In the waning hours of the Awesome Games Done Quick charity marathon, player grandpoobear raced through Super Dram World, a game designed to torture speedrunners.
If you weren’t aware, Super Dram World is a hacked version of Super Mario World for the SNES. It was inspired by a previous hack of the game called Kaizo Mario World. Both are way harder than the original, and creations that arose from the speedrunning community’s obsession with playing hard games as fast as humanly possible.
Kaizo Mario World was created by T. Takemoto, best known for making nightmare hacks like his Asshole Mario series. They make Dark Souls look like a stroll through the park by comparison. The game in turn inspired one of its top speedrunners, PangaeaPanga, to create his own colorful gauntlet. That game became Super Dram World, the one grandpoobear was speedrunning earlier today at AGDQ because, well, he’s the best at it, holding the world record for competing the game which he established just a couple weeks ago with a time of 24:24.
His run today wasn’t nearly so perfect, but it wasn’t half bad either, still beating out the creator of Super Dram World’s first record from over a year ago. Most speedrunners prefer to stick to the official versions of their favorite games. There’s something special about holding the top record for completing the original The Legend of Zelda, for instance. It’s a game that millions are familiar with, and an institution in itself. But others, like PangaeaPanga, prefer to conjure their own hellish challenges.
And thanks to things like Mario Maker, it’s easier than ever. PangaeaPanga, for instance, is know for creating some of the hardest Mario levels imaginable using the Wii U game.. You can watch grandpoobear’s entire run below.