On October 31, 2026, an American speedrunner known as Niftski sat before his computer dressed as Mario, complete with the character’s familiar red clothing and mustache, and prepared to attempt another world record in Nintendo’s 1985 video game Super Mario Bros. His viewers had contributed $1,000 to encourage him to perform a Mario impression throughout his Halloween broadcast, turning what might otherwise have been a tense evening of competition into something closer to a comedy performance. Yet while remaining in character, Niftski accomplished something that years earlier would have seemed almost impossible. He completed the game in 4 minutes, 54.299 seconds, establishing a new world record and coming within approximately 33 milliseconds of matching a tool-assisted benchmark.
The achievement represented the latest chapter in a career that had already reshaped the history of one of gaming’s oldest and most competitive speedrunning communities. Since entering the scene in 2019, Niftski had repeatedly demonstrated that the supposed limits of Super Mario Bros. were not necessarily limits at all, using increasingly precise strategies to reduce completion times by fractions of a second. His performances brought renewed attention to the technical complexity of a game that had been studied for decades, while also helping introduce speedrunning to audiences who might otherwise have known Mario only as one of Nintendo’s most recognizable characters.
By November 2026, Niftski held the verified Any% NTSC world record at 4:54.299, placing him just two frames away from the 4:54.265 benchmark established through tool-assisted play without simultaneous left-and-right inputs. His progress toward that mark had been gradual, often frustrating, and dependent upon the discoveries of an entire community, but it also demonstrated how far human performance could advance in a video game released more than forty years earlier.
Discovering Speedrunning and Returning to a Childhood Favorite
Niftski’s connection to Super Mario Bros. began long before he became one of its most accomplished competitive players. In a January 11, 2023 interview with Mega Cat Studios, he explained that he had been playing the game since approximately the age of five, developing an appreciation for its mechanics, enemies, glitches, and recognizable world. Although the game had originally been designed as a platforming adventure, his understanding of it changed after discovering online documentaries about speedrunning and the history of world records.
Two creators proved particularly influential in his introduction to competitive gaming history. Bismuth and Summoning Salt had produced videos examining the techniques, rivalries, and gradual improvements that shaped Super Mario Bros. speedrunning, showing how players could spend years investigating movements that casual audiences might barely notice. These documentaries introduced Niftski to a different way of approaching a familiar game, one in which completing a level was no longer the central objective, but rather completing it as efficiently as possible.
According to a March 2025 interview published by Guinness World Records, Niftski began speedrunning at approximately fifteen years old. He entered the competitive scene during 2019, when the community was already intensely focused on the smallest possible improvements in movement and routing. By that point, competitors such as Kosmic, somewes, and other established runners had helped bring the game’s Any% record below four minutes and fifty-six seconds, creating a standard that required remarkable consistency and technical knowledge.
The Any% category permitted players to reach the game’s ending without completing every stage or collecting every available item. Rather than progressing through all thirty-two levels, runners could exploit warp zones and other techniques to travel through a much shorter route, typically passing through Worlds 1-1, 1-2, 4-1, 4-2, and the four stages of World 8. What might appear to be a simple sequence of running and jumping was actually a complicated series of precisely timed movements, each carrying the possibility of saving or losing valuable frames.
Niftski’s early development took place within that established competitive environment. His first years required learning strategies that other players had spent considerable time discovering and refining, while developing enough consistency to perform them successfully in a complete run. Over time, however, he moved beyond simply studying the accomplishments of earlier competitors and began establishing records of his own.
The First World Record in 2020
On November 13, 2020, Niftski achieved his first Super Mario Bros. Any% world record, finishing the game in 4:55.430. The performance improved upon the previous record and established him as one of the leading competitors in a community where even a reduction of a few frames could represent months of preparation.
The importance of the achievement was closely connected to the extraordinary level of refinement already present in the game. By 2020, Super Mario Bros. had been examined through decades of conventional play, years of competitive speedrunning, and countless experiments involving game mechanics and tool-assisted demonstrations. Many of the most important shortcuts were already well known, meaning that world records increasingly depended upon combining difficult strategies within a single uninterrupted attempt rather than discovering entirely new routes.
