Key Points:
- Suigi has secured all five major speedrunning categories in Super Mario 64, effectively declaring the game’s speedrunning community ‘dead’.
- Suigi’s dominance is so profound that his records in all 5 main categories remain largely unchallenged.
The Five Star Categories:
- 120 star: Completes every single star in the game.
- 70 star: Completes all normal requirements to reach the final level.
- 16 star: Uses glitches and techniques to significantly reduce required stars.
- 1 star: Further optimizes the 16 star run for a single star collection.
- 0 star: Eliminates stars entirely, focusing on time.
Background Details:
- Some of Suigi’s records were set over a year ago; his 16-star record alone still leads by 6 seconds.
- Suigi estimates it could take up to a couple of years before someone else beats his current world records.
How do you feel about the dedication and skill demonstrated in these ultra-optimized speedruns? Do such efforts bring value to gaming or are they more of an academic exercise?
I’ll go with neither as well. They are an interesting sidestepping of how most games “should be played” that often discovers interesting new glitches, bugs and exploits. Using a TAS to execute arbitrary code is interesting, having that transformed into a possibility for human players (SNES Code Injection – Flappy Bird in SMW, by SethBling) is amazing beyond belief.