When Super Mario Odyssey arrived on the Nintendo Switch in October 2017, players were introduced to a colorful adventure that carried Mario across strange kingdoms, towering cities, ancient ruins, and distant landscapes in pursuit of Bowser. For most players, the game offered hours of exploration, hidden secrets, and hundreds of Power Moons to collect. For a growing community of competitive speedrunners, however, the adventure presented an entirely different challenge: discovering how quickly the game could be completed.
Over the following years, that challenge would transform Super Mario Odyssey into one of the most technically demanding games in competitive speedrunning. Players studied movement mechanics, discovered shortcuts, experimented with glitches, and repeatedly improved routes that had once appeared nearly perfect. As world records fell, the difference between victory and disappointment increasingly came down to seconds, sometimes even fractions of a second.
Among the competitors who helped shape this history was Tyron18, an Italian speedrunner whose achievements would become closely associated with the development of the game’s Any% category. Beginning his competitive journey shortly after the game’s release, Tyron18 eventually established multiple world records and became the first player to cross several important timing barriers.
His accomplishments included the first single-player Any% completion below 59 minutes in October 2019, the first below 57 minutes in May 2022, and the first below 56 minutes in January 2025. These milestones were more than individual achievements, reflecting years of experimentation and the remarkable dedication of a community determined to uncover the limits of one of Nintendo’s most celebrated games.
The Early Years of Super Mario Odyssey Speedrunning
Nintendo released Super Mario Odyssey on October 27, 2017, introducing Cappy, Mario’s unusual companion whose abilities allowed players to capture enemies and interact with the environment in ways that differed from previous three-dimensional Mario adventures. The mechanics encouraged experimentation, providing speedrunners with opportunities to develop increasingly efficient movement techniques.
The game’s Any% category became particularly popular because it challenged competitors to complete the main adventure without requiring them to collect every optional item or finish every additional objective. Under the category’s rules, timing begins when a player starts a new save file and concludes during the final escape sequence in the Moon Kingdom. Success depends on collecting enough Power Moons to progress through each kingdom while minimizing unnecessary movement, delays, and mistakes.
The earliest world records were considerably slower than those achieved in later years. According to the Super Mario Odyssey community’s historical documentation, competitive times had fallen to approximately one hour and five minutes by the end of 2017, with players such as Shaeden, NicroVeda, Chaospringle, and others contributing to the game’s early development.
The first major milestone arrived on March 23, 2019, when NicroVeda completed the single-player Any% category in 59 minutes and 59 seconds. The achievement established that finishing the game in less than an hour was possible, something that earlier competitors had spent considerable time attempting to accomplish.
Tyron18 was already part of this competitive environment. A retrospective published by the Japanese speedrunning writer i speed gory in August 2022 reported that the Italian player had begun practicing Super Mario Odyssey in November 2017 and had entered the category’s top ten by March 2019.
By the time the community reached the one-hour milestone, Tyron18 had developed the experience necessary to challenge some of its strongest competitors. His improvement would soon become apparent on the world-record leaderboard.
Breaking Into the World Records in 2019
On June 8, 2019, Tyron18 established a new Super Mario Odyssey Any% world record of 59 minutes and 32 seconds. Although Chaospringle surpassed the achievement the following day with a 59:31 completion, the record marked Tyron18’s emergence among the leading competitors in the category.
During the summer of 2019, the world record continued to change hands as competitors refined their routes and adopted more efficient strategies. Mitch became another major figure in the competition, recording a 59:14 completion in July and helping establish a rivalry that would influence the category for years.
On October 12, 2019, Tyron18 reached another significant milestone by completing the game in 58 minutes and 59 seconds. His performance represented the first single-player Any% completion below 59 minutes, breaking a timing barrier that had remained beyond the reach of previous world-record holders.
