Reacting to the OLDEST Speedrun of Mario 3

[@KiloShank]

You cannot deny that this was an extremely talented runner for the time. At a time that noone was going for it, David Gibbons went for it, and went all out.

[@StrongKickMan]

I was better

[@vvbvgeneraltsung2913]

​@Action Jackson didnt record it tho so your point is moot😢

[@StrongKickMan]

@@vvbvgeneraltsung2913 I recorded it, but won't share.

[@vvbvgeneraltsung2913]

@@StrongKickMan L

[@SynysterProjects]

"I was better than literally the first person ever to do it" LOL

[@jamesread11]

You need to find gibbons and interview him all those questions

[@NullScar]

👍🏼

[@jivanta23]

He shouldn't be that hard to find considering he's was pretty prevalent in the speed running community. Look up David "marshmallow" Gibbons

[@JaggerG]

Grill him about Bomberman 64 >:^O (jk this joke is very a joke don’t do it)

[@GrinninPig]

leaving a message here in case it ever happens and gets posted

[@jeffr3773]

Not only is 2005 not a long time ago in my mind, it's still in the future. Time stopped for me in 1999

[@NullScar]

Let’s party like it’s 1999! I’ll be at your place soon to celebrate y2K.

[@Night-Jester]

Yeah kind of hard to top The Matrix and Fight Club coming out. Just movies but everything after that is meh I kind of crossed my fingers for Y2K destroying everything.

[@NullScar]

@@Night-Jester hehe. It did. The rest is a simulation.

[@robertsaldivar159]

me too man

[@pictureframe1]

the crazy part to me is that this is already a 15 year old game when this run was recorded.

[@ImakittyLAWL]

There definitely was Emulators and Roms back in 2005, I used to get in trouble for installing them on the school PCs.

[@QuasarEE]

The first SNES emulator was released in 1997 or 1998 IIRC. It ran a handful of games and was painfully slow on a top-of-the-line 486. 😬

[@bulasturubula3660]

Screencording in 2005 in such quality is impressive lol

[@johnb9573]

That would be so cool if Gibbons actually saw this

[@Vitomazzarino]

Marshmallow's Super Metroid 100% speed run gamefaq changed my life.

[@demolicous]

@@Vitomazzarino But why?

[@nipzie]

@@demolicous because it was written by the person who did this speedrun?

[@MrBrendanRizzo]

Trivia questions: 1. That is not the first cloud. You get one after clearing World 2. 2. The enemies are Pile-Driver Micro-Goombas. 3. That is the final hammer.

[@sydonnis7416]

There is a certain charm to older speedruns like this. Tom Votava's old zelda 1 run also stands out in my memory. Strats were underdeveloped yet still highly impressive.

[@ASMRPeople]

He certainly could have practiced on emulators. I recall downloading nesticle in 1999, running it on my Pentium 2 on windows 98.

[@Batmannerz]

ZSNES and Snes9x both had save states as well and they definitely existed around 2000.

[@justinjohnston8729]

+1 for nesticle...he could have created save states to practice back then

[@litigioussociety4249]

1999? Nesticle was out in like 1995. Basically, Windows 95 made NES emulation easily accessible. The weird thing was that 16 bit emulation took a long time before it ran fluidly, and 64 bit emulation was much later before it could be run well on most PCs.

[@mikejunt]

@@litigioussociety4249 SNES9x ran pretty well in 1999; some of the earlier 90s emulators were a bit weaker, but honestly most of development in SNES9x since about 2002 or so has just been keeping it operational in upgraded OS environments and weird mode 7 stuff. Which is what doomed NESticle: it was incredible until it simply stopped being operational in newer versions of Windows

[@xerowolf4242]

definitely had save states on emu's but there weren't any dedicated practice roms where you could just walk through levels and such. I think that's what mitch was mainly referring to.

[@anthonythornton1517]

This was great! You should make this a series - take the best run of each year from 2005 to present and take us through the evolution of the smb3 speedrun

[@animerandomness]

That would be awesome. \m/

[@JeremyWray86]

Look up the history of smb3 speedrun, there is a whole documentary done on here that goes over each person and their runs as they took the top spot starting with this video

[@thenumberquelve158]

No offense, but isn't that what Summoning Salt already does?

