Super Mario Bros. 3 in 3 Minutes – World Record Speedrun Explained [video]
Excellent video. I'm impressed the author went to recreate the run frame by frame, and then used those findings to analyze what was happening. Never expected this video to turn into a full on reverse engineering explanation.As a side note, this kind of speed run has become more popular in the recent years for a combination of reasons:
- First, it's difficult to improve on the regular world records since they're so optimized (just have a look at Quake Done Quick and its sequels).
- Second, the emulators available to the speed running community have evolved. They now include better ways to track what's happening in memory.
- Third, the games themselves are understood better (as recently exemplified by the Super Mario 64 full reverse engineering).So it's creating a whole new genre of runs that simply isn't about execution anymore.If you're interested in the topic, you might like the Super Mario World speed run that uses a similar technique (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gECESOoU8Es), or the recent work on removing randomness from Wind Waker runs (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hs451PfFzQ).