Speedrunning the old Super Mario games is a popular and competitive field; many of the categories have been honed to perfection, so much so that world records are now broken by just a few frames.
It’s not uncommon for top speedrunners of one Mario game to be proficient in several others. And the advancement of the speedrunning meta gave rise to a new category called “The Super Marihour.”
What Is The Super Marihour Challenge?
The Super Marihour Challenge requires speedrunners to beat six Mario games in under an hour, using any warps, skips and techniques that are available and legal in their respective speedrunning categories. The games to beat are:
- Super Mario Bros.
- Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels
- Super Mario Bros. 2
- Super Mario Bros. 3
- Super Mario World
- Super Mario 64
The category was introduced by the famed speedrunner darbian in 2015, and he also became the first player to clear it shortly after coming up with the concept.
How Can This Challenge Actually Be Done?
It requires a ton of knowledge about each Mario game, as well as being able to consistently hit some difficult techniques to minimize your total time. Each of these games, in their shortest categories, tally up to under an hour but there isn’t much wiggle room for failure; a few deaths and some bad RNG on any of the six games will be curtains for your run.
Still, the hyperfocus on beating the games as quickly as possible means anything short of hacking the game is fair play. Warps, out of bound skips and anything to manipulate the game and save those extra seconds is available for the player to use. Actually pulling off all these moves during the run, though, is why only the best Mario speedrunners have been able to clear it.
How Many People Have Completed The Super Marihour?
To date, only four players have completed the Super Marihour Challenge: darbian, lackattack24, Kosmic and PixelPerfectRuns (Edit: As of November 17th 2020, Slade and SuperMegaDav have also completed the challenge, bringing the total to six players.) darbian holds the record in the category with a time of 56 minutes and 17 seconds. It will not only be interesting to see who else completes the challenge, but if anyone can dethrone darbian’s record while doing it. (Edit: As of September 9th, the record belongs to PixelPerfectRuns with a time of 56 minutes and 11 seconds, as seen here.)
An example of the Super Marihour can be found here.
The Super Marihour Challenge is just one of many unique challenges that require beating multiple classic Mario games; there are some categories that can take up to 10 hours to complete. A list of them can be found at speedrun.com.