on october 22nd 2018
mitchflower power achieved a new world
record by completing super mario
brothers 3 in 10 minutes and 44.416
seconds
when watching the run some things might
seem odd or even suspicious why does he
wait here
why does he slow down how does he jump
on a wall
what makes the speed one so good let's
answer all of those questions and more
this is the super mario brothers 3 world
record speedrun explained
first of all the category this is 80
no wrong warp the any percent part means
that the goal is to finish the game by
reaching this screen no matter how much
of the game was actually completed
the use of warp whistles is allowed so
the goal will be to get two warp
whistles
then to use them both to warp to world 8
and then to beat world 8 as quickly as
possible
for speedruns that complete more of the
game there's warp less and 100
if you want to check out these runs you
can find the link in the video
description
the no wrong wire part is a bit more
complex to explain
in short there's a glitch that under
certain circumstances can force the game
to read the value of variables in memory
as if it was instructions of game code
with an extremely precise setup there's
a way to set values for those variables
that translate into instructions that
tell the game to skip to the end screen
immediately
this is a wrong one and that specific
instance is called the credits
warp it's a fascinating albeit very
different speed run and will be covered
in a separate video
[Music]
um
as you may have noticed mid slowed down
here but then mario is moving much
faster
there's a crucial mechanic in mario
brothers 3 called p-speed
the meter at the bottom of the screen
fills up when mario is running
when it's full mario will run faster
jump higher
and if he has the super leaf or the
tanuki suit be able to fly
the meter only fills up when b is held
and mario is running on the ground at
top speed
mitch wants to fill up the p-meter as
early as possible to make use of that
faster movement speed
he barely doesn't have enough space to
fill it all the way up while jumping
over the goomba so as soon as he reaches
p-speed he jumps and does a quick left
tap to dodge the piranha plant
doing it this way is still faster than
jumping earlier and filling up the meter
later
bouncing on these enemies is simply done
by jumping right before touching them
in the last three frames before getting
hit
i play too hard here the hammer brother
moves before mario can start moving
this happens every time when going back
to the world map while at least one
hammer brother is there
each hammer brother chooses one
direction to go in
then it checks if the spot under it is
free hammer brothers can't stay on a
stage a mushroom house or another hammer
brother
in that case they keep moving only going
back the way they came from if they're
in a dead end
interestingly hammer brothers cannot
choose to go towards a spade game a pipe
or completed level
and if they move to a matching card game
both the hammer brother and the matching
card game will move to try to find a
free spot
this can lead to situations where a
hammer brother is trapped or where two
hammer brothers watch together for a
very long time
or even worse where a hammer brother in
a matching game are stuck together
forever
soft locking the game world 1 will be
loaded a total of 4 times
once after each of these 4 stages so the
hammer brother has 29 different
possibilities to move between 4 and 8
tiles of total movement
every time it moves by more than a
single tile the additional movement
costs a bit over half a second
because of the mechanics behind the
choice of a direction to go in the
possibilities are not equi-probable
the optimal pattern only has a 3.5
percent chance of happening
the likeliest scenario is that it moves
seven squares in total
and the expected average is a little
over six squares
in this run the hammer brother moved by
two one
two and one for a total of six squares
which is a little bit better than
average
there's only a 22 percent chance of
getting a better pattern than this
there are many more random elements in
this run and the chance of all of them
being perfect is astronomically low
not getting the optimal hammer brother
pattern is not a big deal
[Music]
in this level p-speed can only be
acquired a bit later
it's theoretically possible to fill up
the p-meter from the beginning but that
requires extremely precise inputs that
are too hard to execute in real time
the fastest strategy to beat the level
as demonstrated by the tool assisted
speedrun for this game