[@lt_johnmcclane]

@@thenumberquelve158 yeah but it’s much more interesting to hear an actual runner’s perspective rather than the dry, documentary style approach that summoning salt takes

[@thenumberquelve158]

@@lt_johnmcclane Fair.

[@Night-Jester]

Yeah I absolutely love the All Stars backgrounds. I particularly like the SMB1 night background. I like imagining a neat expansive world that stretches far far away in the back that I could explore.

[@huevonesunltd]

Even backthen they started with level 1-1, and even to this day it's the optimal stage to start at, guy was ahead of his time

[@murakumo65]

plot twist Mr. gibbons is actually mitchflowerpower.

[@mwn3d_]

This is like watching sports highlights from different eras. Like yeah they're definitely good relative to their peers. But compared to now...the strategies and training are so far ahead that it's like playing a different game.

[@krisfrederick5001]

I appreciate the All-Stars version aesthetically. Especially on the Airships with the thunderstorms...but the music alteration is just obnoxious to me, growing up with the OG SMB3.🍄

[@nugboy420]

The whole Allstars physics with the continued momentum thru the broken from below bricks.

[@grandmastermario3695]

I've only ran the all stars snes version because well that's the 1 I have.

[@nugboy420]

@@grandmastermario3695 haha as a kid I don’t think it bothered me as much, but when I finally went out and bought a copy a few years ago I really really couldn’t stand it. Also I realize I ended my first reply without any real message to it. Before the period it was supposed to say “always fucked with me”…

[@shyguy85]

@@nugboy420 thank god theres a patch for that now

[@mikejunt]

Good emulators with savestates existed for NES and SNES in 2005, so using emulators to practice stages would have been quite realistic at this point in time. NESticle was the best NES emulator until it stopped working in x64 Windows, and it was basically complete in 1999. The SNES Emulators weren't far behind.

[@DanielSanGMR]

Totally, I remember using an Emulator for the first time when I was 10 in 1998

[@bes03c]

3:05 though there may not have been a way to play on authentic hardware, there were still save states in emulators. It was not had to boot one up to practice any part of a game. Emulation was not as accurate as now, but it was still more than good enough to practice.

[@sportsjefe]

This was the ZSNES days, right?

[@ShamanJeeves]

All-Stars lets you select your starting world on the file select screen, up to the highest world you've reached on that particular file, so practicing levels shouldn't have been too difficult. At least that's what I remember. Edit- Confirmed my memory via NSO. Admittedly he'd still have to play through individual worlds to practice their later levels, and it making sure he has all the correct power-ups would take some doing, but practicing would still have been more convenient than having to play the whole game every time. A basic practice file offering all 8 worlds is as simple as grabbing both world 1 whistles, warping to world 8, then doing a quick save and quit.

[@fredskronk]

Exactly. Plus your inventory is saved so you can easily go back to the first mushroom house a few times. (Or do as me as a kid and just beer w1 a few of times to get p-wings)

[@johnsmith-gv9yw]

@@fredskronk umm, he could have used an emulater to practice...

[@dragonslayerz2220]

​@@johnsmith-gv9yw Not in 2005.

[@bojangle]

@@dragonslayerz2220 There were definitely SNES emulators in 2005.. SNES9x and ZNES were released in the late 90s.

[@grandmastermario3695]

The guys a legend for getting WRS in multiple games like mario 3 dk 3 and mario 64 etc, but at the same time wonder why he stopped 16 years isnt even that long ive been playing games for like 23 years and still going, something must of got in his way,

[@youreyesarebleeding1368]

He could have practiced actually (and probably did). NESticle was an NES emulator released in 1996, and it had save states even then. He's playing All Stars which is the SNES version, but ZSNES had save states around 1997. But, you have to consider that there was no analog for him to compare his gameplay to! He had to invent these strats and come up with them on his own, so still very impressive.

[@Beautiful-Sickening-Rolex]

cool! I think this guys run is not far off from where I would be if I practiced for a few weeks...it's good to see something I can realistically aspire to achieve

[@ryanfitzgerald2816]

That was exactly my thoughts as well. In my prime, I'd probably have been maybe 5 minutes slower than this. Liked seeing a speed run just done by a really good player, none of the fancy stuff going on that everyone does now.

[@newtonbeats1212]

You need to find this guy and interview him.

