Top level speedrunning doesn't just involve using every trick in the book, it means making up some of your own and doing some things that shouldn't even be possible with the game. Take the latest speedrun world record of Super Mario Bros on the Super Famicom, where Kosmic used flag clipping, wall jumping, hit box manipulation and more to blow through the game a few fractions of a second faster than the previous record.
All of that is pretty confusing, but fortunately, we have YouTube Bismuth to break it down for us. It's a surprisingly complicated run that really shows how fine tuned a record breaking speedrunning attempt is.
Even just looking at the attempts made and how far Kosmic got on each attempt, the dedication is clear. Out of 118 runs, he only made it past the first warp zone 17 times and only past that level, five times. On his eventual record breaking run, when he made it to 8-1, he had only shaved 21 frames -- around 1/3 of a second off of the world record. The precision required to take it to the finish at that point, was immense.
That precision has been built up over hours upon hours of play though, with Kosmic himself estimating he has made 30,000 - 40,000 attempts at the record over the past six years.
It shows. Though we're not sure we could keep up that kind of dedication, it seemed to be worth it for Kosmic, who claimed the world record of 4:56:462, shaving four frames off of the previous world record.
