SMB3 Banner

Speedruns remain a popular part of gaming culture, ranging from current day titles to treasured retro classics. Super Mario Bros. 3 naturally gets the treatment plenty of times, but two intrepid speed runners have now found a glitch that allows it to be beaten in under three minutes.

Lord Tom and Tompa are the duo that have worked on putting the speedrun together, utilising "some esoteric memory corruption involving glitched pipe travel" to trick level 7:1 into sending Mario down into the abyss where, at the end, Princess Peach awaits rescue. Some of the moves required are seriously impressive, and to the speed runner's credit they want this run to be categorised separately from glitch-free alternatives, in a desire that this won't replace arguably more impressive runs.

This is quite an achievement in its own way, nevertheless, and you can read all the details of how it's done right here. Below are two videos — the first shows the run on a tool-assisted emulator, and below is a marginally slower run completed on NES hardware.

Check them out and let us know what you think.

[source kotaku.com]