[@MR.__G]

Yessss !!!! It would’ve been awesome to have him as a guest & watch the run together

[@morchela]

What surprised me the most was not using the 1up clip in Bowser's castle. That was a well known classic trick. As a comparison by those years there were a lot of OOT known glitches so not utilizing this one is strange.

[@xenxander]

world 3-7 is the world shown on the advertisement for SM3 with McDs, advertising their toy line tied in with the game. I always remembered it for some strange reason. "Your Mic-y-dees is here." "Okay just put it on the table!" Mario flies out of the t.v, flies over to the bag, drives in, munches it all, flies back to the screen and then into the game again, where you hear the death music. Boys says, "oh boy..."

[@Showsni]

Have you watched the blooper reel he uploaded along with his run? He does actually go for the star kill on Boom Boom in it, but didn't quite get it. :D He got a weird death on a pipe entry in one of the sidescrolling levels too, do you know why he died there?

[@KabAudio]

I've watched the blooper real, i enjoyed it. The pipe death is caused by holding right and B at the end of that level, and if you are on the right subpixel (1/8 chance), when you enter the pipe, the pipe animation moves mario to the right far enough to hit the death barrier (since when entering pipes, the autoscroller stops, and on autoscrollers, going off the edges of the screen cause mario to die)

[@CreamerOfTheDairySquad]

Wait... in that world 6 level I thought the developers intended strat WAS to hold the shell and fly, is it not? I remember the first few times I played this game as a young child that level would take me forever and confuse the shit outta me until I always eventually came to "hold a shell and fly" and eventually I just started doing that by default

[@LettersAndNumbers300]

Really enjoyed watching this, looking forward to your live chat with him.

[@dominicsmith5588]

I’m amazed he didn’t go for the 1-up block glitch in Bowsers Castle. I found that glitch on my own when I was around 9 back in 1993, I thought it would be common knowledge for the worlds greatest speed runner at the time.

[@SASMacDroid]

I guess the guy actually only played the game and was good in it and then done a speed run and didn't look up things, but saying that it was slightly tougher getting the information back then i can remember that you could buy magazines with tips and tricks and some of my friends told me about stuff like that so i guess he has never been told about that glitch

[@NullScar]

Might be because glitches weren’t allowed? I don’t think he didn’t know about it. It’s/was common knowledge.

[@SASMacDroid]

@@NullScar the guy made the video in 2005 i think speed runs were not really so much of a thing with solid rules but i could be wrong

[@Showsni]

@@SASMacDroid He explains this in his comments - "I play using Twin Galaxy's rules, which means I do not abuse wall jumping or warping through walls or other barriers." Speed Demos Archive does allow glitches, but Twin Galaxies doesn't, and he's using their ruleset.

[@NullScar]

@@SASMacDroid I mainly thought about twin galaxies, but I don’t know when they started listing Mario 3 though. (With videos). All I know is they did not allow glitches at some point earlier on. Anyway; have a good day 👍🏼

[@CaptainJacksIsland]

The 10 minute SMB3 TAS by Genisto will always be the OG GOAT to me. It went viral because a lot of people thought it was real, it helped popularize TAS', which also led to people getting into speedrunning. Its impact can't be understated.

[@rphntw1n]

Not a bad point. I’m not into tas but you can’t deny that those videos bring a LOT to the community. Respect.

[@handfulofbits]

I remember that video also! People were baffled.

[@scottl.1568]

TAS ain't real speedrunning

[@riggs7167]

@@scottl.1568 nobody is saying it is, and TAS has its own leaderboards anyways

[@MisterAutist]

I think you probably meant Morimoto's run. But Genisto's TAS was also impressive for its time too, the Famtasia sound emulation also had a charm.

[@shaundiltz5821]

yes he could practice. We had emulators and save states in 99 with everything you have today. We just grew up and became adults unfortunately.

[@AllanAdamson]

back then it wasn't important to trim every second

[@jhsevs]

I’ve always wanted to see a simple romhack where every level is original but autoscroll is enabled for absolutely all levels. And I’ve wanted to see a tas for it too

[@B455PL4Y3R]

Mitch mumbles the word Pspeed in his sleep

[@ploxl1441]

no excuses. Wikipedia for snes9x shows: "In 2005, Retro Gamer called Snes9x "the best SNES emulator available".[12]" There were definitely save states available

[@showingthelinks8441]

I think a huge difference is that I didn't see any duck jumps.