Among these strategies were wall clips, which allowed Mario to pass through certain barriers through carefully controlled positioning, and flagpole glitches, which could eliminate portions of the animations that ordinarily occurred at the end of a level. Other techniques relied on manipulating Mario’s acceleration, positioning, or interactions with enemies so that the game behaved in ways its original designers had not necessarily intended.
Even when a technique saved only a few frames, those savings could become significant because Super Mario Bros. uses a timing system commonly described through framerules. For most stages, the game checks completion according to intervals of twenty-one frames, approximately 0.35 seconds, so reaching the end slightly earlier does not always result in a faster overall completion time. A runner must often save enough time to reach the next available framerule before an improvement appears on the final clock.
Niftski’s November 2020 record demonstrated his ability to execute these techniques under competitive conditions, but the record did not remain untouched. Other runners continued improving their performances, including Miniland, whose early 2021 achievements pushed the game closer to a boundary that had become one of the community’s most important objectives. The next major milestone would require a time beginning with 4:54 rather than 4:55, something no verified human Any% run had yet achieved.
April 7, 2021: Breaking the Four-Minute, Fifty-Five-Second Barrier
On April 7, 2021, Niftski completed Super Mario Bros. in 4:54.948, becoming the first human player to achieve a verified Any% completion below four minutes and fifty-five seconds. The record was immediately recognized as one of the most significant moments in the game’s competitive history, attracting coverage from publications including Game Informer and Ars Technica.
Writing for Ars Technica on April 9, journalist Kyle Orland compared the achievement to the breaking of the four-minute mile, emphasizing the difficulty of combining so many precise actions within a single attempt. Although the improvement appeared small when measured against the previous record, it represented the successful execution of techniques that had previously been extraordinarily difficult to combine.
One of the most important improvements involved World 8-1, where Niftski used faster acceleration and a demanding flagpole glitch to save enough frames to overcome another timing barrier. The performance also relied upon precision in World 8-2 and World 8-4, alongside the established wall clips and wrong-warps that had become essential components of elite-level competition.
The recording of the achievement preserved both the gameplay and Niftski’s immediate reaction. As the final stages unfolded, he struggled to remain calm while approaching a completion time that would place him beyond a barrier no other runner had crossed. When the run ended successfully, his astonishment reflected the emotional weight of an accomplishment that could easily have been lost through a single mistake.
In his original Speedrun.com submission, Niftski celebrated the disappearance of the 4:55 barrier and expressed gratitude toward the people who had supported his efforts. He also made clear that he did not intend to stop competing, even after reaching a milestone that had become one of his greatest personal objectives.
The importance of that day remained with him after the record was eventually surpassed. During his January 2023 interview with Mega Cat Studios, he identified the 4:54.948 performance as his most memorable experience in speedrunning, explaining that the happiness associated with the achievement had remained exceptional even after he had established faster records.
For the broader community, the run represented an important shift in expectations. A time that had once seemed beyond the reach of human execution was now part of the verified record history, encouraging competitors to reconsider which supposedly impossible strategies might become achievable through sufficient practice and refinement.
Refining the Record Through 2022
The years following the 2021 breakthrough demonstrated that Niftski’s success was not confined to a single extraordinary performance. On December 2, 2021, he established another Any% world record with a time of 4:54.881, continuing the gradual reduction of the game’s fastest verified completion time.
On August 7, 2022, he improved the record again, completing the game in 4:54.798. The new performance removed five frames from his previous best, representing approximately 0.083 seconds of improvement. Although the difference was nearly impossible to appreciate without frame-by-frame examination, its significance was readily understood by competitors who recognized the difficulty of saving time in a route already approaching its known limits.
Contemporary coverage from Kotaku emphasized both the tiny margin of improvement and the unusual appearance of Niftski’s playing equipment. Unlike the traditional image of a Nintendo competitor holding a controller, Niftski frequently used a keyboard while playing through a permitted emulator, demonstrating that modern competitive communities had developed multiple accepted methods of interacting with older games.
The use of emulation became part of the public discussion surrounding his records, but it did not mean the performances were automated. Approved emulators reproduced the relevant behavior of Nintendo hardware, while the player still had to execute movements in real time. The records were therefore distinct from tool-assisted speedruns, which use precisely programmed or recorded inputs to investigate the theoretical limits of a game.
