The Gold Split Newsletter - Week #21

The Gold Split offers a free, weekly digest of news from the world of speedrunning and beyond.

This Story of the Week is all about @Suigi 's sweep of all five main Super Mario 64 categories and was featured in this week's issue. The full post includes more news, briefly, as well as this week's top times and a fun fact. Check it out HERE.

Story of the Week ✨

@Suigi is the first person to hold the records of Super Mario 64’s five major speedrun categories at the same time. How did we get here? Why did nobody stop him? Is the game truly dead? I’ll give a short overview of the game in general and each category in particular. Let’s dive in!

Overview / History

Super Mario 64 is a game that needs no introduction. Because its 3D movement offers such a wealth of options to traverse incredibly diverse levels, it is objectively one of the best games for speedrunning, both as a player and a viewer. Because it has attracted such a big crowd, the competition is fierce, and it takes years of practice to become one of the best.

0 Star, 1 Star, 16 Star, 70 Star, and 120 Star are the five major speedrun categories. They mainly differ in the number of power stars collected before defeating Bowser in the Sky, the final level of the game. But the methods Mario uses to get there and the glitches allowed along the way vary greatly. Four doors requiring 8, 30, 50, and 70 power stars, respectively, block Mario’s progress until he has collected enough.

In the past, the story of Super Mario 64 speedrunning has been one of specialists: whether it’s @cheese and @puncayshun in 120 Star and 70 Star, @Xiah and @akki in 16 Star, or @MANNO and @Dowsky in 1 Star and 0 Star: dominating performances were always limited to at most two categories. Until @Suigi entered the scene. By June 2023, he already held the record in four of the five categories. Only the most prestigious one was left to claim: 120 Star.

For each category, I’ll give a short overview and then cover @Suigi 's road to the record. Categories are ordered chronologically by the time his most recent record was set.

16 Star

When @Suigi created his account on speedrun.com on March 8th, 2020, he also submitted his first time to the leaderboards: 30 minutes flat in the 16 Star category.

16 Star is the most popular category for beginners. It’s short and there are a limited number of techniques to learn, providing a solid base of experience to step into more technical or longer categories. The goal is to beat the game as fast as possible with the following restrictions:

• A complicated technique called Side Backwards Long Jump is not allowed
• The door blocked by the 30 power stars requirement may only be skipped using a technique called MIPS Clip

16 Star Progression:

A few months after his initial time, @Suigi submitted a 00:20:07 in August 2020 and never stopped improving until achieving his first record on November 10th, 2021. He was only dethroned once more by @Weegee shortly after, but then started his quest of domination that ended in March of 2023 with a record that speedrunning content creator Bismuth called the perfect Mario run: 00:14:35.500.

This time remains on top of that category’s leaderboard today and is the foundation of @Suigi 's streak.

1 Star

This category is the next most technical, the second shortest and uses the Side Backwards Long Jump to skip the door requiring 30 power stars. Players still collect one star in Dire Dire Docks, the stage blocking access to the second Bowser level. This avoids the much more difficult setup needed for the 0 Star category.

1 Star Progression:

@Suigi started running this in October of 2021, but it wasn’t until December of 2022 when he began seriously improving and aiming for a better time. The first record of 00:07:04.270 followed two months later in February of 2023, but he managed to shave nearly seven more seconds off that time.

On April 9th, 2023, he set the record that also still stands today: 00:06:57.580. This marks the beginning of a pattern: when setting a record, @Suigi simply didn’t stop. He continued until he was happy with his performance. And by that time, he’s put himself such an impressive distance away from all the other ranks that it discouraged the competition, leaving them with a significant gap to close. Today, this gap is still over six seconds large.

0 Star

This category is basically the Any% category of Super Mario 64. Everything is allowed, except collecting power stars. It’s similar to 1 Star, but requires a much more complicated setup for the Side Backwards Long Jump in order to skip Dire Dire Docks and go straight to Bowser in the Fire Sea.

0 Star Progression:

@Suigi picked up this category in June of 2022 and seriously started trying to improve soon after his first 1 Star record in February of 2023. Two months later, he set his first record, but once again he did not stop there. He kept improving, eventually securing a comfortable lead of over ten seconds ahead of the second place. This is a huge gap for a run that is just over six minutes long. The final record before moving on was set on October 25th, 2023: 00:06:16.600.

