The Paper Mario franchise has charted its own path for a number of years now, and built up a strong fan community as a result. While a number of fans would like to see Paper Mario return to RPG mechanics in its future installments, the series looking to try out creative new ideas. Being creative and thinking outside the box could also describe speedrunning, and a new speedrun of Paper Mario certainly thinks outside the box.
Paper Mario recently celebrated its 20-year anniversary, and what better way to celebrate than by dismantling a speedrunning record for the game. The “any percent” category for speedrunning a video game is pretty straightforward as it simply means completing the game as quickly as possible by any means necessary. However, the recent Paper Mario speedrun is so unusual, that it may warrant its own category on official Paper Mario speedrun leaderboards.
Speedrunner JCog has set a new record time of 54:22, completing Paper Mario at a blistering pace. A full 45 minutes faster than the current best time. The only caveat is that JCog spends more than half of this run playing The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. He calls it the “Stop’n’Swop Any%” category, which is a reference to a Banjo-Kazooie feature that was cut from that game which was supposed to involve cartridge swapping.
A number of games, particularly older games, can have their internal memory manipulated to cause unusual effects in game, such as triggering an immediate warp to the end credits. Super Mario World has a particularly famous case of what is known as “Arbitrary Code Execution,” or ACE, which allows for the game to be “completed” in mere minutes. Ocarina of Time has ACE strategies that players can use, and JCog exploits this to finish his Paper Mario run.
Using an N64 Expansion Pak and manipulating game data in Ocarina of Time by performing certain movements, JCog creates data that gets stored on the Expansion Pak as an “assembly instruction.” He then quickly switches game cartridges, and when Paper Mario is inserted, after a little in-game manipulation, the Paper Mario cartridge finds that assembly instruction from the Expansion Pak, causing the game to essentially load Mario into the final part of the game, and the credits roll. While a speedrun like Hitman 3‘s 17-second first level is pretty impressive, using a different game to complete a speedrun of Paper Mario is unreal.
Speedrunners are always pushing the boundaries of what is possible in a game, as can be seen by the very quick Bowser’s Fury speedruns already popping up. Code manipulation in a speedrun is pretty common with plenty of broken game elements to be found and exploited, but playing a different game to set up a speedrun in another is next level.
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