During this period, the distinction between human and tool-assisted performance became increasingly important. The 4:54.798 time had once been discussed as a potential human limit, but continued experimentation showed that even established predictions could be overturned by improved strategies and successful execution. The apparent boundaries of the game were changing as the community’s technical understanding developed.
Niftski’s progress also reflected an approach to practice that differed from simply repeating complete runs. In his later interview with Guinness World Records, he estimated that approximately ninety percent of his speedrunning time was devoted to practice, leaving only ten percent for complete attempts. That concentration on individual techniques helped him develop consistency in movements that could otherwise destroy an entire run if performed incorrectly.
Lightning 4-2 and the Breakthrough of 2023
On September 6, 2023, Niftski established another major Super Mario Bros. Any% world record, finishing in 4:54.631. The achievement was particularly significant because it represented the first world-record run to incorporate a successful Lightning 4-2, one of the most difficult and historically important strategies in the game’s competitive development.
World 4-2 had long been central to speedrunning because of its connection to the warp zone that allows players to advance toward World 8. Conventional approaches required precisely manipulating the game’s handling of destinations and positioning so that Mario could reach the desired warp without completing the level through its normal route. Lightning 4-2 represented a more demanding variation that saved an additional framerule, approximately 0.35 seconds, through much faster execution.
The development of the strategy had involved contributions from several members of the community. Earlier tool-assisted demonstrations, including work associated with HappyLee, established possibilities that initially appeared too difficult for ordinary human execution. Niftski himself achieved important individual-level progress with the technique during 2021, while later refinements and community research helped make its use in complete runs increasingly practical.
In his September 2023 record submission, Niftski specifically acknowledged the contributions of KingOfJonnyBoy in helping make the final framerule improvement achievable. This recognition was important because speedrunning strategies rarely emerge from the work of only one person, instead developing through a combination of experimentation, shared footage, technical analysis, and improvements made by different competitors over time.
The completed 4:54.631 run matched the relevant tool-assisted pace through the first seven stages, reaching World 8-4 without having lost time to the earlier framerule barriers. It was a remarkable accomplishment because it suggested that the greatest remaining opportunity for improvement was concentrated in the game’s final stage, where more precise execution could still remove individual frames from the overall completion time.
Ars Technica again examined the significance of the record in September 2023, describing how Niftski had surpassed earlier expectations about the fastest plausible human performance. His achievement demonstrated that a theoretical limit could be dependent upon the strategies known at a particular moment rather than representing an unchangeable boundary.
The emotional response accompanying the run also became part of its historical record. Niftski’s celebrations, captured through his livestream and preserved in the original submission, reflected years of work spent pursuing increasingly narrow margins of improvement. The competition had reached a stage where executing almost the entire game at tool-assisted pace was no longer simply a mathematical possibility, but something a human player had accomplished.
Beyond Any%: Warpless, Glitchless, and Other Mario Records
Although Niftski became most widely recognized for his Any% performances, his competitive achievements extended into several additional categories and versions of Super Mario Bros. These records demonstrated a broader familiarity with the game’s mechanics, requiring different approaches depending upon which shortcuts, glitches, and methods were permitted.
One important accomplishment came in January 2024, when he established a Glitchless record of 5:02.685. Unlike the standard Any% category, Glitchless imposed restrictions on the unintended techniques that could be used during a run, creating a different competitive challenge. Niftski’s performance came within approximately two-tenths of a second of the relevant tool-assisted comparison, demonstrating that his ability to approach optimized gameplay was not dependent entirely upon elaborate glitches.
His Warpless achievements were equally significant. In this category, competitors must complete the game without using the warp zones that ordinarily make the shortest Any% route possible, requiring substantially more gameplay and creating many additional opportunities for mistakes.
On August 8, 2025, Niftski completed a Warpless run in 18:49.972, becoming the first runner to record a time below eighteen minutes and fifty seconds in the category. The achievement improved the previous world record by approximately five seconds, an unusually large reduction for a category with such a long competitive history.
In his original submission, Niftski described the performance as potentially the most impressive and difficult world record he had achieved, even when compared with his Any% accomplishments. He explained that the run came after only seven days of concentrated attempts, following considerable improvement in his consistency through the earlier worlds. The record was particularly meaningful because it combined a lengthy and demanding route with the level of execution normally associated with much shorter categories.
