBling was using when he set a new world record for the run just two weeks ago. 

Using the original SNES, SethBling’s record-smashing time was a sluggish 5:59.6, which he quickly beat again, repeatedly. 

SethBling’s current run stands at 3:07.2, but that record has already been handily upended, not once, but five times, all by the same player, Twitch user dotsarecool. Dots has been systematically breaking the record on his Windows 10 system; his latest currently stands at 1:52.5. 

“Would you look at that,” he grins when he warps to the end credits.

Glitch-hunting is a storied pastime among speedrunners. Essentially in-game hacking, glitching propels the fine art of speedrunning to a whole new level. Still, plenty of gamers greeted the new world record with skepticism. 

“It really is stupid to call glitching a speed run,” wrote one redditor on an r/gaming thread announcing Dot’s victory. (It was promptly downvoted into oblivion.) 

Of course, it takes a village to circumvent Bowser. On Reddit’s r/speedrun, users are already exploring ways to take the SMW glitch to the next level.