[@tylerdulak9030]

Mitch telling us to get good so he has competition. I see what you're doing there.

[@jaredt3150]

5:44 he shoots fireballs to the music. By far the best part of the run!!!

[@regularsharp]

We had savestates and emulators in 2005. ZSNES was a thing since at least the early 2000's. What we didn't have is a platform for information sharing and competition. We had the technology, the problem was "speedrun" wasn't really a thing back then as it is now. Back then, it was just "beat the game really fast". Now, it's "I crouch jumped here and hit this block with quarter-pixel perfect precision. And that's how I beat the record by .00000001 seconds."

[@joshuapluth4930]

Thank you for all the encouragement to future speed runners out there. I feel like i could try. I guess we'll see.

[@edge3220]

I turned 17 in 2005. Gibbons was maybe around that, give or take a few years. Man, time flies. Guess it wouldn't hurt so bad if you actually do something with your life.

[@Fusso]

I'm pretty sure Mitch was around the same age in 2005

[@keithr6100]

What’s wrong with jumping for the wand?

[@jonathanmorrison112]

3:12 David could have used game genie codes to start in later worlds or give him infinite 1ups

[@cronotosaur2881]

1. Peach gives you a cloud after beating a prior world 2. They are called micro-goomba... with brick 3. That is the final hammer

[@judogerudo]

I laughed my ass off at Mitch's face at 1:58 lol

[@thenumberquelve158]

I kind of wonder what his attitude was about this run when he posted it. Since no one else had, it could've been a number of things. It could've been like "well, here's a cool run I guess, I hope people are entertained by it, I wonder when/if someone will beat this time", or "YES, I'm the man, let me demonstrate to the world what a beast I am at SMB3!!" or anywhere in between.

[@joshbaker2885]

First cloud is from the letter from beating world 2.

[@serioushex3893]

honestly, for the time it came out, an impressive run.

[@Spherify]

11:34 I agree, it's insane, I mastered that in the early 90's as a kid -92 or so

[@jmholmes83]

Came to the comments to see if he’s here yet.

[@NihilistSolitude]

In 2005 you has zsnes which allow you to play a rom on a computer and plug a snes controller with a USB adapter. I think I still have that USB adapter somewhere in my house

[@johnfedoruk4414]

FYI at 0:06 he says mushroom house and spade card games. It took me like 7 minutes of re-listening before I got it.

[@Dwedit]

Regarding knowing the layout of a level to find clips, level editors for SMB3 existed back in 2002.

[@Giroxerog07]

Kinda refreshing to see a vanilla run. Don't get me wrong, I love watching the crazy clips and skips but it was nice for a change!

[@CreamerOfTheDairySquad]

I used to speedrun this game when I was a kid/teen. I never submitted anything or set a record but just at home for fun. I didn't even know at the time that speedrunning was a thing. I remember how excited I was the first time I beat smb3 in 20 min lol I didn't like to 100% cus I was in for speed grab two whistles and then warp to world 8 lmao But after seeing this I might pick up smb3 again and start trying all the levels I used to skip 98% of the time lol

[@xtlm]

I mean save states on emulators existed for practice and TAS runs were also around.

[@sleepydragonzarinthal3533]

I used to always jump for the wand as a kid in the 90s, but just to show off, not really for time

[@AllanAdamson]

haha I'm 41 & in 2005 I was relaxing in Hawaii... guys in my age group started making game rooms with a NES in it.. & we'd have parties and play a lil Super Mario Bros... in fact.. there is a crew called.. the Super Mario Bros Crew.. it's been around since around 2005 via the bodybuilding forum

[@TheTriformationT]

Nowadays Marsh is mainly found playing CS 1.6 in CAL-IM with fellow Elite members Randy, Cyberwrath and PDO. He also played a Diablo II mod called Median and every once in a while messes around with Starcraft. Marsh finally started work on his long awaited CS movie in April 2008. It'll be done when its done. In August 2006 Marsh released an edited version of Wouter Jansen's world record complete-game speedrun of Donkey Kong 64, entitled 'Wouter Goes Bananas'. This is without doubt one of the funniest videos you will ever see. Reflections

[@Blutzen]

3:04 "I don't think there were any Everdrives, I don't think there were any practice ROMs, I don't think there was any way for David to practice later worlds..." This is the All-Stars version, so you can choose to start in any world that you've reached when you launch the game.

