“Two Frames, One Dream” – SMB Any%, GoldenEye Bounties, and Hidden Kart Legends
Welcome back to another week in the wild world of speedrunning — a week where milliseconds were shattered, forgotten games made comebacks, and new runners carved their names into leaderboards across genres. Let’s dive in.
🌟 Headline of the Week: Super Mario Bros. Any% Tightens Again!
The biggest buzz this week: Niftski does it again.
With a 4:54.448 run, he lowers the Super Mario Bros. Any% world record by 2 frames, closing the gap to the no Left+Right TAS to just 11 frames. That’s an insane level of precision for a nearly 40-year-old game.
As Reddit user akurgo pointed out in a discussion thread, the margin between human and tool-assisted perfection is now measured in frames. The post sparked an in-depth chat about frame rules, TAS strategies, and what “the endgame” looks like for this category.
Also worth checking out: a new TAS collaboration by OmerAras55 & Brandon, pushing the SMB 141 press challenge even further by saving a press in 4-2 Warp Zone — a micro-optimization that reminds everyone just how much room still exists for human ingenuity.
💬 Community Spotlight: “Speedruns Are Getting Too Good Too Fast”
A popular discussion post by glowshroom12 reflected on how new games go from release to fully broken almost instantly.
“Back then, it took years for games to be this optimized… Now, a month after release, people are already skipping bosses.”
The comment section turned into a love letter to the golden age of discovery — when runners stumbled into glitches rather than systematically engineered them. That said, modern speedrunning’s hyper-optimization is also a testament to shared knowledge and global collaboration.
🎯 Classic Comeback: The GoldenEye Bounty
After 28 years of running, GoldenEye 007 is still making headlines.
Blue_Khakis posted about a crowdfunded bounty for breaking the 1:10:00 total time barrier, currently offering $500 per second cut on any level. Legendary runners like David Clemens (Facility Secret Agent 0:50 grind) and Irie Butler (Aztec 00 Agent 1:32 attempts) are still out there pushing the game’s limits.
The thread served as both a history lesson and a hype reel for one of speedrunning’s oldest active communities.
🏎️ Mario Kart World: Shortcut Revolution
Meester_Tweester was everywhere again this week, covering a wave of world records across Mario Kart World:
- 🥇 Peach Stadium – JaK 🇺🇸 goes sub-2:15, pulling off the new wall ride shortcut on all three laps.
- 🥇 Cheep Cheep Falls – Pluto 🇺🇸 hits a new 1:54.896, first sub-1:55.
- 🥇 Dandelion Depths – Logan 🇺🇸 earns his 24th WR, tying for most current WRs at 5.
- 🥇 Choco Mountain – Another 🇫🇷 discovers a new charge jump strat.
It’s been a historic streak for the MKW scene — four unique tracks, four new records, and countless new techs.
🚗 Hidden Gem: Cars 2 Speedrunning’s Secret Revolution
One of the best reads this week came from GhostHNW, who returned with another installment of Speedrun Stories, this time covering Cars 2 and the community’s quest to shortcut all 15 tracks.
The write-up reads like a detective novel — theories, collaboration, and one of the most obscure but passionate grind sessions in recent memory. By September 2025, the community managed to find skips on 14 of 15 tracks, with the last one (Mountain Run) still resisting complete domination.
Ghost’s storytelling captures why so many of us love speedrunning: a small, dedicated group making gaming history in a corner of the internet no one else is watching.
“Unless you are actually part of the community, you would never, EVER have heard of this story. Isn’t that the epitome of what we do?”
📹 Recommended Watch: The Quest for the Perfect Speedrun
bismuth9 released a new 26-minute video essay that dives into the philosophy behind optimization, failure, and the human drive for perfection in speedrunning. If you love Summoning Salt-style storytelling, this one’s a must-watch.
🕹️ Other Highlights
- 🧗 Celeste PB – Mario_Bros87 shaved 22 minutes off their time. A huge personal milestone.
- ⚔️ Final Fantasy Tactics – greenhornX_X submitted a “Squire No Math%” speedrun. Bold category, great execution.
- 🧠 Ben 10 Speedrunning Community – GhostHNW also dropped Part 3 of “This is Our Story,” chronicling the Cuboe-Cobra era of Ben 10: Cosmic Destruction.
- 🎯 Quick & Crash – imshocker hit a new WR at 1.509s, making it one of the fastest real-time reflex runs on record.
- 🎓 Weekly Help Thread – New runners, don’t miss the October 20th Getting Started thread — a great place to ask about routing, setup, or streaming advice.
🧩 Glitch Corner
- Somedudereddit1 shared a new LEGO Indiana Jones 2 glitch video.
- Different_Garden_684 showcased a Mario Galaxy swim glitch variant.
- wesley10pro showed us how to cross boundaries in Jak 2 using the JET-Board — proving once again that no game is ever truly “done” being broken.
🏁 Closing Thoughts
This week’s posts sum up what makes r/speedrun special: the chase for perfection, the joy of discovery, and the communities that keep these games alive decades later. Whether you’re grinding frames in SMB, chasing ghosts in GoldenEye, or clipping cars through geometry, there’s always a new story waiting to be written.
See you next week, runners. And remember: two frames today could be one frame tomorrow.
Source: reddit.com