is even crazier instead mitch goes for a
strategy that is much easier
at the cost of a fraction of a second
somebody
tripped over the cable and plugged the
server damn right they did
yo angel wind what's up
[Music]
mitch will need a super leaf to fly up
to the second warp whistle
so he needs a mushroom first the fastest
to get
is here because bumping on this block
from the side allows him to grab the
mushroom faster
and keep more momentum than he would
have kept from a regular block
many of you may already know this but
after holding down on white blocks for
four seconds
mario falls behind the background which
allows him to get behind the black wall
at the end of the stage
hidden behind it is the secret exit that
rewards him with the first warp whistle
by timing it correctly mitch was able to
start moving and build up as much speed
as possible right before the 4 second
threshold
holding this koopa shell also left him
run through this goopa letting him reach
b speed without losing his mushroom or
having to jump
i thought you were saving bits for a
loot crate
yeah don't be spending your bits you
gotta save them
moving on the overworld map is not as
simple as it seems
the first movement after loading the map
can be buffered by holding the desired
direction
for every subsequent movement attempting
to move too early results in mario being
unable to move for the next 24 frames
which at this level of play is a major
mistake
additionally when moving by multiple
spaces in any given direction
holding the d-pad makes mario move every
16 frames but only after having to wait
for those 24 frames first
so to move around optimally mitch
actually needs to time his d-pad presses
perfectly
in this run he will need to move on the
overworld map 38 times so it adds up
very quickly
this is the second of the two whistles
needed to reach world 8.
whenever mario jumps with b-speed a
counter runs for a little over 4 seconds
if it reaches 0 before mario lands and
regains p-speed the p-meter will reset
preventing mario from flying any further
the counter always starts when mario
jumps no matter his power web state so
this is why he can fly up even though he
didn't have the leaf at the moment he
jumped
as long as this jump timer is active
mario's speed is not taken into account
so mario can turn around without
resetting the p-meter
this also means that it's possible to
reset the p-meter by repeatedly bouncing
until the timer hits zero even without
the super leaf
i read that part burns yeah
that sucks using a whistle will take you
to the warp zone
depending on which world it was used in
mario will be placed in the next row
unless he was already in world 8
but you can use a second whistle when
already in the warp zone to go directly
to the last row
this is the fastest way to reach the
final world from the start of the game
the band-aid
the band-aid strat
this is the first of four auto-scrolling
levels in world 8.
unfortunately there is no way to speed
up these levels significantly so all
mitch has to do is to avoid losing time
the main thing to look out for in this
level is lag which can easily happen
when too many enemies are on screen at
once
so he tries to clear out enemies and
prevent bombs from exploding
the stories the stories were too
embarrassing
twitch chat was like shut it down shut
the mfp
chat down
uh i'm guaranteed one of the hands most
likely
there is one way to reach the pipe
faster and that is by clipping inside of
a block and letting the wall push mario
to the right and partly off screen
as you can see in this comparison with
the tool assisted speed run
however this is way too difficult to
achieve and involves a high risk for a
low
reward if mario gets pushed off screen
he will be crushed and die
he can only get pushed a maximum of 22
pixels forward
given that auto scrollers move by one
pixel every two frames this trick can
only save a maximum of 44 frames
if done perfectly which is not even
three quarters of a second
this part is where reducing lag is the
most important
getting rid of these bombs is crucial to
avoid a slowdown and time loss
why are we doing pickup lines uh i
didn't know we were on the pickup lines
i'm not a pickup line person i don't
know if i've ever used a pickup line on
someone before
in this room there are two key details
to note first
the chest only spawns when all enemies
are dead and their projectiles are off
screen
the boomerang row can move forwards or
backwards if it moves forwards it will
throw its boomerang from further left so
the boomerang will take an extra 22
