Niftski sets Super Mario Bros. any% record in Mario costume

Specimen from the stream: a Super Mario Bros. any% clock at 4:54.299, set on Halloween by Niftski while dressed as the plumber and talking in character. The run is the classic 1985 Nintendo platformer pushed through the any% route, where skips and glitches are fair game.¹

Niftski already held the any% world record and cut 0.33 seconds off his own mark on the livestream, now up on his YouTube channel. The new time sits two frames—33 milliseconds—from a theoretical perfect run that would tie the tool-assisted standard.¹²

Still in character before the attempt, he said, “Hopefully I don’t get this today because that would be very stupid.” He got it anyway.¹

Those two frames dropped early. Small misses on fast accelerations in the first and second rooms cost one frame each, which is what kept the tape off the TAS line. If that reading holds and no larger strat appears, only two further records may remain in the category.¹

He already sits alone atop warpless, glitchless, and any% for Super Mario Bros. On this night the costume did real work for the nerves: he said it made him not nervous at all, and that the clear felt casual rather than heavy.¹

Worth knowing: the Halloween world-record vod is on Niftski’s YouTube; the category record now rests two frames from the theorized ceiling.

Our read: A full costume and a loose mood shaved a record that was already thin down to a two-frame gap. When human play is 33 milliseconds off a TAS tie, the next fight is less a new route than whether those last frames ever stick—and what the board looks like if they do.

Footnotes

1. ign.com, “Niftski sets new Super Mario Bros. speedrun world record”. Retrieved November 3, 2026. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

2. X, “Posts on X from @IGN”. Retrieved November 3, 2026. ↩