I Got A 4:57 in Super Mario Bros.

Time: 4:57.710
Position: 6th Place
YouTube Video: https://youtu.be/wlDsgwR7_sI
Twitch Video: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/140761605
Full Attempts Video: https://youtu.be/Lv1djSg3H7c
Splits: https://splits.io/1dmc

There is no audio until 8-3 because I forgot to unmute it. Why? Here's the story of this run:

Over the past few weeks, I've had very little opportunity to stream attempts at the legendary 4:57 in Super Mario Bros. This was due to illness, pervasive wrist issues that prevent me from gaming too often and a large quantity of uni work to get done.

So, with this in mind, I wasn't exactly in practice with the game. I took a break from some programming work to eat some food. Meatballs followed by a brownie, to be precise. While eating the food I threw on an episode of a TV show, which I was about half way through when I finished the food. I didn't want to return to work just yet and leave the rest of the show up in the air, so instead I decided to watch the rest of the show while playing a game: SMB1.

My intentions were to de-rust the first few levels of the game, having not played them much in the past few days. I expected most runs to die before 8-1, and the rest to die at 8-1. Any runs to 8-2 would have such a ridiculously low chance of getting the bullet bill glitch (a 0.7 second time save) that I wouldn't have to worry about the rule on the leaderboards that specifies that sub 5:00 runs need to be streamed. For the amount of time I was planning to do runs, it didn't even seem worth it to stream to an alt account, due to the effort needed to find the key to stream to it. I didn't even open my splits to time it.

There were overall 21 minutes and 48 seconds of attempts. The first few went as expected: silly deaths, mucking around, derusting the first few levels of the game. I had one get to 8-4 tied with pb, but it messed up the turnaround room and the water section badly and ended up being incredibly slow.

Around 15 minutes in, I had a run which made it to world 8. Then  8-2. Then it got optimal bullet bill glitch. Yes, I got optimal bullet bill glitch for the first time ever in a run, and it was offline. My heart was racing at this point. I glanced over at OBS and realised that the sound was muted. It was muted! I quickly unmuted the sound and paused the TV show. Was I about to get an invalid 4:57 offline? Surely not. I contemplated going for the backwards walljump just to kill the run, but my common sense rejected it. This could be the run I've been going for.

I got to 8-4. The walljump room was very good, since I hit both frame perfect tricks. Then there was the turnaround. I went too far and lost some time but it didn't matter. I got into the pipe and I was in the water section. At this point I was in disbelief. There was no way that this was happening. I sailed through the water and lost a couple of frames touching down in the middle due to nerves. I jumped through Bowser's hammers and hit the axe. It was done.

Expect the unexpected. Any good time in a speedrun is a low probability event, it just happened that this one was in the first few attempts offline. I will try to get the streaming rule changed, but if it isn't, so be it. I'll beat this time eventually.

Edit: This run also happens to tie the 4:57.710 run that darbian did in 2015. darbian was one of the two SMB1 runners I originally watched (andrewg1990 being the other), and his entertaining stream and detailed tutorial got me running the game in the first place. A happy coincidence :)