frames to go off screen delaying the
chest by the same amount
fortunately it went backwards in this
run however
the boomerang broke can also choose to
delay its throw by 15 frames which is
what happened here
so of the four different possibilities
mitch got the second best outcome
here's the second detail when the chest
spawns it will be placed at one of these
two points
it always appears at the furthest of the
two so to reach the chest
faster mitch made sure to keep mario in
the right half of the room while
building up speed to the left crossing
the middle point right as the chest
spawned
i've never really done pickup lines
before i've always found them to be
super like
too much whether they work or not i
you know that's not up for me to decide
i don't really care or like
has nothing to do with me i just always
thought that me doing them was like
weird
i don't know i'm just not a pickup line
kind of person this fire flower is one
of the toughest power ups to grab and
keep in a 2d mario game even though
mitch makes it look easy
he needs to grab it for the upcoming
battle against boom boom because using
fireballs is faster than stomping on him
three times
in fact mitch needs to keep this fire
flower through the entirety of world
viii
the remaining auto scrollers in the run
have very little going on
so they're going to be fast forwarded
through if you'd like to watch them in
full
the unedited speedrun is in the video
description
[Music]
when coming out of the pipe mario can't
move to the right until he touches the
floor
mitch uses this to his advantage by
letting go of the d-pad with his left
hand so he can match the b button with
both hands
this lets him throw two fireballs the
maximum that can be on screen at once as
quickly as possible
when fireballs hit a target they go out
in a puff of smoke
only when that puff of smoke has
completely disappeared can a new
fireball be thrown
however if we look closely you can see
that he actually threw the third
fireball 11 frames after the first one
fully disappeared
this is actually on purpose boom boom
can sometimes jump over fireballs
causing them to miss
so mitch intentionally delays his
fireballs by about a fifth of a second
to make sure that never happens
after that he throws the final fireball
only a couple of frames after the third
one fully disappears
you can tell how fast a boom boom fight
was visually by looking at where he is
compared to the floor texture
an optimal fight ends with boom boom
centered on this line
as you can see mitch barely lost any
time to an optimal fight
the tool assisted run can actually kill
boom boom even faster but humans simply
can't attain that level of perfection
yo i did it without bumping i finally
did it how do i press b
so fast i used both my thumbs how did
mario go over these squares without
being grabbed once
well the short answer is look when mario
goes over each one of these three
squares
he has a 50 50 chance of being grabbed
by a hand and forced into the stage
each of them is a pretty large time loss
so to have a chance at the record
mitch needs to be lucky enough to avoid
being grabbed all three times
this results in a 1 in 8 chance this is
by far the most important element of
luck in the run
other factors can cost small amounts of
time here and there but these hands
cause
7 runs out of 8 to come to a dead end
right there
this boom boom fight also went very well
for mitch he executed this strategy
pretty much perfectly
i'm surprised i got no bump
[Music]
bumpless
here mitch intentionally slows down and
waits before jumping to kill this
piranha plant
this is because piranha plants take aim
for a short time then
fire either up or down depending on
where mario is relative to them
if mitch had jumped earlier the plant
would have fired up and hit mario
so he made sure to wait until the plant
fired its fireball down before he jumped
and he kept his precious fire flower
there's a special property of the
p-meter that i haven't explained yet and
it's especially relevant here
the p-meter builds up only if mario is
running at full speed on the ground and
b
is held but it doesn't check for these
conditions at all times
it only checks once every 8 frames here
mitch needs to throw a fireball to kill
the paratroopa which means he needs to
release b
if he's not holding b when the p-meter
checks for the conditions or if he lets
his speed drop
the p-meter won't increment instead it
will decrement by one arrow and reset
its timer to 24 frames effectively
delaying p-speed by 32 frames
there simply isn't enough room to get
