An anonymous speedrunning fan is offering $4,000 to whoever can break the Super Mario 64 world record
You have until the end of the year
Reddit user FBomb2F has offered a $4,000 reward to whoever can beat Allan "Cheese" Alvarez's world record speedrun of Super Mario 64. Speedrunners have until December 31 to live stream a successful run.
FBomb2F posted the offer and specific rules that needed to be followed in order for someone to claim the money in a reddit thread last month. Runners will need to submit their videos on speedrun.com, run it on an N64 console, and everything will need to be live streamed. It'll also need to be the 120 star run of Super Mario 64.
The current record sits at one hour, thirty nine minutes, and nineteen seconds (1:39:19) by Alvarez, who is one of the most notable speedrunners in the community. FBomb2F originally said that Alvarez would get the reward if no one could beat the record, but rescinded that part of the offer and said he would "figure something out" instead.
While we don't know much about FBomb2F, we do know he's a trucker who fell in love with speedrunning back in 2014. "I just drive and watch youtube when I'm parked. It's kind of how I got into watching speedrunning," he said in a comment. "I saw siglemic's 120 star run at SGDQ 2014 and I was hooked on it. Youtube kind of knows that I like speedrunning now cause I leave autoplay on when I go to bed and no matter what I fall asleep watching, I always end up waking up to a speedrun or race of some kind."
After a few concerns about the legitimacy of the deal, FBomb2F confirmed he would look into an escrow service to hold the prize money until the end of the year. If you're interested in trying to beat the record or have a question about the deal you can message FBomb2F on discord at FBomb#5989.
Speedrunning is an absolutely wild way to play through games, check out this run where a player completed the Resident Evil 2 remake demo in under three minutes.
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Aron Garst is a journalist and writer exploring the future of games and interactivity. Follow him on X at @GarstProduction.