Only two days later, on October 14, he improved the record again, this time finishing in 58 minutes and 47 seconds. The rapid succession of achievements demonstrated how quickly the competitive landscape could change when an experienced runner found improvements to an already highly optimized route.
These performances also attracted attention beyond gaming websites and streaming communities. In 2020, researcher Jonathan Hay published Fully Optimized: The (Post)human Art of Speedrunning in the Journal of Posthuman Studies. The academic article examined the relationship between speedrunning, human performance, technological systems, and the pursuit of optimization, using Super Mario Odyssey as a central example.
Hay included a historical progression of the game’s world records, documenting Tyron18’s 59:32 performance in June 2019 and his two October achievements. The study demonstrated that the increasingly sophisticated efforts of Mario speedrunners had become relevant to academic discussions about digital culture and competitive performance.
For Tyron18, the attention reflected a growing reputation, but the competition was far from finished. The next major challenge involved reducing the Any% record below 58 minutes, a goal that would require further improvements to routes already approaching their practical limits.
The Rivalry With Mitch and the Race Below 58 Minutes
Throughout 2019 and 2020, Tyron18 and Mitch became two of the most prominent competitors in Super Mario Odyssey Any% speedrunning. Their rivalry reflected the changing demands of the category, where competitors increasingly needed to combine precise movement, efficient routing, newly discovered techniques, and the ability to maintain concentration across an entire run.
Mitch achieved the first sub-58-minute completion on July 27, 2020, recording a time of 57 minutes and 54 seconds. The accomplishment was subsequently documented by Guinness World Records, which recognized his performance within its historical coverage of the game.
The record represented another breakthrough in a category where the removal of even a few seconds had become increasingly difficult. Earlier improvements had frequently involved discovering more efficient routes through entire sections of the game, but the leading competitors were now working with strategies that had already been tested and refined through thousands of attempts.
Tyron18 continued to compete at the highest level. On August 19, 2021, he recorded a world-record time of 57 minutes and 31 seconds, demonstrating that further improvements were still possible despite the category’s increasingly demanding technical requirements.
His next important achievement arrived in November 2021.
On November 24, Tyron18 lowered the world record to 57 minutes and 21 seconds, surpassing the previous mark of 57:35 held by Rushia1. The accomplishment received international attention, including coverage from Spanish gaming publication 3DJuegos, Japanese outlet GameSpark*, and Italian technology publication Tom’s Hardware Italia.
Contemporary reporting also revealed an important detail about Tyron18’s approach to competition. Despite breaking the world record, he remained dissatisfied with portions of the performance. According to the November 30 report from GameSpark*, his run had been particularly strong during the early kingdoms, but mistakes between the Metro and Luncheon kingdoms had cost him considerable time.
For many players, securing a world record would have been sufficient reason to celebrate. For Tyron18, the remaining mistakes represented evidence that the category could still be pushed further, and he continued working toward a completion below 57 minutes.
The First 56-Minute Run in 2022
By early 2022, the pursuit of a sub-57-minute Super Mario Odyssey speedrun had become one of Tyron18’s defining competitive objectives. His earlier performances had demonstrated exceptional consistency, but the amount of time available to save was shrinking as the community approached what many considered the practical limits of its established routes.
A detailed retrospective published by i speed gory on August 10, 2022, described the months of preparation that preceded the eventual breakthrough. The writer emphasized Tyron18’s combination of technical ability, consistency, and persistence, noting that the runner continued concentrating on Super Mario Odyssey while pursuing improvements that were becoming progressively harder to obtain.
One of the most important developments occurred on April 27, 2022, when a technique known as Platform Clip was discovered for the Sand Kingdom. The maneuver allowed players to exploit the game’s geometry and save approximately seven seconds under favorable conditions.
Although seven seconds might appear insignificant during a casual playthrough, the discovery was substantial in a category where competitors often devoted hundreds of attempts to saving much smaller amounts of time.