Additional records reflected his interest in different releases of Nintendo’s platforming games. He established notable performances in the Super Mario All-Stars versions of the original game, including a 4:55.780 Any% run and a 19:42.885 Warpless run, while also competing in Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels and several Mario-related category extensions.
In July 2026, Niftski recorded a 4:59.778 Any% performance in the PAL version of Super Mario Bros., becoming the first competitor to achieve a verified sub-five-minute time in that version’s category. Because PAL and NTSC versions operate under different timing conditions, their records are maintained separately rather than compared as though they were identical performances.
Taken together, these accomplishments established a competitive career that extended far beyond a single category. They also showed that Niftski’s knowledge of the game could be applied to different rule sets, different versions, and different challenges, many of which required their own specialized strategies.
The Race Toward Perfection in 2025
By January 2025, Niftski had returned to the main Any% category with the intention of reducing his best time even further. His next world record, completed in 4:54.565, brought the human performance within 0.300 seconds of the relevant 4:54.265 tool-assisted benchmark.
The achievement again attracted considerable attention, including coverage from Guinness World Records and PC Gamer. The reports emphasized the extraordinary precision required to improve upon a game that had already been analyzed for decades, while also introducing readers to the unusual equipment and training habits that distinguished Niftski’s performances.
For much of the game, he had reached the point where faster completion depended less upon improving major sections of the route and more upon perfecting movement within World 8-4. Earlier stages relied heavily upon framerules, but the final stage allowed individual frames to affect the overall completion time more directly, making it especially important for competitors pursuing the theoretical benchmark.
The year also saw the emergence of increasingly close competition from other highly skilled runners. In August 2025, averge11 established a world record of 4:54.515, narrowing the distance to the tool-assisted target and demonstrating that Niftski was not alone in pursuing the final remaining improvements.
Niftski returned to Any% attempts in October 2025 and quickly matched the 4:54.515 record. Only a little more than two hours later, he improved the time to 4:54.482, becoming the first runner to record a verified completion in the 4:54.4 range. Later that month, he lowered the record again to 4:54.448, placing himself just eleven frames away from the benchmark.
These performances also illustrated the changing nature of world-record competition. A few years earlier, improvements of several tenths of a second had been sufficient to establish historic milestones, but by late 2025 the remaining differences were often so small that they could be explained only by examining individual movements in the final portions of the game.
The race was no longer simply about finding a faster route. It had become a competition to determine whether a human could execute a sequence of known movements with nearly the same precision as a tool-assisted demonstration.
Equipment, Community Rules, and Competitive Debate
As the world’s leading Super Mario Bros. runners approached the tool-assisted benchmark, the equipment used to complete their attempts became an increasingly important subject of discussion. Niftski had spent much of his career using a keyboard and approved emulation software, but his later performances also involved MiSTer FPGA hardware and combinations of different input devices.
These developments raised questions about which methods should be permitted in official competition, particularly when players used more than one input device during a single attempt. Keyboard and controller inputs can differ in their physical behavior, potentially making certain movements easier to execute, and the community had to decide how to balance innovation with consistent competitive standards.
During 2026, disagreements emerged over restrictions on input-device swapping. Niftski publicly criticized changes made by the Super Mario Bros. moderation team and raised allegations concerning the motives behind certain decisions. Those allegations became the subject of reporting by Kotaku in April 2026, although the claims were disputed and should not be treated as established findings.
The rules continued evolving as the community reconsidered the issue. Later in 2026, the moderation team permitted restricted input swapping under specified conditions, including requirements that players disclose their devices and configurations, restrict switching to moments when Mario was not under player control, and provide footage showing their inputs.
The debate represented an important part of the history of competitive speedrunning. Unlike traditional sports governed by longstanding institutions, many video game speedrunning communities develop and maintain their own standards through moderators, competitors, and public discussion. Their decisions influence how performances are verified, what equipment may be used, and how world records remain comparable across changing technologies.
For Niftski, these questions were especially relevant because his ultimate objective required such precise execution that the physical characteristics of an input device could become part of the strategy itself. His eventual October 2026 record was verified under the community’s rules, and its original submission identified the equipment used during the performance.
