For a game that's thirty years old this year, Super Mario Bros. has an incredible longevity.
In fact, it's still being played and enjoyed by many, many players who were born long after the game was first released. What's more, it's still hugely popular in the speedrun community and records are still being set to this day. Just yesterday, a new World Record was set for Super Mario Bros. using only warps and no tool assistance.
Speedruns, in case the name didn't make it obvious, is clearing a game in the fastest time possible. That means no cheats and no hacks in the game. The game has to played on its original console, a standard controller has to be used and it has to be streamed live in the interest of fairness and transparency.
Yesterday's record was set by Darbian, a Twitch partner who beat the standing record by .433 seconds. Yes, it's really down to that close of a margin. What made this run more interesting was that Darbian also strapped a heart-rate monitor onto himself as he did the speedrun and, as you can see, his heartrate hits close to 170BPM as he's playing.
To put that in context, the resting heartrate for a normal adult is anywhere between 60 and 100BPM. If you're particularly fit, it can go down as low as 40BPM. When you're running or exercising, it can go up close to 150 or 170BPM. For this guy, his heartrate was the equivalent of flat-out sprinting.
Take a look.
Again, in case you're unfamiliar, the stream of text beside him is people watching his stream and commenting. Like we said, there's a huge community of players who follow these speedruns.
The level of precision going on and the fact that, most likely, this guy was probably born a few years after the game was first released - and he set the World Record for it.
Amazing stuff, really.
Via YouTube