p-speeded that happens
so mitch needs to release b when the
p-meter is not checking for it and
repress it fast enough to not lose any
speed
according to his input display he
released it for only two frames
here mitch slowed down intentionally
mario gets a card at the end of every
numbered stage
the card always cycles between a
mushroom a flower and a star
usually running at p speed and jumping
into the card will give mario a star
this is what happened in the first two
levels matching three stars gives you
five lives with this long
fanfare so he wants to avoid it and get
the much shorter single one up instead
so he delays his jump just enough for
the card to cycle back to the mushroom
mario has momentum in this game so i can
hold the d-pad let go quick
shoot and go back to d-pad without much
of a difference being made
[Music]
oh god damn it what a surprise
i can't believe i kept p speed but both
times
both both no hands runs got the bad rng
here you can see mitch's slowed down
considerably and was visibly annoyed
what happened he had to slow down
because of the angry sun
optimally this section would look like
this however
the sun affects how you need to approach
this part
the sun swoops down after spinning in
the corner a random amount between two
and five times
if it spins three times or more there's
enough time to bounce through this
section near seamlessly but if it spins
only twice
there is no way to get past it without
slowing down it did spin twice here so
it would have hit mario had he followed
this route
this forced mitch to slow down
unfortunately losing about half a second
in the process
this is possibly the biggest time loss
in the entire speedrun which speaks
volumes about the quality of the run
itself
again though considering the 1 and 8
chance at mitch just overcame
this is not the end of the world
[Music]
my slide
[Music]
this room is very tricky to get through
this quickly without getting hit
especially this jump to avoid the roto
disc which has a two frame window
mitch's capture card missed the frame
where mario is on the ground but you can
see that mario is still in midair on
this frame and two frames later he
already jumped again
the layout of this room makes reaching
p-speed extremely tricky
mitch intentionally stays on this
backwards conveyor belt to maximize the
time spent running at full speed
the small time loss from the backwards
momentum of the conveyor is largely
outweighed by the benefit of reaching
p-speed before leaving this platform
similarly because he has to jump between
these two platforms anyway he stays on
this forwards moving conveyor as little
as possible
this one tile gap is crucial if the
p-meter happens to check for the three
conditions while mario is above the gap
mario won't be on the ground so the
meter will not increment
so the three or four frames where mario
is over the gap need to fall in between
two of these checks
it's hard to tell precisely when the
check is made because the p-meter
doesn't always visually update at the
same time but it possibly incremented
exactly on the frame where mario landed
on the ground
here mario somehow kept p-speed through
the door
how is that possible normally because
mario is stationary coming out of the
door
the p-meter is reset however by jumping
shortly after exiting the door
mario will jump before the p-meter
resets because mario is now in the air
the p-meter is relying on the jump timer
instead of mario's speed so it doesn't
reset
once he lands he does briefly lose
p-speed but since he's already going
almost at full speed
it doesn't take long for him to get it
right back this door
is only there while the p-switch is
active thanks to p-speed conservation
mitch is able to make it in using the
far p switch otherwise he would have had
to hit this one instead
p-switches also stopped conveyor belts
so if he had hit the closed switch he
would have had to wait out its timer
before being carried under the spikes
in the final moments of the p-switch
because the conveyor is stopped anyway
mitch takes some time to build up
momentum to slide as far as possible
under the spikes
jumping here lets mario accelerate to a
higher speed which translates to an
increased sliding distance that
outweighs the benefits of the conveyor's
momentum
optimally this would be the best
strategy however
in this run it would have been a few
frames faster to simply go to the right
it all depends on exactly how long is
left on the p-switch timer
right on
now remember the world record presses a
on bowser's castle at 9
52.