The new technique provided another opportunity to improve an established route, but incorporating it successfully into a complete run still required extensive practice. A successful attempt demanded not only accurate execution of the newly discovered shortcut but also a strong performance throughout the remaining kingdoms.
On May 26, 2022, Tyron18 finally accomplished the objective.
He completed Super Mario Odyssey Any% in 56 minutes and 55 seconds, becoming the first single-player competitor to finish the category below 57 minutes. The achievement represented one of the most important milestones in the game’s competitive history.
His original world-record submission on Speedrun.com preserves the performance, while the accompanying description expresses his disbelief that the long-awaited achievement had finally happened.
Tyron18 also published the complete recording on YouTube under the title [Former WR] Super Mario Odyssey Any% Speedrun in 56:55 (FIRST 56). Released on the same day as the achievement, the footage remains valuable primary evidence of the techniques and gameplay underlying the record.
The significance of the performance extended beyond the finishing time. After years of competition, the world record had entered the 56-minute range, and Tyron18 had accomplished something that numerous highly skilled competitors had previously pursued without success.
Yet even this achievement did not represent the end of his efforts to improve the game.
New Discoveries and the Pursuit of Perfection
Following the first sub-57-minute completion, Super Mario Odyssey speedrunning continued to evolve through newly discovered techniques and increasingly aggressive movement strategies.
Tyron18 remained central to that development, refining established routes while experimenting with methods that could remove additional seconds from the overall completion time.
On May 12, 2023, he recorded another world record of 56 minutes and 41 seconds, an accomplishment that demonstrated how improvements remained possible even after the category had become extraordinarily optimized.
A May 23 analysis published by i speed gory examined the achievement and discussed several techniques that were changing the nature of elite Super Mario Odyssey competition. Among the most important were Triple Moon Clip, a difficult maneuver involving extremely precise inputs, and Ice Corner Clip, another demanding technique that allowed players to bypass intended sections of the environment.
According to the analysis, the combined use of these advanced methods offered substantial time savings. Their difficulty also meant that competitors needed to weigh the potential benefits against the considerable risk of losing an otherwise promising run.
The same discussion examined the concept known as Sum of Best, which combines a player’s fastest recorded individual segments to estimate a theoretical completion time. Although such a figure does not represent an actual uninterrupted playthrough, it allows runners to evaluate how much improvement might remain possible.
By May 2023, Tyron18’s theoretical Sum of Best had fallen below 56 minutes, suggesting that the next major timing barrier might eventually be broken. Achieving that result in a complete run, however, remained a separate and considerably more difficult challenge.
His accomplishments also attracted the attention of prominent speedrunning commentators. On July 14, 2023, creator tomatoanus published How a World Record Speedrunner Beats Super Mario Odyssey in Under an Hour, a technical explanation of Tyron18’s gameplay and the numerous movement techniques that made his performances possible.
The analysis discussed methods including roll cancels, specialized cap movements, spinpounds, and out-of-bounds shortcuts, illustrating the complexity of a speedrun that might appear almost effortless to an unfamiliar viewer.
These explanations helped introduce Tyron18’s achievements to audiences who did not necessarily follow competitive leaderboards, while also documenting the extraordinary level of preparation involved in modern Mario speedrunning.
Guinness World Records and Other Competitive Achievements
Although Tyron18 became best known for his Any% performances, his speedrunning accomplishments extended into additional Super Mario Odyssey categories.
One particularly unusual achievement involved Nipple%, a category in which competitors attempt to obtain the costume that allows Mario to appear wearing only boxer shorts as quickly as possible.
On August 1, 2023, Tyron18 completed the challenge in 7 minutes and 23.667 seconds, establishing a performance formally documented by Guinness World Records.
Guinness later referenced the achievement in its March 2024 article A History of Mario Games as Told Through World Records, placing Tyron18 within a broader account of notable accomplishments throughout Nintendo’s long-running franchise.
The recognition demonstrated that his competitive achievements had become significant beyond the specialized community that maintained the game’s traditional Any% leaderboards.
