After years of whittling down the Super Mario 64 120-star speedrun time to under 1 hour and 41 minutes -- a feat achieved in August 2015 -- the race was on to take another 60 seconds off the clock.
Speedrunner Allan “Cheese05" Alvarez managed to set an astounding new world record last night with a time of 1 hour, 39 minutes and 57 seconds, breaking his own world record of 1:40:05 he set in April. He hit the elusive 1:39 time with a jaw-dropping run through the game, utilizing an array of glitches and exploits paired with near-perfect pathing to grab 120 stars with just seconds to spare.
Right after Cheese finished, he stood up, squatted down behind his chair and held his face in his hands as the built-up intensity and stress released itself.
He brought his family into the room as the final cutscene and credits played and the Twitch chat collectively lost its mind. He told his grandma he'd been trying to reach this goal for seven months and she answered him with a hug.
The race isn't over, though. As it goes with speedruns, though, there's still room for improvement. Runners like Batora (who had just tied Cheese's old record of 1:40:05 two days before) and Puncayshun are hot on Cheese's tail and aren't going to let up just because he got to 1:39 first.
