When Niftski, the speedrunner and record holder Super Mario Bros., started a stream for Halloween, he wasn’t expecting much beyond a fun festive period. Dressed like Super Mario and ultimately speaking in Super Mario’s distinctive dialect, he achieved something unexpected. By defeating the 8th world, defeating King Koopa and saving the princess, Niftski shaved 0.33 seconds off the world record. Two meager images of a perfect race.
“I hope I don’t get this today because that would be very stupid,” Niftski said moments before receiving this today.
At just 22 years old, Niftski broke numerous records in Mario’s first side-scrolling adventure. His dominance on the leaderboard made him a celebrity in the speedrunning world. It sits at the top of current records for distortion-free, glitch-free, and whitest performance of any percentage. He set the latter record only a few months ago, clocking 4:54.332 in August. On Halloween, Niftski beat him again, dropping the time to 4:54.299, setting the final world record. The funny thing is that Niftski had him dressed like the iconic plumber, doing the voice and trying to keep the mustache glued to his face.
“IT’S MARIO!” ” the runner shouted as he changed the story, “WHAT I CAN’T BREAK CHARACTER!” »
https://t.co/d0NG9eFfCn pic.twitter.com/aoNoRPVoFD
— orange (@acid4096dx) November 1, 2026
While his Mario sometimes borders on something more Yakov Smirnoff, Niftski commits to the track around the middle of his five-hour stream. Although he sometimes hates this stunt, saying fans may blame his mother for purchasing the facial hair accessory, he ends up giving her credit for his accomplishment. The runner insinuating that the awkward voice took away a lot of the advantage. “It didn’t make me nervous at all,” Niftski said, “it didn’t even seem real. It was so casual.”
The new record brings the game, released in 1985 and still a hotbed of speedrunning activity, to within three milliseconds of a theoretical “perfect” record. Niftski said these two frames were lost in the first part of the match. The game is one of the most competitive in the world of speedrunning, with glitches and exploits carefully combed through, it has reached a threshold of human skill. The record only fell below five minutes around 2010, when Andrew Gardikis reignited the scene with a new plan for aspiring runners.
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