In Pursuit of a World Record

Chasing Mario: In Pursuit of a World Record
Article by Brandon Daiker

...continued from page 1.

Sensing a trend here? The cape.

To speed run, you don't have time to screw with the game freezing for a few seconds while Yoshi gets huge, wait each time you need to set Yoshi down to cough up the shell and re-swallow it to fly again, all that. You need the cape for speed, and without it, you're done. There is one cape on this route through the game, and that's in Donut Plains 1. That means, to be able to finish the route, you can't get hit, at all, for seven levels. This was the hardest thing for me to do.

I got the route, and then played every level individually, over and over and over and over. I played each level probably fifty times or more. Then I started to put them together. The most frustrating thing is when you get to say, Donut Secret House, and then get hit. Especially since you've been putting together a perfect run up until that point. If that happens, you basically lose. Your challenge is over.

After a while I got cocky enough to actually start videotaping the runs, so that if I actually finished one I could send it in to these "Twin Galaxies" people and get my name on the site. The first time I started recording, I screwed up on the second level by falling right into a pit. Stop, rewind, reset the system, try again. The next time I died on the first level. Rewind, try again.

The most frustrating part about the speed run is that you have to do it all at once. Individually, I have run every level as close to perfect as I can imagine. Together, that's a different story. Nothing ever goes together the way you planned, and that little thing called adrenaline only screws with your head.

There was a point, in the midst of the most intense devotion to practicing, where it would not be uncommon for me to play for three hours a day on those same twelve levels. This continued for maybe a solid two or three weeks. I neglected classes, hardly left the house, really. My dreams were consumed with thoughts about how I could run it faster, how I could do it better. I didn't play other games. I didn't watch movies or TV. I hardly listened to music. All I did was watch my old runs and keep playing. I had stopped playing longer, newer games because I didn't have enough time...but now, having less time, I gained better gameplay -- all so I could get the fastest possible completion in the least amount of time I could manage.

When I finally figured I was decent enough to finish a somewhat-fast run and tape it, I tried and messed it up innumerable times for days. After all my work, I had pretty much all but given up. I knew I'd never beat first or second place. I pretty much resolved to settle for anything better than the 15:33 which was in third place on the scoreboard.

On the evening of my birthday I decided to give it one more shot. The tape was rolling and catching every single partial mistake or every almost mess-up. But, as it went, I found that I was all the way to Bowser's castle despite myself, and I was looking at actually finishing out somewhat decently. After I passed the two rooms (2 and 5 are the fastest, by the way) and made it to the little "antechamber," adrenaline took over for the better. I was moving fast, didn't even realize what I was doing. It really was like the buttons were pushing themselves. I hopped over the Ninjis, was using the Mechakoopa as a shield and kicking it through the air while jumping, took out the string of three at the end and popped the koopa in the lava as I was bounding over it to Bowser's door. I rewatched the tape later on, after I had finished the game with a time of 12:14, and couldn't even believe I was the one pushing the buttons toward the end there.

Happy birthday, Brandon -- I was pretty pleased that I had a decent run on tape. There were a few time-costing mistakes, sure, and I screwed up so badly on Bowser that he actually flew back away and dropped fire again, a second cycle that cost me god-knows-how-long -- but I had this one, had it captured. For a week or so I reveled in my accomplishment, re-watched it and timed it a couple times, then sent it in to the Twin Galaxies people, who stuck it on their site. A minute five seconds outside of a tie for first, but there I was in third place. You can see the page here.

"But wait, Brandon!" you might be saying. "You're not in third anymore!" No, no, I'm not -- I was ousted from my cushy not-really-that-amazing third place and into an even less amazing fourth by a Mr. Rodrigo Lopes a few months ago. He finished a full thirty-one seconds faster than I did.

But what's the fun of speed-running without a little competition?

Picking Super Mario World back up, again, in an attempt to Defend My Title, has been a lot like riding a bike, in some senses. That old adage -- that you never forget how to ride -- it partially holds up. I guess I didn't forget how to ride the bike but I sure as shit forgot how to ride it without falling off. Re-learning over the last couple weeks has been just as enjoyable as it was the first time I started speed running. The game seems new again, the competition more fierce, the stakes higher, I guess, even though they aren't.

But that is what the story is about, what the speed run is for -- a goal, a tale, an account. A thing you did, a thing I did, even if it wasn't all that amazing to anybody else. After all, grandpa may have caught a mutated red-eyed fish bigger than his arm, but who hasn't caught something bigger than the boat? The dock? His house. So big he couldn't even see it all standing four feet back.

As I race toward Bowser again, the stopwatch still next to me, my heart still pounding inexplicably, I think of the stories I'll tell, and how completely embellished they'll be, and how crazy it is that I'm tossing Mechakoopa all over the place, and on the last jump to Bowser's door I land right in the lava. Stop, rewind, restart. Keep trying.

Have your own epic speedrunning story to tell? Let us know at qa@n-sider.com.