Man completes Super Mario Bros. with the lowest possible score
No coins, kills, or extra time on the counter.
Generally in video games the goal is to complete a game with the highest score, but a certain sect of players have realised that rolling credits in the original Super Mario Bros. with the lowest possible score is an equally arduous undertaking. That hasn't stopped YouTuber NotEntirelySure from achieving this herculean effort.
Why's it so hard, you ask? Finishing Super Mario Bros. with the lowest score possible (without continues), a mere 500, requires not harming a single foe, collecting any coins, and you must complete each stage with zero seconds on the clock (at the bottom of the flagpole no less). Sound easy now?
NotEntirelySure noted that the hardest part of this run is a jump in level 8-1 where you need to make it across a large gap without collecting any of the coins suspended over the chasm. "The timing of the liftoff, the duration of holding the jump button, and the timing of the wall jump are all frame perfect," the pro player explained. "NES games run at 60 frames per second, which means all the necessary inputs need to be timed within 1/60 of a second. In addition, the starting position before running I used not only has to be on the right pixel, but also the x sub-pixel has to fall within a certain range."
"In short, it's a pretty annoying jump," he added. "There is literally no room for error."
As evidence of this, we can see NotEntirelySure fail his first attempt at the leap, and he feels he was lucky to even accomplish this on a second go. "I was extremely cautious for the remainder of the run, not risking jumping over any of the hammer bros. I also had a few panicky moments since I was fairly jittery, but luckily nothing that cost me the run. By the end I felt like my heart was going to explode."
Watch the harrowing run in the nine minute video below. The jump in question is at 3.51 if you'd like to skip to the most nail-biting moment.
