← All Speedruns

Super Mario Bros.

NES · Any% · 1985

Current WR
4:54.948
First Known Run
~6:30:00

The most iconic speedrun in existence, defined by the sub-5-minute barrier and the discovery of wrong warps that allow players to skip entire worlds.

Super Mario Bros. speedrunning became synonymous with competitive gaming itself, attracting the widest mainstream audience of any run. The pivotal breakthrough was the wrong warp, a glitch discovered in the early 2000s that allows a player entering a pipe in World 4-2 to warp not to World 5 as intended but directly to World -1 or World 8, bypassing roughly two-thirds of the game. Framer-perfect walljumps, flagpole glitches, and sub-pixel manipulation now define top-level play, with the world record hovering around the theoretical minimum of 4:54. The community is anchored at Speedrun.com and has been the subject of major documentary films and world-record controversies.

Famous Techniques:
  • Wrong Warp — entering the 4-2 pipe in the correct sub-pixel position warps the player to World 8 instead of World 5
  • Flagpole Glitch — touching the flagpole at exactly the right height skips the pole-slide animation, saving frames
  • Framerule — the game only advances the next level every 21 frames, so runners optimise to hit level transitions on the earliest possible framerule
  • Fast Acceleration — holding B while running maintains maximum speed; releasing it even briefly costs framerules
Notable Runners:
  • Kosmic — longtime world-record holder and record-progression analyst known for frame-perfect consistency
  • Darbian — held the 4:57.260 world record in 2016 and popularised live commentary of near-optimal runs
  • Niftski — current-era top contender who pushed the record into the 4:54 range with sub-pixel-optimised routing
Key Facts:
  • The sub-5-minute barrier was first broken in 2014 and remains the most famous milestone in speedrunning
  • Wrong warp was the single biggest time-save discovery, cutting minutes off the then-dominant "warpless" routes
  • Andrew Gardikis held the world record for years with a 4:58 that stood from 2010 to 2014
  • Controversies around TASBot-assisted runs versus legitimate human records sharpened community verification standards