Super Mario 64 speedrunner Liam King comes incredibly close to breaking his own record, only to fall short during the final boss fight with Bowser.
A Super Mario 64 speedrunner came incredibly close to breaking his own record, only to face disaster in the final confrontation with Bowser. 1996’s classic Super Mario 64 is a popular choice for speedrunners, who attempt to clear a given video game as quickly as possible by skipping cutscenes, avoiding all non-essential side quests, and charting out the most direct route to vital story objectives. They may even employ various mods and cheats to shave precious hours off of even the largest of games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey.
Mario’s first foray into the realm of 3D gaming has been the subject of many noteworthy speedruns, including a 70-person blindfolded run of Super Mario 64 during last summer’s virtual Summer Games Done Quick 2021 event to benefit Doctors Without Borders. The current world speedrunning record for Super Mario 64 is currently held by Liam Kings, a Twitch streamer who set the fastest time at 1:37:53.4 on November 21, 2021. Of course, there is always room for improvement, and Liam recently attempted to beat his own record - coming within a hair of doing so before tragedy struck.
As reported by DualShockers, Liam Kings was nearing the end of his latest speedrun of Super Mario 64, making great time as he reached the final boss fight against Bowser in the sky above Super Mario's Mushroom Kingdom. The battle goes smoothly at first, with Liam successfully tossing the massive turtle into exploding spikeballs to chip away at his health. However, during the third and final throw, Liam misses the explosive, causing Bowser to land harmlessly on the edge of the floating platform this fight takes place on. When Liam tries to reach Bowser to toss him again, he gets caught up in one of the boss’s shockwave attacks, knocking him off of the edge and ruining his otherwise perfect speedrun. A clip of this setback was later posted to r/LivestreamFail by join_the_slark_side, and viewers have complimented Liam’s calm acceptance of the incident despite some profanity. According to the streaming overlay found in this clip, Liam was on track to beat his old record by a mere 14 seconds - and would have still cleared it by 10 seconds even with his failed Bowser toss if he hadn’t died.
Plenty of talented speedrunners have set new records for clearing popular Nintendo games quickly. In August, a Super Mario Bros. speedrunner managed to clear the classic platformer in 4:54:97, breaking the long-held record of 4:55. Likewise, a speedrunner broke the record for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time last April by exploiting a glitch that allows players to skip the game’s cutscenes.
Liam Kings still holds the world record for the fasted Super Mario 64 speedrun, so not much is lost with his recent Bowser-related mishap. Still, he came very close to breaking his own record and was only foiled by a split-second attack from Bowser that undid all of his previous work in getting to Super Mario 64’s final boss fight as quickly as possible. He has always been a troublemaker for the citizens of the Mushroom Kingdom, and now it seems that Bowser, the king of Mario's Koopas, has managed to ruin one talented speedrunner’s day as well.
Source: DualShockers, join_the_slark_side/Reddit