Tyron18 also participated in organized races against other speedrunners. Unlike individual world-record attempts, which frequently involve restarting after mistakes, live races require competitors to complete an attempt under direct competitive pressure.
His Racetime.gg profile preserves 35 recorded race entries, including 26 first-place finishes in the platform’s available archive. These results provide evidence of his ability to compete successfully against other experienced runners rather than solely pursuing individual records.
One notable race occurred on July 15, 2023, when Tyron18 finished first among six competitors with a time of 57 minutes and 33 seconds. Other participants included BusterDoggy, Dansta2106, goryuya, Lucidityy, and Mitch.
Although the race time was slower than his best independently recorded performances, its competitive circumstances made the result significant. Completing a demanding route while directly competing against other elite runners required consistency, adaptability, and the ability to recover from mistakes without simply abandoning the attempt.
Together, these accomplishments demonstrated that Tyron18’s influence extended across multiple forms of competitive speedrunning.
Breaking the 56-Minute Barrier in January 2025
As Super Mario Odyssey approached its eighth anniversary, the world record continued to improve, although the amount of time available to save had become increasingly limited.
Throughout 2024, Tyron18 remained among the leading competitors and recorded further Any% improvements, including runs of 56 minutes and 14 seconds and 56 minutes and 11 seconds.
Each achievement brought the category closer to an objective that had once appeared far beyond the possibilities of the game’s original routes. Breaking the 56-minute barrier would require combining years of technical discoveries with an exceptionally precise complete performance.
On January 10, 2025, Tyron18 accomplished that goal.
He completed the single-player Any% category in 55 minutes and 59.933 seconds, becoming the first competitor to finish the category below 56 minutes.
The achievement was preserved through his original broadcast footage and a verified Speedrun.com submission, which records the performance as 55 minutes and 59 seconds on the original Nintendo Switch.
The record represented another major turning point in the game’s history. Tyron18 had already become the first single-player competitor to break the 59-minute and 57-minute barriers, but his January 2025 performance added another achievement to a career characterized by long periods of sustained improvement.
The Super Mario Odyssey Wiki, which preserves the community’s competitive history, identifies the 55:59.933 performance as the first successful sub-56-minute single-player Any% run.
Viewed alongside his earlier accomplishments, the record illustrated how dramatically the competitive understanding of the game had changed. When Super Mario Odyssey was released in 2017, a completion near one hour had seemed exceptionally ambitious. Less than eight years later, Tyron18 had helped move the record several additional minutes beyond that once formidable barrier.
The performance also demonstrated that a speedrun considered highly optimized could still contain opportunities for improvement, provided competitors remained willing to experiment and continue practicing techniques that demanded extraordinary precision.
Super Mario Odyssey on Nintendo Switch 2
The arrival of Nintendo Switch 2 in 2025 introduced another chapter in the history of Super Mario Odyssey speedrunning. Nintendo made the original game playable on the newer system with enhanced features, providing competitors with new hardware on which to test and compare performances.
Hardware differences created additional considerations for competitive timing. Loading speeds, game versions, and leaderboard classifications could influence how records were interpreted, making it important to distinguish raw completion times from adjusted comparisons across different systems.
Tyron18 continued competing during this transition, recording increasingly fast performances on the newer console.
His verified Switch 2 results included a 55-minute and 51-second completion, followed by further improvements into the 55:20 range.
By November 2026, his Speedrun.com profile displayed a first-place single-player Any% performance of 55 minutes and 13 seconds, recorded using a digital copy of version 1.4.1 on Nintendo Switch 2. The individual submission identifies the result as a real-time attempt and preserves the gameplay evidence associated with the achievement.
Although leaderboard positions can change as competitors establish new records, the performance demonstrated Tyron18’s continued presence at the highest levels of competition years after his earliest world-record achievements.
