Surprise: he broke the Super Mario Galaxy 2 world record in the middle of a charity marathon

Game News Surprise: he broke the Super Mario Galaxy 2 world record in the middle of a charity marathon

What if Super Mario Galaxy 2 was talked about again at the beginning of the year? Unfortunately, this isn’t to announce its (finally) arrival on the Nintendo Switch. One of the Wii’s greatest (if not the best?) video games, and prominently absent from the Super Mario 3D All-Stars compilation released in September 2020 on hybrid consoles from nintendo, unfortunately for now it’s still limited to another era and doesn’t have an official remaster yet. However, this does not prevent the most determined sprinters from continuing to compete for the best performances in the world on their original medium. The proof: the Super Mario Galaxy 2 world speedrun record has just been broken, for the first time in 9 months, under very special circumstances that make it even more extraordinary.

Amazing games end quickly

If you’re interested in the world of speedrunning, you’ve no doubt heard about the big event you may be participating in right now. We are of course talking about AGDQ, which stands for “Awesome Games Done Quick” (literally “amazing games finished quickly”), and which the goal is to bring together incredibly talented players for a full week around a charity speedrun marathon. Launched in 2010, AGDQ takes place annually in early/mid January and raises funds for Cancer Prevention Foundation, an organization dedicated to fighting cancer. The popularity and very positive image of the event made it possible systematically racking up sums happily exceeding a million dollars every year, even reaching a record sum in 2022 for a total of $3.42 million.

So every year, several dozen different games are presented, from the very recent (like Splatoon 3 which “lived” this year) to the very old spins sometimes even on engines often released (long) before the birth of fast runners who practice the subtle art of try hard. Whether you want it or not, wildly popular titles in the world of speedrunning regularly feature there, if not annually, and certain genres are better represented than others. It’s quite logical that platformers It is therefore a type of game that is very present in sprint marathons, and therefore in AGDQ, and titles from the Super Mario series are regularly widely available there. This year, four episodes of the franchise are part of planning marathons, including one that interests us here: Super Mario Galaxy 2, are the subject of particular shows because they are “races” against 4 players.

Four is even better

Visually, speedrunning has everything for solo practice, which is a bit isolated, though most of the best “performers” in the field broadcast their efforts live on platforms like Twitch. However, and particularly during events such as AGDQ, the concept of “racing” against several fast runners simultaneously in the same game is also very popular, and very spectacular at very high levels. It is partly for this reason that a 4-man “race” was selected for the 2023 edition of the famous marathon, opposing players of extraordinary levels, all ranked between 2nd and 11th place worldwide in game category “every%”.. Which mean finish the game as fast as possible without worrying about the completion percentage, while following the rules set by the community in order to avoid exploiting the huge number of bugs and glitches that completely “ruined” the game. As part of the AGDQ 2023, the world’s top four players are up against:

• Jhay2nd in the world (and multiple world record holders in almost every speedrun category in the game as well as the first Super Mario Galaxy);
• HardcoreGaming3rd in the world (and roughly Jhay’s main “rival” in both Super Mario Galaxy)
• SuperViperT3027th worldwide;
• MutantAbyss11th in the world ranking.

Historic achievement

If we look at the results of Jhay and HardcoreGaming in the two episodes of Super Mario Galaxy, the battle for victory seems to have formed far ahead between them. However, the Welshman was always one step ahead, and proved it after nearly 3 hours of battling his rivals (remotely, AGDQ has been held online since 2021 including after the Covid-19 pandemic). Not content with winning one of the most anticipated “races” of this edition, and this in front of a crowd of over 80,000, the multiple world record holder who holds 9 of the 14 best recorded times in various categories Super Mario Galaxy 1 and 2 (… and 5 second place!) therefore adding the 10th to his collection, take over all leaderboard a game with 4 world records in 4 possible categories, quite simple. To make matters worse, he even closed the gap by 43 seconds on the previous world record Doopsie in March 2020, with the time of 2 hours, 54 minutes and 51 seconds serves as the new world benchmark. What a performance given the context, and one that will no doubt go down in the history of AGDQ and even speedrunning in general!

The 2023 edition of Awesome Games Done Quick (AGDQ), which is disputed entirely online, will follow until the evening of Saturday 14 to Sunday 15 January. You can consult a permanent retransmission with commentary by a French-speaking speedrun specialist LeFrenchRestreamwho also invites you to consult with AGDQ 2023 schedule based on French hours (the official schedule is based on American clocks).