Abyssoft

The first time the skip was first introduced in 2021 was by speedrunner Forest64, which sparked a fire in the community to attempt to recreate it. However, it wouldn’t be until almost two years later that it was recreated and used in a speedrun, resulting in some shifts in the track’s speedrunning records. Forest64 himself managed to implement the skip in a run after over 200 hours of grinding and thousands of attempts on March 11, 2023 beating the previous non-shortcut time by just four-tenths of a second. This was impressive because it both dethroned the original time, and was the first time the skip was successfully pulled off through play, rather than testing.

Advertisement

However, that reign would be short lived, as speedrunner Christian C. hit the skip and shaved off a second of his time just two days later on March 13. The following day, speedrunner Aaron Jablonski also managed to hit the skip but wasn’t quite able to overtake Christian’s time. Abyssoft’s video breaks down some of the ways this run can still be improved by using the skip, but given just how difficult it’s proven for the pros to pull off, it may be some time before anyone manages to improve the run through this method.

Ironically enough, after all the hubbub the world record for Bowser’s Castle was overtaken again by Beck Abney on April 4 without using the skip. As of this writing, Abney’s record of 1'49"38 sits on the top spot, but there’s still room for the speedrunners to cut down the already impressive time if the skip is implemented.

Advertisement
Advertisement

What remains to be seen is if The Super Mario Bros. Movie actor Jack Black can beat the record after beating his castmates in Mario Kart for all to see.