His profile also documented accomplishments in other categories, including Dark Side, Darker Side, World Peace, and specialized challenge runs, reflecting an increasingly broad competitive history within Super Mario Odyssey.
These later achievements represented a continuation of the same pursuit that had characterized his earlier career: discovering ways to complete familiar challenges more efficiently, even after thousands of hours of collective experimentation had already transformed the game.
Tyron18’s Legacy in Video Game History
Tyron18’s importance to video game history rests not simply on the number of world records he established, but on the role his performances played in the continuing development of Super Mario Odyssey as a competitive discipline.
His achievements provide a chronological record of the game’s evolving technical possibilities. The 59:32 world record in June 2019 marked his emergence among its leading competitors, while the 58:59 performance later that year demonstrated that another significant timing barrier could be broken.
The 56:55 completion in May 2022 represented an even greater achievement, requiring both a mastery of established movement techniques and the successful incorporation of newly discovered shortcuts. His January 2025 record of 55:59.933 showed that the category could continue progressing long after earlier competitors had approached what appeared to be its practical limits.
The rivalry with Mitch, the technical developments documented by Japanese speedrunning writers, and the preservation of original footage through Speedrun.com and YouTube all place Tyron18 within a larger competitive tradition. His career illustrates how individual expertise and collective experimentation can work together to change what players consider possible within a video game.
Academic research, international journalism, community historical archives, and Guinness World Records have each preserved different aspects of his achievements. Taken together, these records demonstrate that competitive speedrunning has developed a history substantial enough to be studied, documented, and understood beyond the immediate circumstances of a particular world-record attempt.
Perhaps the most enduring quality of Tyron18’s career is the persistence visible throughout its progression. Across multiple years, changes in hardware, newly discovered techniques, and increasingly difficult record targets, he continued returning to the same game in search of improvements that often amounted to only a few seconds.
For the history of Super Mario Odyssey, Tyron18 remains one of the defining competitors of its speedrunning era. His records helped establish new standards of performance, while his continued efforts demonstrated that even a thoroughly explored game could still hold unexpected possibilities.
What began as a colorful Nintendo adventure in October 2017 became a lasting competitive pursuit, and Tyron18’s name became inseparable from some of its most important milestones.
Sources & Further Reading
Adinolfi, Alessandro. “Basta meno di un’ora per completare Super Mario Odyssey.” Tom’s Hardware Italia, November 27, 2021. https://www.tomshw.it/videogioco/basta-meno-di-unora-per-completare-super-mario-odyssey
3DJuegos. “Speedrunner termina Super Mario Odyssey en menos de 58 minutos e impone un nuevo récord.” November 26, 2021. https://www.3djuegos.com/juegos/super-mario-odyssey/noticias/speedrunner-termina-super-mario-odyssey-en-menos-de-58-211127-118473
Game*Spark. “『スーパーマリオ オデッセイ』スピードラン世界記録更新も57分の壁に阻まれる.” November 30, 2021. https://www.gamespark.jp/article/2021/11/30/113935.html
Guinness World Records. “Fastest Time to Make Mario Topless in Super Mario Odyssey.” August 1, 2023. https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/539089-fastest-time-to-make-mario-topless-in-super-mario-odyssey
