The 'holy grail' of Super Mario 64 techniques has recently been perfected by the speedrunning community and it is capable of finally achieving a sub-1:37 time for 120-star runs.
The technique in question is all about bypassing the slow carpet ride required to nab the 'Big House in the Sky' star on Rainbow Ride. 'Carpetless' runs have been a known possibility since 2009, though nobody had been able to successfully utilise the technique in a full run to shave off any good amount of time. That is, until now.
A new route has been found which sees runners setting up a precise triple jump and wall kick combo up the side of the central house. It's a tricky one, to be sure, but a speedrunner by the name of Karinpune has managed to successfully pull it off and achieve the first-ever sub-1:37 all-stars run with a ridiculously fast time of 1:36:48.5 according to Speedrun.com— we're normally still messing around with Mario's squishy home screen face by that point.
Prior to the discovery of this new technique, the 120-star record was held by speedrunner Weegee with a time of 1:37:35, though Karin is one of three runners that have since beaten this thanks to the sneaky wall-jumping manoeuvre. The above video from Karl Jobst explains the history of 'Carpetless' runs before showing the new perfected technique in action.
Super Mario 64 speedrunning is a competitive game, so discovering a way to wipe almost a whole minute off of previous records is a pretty big deal — regardless of just how tricky a manoeuvre it is. Landing a 120-star run in under 1:37 has long been considered impossible, so we can only imagine how far this technique can be pushed in the future to keep bringing that time down. You can watch Karin's full, record-breaking run below.