Speedrunner Breaks Super Mario Bros. World Record While Dressed as the Italian Plumber, Now Just 2 Frames From Theoretical Perfect Run
Speedrunner Niftski set a new Super Mario Bros. world record on November 1, 2026, during a Halloween livestream, completing the classic NES game in 4:54.299 while dressed as Mario. The run improved his own previous world record by 0.33 seconds, and he’s now just 2 frames (33 milliseconds) away from matching a tool-assisted speedrun (TAS)—a theoretically perfect performance executed through pre-programmed inputs.
The achievement highlights the extreme optimization level of modern speedrunning. In the “Any% Glitchless” category that Niftski competes in, runners exploit in-game glitches to complete the game’s story as quickly as possible. Each successive world record typically yields only tiny improvements measured in individual frames, as elite runners push the boundaries of human performance through frame-perfect techniques and optimized movement.
That Niftski’s human-performed run now sits within 33 milliseconds of TAS parity represents a remarkable convergence between human skill and theoretical perfection. Achieving a human run that ties or beats a TAS time would be a historic milestone in speedrunning, though the margin for improvement has become vanishingly small.
The record was livestreamed on Niftski’s YouTube channel and represents the continued evolution of Super Mario Bros. speedrunning, nearly four decades after the 1985 original’s release.