How To Make $1,000 Playing ‘Super Mario 64’

Casual fans might run through a video game once or twice, but there’s nothing casual about speedrunning.

Speedrunners are known to hunt down every possible glitch, shortcut, or advantage they can find to cut down their time. They are dedicated to being the fastest and most efficient at their chosen game, and their world records are no joke. For instance, the Super Mario World tied record holder, Dotsarecool, completed the game in just under one minute and 42 seconds.

Speedrunners particularly enjoy the Mario games for their brand of gaming. The Mario games are lush with secrets and hidden glitches that can shave a few seconds, or minutes, off a gamer’s final time.

With that knowledge, is it any wonder that a speedrunner is offering a $1,000 bounty to anyone able to replicate a glitch found in the Japanese version Super Mario 64 that could take a significant amount of time off a run?

Super Mario 64 has been out since 1996. It’s fair to say that hardcore fans and casual players alike have come together to run through the game millions of times since then. Recently, however, a seemingly brand-new glitch was found by gaming streamer DOTA_TeaBag.

In this Super Mario 64 glitch, Mario was warped up several floors in the Tick Tock Clock level while collecting red coins.

No one has claimed to have seen this glitch before and speedrunner Pannenkoek has been trying to find that Super Mario 64 glitch since.

In his bounty video, Pannenkoek, explains how upwarps work in Super Mario 64.

“This glitch occurs when Mario is below a hangable ceiling and jumps into a lower, adjacent ceiling. When this happens, the game recognizes that Mario is both below a hangable ceiling and just jumped into the ceiling above him; so the game mixes together the properties of these two ceilings, thinks Mario jumped into a hangable ceiling and thus puts him at the height of the hangable ceiling.”

Pannenkoek’s Super Mario 64 glitch-bounty video has over 800,000 views and it was only posted three days ago. He has requested specific file-types for submissions to be valid for the bounty.

The Super Mario 64 proof “should be a.m64 and.st file, which when played perform the glitch. To submit, you can zip up these files, upload to TinyUpload.com, and then send me the link in a comment or private message.”

No one has claimed the $1,000 dollars yet.

[Image courtesy of Nintendo]