For a while, I've been retiming each segment of the best Warpless No OoB runs, to compare how long each runner spends on each split. Each time the lives screen appears when entering a new area, I count that as a split, and the run starts and ends on the same frame as it would do in normal retiming.

The best times have been pulled from a mix of my spliced Warpless run, my L4 WR, and Troyish's L6, to conveniently make a sum of best of 3:06 exactly. A green cell means that split is the fastest out of everyone else's full game PBs, and a deeper red shows how behind the runner's split is compared to everyone else's. For the most part, the greens are closer to the top, and there are deeper reds towards the bottom.

A couple anomalies here would be KesN - his level 1 is the 2nd best, and his level 2.2 and 4.1 are much faster than everyone around him, but because he loses over 5 seconds in level 3, he is only 10th (excluding Fro, who deleted his runs) while improving just his level 3 is enough to get him into top 6. EDIT: this isn't true anymore because idkjake just got a top 3 run a couple minutes ago, but I'll keep it here regardless.

Here are some pie charts (and analysis) of where each top 8 runner is losing time compared to a perfect 3:06.00:

1st: @SlushPuppy There isn't very much to say here, because I already do all of the strategies which are done in the SoB. Interestingly, my biggest time losses are in 2.3, due to bonking while trying to get to the flagpole, and levels 1 and 5, because of suboptimal acceleration boosts. This definitely shows that, at the top level, bonking will cost a huge amount of time, and acceleration boosts will make a big difference to your final time.

2nd: @Siver Siver loses a little bit of time in every split, but his main demons were level 1 and level 2. In level 1 he most likely lost time because of a bad acceleration boost (though solid accel boosts in 5 and 6 mostly make up for this). In level 2.2, his time losses are from slowing down to make the first section (going under the ? blocks) easier and a small bonk after getting past the ? orb. Then, in 2.3 he bonks on the staircase and the block under the flagpole, costing a whole 0.833 seconds. That level really isn't forgiving...

3rd: @idkjake I believe this runner does every trick except for acceleration boosts, explaining why almost half of his time is lost in L1, L5, and L6. The rest of his time losses are a bonk on the stairs of 2.3, and a couple small time losses all around, which will certainly go down over time as his movement improves even more.

4th: @IcySkid Level 2 is clearly Icy's strong suit - she's only about 0.5 seconds away from an SoB-level L2. Her main downfalls are a bonk near the end of 4.1 and a nonoptimal acceleration boost + a bonk in level 5. She's doing every advanced technique perfectly, so all she needs to improve further is better movement. This is about what I expected going into it - as she's a newer runner, she's put practice into the hard techniques, but hasn't (yet) gotten the movement that newer players have.

5th: @xXGaming_FroXx This run was never officially submitted (and the rest of his runs were deleted) but his PB can be found here: He does every advanced technique except for the fast L3 ending where you jump between the shell and the flagpole so you can touch the flagpole faster without dying, which explains a quarter of his time losses. The rest of his time losses are just down to unpolished movement, especially in level 1 where he is over a second behind the WR. This is more evidence that the new-school runners are better at the advanced techniques, but haven't had the time to develop their movement yet.

6th: @okot / @Tokonata Here is the oldest run on the list so far. The run was done back when we didn't know much about acceleration boosting, so despite doing well on levels 1, 5, and 6, he could have been a combined 2 seconds faster by perfecting those levels with acceleration boosts. His level 2 is really good, as he did every advanced technique in that level, but almost half of his time losses came from L3 and L4.1. His L3 didn't do the shell jump at the end of L3, and slowed down a lot in several places, especially at the start where he hit the ? block then kept going, so he had to turn left THEN turn right to start moving again. In L4.1, he does 2nd firebar skip much later than he could have. He also tended to slow down in the harder parts of that level, like after the first firebar skip where you have to jump right without hitting the hidden block. Some of the time loss likely would have came from not doing fast pipe too - it was discovered after this run that falling into the pipe instead of entering it while you're already on top of it was a little faster.

7th: @SirTroyish Since Troy is an Any% runner, it's no surprise that his acceleration boosts are really good (as you can tell from his level 6 - I've never seen a level 6 faster than his). Other than a bonk in 2.3 (which a lot of runners get messed up by constantly), his only notable time losses are in L3 and L4. In level 3, he loses most of his time from holding back too much (and also not having shell jump). I'd guess that he's less confident with level 3 because he hasn't done as much warpless compared to any%. His level 4 is mostly fine, there were just two small mistakes in execution: he messed up his lion jump and missed fast flag. I think all he would need to be at around 3:10 is work on his level 3 then get a lucky run where he nails everything.

8th: @Merlyn Most of these splits are really solid, even the tougher levels like 3 and 4.1, but there are 3 that stand out as having potential for time saves, and all 3 have a similar cause. L2.3 had a staircase bonk and missed fast flag, L4.2 had another staircase bonk and another missed fast flag, and the bulk of the time loss was in L5, where there was a slow flag (this is when you miss fast flag and instead of travelling faster than normal, you travel slower than normal.) His movement all around is great, so I think he's 100% got potential to be sub-3:10 very soon even though he's 8th.

BONUS: @f1 f1's run is very interesting, because it was done back in early 2016. This was before a lot of the major time saves were discovered. This means around 5-6 seconds are lost due to no fast flag alone, and it's the reason his L1 is notably slower than the top 8 runners. If you ignore time losses from not having fast flag, a lot of his splits are actually really good, with the only big losses being a lack of any of the advanced techniques used in L3 and L4 by people who have run the game more recently.

BONUS: @Gohgo Since this is a 3:52, the results are going to be very different here. Half of his time loss is in L3, and there's an obvious reason why: there's a death at the end of the level, and although he respawned at the last checkpoint, getting to that checkpoint cost him a lot of time too. Another quarter of his time losses are in level 4. He does the first firebar skip, and then after the checkpoint, he goes over the firebar (instead of going for lion jump, which is still much faster than this even if you miss the setup). Although his other levels could all be faster and he could cut down his time with some intermediate techniques like fast flag, the main thing to take away from this is that, for the average runner, cutting down on deaths and optimising your routing are by far the most effective way to improve.

I hope everyone liked this post! If there's any other cat mario stats you want to know about, let me know :)

Damn this is super in depth and interesting. So much to know about runs that you analyzed down to the bones. I'm really interested to see what you have to say about the rest of the top 8.

Just updated my post with the rest of the top 8, as well as the two mods for some bonus info. Until someone gets a new top 8 PB, my work is done here for now!