Super Mario Bros. continues to challenge speedrunners more than four decades after its 1985 release. On October 31, during a Halloween livestream in which he played dressed as Mario, American speedrunner Niftski completed the game in 4 minutes, 54.299 seconds, setting a new world record.
The run improves on Niftski’s previous record of 4:54.332, set on August 13, by 33 milliseconds. It also brings him within two frames of the game’s reference tool-assisted speedrun, or TAS, which was created by Maru371 in April 2019 and finished in 4:54.265.
A TAS uses computer tools to optimize inputs frame by frame, allowing its creator to slow the game down, test commands and retry sequences. Human players must perform the entire run in real time, making every jump, movement and button press count.
Super Mario Bros. runs at 60 frames per second, so each frame lasts about 16.7 milliseconds. Two frames amount to just over three hundredths of a second. Reaching that mark requires exploiting the game’s mechanics with exceptional precision.
Most levels are governed by a 21-frame timing cycle known as the framerule. This means that losing a few frames during a section may not change the final time. The final stage, World 8-4, does not follow that cycle, however, so every jump and movement directly affects the result.
Several runners, including Niftski, are competing both for the human world record and to match the TAS time. The rules surrounding one optimization technique have also changed during that pursuit: Speedrun.com moderators banned input swapping in February 2026, then allowed it again in July, but only when the player is not controlling Mario, such as between levels.
Niftski’s latest performance leaves the human record only two frames behind the reference run. Closing that final gap will require near-perfect execution throughout the game.
Sources: Numerama.