October 31, 2026: Two Frames from the Limit
During the summer of 2026, the competition toward a tool-assisted tie reached another critical stage. Brazilian runner LeKukie established a 4:54.365 world record in June, bringing the category within six frames of the 4:54.265 benchmark. Niftski responded in August with a run of 4:54.332, reclaiming the record and reducing the remaining gap to four frames.
The August performance was itself an extraordinary demonstration of precision. Niftski explained in his original submission that he had approached the final stage at a pace capable of matching the tool-assisted benchmark, but lost a frame during a pipe entry and ultimately finished just short of his ideal time. Rather than regarding the record as a conclusion, he continued pursuing the remaining frames.
His next major improvement came during the Halloween broadcast on October 31, 2026. The circumstances were unusual even by the standards of modern livestreaming, as Niftski wore a Mario costume and remained in character while his audience followed another series of record attempts.
The entertainment surrounding the stream had an unexpected effect on his performance. Niftski later explained that he had not wanted to establish a world record while performing the Mario impression, and that this reduced his usual nervousness during the attempt. With less pressure associated with the possibility of success, he was able to complete the demanding sequence of movements necessary to improve the record.
The final time was 4:54.299, removing another two frames from his previous best and establishing the first verified Any% completion below 4:54.300. According to his Speedrun.com submission, the remaining losses consisted of one frame in the first room of World 8-4 and another in the second room, leaving him just 0.033 seconds short of the benchmark he had spent years pursuing.
The performance was completed using MiSTer FPGA hardware, a Keychron K5 Pro keyboard, and a Hyperkin controller, as documented in the original record submission. The accompanying footage preserved the unusual circumstances of the broadcast and the reaction that followed, when Niftski’s excitement collided with his determination to remain in character.
Contemporary coverage from Dexerto, Kotaku, GamesRadar+, and international gaming publications treated the record as another major milestone in the history of the game. More than forty years after its original release, Super Mario Bros. remained the subject of intense competitive attention, with players continuing to discover how close human performance could come to the limits established through technical analysis.
The time also required an important qualification. The 4:54.265 benchmark was associated with a tool-assisted run that did not use simultaneous left-and-right inputs, a restriction relevant to standard human competition. Other tool-assisted configurations can achieve faster times, including a 4:54.032 performance using inputs unavailable on a conventional NES controller. Consequently, matching 4:54.265 would represent equality with a particular accepted benchmark rather than proof that the game could never be completed faster under any imaginable rules or future discoveries.
As of November 8, 2026, Niftski’s 4:54.299 remained the verified Any% NTSC world record, placing him closer to that benchmark than any previous human competitor.
Niftski’s Influence on Speedrunning and Video Game History
Niftski’s career illustrates how competitive video gaming can transform an established work into something that remains open to technical discovery and reinterpretation. Super Mario Bros. was originally released in 1985, long before modern livestreaming platforms and organized online speedrunning communities became central parts of gaming culture. Yet the game continued attracting competitors who approached its mechanics with the seriousness of researchers investigating a complicated technical system.
The history of Niftski’s world records also demonstrates the importance of collective knowledge. His achievements depended upon discoveries made by earlier runners, including researchers who examined wall clips, wrong-warps, framerules, and tool-assisted strategies, while his own performances helped establish new expectations for the people who followed him.
That relationship between individual achievement and community development was something Niftski recognized in his interviews. In 2023, he credited the friendships, encouragement, and shared interest within speedrunning as important reasons for remaining involved in the community. He also encouraged other players to try competitive speedrunning, emphasizing that familiar games could become entirely new experiences when approached through the challenge of improving completion times.
His influence extended beyond verified leaderboards. Livestreams, archived recordings, interviews, technical discussions, and world-record documentaries allowed audiences to experience the progression of the game almost as it happened. Moments such as the first sub-4:55 completion in 2021 and the Halloween record of 2026 became part of a documented history that future competitors could study and compare against their own performances.
Perhaps the most important characteristic of Niftski’s competitive career was his willingness to continue after accomplishing goals that once seemed unreachable. The 4:55 barrier had been broken, Lightning 4-2 had been incorporated into a world-record run, and multiple categories had been pushed toward their known tool-assisted limits, yet each achievement created another objective.