[Music]
remember 9 52 on the a press in bowser's
castle is the world record
if you look closely you can see that
boom boom is a little off to the left
which means mitch lost some time on this
fight his fireball timing was again top
notch but he lost time here because when
throwing the last fireball
mario was standing a bit away from boom
boom so the fireball traveled for longer
before hitting him
this is a very minor time loss though
overall the boom boom fights in this run
went very well
looks like i'm pretty par with it
[Music]
okay this part needs a deep dive there
are three major things happening here
the wall jump the thwomp kill and the
wall clip
let's start with the wall jump when
mario hits the side of any block he
moves partly inside the block and gets
pushed out on the next frame
so after running into a wall he can be
found inside of the wall for a short
time
everything from ground to pipes to walls
is broken up into individual blocks
this piece of the wall is in no way
different to any ground block mario can
stand on
if on the first frame mario is found
inside of a wall he's on top of a block
that makes up that wall he can stand on
it for that one frame so he can also
jump from this position
note that as opposed to super mario
brothers mario doesn't need to be
exactly on the top pixel of the block
of the 16 pixels that make up each block
a wall jump is possible for 6 of them
but this is not as simple as a frame
perfect jump to be able to stand on the
block
mario needs to be at least this far in 3
pixels inside the wall
mario's position is calculated with more
precision than the visual resolution of
the screen
the smallest unit of distance the game
commonly uses is 1 16 of a pixel which
is called a subpixel
consequently mario's speed is calculated
in subpixels per frame so a speed of 16
is exactly 1 pixel per frame and mario's
top speed without a full p meter is 40
or 2 and a half pixels per frame
at that speed he will alternate between
moving 2 pixels and 3 pixels on every
frame
this means that assuming mario is coming
into the wall pixel perfectly at full
speed there's only a 50 50 chance that
he will move 3 pixels into the wall
if his subpixel position is in the lower
half he will move by 2 pixels instead
which is not enough to stand inside of
the wall
from any random starting position only 8
out of 40 subpixels allow mario to wall
jump
so by running at full speed into a wall
and jumping at a random part of it the
chance of having the opportunity to
perform a one frame wall jump is only 7
percent
here mitch was possibly not moving at
full speed we can't measure
exactly how much speed he had but it
seems to be somewhere between 36 and 40.
every unit of speed below 40 makes the
wall jump increasingly unlikely with the
absolute minimum speed being 33
just one subpixel above 2 pixels per
frame mario's subpixel position is
entirely out of mitch's control as it's
never set to a fixed value at any point
other than the very start of the run
on top of that mitch needs to time his
jump very perfectly while mario is
stumbling in the air because of the star
power making it very hard to see where
he is exactly relative to the wall
all of this makes the wall jump the
single hardest trick in this run by a
long shot
it's particularly inconvenient that it's
right at the very end of the run after 4
auto scrollers in a 1 in 8 chance
the next part is this thwomp kill mitch
needs to keep his fire flower for the
bowser fight so that's why he uses the
star that he got in this level to get
through the swamp
the star expiring seems like a pretty
close call
but just how close is it well we can use
bios flashing as a reference
it turns out that the last frame of
invincibility is exactly two frames
before mario returns to his normal color
which happens to be this frame
that's right this one kill was frame
perfect
one frame later and the star would have
had expired
the wall clip is a bit different by duck
jumping into this pixel and releasing
down
mario stands on the block and uncrouches
this puts his upper half fully inside of
the ceiling
in this case instead of ejecting mario
to the left the game slowly pulls mario
to the right until he's out on the other
side
the easiest and most famous way to do
this is using this one of block as
simply jumping onto the block and
uncrouching will get
mario to the other side of the wall
mario is moving at the same speed so the
odds of mario ending up 3 pixels inside
the wall are again
about 1 in 5. it would seem that the
wall jump from just a few seconds
earlier would give some insight on the
subpixel value of mario's position
but this value is so finicky that tiny
factors such as the exact subpixel when
hitting the wall jump the slightly
irregular acceleration mechanics
and having to duck before the jump are
more than enough to throw any guess out
of the window
as a result the subpixel position is
again effectively random
bowser's castle has a pretty complex
layout there are two different paths and
two different arenas
this door leads to this section of the
subworld in this arena
and that door leads to that section in
the second arena
however because there's only one
subworld these are all connected
