Prolific Mario speedrunner Kosmic set a new world record in the Super Mario All-Stars version of The Lost Levels this week, and he was on pace for a "massive" improvement in an even bigger category until he suddenly suffered a horrible fate those of us who lived through the cartridge era know all too well – a sudden crash blamed on dirty connectors.
Super Mario All-Stars is a SNES collection featuring upgraded, 16-bit versions of 8-bit Mario games, and it was the first chance players worldwide had to play the Japanese Super Mario Bros. 2, which was retitled The Lost Levels. This is a notoriously difficult game, which features an uber-challenging array of levels from 1-1 to 8-4. If you manage to beat all of those stages without skipping any through warp zones, you unlock five more secret worlds, ranging from 9-1 through D-4.
Speedruns for the All-Stars versions of The Lost Levels have multiple different categories, including Warpless 8-4, which, once completed, allow you to continue onto an attempt at Warpless D-4.
That's what Kosmic was attempting earlier this week, and he did manage to secure a new Warpless 8-4 world record of 21:42 – three seconds faster than his previous record.
That put him on incredible pace to continue into an attempt at a Warpless D-4 record. Kosmic previously held that record for three-and-half years; he just lost it to EthanRTA this past February. With his latest run, Kosmic was on pace to soon take it back, but just 90 seconds into the secret worlds, in 9-2, the unthinkable happened: his console simply crashed.
As Kosmic summed up in a later tweet: "What if massive World Record pace but the universe said no."
He and the chat took a few moments simply saying "what?!" back and forth, before he started trying to figure out what went wrong. "This cartridge/console, if I definitely bump it, it will crash the game sometimes," Kosmic said. "But I didn't do anything, dude. I don't know. I guess it's not safe to do any more runs until I give a good clean."
This is the curse of running on original hardware – you're always at risk of this kind of sudden failure, whether due to a dirty cartridge or some peculiarity in your hardware. After a few moments of lament, Kosmic simply added, "Well, that sucks. If I throw the run that's one thing, but I didn't even get the chance."
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