The Flagpole Glitch skips the animation of the flag coming down and allows Mario to immediately get off of the pole, saving a little bit of time.” “Mario normally remains on the flagpole until the flag drops to the bottom at which point he hops off and walks to the castle. “The Flagpole Glitch is performed by grabbing the flagpole at the end of stage while Mario is inside of the block that the pole sits on,” explained Darbian. In the case of Super Mario Bros., the game has become about how many of the TAS strats can a person incorporate into a single playthrough.” For less studied games, sometimes the best approach is to do more research and testing to possibly find a new route or new trick to employ to save more time. run, before Kosmic beat him by 66 milliseconds, “the options for improving it further become more and more limited. “As the time in any game lowers,” said Darbian, who held the previous Super Mario Bros.

(If you're interested in learning more about TAS, check out the archive at TASVideos.) In essence, you're not playing the game, but scripting the game to play itself. HappyLee, however, performed a tool-assisted run (TAS), in which the goal is to program a series of inputs that maximizes the speed at which a given game is played, typically in a way that would be impossible for humans to copy. Kosmic’s world record happened in real-time, forcing him to string together a nearly perfect run of the game without a chance to recover. The difference between Kosmic and HappyLee is approach.

That record was set in 2011 by speedrunner HappyLee, a time that stands about two seconds faster than what Kosmic just achieved. speedrunning is at a fascinating moment every new record brings people one step closer to reaching what’s believed to be the fastest possible time for a human to beat the game: four minutes, 54 seconds, and 32 milliseconds. It’s unclear how long Kosmic’s record will hold.

World 8 practice rom super mario bros