The result was a career defined not by one isolated record but by a sustained series of improvements that changed what the community believed a human player could achieve.
The Legacy of a Near-Perfect Run
By the closing months of 2026, Niftski had become one of the defining figures in the modern history of Super Mario Bros. speedrunning. His records documented the progression from 4:55.430 in November 2020 to 4:54.299 in October 2026, a reduction of more than one second that represented an enormous amount of work within a game where improvements had become almost impossibly small.
His accomplishments in Warpless, Glitchless, PAL, and other Mario-related categories further demonstrated the depth of his competitive ability, while his public interviews and broadcasts preserved the personal experiences behind performances usually represented by only a handful of numbers.
The October 2026 world record provided an especially memorable image of that career. A player who had spent years studying the smallest details of a forty-year-old video game finally brought himself within two frames of a tool-assisted benchmark, accomplishing the feat while dressed as the character whose movements he had devoted so much time to mastering.
Whether the remaining two frames would eventually be eliminated was still uncertain in November 2026, but the historical importance of the pursuit was already established. Niftski had shown that the boundaries of competitive play could continue changing through patience, experimentation, and the exchange of knowledge between generations of players.
In the history of video games, his story represents more than an exceptionally fast completion of Super Mario Bros. It demonstrates how an old game can become the setting for new achievements, how a community can collectively explore its possibilities, and how a record measured in mere milliseconds can embody years of dedication.
Sources & Further Reading
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Niftski. “Super Mario Bros. Any% Speedrun in 4:54.881.” Speedrun.com, December 2, 2021. https://www.speedrun.com/smb1/runs/z0owxg4z
Niftski. “Super Mario Bros. Any% Speedrun in 4:54.798.” Speedrun.com, August 7, 2022. https://www.speedrun.com/smb1/runs/z0l3vd9z
Niftski. “Super Mario Bros. Any% Speedrun in 4:54.631.” Speedrun.com, September 6, 2023. https://www.speedrun.com/smb1/runs/y2k9vkwy
Niftski. “Super Mario Bros. Any% Speedrun in 4:54.565.” Speedrun.com, January 9, 2025. https://www.speedrun.com/smb1/runs/y4j2p42y
Niftski. “Super Mario Bros. Any% Speedrun in 4:54.515.” Speedrun.com, October 9, 2025. https://www.speedrun.com/smb1/runs/yw5pwn3y
Niftski. “Super Mario Bros. Any% Speedrun in 4:54.482.” Speedrun.com, October 9, 2025. https://www.speedrun.com/smb1/runs/mr580xgy
Niftski. “Super Mario Bros. Any% Speedrun in 4:54.448.” Speedrun.com, October 23, 2025. https://www.speedrun.com/smb1/runs/yw582k0y
Niftski. “Super Mario Bros. Any% Speedrun in 4:54.332.” Speedrun.com, August 2026. https://www.speedrun.com/smb1/runs/z142re9z
Niftski. “Super Mario Bros. Any% Speedrun in 4:54.299.” Speedrun.com, October 31, 2026. https://www.speedrun.com/smb1/runs/ylw8epxz
Niftski. “Super Mario Bros. Warpless Speedrun in 18:49.972.” Speedrun.com, August 8, 2025. https://www.speedrun.com/smb1/runs/yljpjgnm
Niftski. “Super Mario Bros. Glitchless Speedrun in 5:02.685.” Speedrun.com, January 2024. https://www.speedrun.com/smb1/runs/yd2x27qm
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Gross, Katherine. “American Gamer Beats Super Mario Bros in Just 4 Min 54 Sec during Spectacular Speedrun.” Guinness World Records, March 10, 2025. https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/news/2025/3/american-gamer-beats-super-mario-bros-in-just-4-min-54-sec-during-spectacular-speedrun