[@kaldo_kaldo]

But you don't have any of the powerups

[@jakobfredriksson2272]

Awesome! Btw, I pretty much just played SM3 the entire 90' during my childhood and while watching this, damn, I could've been a decent speed runner (at the time). Some places where P-speed is created and 'discovered' later, I managed to pull of around 93 =)

[@jelly-butter]

how is this the oldest? this speedrun was done 17 years after smb3 released!

[@plusah1268]

I love watching this, orob gonna go watch that guys entire playthrough lol. I love that college try this guy gives, very unoptimal, but also extremely impressive for the time. The goomba shoe part made me spit out the water i was drinking out of laughter lok

[@NihilistSolitude]

Fauci has pictures of himself in his castle 🤔

[@metaljay2896]

Mitch will always be my personal speedrunning goat. You are the reason I call it a sport. 🤘

[@gopherbone697]

Save states existed in at least 1999

[@justanobody0]

Dave Gibbons performs better mario 3 performance than I've ever done Mitchflowerpower: I've noticed 3 million errors by Gibbons that can easily be remedied 30:15 those of you who are watching, do you think you could beat this... what is this 1 hour and 24 minutes or something no You yourself said it's really easy to die in this game, and you also noted that you probably think it was rare for a player of this era to make it all the way to the end without dying once. Compared to my gameplay of the time, Gibbons would've been a pro. He even knows when to use the various items, which shows how much a nub I am at Smb3

[@cxx23]

100% agree. Saying he's a casual player is doing him a huge disservice. Being way better now doesn't take away from how good he was then. Just like how Super Mario Odyssey doesn't take away from how amazing SMB3 was. Another example. Pro skateboarders from the 80s were incredible, but people got better. Doesn't detract, because what came before is the groundwork.

[@WaywardBrigand]

First cloud is from the letter The Princess sends you when you beat the world 2 airship.

[@CrownRock1]

We had emulators in '05. I was using ZNES to run SNES games in 2000, maybe earlier. And it had multiple save states.

[@midwestmystic6431]

Before speedruns were really a thing, I did them after working night shifts in my apartment. No emulators, lots of cigarettes.

[@TompaA]

Rewatching this makes me wonder if he ever saw the 2001 100% TAS before this.

[@xxEzraBxxx]

might have for the strats

[@TompaA]

@@xxEzraBxxx Nah, very doubtful. There are loads of strats he really should have used if so imo. But who knows =).

[@xxEzraBxxx]

@@TompaA might have either thought it was too unsafe or lack of practice

[@Showsni]

He says in his comments to the run: "Although this is a faithful adaptation of SMB3, it does differ from its NES predecessor in a couple areas. Mainly, the proportions of some of the stages are slightly off in some areas -- slight enough to make some tricks impossible from the NES run. I really didn't notice until I started running and comparing it to the emulated run. Speaking of which, I have to thank the guys over at Bisqwit's site. The runs over there were quite useful to me and I tried to mimic their moves as closely as possible." So yeah, looks like he certainly saw those runs. Note that he was using Twin Galaxies rules, so he wasn't allowed to use any clips or wall jumps.

[@QuietQuilava156]

"How could he have practiced that level?" Snes9x and save states have been around for a while man. I was using them in 2002 so like, I can imagine runners using them for practice. Still impressive!

[@garyquack19]

what i like about this run is that there is no clipping - clipping goes against the intention of the game by the developers, and adds too much randomness to the competition. I would like to see a "100%, No Clipping" category created. Not even the 1Up on Bowser Castle.

[@commentresurrection1841]

Dude we were doing speed runs in 1995 lol This isnt a new thing

[@donkeyking475]

You gotta get some of these other top runners on here for interviews and hearing them go through what they were thinking.

[@nigelbaboolal5072]

It would be interesting to see you talk to this person.

[@agent00x]

he uploaded a bloopers video with this as well. Someone has recently uploaded a copy of it.

[@YaoMingsFriend]

"90s bedsheets, i don;t want to talk about it" Me too bro, I understand.

