Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/09/26/super-mario-bros-speedrun-reco.html
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The explanation video is very insightful and thought provoking. I never knew pixel-perfect moves and frame-perfect timing were not only possible, but also necessary for such records.
Does anybody know how the Excel sheet near the end of the explanation video is achieved? What kind of setup is needed to analyze the run with such precision and with so many details? Thanks.
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the first human to beat Super Mario Bros in 4 minutes and 55 seconds
That description doesn’t seem correct.
His time was 4:55.96.
If it takes me an hour and 57 minutes (aka 1.96 hours) to run 10 miles, I wouldn’t say I ran it “in one hour” just because it was under two. When using “in/within” don’t we have to round up?
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Significant figures matter to some degree- while he’s not doing math, there’s never been anybody that’s finished SMB with a time that started with 4:55 anything. The next top five speed runs are all 4:56.x. Everybody’s really been fighting over measurements that involve a quarter of a second for the past year.
So within the speedrun community, saying “it was a 1:55 run” means you finally got a score starting with that.
1st 4m 55s 913ms
2nd 4m 56s 245ms
3rd 4m 56s 528ms
4th 4m 56s 961ms
5th 4m 56s 978ms
5th 4m 56s 978ms
7th 4m 57s 144ms
8th 4m 57s 294ms
9th 4m 57s 543ms
However, your physical efforts of 1 hour and 57 minutes aren’t within the “Speed running community”. There’s no context for how fast you can or can’t run, so if you say you ran 10 miles in an hour, we can’t judge whether or not that scale is significant.
If you’re talking about elite marathon runners, when somebody finally runs “1:59 marathon”, it’ll be understood that it’s likely closer to 1:59.99, rather than 1:59.00
Granted, it’ll be referred to a “broke the 2-hour marathon mark” which could mean somebody ran it in 0:1.00, or 1:59.00, both are valid in that context. It may be more accurate to apply “Sub 4:56” but there are literal physical constraints on pixels and clocks here, so nobody’s doing a 4:50 or 4:53, for that matter.
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