by taking this door and going through
the wall mario ends up where this door
normally takes him
this cuts most of the level but prevents
mario from going through this section
with the speed
overall it saves about 5 seconds
here mario ducks to fit under the
ceiling without hitting it
however if he was moving at full speed
he would have still hit it
so mitch intentionally presses down
earlier and slides on this statue
while sliding mario gradually loses
speed and this tiny slow down is just
enough to barely miss the corner
the usual way to defeat bowser is to
force him to destroy the floor until he
falls down but using fireballs is about
25 seconds faster
bowser takes 35 fireballs to kill
mitch positions himself perfectly so
that bowser would jump right next to him
allowing him to fire the last few
fireballs faster
what what
and just like that super mario brothers
3 was beaten in 10 minutes and 44
seconds
the timing ends on entering the door
specifically on this frame
mitch stopped his timer at 10 44 47 but
upon retiming the run it was found to be
a 1044.416
with this run he beat the previous world
record set by kirua in 2017 by just
under one second
sorry about that scream so what else can
be done to improve the record
well although mitch got very fortunate
patterns there's always room for faster
hammer bros in a better sun pattern
together these could save a bit over a
second also
although his map movement was
astoundingly accurate mitch did slowly
lose frames over the course of the run
compared to frank perfect gameplay he
lost a total of 25 frames in the 38
overworld moves and 31 frames entering
the 16 stages of the run
this sums up to 56 frames not even a
second off
absolute perfection keep in mind that
being early even by a single frame is a
large time loss yet miz somehow did most
of the actions on the map within one
frame of perfect
other than that there are a few little
things here and there that add up like
the boom boom fights the world one
levels and 8-1 for instance
there's almost always frames to squeeze
out of these sections but it's hard to
estimate exactly how many
there is some time left to save by
adding more tricks to the run
the 1-2 sliding strategy is too precise
to pull off in real-time runs
the issue with it is two-fold first
actually reaching the maximum sliding
speed
is nearly impossible without either
getting hit by the goomba or hitting
this wall
second mario slows down when he touches
the ground requiring
frame perfect jumps to preserve his
speed a sub-optimal speed carries
through the entire stage so these
compounding speed losses make this trick
not only extremely hard to pull off in
the first place but also even harder to
save any time with it
the tank and navy auto scrollers can be
sped up by up to 44 frames using this
block clip
although very hard it has been done in
real time before and it is considered a
somewhat viable option to save time on
the record
considering that getting out of the
block one frame late is instant death
it's fair to assume that runners would
air on the safe side and jump a bit
early
saving about 30 to 40 frames per clip at
most or a bit over a second if going for
both
the first one is much harder to pull off
though due to this precise jump on the
cannonball to reach the final tank
in bowser's castle there is potential
for a strategy to build up p-speed here
that would involve turning back between
the p-meter checks but without precise
knowledge of which frame the p-meter is
checking on
this would be a ridiculously risky
endeavor even with that knowledge it
would still be incredibly hard to slow
down just the right amount to always be
at full speed every 8 frames
while saving enough distance to fill up
the p-meter before leaving the ground
it is a possible area of development but
it looks unlikely as of now
finally the holy grail in rare instances
bowser can have this much lower death
animation and fall down faster
compare this with the regular animation
that mitch got in his run
surely this would save a lot of time
right well
it turns out it only saves 1 second it
also requires hitting the final fireball
on bowser frame perfectly
at the same time he starts his animation
to jump it also needs to be a low jump
because if he does a high jump instead
this happens
in that case the fanfare is delayed by
almost a minute and a half
needless to say performing a frame
perfect kill on the random bowser
pattern so you can risk the entire run
on a coin flip to save one second is the
last thing anyone wants to do to beat
this record
all things considered we can see that
super mario brothers 3 has not quite
reached its limit just yet but it's
incredibly close
the tool assisted speedrun by tampa maru
and lortong clocks in at 10 23
but almost nothing in this run can ever
be pulled off by a human
if someone pulled off a run with perfect
luck perfect map movement
both auto scroller clips and a fast
bowser death it would just be barely
enough to break the 1040 barrier
it's unclear whether or not this will
ever happen as of right now nobody is
actively trying to achieve such a feat
i personally think a 1039 is simply too
hard to be done
but i'd sure love to be proven wrong
[Music]
you