Guinness World Records. “A History of Mario Games as Told Through World Records.” March 2024. https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/news/2024/3/a-history-of-mario-games-as-told-through-world-records-767548
Hay, Jonathan. “Fully Optimized: The (Post)human Art of Speedrunning.” Journal of Posthuman Studies 4, no. 1 (2020): 5–24. https://doi.org/10.5325/jpoststud.4.1.0005
Imbesi, Alessandro “Stormkyleis.” “Super Mario Odyssey: Un video mostra la progressione dello speedrun.” Mario’s Castle, December 10, 2019. https://www.mariocastle.it/super-mario-odyssey-un-video-mostra-la-progressione-degli-speedrun/
i speed gory. “(マリオデAny%RTA)史上初！57分の壁を破ったTyron氏を凄さを語る.” August 10, 2022. https://goryuyaodyssey.hatenablog.com/entry/2022/08/10/205350
i speed gory. “(マリオデRTA)マリオデッセイAny%の終わりが近づいている.” May 23, 2023. https://goryuyaodyssey.hatenablog.com/entry/2023/05/23/193826
Nintendo. “In Shops and on Nintendo eShop Now: Super Mario Odyssey.” October 27, 2017. https://www.nintendo.com/en-gb/News/2017/October/In-shops-and-on-Nintendo-eShop-now-Super-Mario-Odyssey-1298275.html
Nintendo. “Super Mario Odyssey.” Nintendo Official Site. Accessed November 8, 2026. https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/super-mario-odyssey-105879/
Racetime.gg. “Tyron18: Race Results and Statistics.” Accessed November 8, 2026. https://racetime.gg/user/JrM6PoY9LOoRdm5v/tyron18
Racetime.gg. “Super Mario Odyssey: Race Leaderboards.” Accessed November 8, 2026. https://racetime.gg/smo/leaderboards
SmallAnt. “How Super Mario Odyssey Was Beaten in Under 1 Hour: World Record Progression.” YouTube video, December 6, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eihjtI4F88
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Speedrun.com. “Tyron18: Player Profile and Verified Speedrun History.” Accessed November 8, 2026. https://www.speedrun.com/users/Tyron18
Speedrun.com. “Tyron18: Full Game Run Archive.” Accessed November 8, 2026. https://www.speedrun.com/users/Tyron18?view=fullgame
Speedrun.com. “Super Mario Odyssey Any% in 56:55 by Tyron18.” May 26, 2022. https://www.speedrun.com/smo/runs/y4q8jp3m
Speedrun.com. “Super Mario Odyssey Any% in 55:59 by Tyron18.” January 10, 2025. https://www.speedrun.com/smo/runs/ywwq1g3y
Speedrun.com. “Super Mario Odyssey Any% in 55:13 by Tyron18.” Verified Nintendo Switch 2 submission. https://www.speedrun.com/smo/runs/zngekj7m
Super Mario Odyssey Community. “Super Mario Odyssey: World Record Progression.” Google Sheets, community-maintained historical spreadsheet. Accessed November 8, 2026. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ROdtNjkyCI2XXNAjooEebY9K5sNWJB5iqokIvjQTh2s/edit
Super Mario Odyssey Speedrunning Community. “Super Mario Odyssey: Combined Top 100 Any% Leaderboard (Load-Adjusted).” Accessed November 8, 2026. https://www.smo-speedruns.org/app/load-adjusted-lb/
Super Mario Odyssey Wiki. “Any%.” Last modified May 18, 2026. https://smo.wiki/Any%25
tomatoanus. “How a World Record Speedrunner Beats Super Mario Odyssey in Under an Hour (Speedrun Explained Any%).” YouTube video, July 14, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cN9iV9drNcU
TwitchMetrics. “Tyron18: Twitch Streaming Statistics and Video Archives.” Accessed November 8, 2026. https://www.twitchmetrics.net/c/188892584-tyron18
Tyron18. “[Former WR] Super Mario Odyssey Any% Speedrun in 56:55 (FIRST 56).” YouTube video, May 26, 2022. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4t8qXh0rDQ
Tyron18. “[WR] Super Mario Odyssey Speedrun 55:59.933 [Switch1].” YouTube video, January 10, 2025. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5JvBtp8ewo
Yurevitch, Theo. “The 10 Best Speedruns of All Time.” Gamepur, July 14, 2020. https://www.gamepur.com/features/10-best-speedruns-of-all-time
Ali213. “《超级马里奥:奥德赛》速通世界纪录刷新!实况影像赏.” November 30, 2021. https://www.ali213.net/news/html/2021-11/638939.html