Niftski, the speedrunning world record holder for Super Mario Bros., beat his own record on a Halloween livestream while dressed as Mario. Speaking in character, he said: “Hopefully I don’t get this today because that would be very stupid.” Guess what?
This Halloween run, which you can watch on Niftski’s YouTube channel, shaved 0.33 seconds off the previous world record, also held by Niftski — two frames away from a perfect run.
4:54.299 SMB1 ANY% WORLD RECORD ON HALLOWEEN WHILE LARPING AS MARIO! It doesn’t even feel real that I actually achieved this, but here we are. Only 2 frames (33 milliseconds) stand between this run and absolute perfection / TAS tie. 4:54.265 next! https://t.co/S1ZpmEMG4c
— Niftski (@Niftski) November 1, 2026
According to Niftski, those two frames were lost early in the run and kept him away from a “perfect run,” theorized to be the absolute pinnacle of Super Mario Bros. “any percent” attempts. He messed up fast accelerations in the first and second rooms by a small amount which cost one frame each.
If it is accurate and there are no more strats to bring the time down significantly, that just leaves the run and those two frames. That means there’s only two milliseconds left, which means there are only two more world records possible in the category.
“Will this be like the first ever game perfected? Like what’s gonna happen once someone matches the TAS? It’s just over?” asked one fan.
Niftski breaks the SMB1 world record while doing the worst Mario impression ever. Frame-perfect hands, not-so-perfect voice 🍄 https://t.co/B21YnDkrwH
— imngrok • Stream Clips (@imngrok) November 1, 2026
Niftski sits alone at the top of the speedrunning records, and it seems the only person who can beat him is himself, dressed as Mario. He holds the records for warpless, glitchless, and the “any percent” category, which is a race to the end by any means necessary, skipping whatever you can using exploits and glitches.
It’s that last category he beat this Halloween, taking his previous record of 4:54:332 down to 4:54:229 — that’s minutes, seconds, and milliseconds. About halfway through the run, he committed fully to Mario and let Nintendo fill his heart.
According to the speedrunner, being a doofus and pretending to be Mario helped. “It made me not nervous at all,” said Niftski, “it doesn’t even feel real. It felt so casual.”
“I can’t believe I witnessed a russian mario do the 67 and get any% wr in the same video,” said one X / Twitter user who watched the stream.
Image credit: Niftski / YouTube.