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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/apocalypse_astro on 2024-05-03 13:56:39.

This is a tale of a community centered around one of the most popular speedrunning games of all time, and how they set out to push a game to its absolute limits, and themselves to the height of human ability.

Almost everyone, even the top runners themselves, were convinced this feat of skill was impossible. They were wrong. This is the story of how Super Mario Odyssey was beaten in under an hour.

Background

Super Mario Odyssey is a platforming game released by Nintendo for the Nintendo Switch console on October 27th, 2017, only seven months after the launch of the Switch itself. After a decade of main-series Super Mario games which mostly featured 2D gameplay with linear progression (excluding the release of Super Mario Galaxy 2, which did feature 3D gameplay but still included mostly linear level design), it was a welcome return to the open-world, 3D “collectathon”-style gameplay that hadn’t been seen in the Mario Franchise since Super Mario Sunshine was released back in 2002.

Odyssey was an instant hit with both critics and players, and is still the third best-selling main-series Mario game today, with over 25 million copies sold worldwide. It is also, incidentally, a game that is very near and dear to my heart, which is why this writeup even exists.

The Gameplay

In the beginning of Odyssey, as is so often the case in Mario games, Bowser (the giant fire-breathing turtle-lizard) kidnaps the human Princess Peach and takes her across different kingdoms. This time, he's collecting an item from each one for their grand wedding. Meanwhile, our beloved Italian plumber protagonist, Mario, pursues them in order to save Peach from Bowser's evil, nuptial machinations. The game even ends with a huge showdown on the Moon itself, as Mario interrupts the wedding ceremony in the nick of time, fights Bowser one last time and rescues Peach (well, rescue’s a bit of a strong word. Yay, feminism?).

He is accompanied on his journey by Cappy, a Bonneter (a ghostly, hat-like creature) from the Cap Kingdom that possesses Mario’s torn hat. One of the main mechanics of Odyssey is using Cappy to possess different objects and creatures in the game, that allow Mario to borrow their unique mechanics to solve puzzles and move creatively. Another important mechanic involving Cappy is throwing him mid-jump and bouncing on him to gain an extra height boost.

During the game, Mario and Cappy travel around the fourteen kingdoms and collect moons (the main collectable) to power the Odyssey, their flying ship. Some can be acquired quite easily, while some require solving more complex puzzles and minigames or finding hidden locations. While the kingdoms themselves allow the player to wander around freely and collect as many moons as they desire in whatever order they please, the progression between kingdoms is (mostly) linear- a specific number of moons must be collected in each kingdom in order to move on to the next, and a player must go through all kingdoms in order to reach the end of the game.

Most of the other mechanics are basic Mario platformer moves: running, jumping, ground-pounding, flipping, and so on. Odyssey's movement is incredibly intuitive, fluid and easy to pick up, which is part of the reason why immediately after the game's release, Odyssey developed an unusually large and involved speedrunning community.

How Low Can We Go?

Let’s back up a little and talk about speedrunning in general. There are many ways to speedrun a game: collect all items of a certain kind, finish a certain area the fastest, beat everything there is to do in the game, and many other categories specific to each game. There’s even a meme category for Odyssey aptly called Nipple%, in which you need to get to the Sand Kingdom, earn 1000 coins along the way and buy the boxers outfit from the shop there (which leaves Mario with his chest proudly uncovered). As of today, the record is held at 7 minutes, 23 seconds and 667 milliseconds by Tyron18, and 907 runs in this category are registered on Speedrun.com.

But arguably the most popular speedrunning category in most games is called “Any%”. What does Any% mean? Quite simply, beating the game in as little time as possible- playing any percentage of the game required to beat it. In Odyssey, the Any% run begins when selecting the Save button on a new save file, and ends when entering the spark pylon at the end of the Escape segment on the Moon.1

When Odyssey came out, the immediate question that was asked was “what is the lowest possible time for any Any% speedrun? What is the best theoretical record?”. In the early days after release, as with any new game, new strategies and routes were being developed rapidly, with new glitches and exploits constantly being found by the eager community (and subsequently patched with equal fervor by Nintendo).

Very soon after the community had started optimization of the speedrun, people began theorizing that an Any% run with a time of under an hour was possible. Colloquially, it was called “sub-one hour”. This eventually became the ultimate goal of the entire community, and one of the greatest speedrunning challenges in gaming history- beating Super Mario Odyssey in under one hour.

The Beginning

The first record was set by MonkeyKingHero on launch day, October 27th, 2017, and boasted a 02:11:54. During the first week or so, MonkeyKingHero and another runner, IMtendo, managed to bring the record down by over fifty minutes, down to 01:18:15 on November 3rd. To understand the absurdity of the situation, two more records were set that day, and one of the only lasted for thirty minutes.

Many notable and significant glitches, skips and exploits were found in these early days. For example, one of them was Dino Skip, in which you possess the dinosaur (yes, there’s an actual T-Rex in this game) in the Cascade Kingdom and use it to jump high enough on a nearby trampoline to skip straight to a mini-boss fight. Another important exploit found was Moon Cave Skip, which allows you to, with a series of precise wall jumps from the top of the Sphinx’s head in the Moon Kingdom, skip all of the Moon Cave (a very long gauntlet of platforming challenges with a mini-boss fight at the end) and go straight to the Chapel for the wedding ceremony. Huge chunks of time were shaved off with tricks like these.

After the first week, several renowned runners began to compete for the top spot as well: Vallu, a well-respected Mario speedrunner who used to hold legendary world records, Iwabi74, who still holds six Majora’s Mask world records to this day, and Samura1man, widely known for his Super Mario Sunshine world record.

Of the three, Vallu began dominating the scene. He set seven new consecutive records in only five days, managing to shave off six whole minutes from November 3rd to November 8th, with his final record being set at 01:10:43. But then, amidst these juggernauts, a new challenger approached.

A speedrunner named Shaeden suddenly began topping the leaderboards and competing with Vallu, Iwabi and Samura1man for their hard-earned records. No one had ever heard of him before... until it was discovered he used to go by Pydoyks, and was known as one of- if the best- Ocarina of Time speedrunners of all time and a true legend of gaming, prior to his disappearance from the internet around 2013. But he returned under a new name just in time for the Odyssey speedrunning craze, and he did not disappoint.

However, Shaeden’s complete dominance of the leaderboards did not go unchallenged. NicroVeda, a Canadian speedrunner, began to break Shaedens records, and Shaeden responded in kind. Between January 11th and April 12th, 2018, eleven new records were set only by Shaeden and NicroVeda, bringing the record all the way down to a whopping 01:03:16.

But then, everything changed ~~when the Fire Nation attacked~~ when version 1.2.0 came out.

Version 1.2.0- An Omen of Change

Originally, all speedruns were played on version 1.0.1 or the functionally identical version 1.1.0. Playing on version 1.0.0 was banned because it was very hard to obtain- requring either requiring either a factory-reset Switch, or a physical copy of Odyssey that had never been updated, essentially forcing runners who played on a digital copy and wanted to stay competitive to buy a physical copy, and only made one additional glitch possible.

This glitch, known as First Moon Skip, is only possible in version 1.0.0.2 It’s an incredibly finicky glitch that requires Mario to jump and dive across the water to the left of the bridge in the beginning of the Cascade Kingdom, jump up underneath an invisible wall and do a very precise dive to the platform ahead... but it saves 26 precious seconds.

However, on February 21st, 2018, version 1.2.0 came out. It added a new minigame named Luigi’s Balloon World, and more importantly, patched out several important glitches and made them impossible. As 1.2.0 was now ...

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