120 Star

120 Star is without a doubt the most prestigious category. Over the course of more than 90 minutes, every single star in the game is collected. The way in which that is done has been refined unlike any other category in any other game, and there are many different routes for players of different skill levels. 120 Star demands constant focus, stamina, precision, and especially consistency. If @Suigi could prove here that he’s not just the best in the shorter categories, nobody would be able to doubt his status as a legend.

120 Star Progression:

@Suigi made his first tentative steps in November of 2021 and the beginning of 2022. But only after his times in 16 Star, 1 Star, and 0 Star were secured, he began to put a lot of effort into practice.

And the results spoke for themselves: by June of 2024, after just over six months, he achieved a time of 01:37:38, putting him in reach of the record at the time. But it still took four months of more and more promising attempts until it finally happened: on October 26th, 2024, @Suigi set a new record at 01:35:33. Not only was he the first to achieve a time below 01:36:00, he also improved his previous time by almost one and a half minutes.

More than that, he also proved that it was not a fluke by again persevering and setting another record, just eight days later. It’s the record that still stands today: 01:35:28.

70 Star

70 power stars is the amount necessary to get past all of Bowser’s obstacles without the use of glitches. The major sequence breaks through the power star doors and the endless staircase are banned, and thus this category is the closest of the five major ones that could be considered glitchless-ish.

Throughout the years, players meticulously identified those 70 stars that can be collected the fastest. Many route variations for various skill levels exist that collect certain power stars at different points in the game, or opt for entirely different ones.

70 Star Progression:

@Suigi played 70 Star at various points throughout his journey, most notably after he started practising the category in February of 2022 and in June of 2023, when he broke the record for the first time.

At this point in time, @Suigi already held four out of the five records. However, he had not yet mastered 120 Star, and doing so would take a while. Others were also close to beating his 70 Star record, and Japanese runner @ikori_o eventually did twice in December of 2023 by a decent margin.

It wasn’t until @Suigi secured his 120 Star victory that he could return to 70 Star and complete the full sweep of all major categories in Super Mario 64, an achievement almost 20 months in the making. On November 17th, 2024, he beat @ikori_o 's time by two seconds and became the greatest of all time: 00:46:26 🐐

Conclusion & Outlook

If you’ve read all of this but are still in search of answers that will explain how @Suigi managed this legendary accomplishment, consider these points:

• His attitude to practice: in the past, many runners would practice the majority of the run by doing full game runs. This made them experts in the more casual sections, but made it harder to consistently pull off the more difficult techniques. @Suigi specifically practised these harder skips until he was able to confidently do them five times or even ten or more times in a row within a certain timeframe.
• The times he had set in 16 Star, 1 Star, and 0 Star were so dominant that there was very little competition to challenge them. That is still true even over a year after they had been achieved.
• Breaking the record in 120 Star was only a matter of time given his talent. And afterwards it took him just 22 days to also sit on top of the 70 Star leaderboard. There simply was not enough time for anybody to respond.
• He’s just that good.

After the dust had settled, some said that Super Mario 64 speedrunning is dead. That everything has been achieved. That there’s no drive to push for more. But I don’t think that’s the case.

While @Suigi 's records in the shorter categories will be incredibly tough to beat, the 70 Star time is well within reach. And 120 Star is so complex and long and has so many people consistently at the top that it would be a huge surprise to not see others motivated by his achievement. Super Mario 64 will remain a shining beacon within speedrunning and will always attract new runners to the scene. @Suigi is incredibly young and likely only the beginning of a new generation of runners, and instead of mourning the past and being pessimistic about the future, let’s focus on making them feel as welcome as possible. If we manage this, we’ll be able to witness many more achievements just like this one.

Thank you for reading! If you're curious about more of this week's news or would even consider subscribing to the newsletter, you'll find the full post over HERE.

Finding new stories to cover can be challenging. I encourage you to think about what happened recently in the communities you are a part of. If there are any stories, articles, glitches, events, or other topics I should be taking a look at, go ahead and submit them here or in the Gold Split Discord! 📨