Super Mario Bros speedrunners spend 16 months and “hundreds of hours” doing “things that have never been done before in this 40-year-old game” to finally build the perfect 000000 point run

Super Mario Bros. is nearing its 40th anniversary, and speedrunners continue to discover innovative methods to exploit it. In the past 16 months, a collective of runners has dedicated countless hours to thoroughly dissecting the game, aiming to achieve a flawless run that concludes with precisely 000000 points on the scoreboard.

Completing each level in the original Super Mario Bros. awards points based on the remaining time on the clock. So, how can one finish the entire game with zero points? By accumulating so many points that the scoreboard resets to 000000 after the final Bowser defeat.

Since January 2024, this team has been constructing a tool-assisted speedrun (TAS) aimed at achieving exactly 10,000,000 points throughout the game, finishing with the scoreboard displaying 000000 points as effectively as possible. The techniques necessary for this are far too exacting for human execution, so the run has been assembled as a series of meticulously programmed inputs.

You can watch it in its entirety below. Additionally, a Twitch stream from Kosmic—one of the TAS developers, though he humbly downplays his contributions—provides extensive insights into its creation. The run “does things that have never been accomplished in this 40-year-old game,” Kosmic shares. “We relish making new phenomena occur.”

Kosmic remarked that optimizing this was “extremely challenging, as you’ll notice many levels conclude with around 20 seconds left on the timer. We needed to accumulate sufficient points without fully utilizing the time allotted for scoring. It was about determining the precise amount of points needed on each level.”

A key aspect of the run is “one of the most renowned tricks in Mario”: the 1-Up exploit, where you kick a Koopa shell repeatedly on the edge of steps. This generates increasing points for each stomp, ultimately leading to infinite extra lives. While executing this trick in real-time is manageable, the downside is that once you start earning 1-Ups, additional points cease.

In the TAS, however, Mario skillfully lands to interrupt the jump combo, repeating the process continuously to acquire points without accruing unnecessary 1-Ups. The additional efficiency stems from Mario simultaneously defeating Spinies thrown by a nearby Lakitu to amass points even more quickly.

“This represents the quickest known method for generating points in Super Mario Bros.,” Kosmic elaborates. “This is feasible due to the Koopa shell’s proximity to a wall and a one-block gap in the floor—creating optimal conditions for immediate landing and kicking.”

HappyLee, another developer of the TAS, mentioned during the stream that “this undertaking commenced in January 2024.” He also stated in a Twitter post that it “took hundreds of hours to complete. Creating something novel in a 40-year-old game is no easy feat.” Clearly, the Mario speedrunning community is undeterred by challenges.

Super Mario Bros 2 player crashes the game, casually shares the clip online, making “the biggest 2D Mario speedrun discovery in years.”

Dustin Bailey became part of the GamesRadar team as a Staff Writer in May 2022 and resides in Missouri. He has been reporting on games (with occasional forays into anime and professional wrestling) since 2015, starting as a freelancer and later working as a news writer at PCGamesN for nearly five years. His passion for gaming ignited somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic, and you can often find him splitting his leisure time between retro gaming, the latest major action-adventure title, or a lengthy stint in American Truck Simulator.