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Super Mario Bros. Speedrun: The Perfect Millisecond

1701 words | Reading time : 8 minute(s)

AnalysisSpeedrunRecords

The world record sits just 100 milliseconds away from the theoretically perfect time. This analysis dives into the most fiercely contested discipline in competitive gaming: the Any% record of 4:54.365 set by LeKukie on 2 June 2026, against a theoretical optimum of 4:54.265. It breaks down the Any%, Warpless and Glitchless categories, and the framerule that pushes the clock forward in fixed steps.

The speedrun of Super Mario Bros. — in English: Super Mario Bros. speedrunning — is one of the most famous and most fiercely contested disciplines in all of competitive gaming. Around a title released in 1985, a worldwide community has spent more than ten years hunting the perfect fraction of a second.

In June 2026, the Any% world record fell to 4:54.365, roughly 100 milliseconds off the theoretical "perfect run". A dive into a world of categories, framerules and pinpoint glitches.

Contents

A 1985 game turned global competitive arena

Super Mario Bros. was released on 13 September 1985 (Japan) on the Famicom, then in 1987 in Europe on the NES. Forty years on, this platformer remains one of the most active competitive arenas on the speedrun scene.

If the game fascinates runners so much, it is because it is almost entirely deterministic: give it identical inputs and it reacts in identical fashion, with no significant randomness. Every jump can therefore be optimised down to the pixel and the frame, and runs can be compared with real rigour.

The discipline revolves around speedrun.com, the community platform that logs times, validates videos and ranks runners. Every top-level run is filmed, checked frame by frame and, more often than not, played on original hardware in order to be ratified.

Any%, Warpless, Glitchless: the three main categories

The flagship category is Any%: anything goes to finish the game as fast as possible, warps and glitches included. Thanks to the warp zones hidden away by the developers, the runner only plays through 8 of the game's 32 levels. It is the most popular category and the most closely watched.

The Warpless category bans warps: you then have to clear all 32 levels, though glitches remain allowed. The world record there is over 18 minutes, an entirely different exercise in endurance and consistency.

Finally, the Glitchless category bans glitches — wall jumps, wrong warps, flagpole glitch — while remaining otherwise identical to Any%. Stripped of its most technical shortcuts, the best time there hovers around 5 minutes.

That gap between categories says it all: glitches save whole seconds, and Any% is where most of the attention goes, along with the rivalries at the top of the leaderboard.

The framerule: why the clock advances in 0.35 s steps

The game's most counter-intuitive quirk comes down to the framerule (the community's English term). Super Mario Bros. runs at 60 frames per second, but the game only checks whether a level is finished every 21 frames, that is 0.35 seconds.

A level's completion time is therefore always a multiple of 21 frames. Runner darbian popularised the bus stop image: Mario may well reach the flag early, but he still has to wait for the next "bus", which only comes around every 21 frames.

The whole point is to clear each threshold by the narrowest margin. Saving half a second of gameplay is worthless if you miss the framerule; conversely, scraping together a single frame can tip an entire level into the lower framerule and save 0.35 seconds in one go.

This mechanic reshapes strategy: sometimes it is better to slow down slightly to set up a jump rather than charge ahead, since the 21-frame threshold is going to be reached either way. It is this constant calculation that makes the optimisation so deep.

Glitches and frame-perfect techniques

The most emblematic glitch is the flagpole glitch: by controlling Mario's position down to the sub-pixel, the runner makes him "slip into" the block that holds the finish flagpole. Each successful execution generally saves a full framerule, or 0.35 seconds.

The wall jump exploits another flaw: by jumping against the seam between two wall tiles, Mario briefly gets stuck in the scenery and can take a second jump from there, something normally impossible.

Another piece of fine craftsmanship, the "Lightning 4-2": it is the fastest known method for triggering the wrong warp in world 4-2. Developed by Niftski in September 2023, it saves a full framerule over every previous technique.

These manoeuvres are described as "frame-perfect": they demand an input that is exact to the frame (1/60 s). One frame too early or too late and the glitch fails — often costing Mario his life, and the whole run with it.

Minus World screen in Super Mario Bros., the endless water level
The Minus World: the most famous glitch of 1985, long exploited in speedruns.

From darbian to LeKukie: the lineage of record holders

In the mid-2010s, darbian established himself as the figurehead and made the bus stop theory accessible to all, with records dropping from the 4:57 range down into the 4:56s.

Next came Kosmic, the first to settle into the 4:55 bracket with a time of 4:55.913 on 25 September 2018. The 4:55 mark then became the new wall to bring down.

That wall fell thanks to Niftski, the American runner who dominated from the early 2020s through to 2025. He broke the 4:55 barrier with 4:54.948 in April 2021, then lowered the mark to 4:54.631 (2023) and 4:54.448 (October 2025).

That progress was fuelled by rivalry: around the turn of the 2020s, Niftski spent a long time slugging it out with Britain's Miniland, each record answering the other by just a few frames.

The final stretch saw two relays in quick succession: averge11 posted 4:54.415 on 18 December 2025, before LeKukie seized the record with 4:54.365 on 2 June 2026.

4:54.365: 100 milliseconds from the perfect run

The theoretically perfect run of Super Mario Bros. is estimated at 4:54.265. The current record is now only about 100 milliseconds away, the equivalent of barely a handful of frames.

LeKukie's record was, what is more, completed live and on original hardware, under the most demanding conditions imaginable. Pulling off a full run without a single mistake takes as much composure as muscle memory.

At this level, the margin comes down to minuscule optimisations and an almost flawless chain of every frame-perfect glitch; each new record is now decided by a few dozen milliseconds, wrenched out over thousands of attempts.

This quest owes a great deal to the charity marathons Games Done Quick (GDQ), which gave the discipline a global showcase and brought Super Mario Bros. runs to a mainstream audience. Between framerule theory and controller-in-hand feats, the community now has just one goal: closing the last thousandths of a second.

Super Mario Bros. speedrunning: key facts

Original game Super Mario Bros. (1985, Famicom/NES)
Any% world record 4:54.365
Holder (2026) LeKukie, 2 June 2026
Theoretical "perfect" time 4:54.265 (~100 ms faster)
Framerule 21 frames = 0.35 seconds
Levels in Any% 8 out of 32 (warps allowed)
Most contested category Any%
Community platform speedrun.com

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FAQ

  • What is the Super Mario Bros. world record in 2026?
    In the Any% category, the record is 4:54.365, set by LeKukie on 2 June 2026, on original hardware and live.
  • What is a framerule?
    It is the fact that the game only checks whether a level is finished every 21 frames, or 0.35 seconds. Level times are therefore always multiples of that step.
  • What is the difference between Any%, Warpless and Glitchless?
    Any% allows warps and glitches and only goes through 8 of the 32 levels. Warpless bans warps and requires all 32 levels. Glitchless bans glitches while otherwise staying close to Any%.
  • Can this record still be beaten?
    Yes, but only by a hair: the theoretically perfect run is estimated at 4:54.265, about 100 milliseconds off the current time. Progress is now measured in tens of milliseconds.
  • What is the flagpole glitch?
    A technique that makes Mario enter the block of the finish flagpole thanks to sub-pixel-precise positioning, saving roughly 0.35 seconds each time it is pulled off.
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