[@jackstrap5541]

People often forget the begining of speedrun was great powerplay run. All the great speedruner strats was not invented

[@thediamonddust]

I wonder if the guy will ever see this video. It would be awesome to hear from him.

[@WhatisAPaladin]

emulators were around at this time period, ZSnes x9snes have been around since the late 90s

[@grantt4532]

Doesn't Allstars have a save function you could use to practice?

[@EazzyBeezie]

You would have to rack up 99 lives in world 1 then die and repeat levels you needed, using warp whistle when needed

[@WingedEspeon]

I was really surprised that he didn't get the easy clip in bowsers castle. Even I knew about that one with no internet as a casual player.

[@TompaA]

It's because he went by rules of Twin Galaxies, which banned it for unknown reason.

[@TheCreativeType]

While I’m more of a SNES music person myself, I do find some of the all stars renditions to use some odd instruments

[@LeetTron5000]

pretty sure in all stars you could choose wwhat world you wanted to go to after getting to lvl 8, it also takes no time to get and use flutes to take you wherever you want.

[@DAngelProductions]

Snes emulators existed back then, I know I was a kid playing the crap out of them on my gateway pc. I wouldn’t doubt he practiced on it before going for a legit full run.

[@igortolstov487]

How old is Mitch? He is talking about 2005 like a Stone Age. I was in high school at that time, and I was playing these games on emulators. So yeah, you could practice all you want with save state features

[@Shippard]

Snes emulator (what I used) released in 1997, so there where savestates in 2005

[@sanpuru1969]

He probably stopped running because outside of pride, there wasn't much reward for continuing to improve beyond personal satisfaction. Sure you could get your name on a leaderboard, but you weren't gaining followers or making money from it, so most people didn't have time to devote many hours a day for years to practicing speedrun skills. It was a hobby, not a career possibility.

[@tedhand6237]

I don't think I ever clipped by accident as a kid, and I played a lot of 3.

[@Ryet9]

JUST getting under 2hrs for 100% and am pretty proud of that... this was a good look back, but wow has it changed since back then... Why don't u slide on 8-2.... down that last hill? ❤

[@bloxa]

Awesome! Wasn't glitches illegal at this point? Hence no glitches

[@nugboy420]

0:54 I agree, but even as a kid after playing the NES version, I could realize it just wasn’t the same. Done done done

[@nugboy420]

I’m voice texting but maybe you know what I mean at the end of the previous comment

[@EarthWalkerOne]

damn, i'd already quit 'speedrunning' before 2005. I never timed it or called it speedrunning. I'd just play as fast as I could when needed to kill some time. Really wish I knew what my times were, I played SMB3 pretty regularly from release to about 2002-3.

[@bigstopowens]

so i had a little competition back in the early 2000's with my buddy. we ran super mario 1 to see who could beat it faster with warps, nothing like runs today, we hit like 12-13 minutes i think, hard to remember, there is no way i could run a 100% of 3 without dying. side note we discovered a way to fast level in fable 1 not the anniversary edition before some of the newer leveling glitches came out, we got that run down to like 2 hours or so, we really didn't time them but it was somewhere around there, we had 2 xboxs and 2 copies of fable (results of people moving in together), and the same buddy that ran sm1 ran it side by side and he went for skorms bow which made his run super fast 3 or 4 hitting the last boss can't remember how many it took, while i had a good sword that took like 20 swings

[@JustAnotherMatt420]

There were emu’s and ROMs back then. Just harder to find.

[@cmayk]

"2005? I wasn't even born yet" I did NOT think I was older than mfp

[@Keelyn1984]

I played roms on snes9x back then in 2001 and it already had savestates. The first known snes emulators date back to 1994. He could have used one for practice. But the knowledge howto do it wasn't widespread. Downloading roms could also get you in serious legal trouble. Also, getting a bad reputation for playing on emulation instead of the original hardware was a thing. And lastly people didn't trust the emulators enough because they weren't sophisticated enough and the gaming experience varied from game to game. Because of all this most people told you to play on the original hardware instead of an emulator.

[@martedoddles5389]

1:56 I don't know why, but this scene made me thought that would be a great meme lmao

[@MrTylerWpg]

14:00 I feel you can get one from the red mushroom house behind the rock next to 4-1