American gamer Niftski started playing Super Mario Bros., the iconic 1985 game, at the age of five. He took up speedrunning when he was 15. In 2021, he became the first person to complete Super Mario Bros. in under 4 minutes and 55 seconds. He didn't stop there, breaking his own records in 2023 and 2025.
American gamer Niftski started playing Super Mario Bros., the iconic 1985 game, at the age of five. He took up speedrunning when he was 15. In 2021, he became the first person to complete Super Mario Bros. in under 4 minutes and 55 seconds. He didn't stop there, breaking his own records in 2023 and 2025.
"Super Mario Bros. is a game from my childhood that holds a special place in my heart. I first started playing it when I was about five years old, and I was obsessed with everything about the game - the mechanics, the graphics, the glitches, the enemies, everything," the gamer says.
On January 10, Niftski completed the game in 4 minutes 54.565 seconds and received the title of fastest Super Mario Bros. (Any%), thus breaking his own record from 2023 of 4 minutes 54.631 seconds.
"I have a strong desire to lower the Super Mario Bros. Any% world record to at least 4:54.3 before I'm completely satisfied," Niftski notes. "For context, my last Any% world record was 4:54.565, and the absolute perfect time you can get in this game is 4:54.265. That means if I were to achieve that goal, the world record would be less than 0.3 seconds away from absolute perfection!"
To achieve these results, Niftski spends 90% of his time training and 10% speedrunning. “And I think that’s a big reason why I’ve gotten this far in this game,” the player explained to Guinness World Records.
Super Mario Bros. uses frames, which are essentially 21-frame, or 0.35-second, loops in which the game checks for level completion. If you play each level fast enough, you can get an optimal frame, which means you can technically get the fastest — or “perfect” — result possible.
Niftski's current world record is a perfect frame in every level except 8-4 (which has a more complicated scoring metric), meaning his world record is nearly impossible to break. However, the gamer is not resting on his laurels and is determined to perfect this level to the last.
"When I first started speedrunning, I never expected to become a top-level player. At the time, I just started the game for fun and challenged myself to keep improving," he said. "When I realized I was at a level where I could actually set a world record in these categories, I gave it my all until I did. I remember the time I set my first world record in the main category and how happy I was, and from that point on, that was enough momentum and push to get me to do even more."
