Gotta Go Fast II

Published October 26, 2017 - 2 mins to read

Yesterday I listened to this episode of the Frame Savers podcast with Darbian as the guest, released in March of last year. At that time, he had 11000 attempts at Super Mario Bros 1 any%, and his world record PB was 4:57.42. SMB1 features something called "frame rules", equivalent to 21 frame or approximately 0.35 seconds, and I believe that in every level except for the last in the game, that is the smallest amount of time that can be saved. Darbian stated at that time that he believed he could get a 4:57.07 and save one further frame rule, and that that time would be the theoretical faster possible by a human. The TAS (tool-assisted speedrun, i.e. a speedrun by a computer with perfect inputs) world record is 4:54.032.

Earlier this week, Darbian beat his own Super Mario Bros 1 any% world record by one frame rule, equal to roughly 0.35 seconds, taking the time from record from 4:56.878 to 4:56.528. He had over 27000 attempts in the game at that point. This means he had spent 18 months to play the game 16000 times in order to save ~0.9 of a second of the world record. A lot of people would probably think that time was wasted, that he could've spent it doing something productive etc. I think a lot of people would ask the question, "why?", and I sort of see their point. There is no prize money for beating the SMB1 record, there is no fame other than that of the incredibly niche community of speedrunners, there is nothing. But Darbian took a skill, and practiced it relentlessly, with incredible dedication, until he achieved his goal. Does it matter that his goal was very different from ours, and we don't understand why he chose to do it? I don't think so. I think Darbian's achievement is a great reminder of what we can all do if we really want to - if he can spend thousands of hours to shave 0.9s off his record, I can definitely work 200+ hours a month, or go to the gym 5 days a week, or learn Spanish, or anything else I put my mind to.

"I don't have a girlfriend, I have the Super Mario 1 record" - Darbian.