10 Video Games Broken Beyond Belief While Speedrunning
5. Super Mario 64
It really isn't a surprise that one of the most beloved games of all time has been absolutely wrecked by speedrunning enthusiasts. At this point, Super Mario 64 is like that old family board game you bring out on special occasions, with its corners frayed, some of the pieces missing, and the cards strewn across the inside of the box.
But it might surprise you to learn just how much the game has been broken open, with a recent world-record speedrun sitting at a bonkers 6 minutes and 36 seconds. Impressive, considering that the player spends the first 50 seconds of the run watching a cutscene.
On top of a few tricks to get Mario moving through the world a bit faster (such as chaining jumps to cover more ground more quickly), the biggest aid available to speedrunners is the famous "Backwards Long Jump" glitch (1:18 in the video below), in which the player faces Mario away from some stairs, jumps, and lands while holding backwards on the control stick. The result of this move is that Mario will be sent flying away at a high speed, usually clipping through walls along the way.
Combine this with the aforementioned jump-chaining, dodging past certain obstacles (rather than going where the game wants you to go), and even a few accurately-planned controller swaps, and the Super Mario 64 speedrun is like a dance that has to be choreographed down to the tiniest of details.