Super Mario RPG was a titan from the SNES era of gaming, and much like other games from that era, it has a dedicated speedrunning scene. Read on to learn more about the history of Super Mario RPG Speedruns and the current world record.
The History of Super Mario RPG Speedruns
Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars has been lauded by many to be one of the greatest SNES titles of all time. Known as the progenitor of all RPG titles in the Mario franchise, some have credited this game as the inspiration for later games like Paper Mario and Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga.
Much like other SNES titles, Super Mario RPG hosts a thriving speedrunning community, but the ups and downs of this game’s speedrun history are anything but ordinary. Follow me as we delve into the surprisingly intricate inner workings of a Super Mario RPG speedrun and how it affected those racing the clock to its end. This is the history of Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars Speedruns.
How Speedrunners Run Super Mario RPG
Before we discuss the long history of Super Mario RPG speedruns, we must first understand the categories of speedruns available and the many exploits runners use to lower their in-game time.
Any%, Low Level, and Beat Culex Categories
According to Speedrun.net, the Super Mario RPG community recognizes the following three categories as official: Any%, Low Level, and Beat Culex. All three categories bar the use of in-game cheats and emulator functions like frame skipping, but allowed the exploitation of the game's many glitches. At the same time, only the latter two have specific end conditions apart from just finishing the game.
Any% speedruns only require its runners to finish the game as fast as possible using strategy, optimization, and exploits. Low-level speedruns are similar, but runners cannot gain EXP while doing so, apart from a few scripted instances. Lastly, the Beat Culex category only requires its runners to beat the game’s secret boss, Culex.
For the purpose of this article, we’ll be discussing the category with the most entries and the most storied history, the Any% speedrun category.
Strategies, Exploits, and Optimizations
Apart from raw skill, runners also have plenty of ways to lower their run times, often unique to the game they’re currently running. Speedrunning Super Mario RPG is no different, as the top runners of this game employ multitudes of strategies, exploits, and optimizations at a time. Some of the most well-known ones include the Terapin Manip, the Mack Skip, and the Wiggler Exploit, each of which will be explained in detail as we go through the history of each run.
History of The Any% Super Mario RPG Speedrun
Fumitsuki Sets The First Any% Speedrun Time
Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars, released in 1996 for the SNES, was well-received as the first RPG game in the Mario franchise. However, the first documented speedrun for the game didn't occur until 2009, more than 13 years later.
Set by a runner named Fumitsuki, this initial speedrun clocked in at 3:43:45. Unfortunately, apart from a run verification from a now-deleted user, there’s no way to corroborate the particulars of the actual run. While most runners consider this the first Super Mario RPG Any% speedrun, a few contend that the lack of video evidence disqualifies it from that title.
Regardless, whether they knew it or not, Fumitsuki kicked off a series of events that would eventually lead to the rest of Super Mario RPG speedrun history.
Cyghfer is The First Verified User to Beat Fumitsuki
Fumitsuki’s speedrun record held for almost 2 years, at which point a runner named HP clocked in a run that was 37 minutes and 49 seconds faster at 3:05:56. This run did have video evidence and run verification, but HP, up until now, was not a verified runner. This meant that they were not recognized as a formal runner yet.
A little more than a year later, in early 2012, the first verified runner to beat Fumitsuki and HP’s time was Cyghfer (pronounced as cipher). This run clocked in at 2:57:09, 8 minutes and 47 seconds faster than HP’s time.
By this time, the Super Mario RPG Any% speedrun was no longer an obscure speedrunning category, as we’ll see with the incoming surge of entries following Cyghfer’s. Concurrent with this surge was the advent of increasingly complex exploits to lower run times, the biggest of which would be the game’s Japanese version, which saves 9 whole minutes of text scroll from runners’ times.
A Surge of Runners Set the Pace
Many runners would follow in Cyghfer’s footsteps, lowering the time to beat by minutes with each attempt. A runner named Rakuu followed up with a time of 2:55:39 three months later, succeeded by Checkers at 2:53:21 after a year. Both were overtaken by heikin_fan_club 9 months afterwards. Eventually, there was no other way to reduce this time, with heikin_fan_clubs record of 2:50:54 standing tall for nearly a year before another runner could beat it.
Runners Iackattack (2:50:23) and Millnium (2:50:11) eventually set the pace, beating the previous time by mere seconds. To achieve this, they had to employ almost every trick in the book and play perfect games. By the time the Super Mario RPG Speedrun scene reached 2017, prospecting runners had to resort to frame-perfect command executions to even get a chance to beat Hibiki’s run time of 2:48:23, which was set soon after Millnium's.
It looked like Hibiki would hold the time forever, with each innovation in strategy and new exploit yielding less and less fruit to each challenger. Of course, that was until a new challenger entered the stage. Less than a year later, a runner named Justin-credible would do the unthinkable.
The Super Mario RPG Any% Speedrun World Record
July 28, 2018, is the day that Justin-credible, a runner mostly known for their Megaman speedruns, took a crack at Hibiki’s title. It was an arduous journey, one that actually did require every trick in the book, some of which we’re going to discuss to better frame the difficulty and legendary status of this world record run.
Frame-Perfect Terrapin Manip
Right off the bat Justin-credible, henceforth referred to as Justin, had to perform a specific maneuver called the Terapin Manip, an exploit used to speed through the game’s earlier encounters. This exploit relied on the game’s RNG counter, which ticked up with every in-game frame.
This counter decides the outcome of every random variable in the game, which comes into play depending on which frame (and therefore which RNG counter) a command was input. These frames only stop ticking while on the overworld map or in an in-game menu.
The gist of the maneuver is that, through careful frame manipulation, Justin could start an encounter with the game’s first enemies, called Terrapins, on a specific frame and RNG counter. If done correctly, the Terrapins would not fight back during the encounter, ending it much sooner. This was just one of many complex exploits Justin had to perform flawlessly, ultimately saving less than a second in his run time.
Overworld Fights, Stars, and Level-ups
In Super Mario RPG, overworld fights are mostly optional, and Justin avoided unnecessary encounters by memorizing enemy movement patterns. While this strategy works for the Low-Level speedrun category, the Any% speedrun requires some character levels to finish quickly. Stars come into play here.
Simply put, stars allow the player to kill overworld enemies instantly without triggering an encounter while still granting you the EXP you would have gotten. This is extremely powerful, but stars only last for a limited time and are exceedingly rare, so knowing when and where to use them is a skill required for a successful run. Justin executed his usage of stars almost perfectly, suffering only one unnecessary encounter due to a misplay.
Characters level up after gaining enough EXP, which allows them to increase one of three stats: HP, Attack, and Special. The crucial aspect is the amount gained on each level-up, and the increase is higher if the right stat is upgraded for that level. While it's usually unclear which stat you should upgrade for each level, runners have devised an optimal level-up path that Justin effectively employed in his run.
The Current World Record
Utilizing the above-mentioned strategies, in addition to many more that are far too complex to summarize, Justin-credible finished with a time of 2:48:19, a whopping 4 seconds faster than Hibiki’s time. It isn’t much of a gap, but that was five years ago. Since then, Justin continued to improve and beat his previous score a total of seven times with no other runner managing to catch up with any of them.
The record currently stands at 2:46:13, set in mid-2021 by Justin-credible during a Twitch stream. He holds the record to this day, with Hibiki hot on his heels at 2nd place. Only time will tell how long Justin’s record will remain his, but until then, he sits atop the leaderboard as the pinnacle of Super Mario RPG’s speedrunning history.
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