Orland, Kyle. “How a Speedrunner Broke Super Mario Bros.’ Biggest Barrier.” Ars Technica, April 9, 2021. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/04/new-super-mario-bros-record-breaks-speedrunnings-four-minute-mile/
Orland, Kyle. “Record-Breaking Super Mario Bros. Speedrun Approaches Robotic Perfection.” Ars Technica, September 8, 2023. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2023/09/record-breaking-super-mario-bros-speedrun-approaches-robotic-perfection/
Tack, Daniel. “Niftski Breaks the Super Mario Bros. Speedrun Record with a Perfect Run.” Game Informer, April 8, 2021. https://gameinformer.com/2021/04/08/niftski-breaks-the-super-mario-bros-speedrun-record-with-a-perfect-run
Notis, Ari. “Super Mario Bros. World Record Now Just a Half-Second Short of a Perfect Run.” Kotaku, August 8, 2022. https://kotaku.com/super-mario-bros-speedrunner-world-record-niftski-1849386352
Jiang, Sisi. “Only a Computer Could Do This Super Mario Bros. Trick Until Now.” Kotaku, August 10, 2022. https://kotaku.com/super-mario-bros-speedrun-frame-rule-4-2-world-record-1849396620
McFerran, Damien. “Super Mario Speedrunner Is Just Frames Away from Machine-Level Perfection.” Time Extension, February 1, 2024. https://www.timeextension.com/news/2024/02/super-mario-speedrunner-is-just-frames-away-from-machine-level-perfection
McFerran, Damien. “‘We Are Now 0.3 Seconds Off of Absolute Perfection,’ Says Super Mario Speedrunner as He Sets New World Record.” Time Extension, January 12, 2025. https://www.timeextension.com/news/2025/01/we-are-now-0-3-seconds-off-of-absolute-perfection-says-super-mario-speedrunner-as-he-sets-new-world-record
Stanton, Rich. “Super Mario Bros. Speedrunner Sets a New World Record on a PC Using Keyboard Controls and Boldly Proclaims They’re ‘Now 0.3 Seconds Off of Absolute Perfection.’” PC Gamer, January 17, 2025. https://www.pcgamer.com/games/super-mario-bros-speedrunner-sets-a-new-world-record-on-a-pc-using-keyboard-controls-and-boldly-proclaims-theyre-now-0-3-seconds-off-of-absolute-perfection/
Zollner, Amelia. “Super Mario Bros. Speedrunner Claims He’s Being Sabotaged.” Kotaku, April 1, 2026. https://kotaku.com/super-mario-bros-speedrunner-niftski-speedrun-tas-input-world-record-2000684012
Bailey, Dustin. “The ‘Greatest Speedrun Accomplishment of All Time’ Is in Sight as Two Legendary Super Mario Bros. Runners Compete for a Time That Once Seemed Impossible.” GamesRadar+, August 14, 2026. https://www.gamesradar.com/games/super-mario/the-greatest-speedrun-accomplishment-of-all-time-is-in-sight-as-two-legendary-super-mario-bros-runners-compete-for-a-time-that-once-seemed-impossible/
Fairfax, Zackerie. “Niftski Breaks Super Mario Bros. World Record in Mario Costume as Perfect Run Comes within 2 Frames.” Dexerto, November 1, 2026. https://www.dexerto.com/gaming/niftski-breaks-super-mario-bros-world-record-in-mario-costume-as-perfect-run-comes-within-2-frames-3423721/
Kotzer, Zack. “Speedrunner Dressed as Mario Sets Incredible Super Mario Bros. World Record on Halloween Stream: ‘Can I Please Break Character.’” Kotaku, November 1, 2026. https://kotaku.com/mario-dressed-speedrunner-breaks-world-super-mario-bros-record-on-halloween-stream-can-i-please-break-character-2000752087
Bailey, Dustin. “Super Mario Bros Speedrunner Accidentally Sets a World Record He’s Been Chasing for 7 Years after Promising an Entire Stream as Mario.” GamesRadar+, November 2, 2026. https://www.gamesradar.com/games/super-mario/super-mario-bros-speedrunner-accidentally-sets-a-world-record-hes-been-chasing-for-7-years-after-promising-an-entire-stream-as-mario-please-have-this-a-run-die-i-dont-a-like-it-i-dont-a-want-to-get-this-larping-as-mario/
JFred99. “Niftski Personal Bests and Historical Speedrunning Records.” JFred99 Speedrunning Database. Accessed November 8, 2026. https://jfred99.com/runners/Niftski/
PreserveTube. “Niftski: Archived Speedrunning Videos and Historical Performances.” Accessed November 8, 2026. https://preservetube.com/channel/UCWdQCuLMf45n-_PHWu4sJNw