Super Mario 64 speedrunners continue to make huge discoveries even now, almost 30 years after the launch of one of best games for N64 ever made. As of last weekend, one of the game's most famous speedrunning tricks—a major obstacle for newcomers and a thorn in the side of even the most experienced players—has become completely trivial to perform.
Many of Super Mario 64's speedrunning categories require what the community calls the backward long jump, or BLJ. If you perform a BLJ on an inclined surface, you can boost Mario's speed to a nearly infinite level, which you can use to get around certain doors with minimal star requirements. This makes it an essential tool for super-fast Any% categories like 1 star.
This is where a new trick called “crackslide” comes in. As Bubzia explains in the video above, titled “This New Discovery Will Change Super Mario 64 Forever,” a pair of speedrunners named Crackhex and FramePerfection have discovered a brand new technique that allows you to bypass the 30-star door without having to perform the notorious SBLJ.
Although the initial demonstration of the crack was done using emulator tools, within minutes another runner known as haribo39 demonstrated that it was easily doable in real time using human hands on a regular controller. You can get a full demonstration of the trick on video, but it only requires a simple stance against a wall, a couple of backflips to get into position, and a C-up butt slide along the railing to gain speed to get through the door.
It's not exactly easy, but it's a lot, many easier than the old SBLJ and almost as fast. Top-level speedrunners will likely continue to set world records on SBLJ, but the steep descent opens up Super Mario 64's fastest categories to a host of new runners who might otherwise be intimidated by such a notorious stunt.
Crackslide is especially attractive for blindfolded speedrunning because, as Bubzia explains, it makes it possible to complete Super Mario 64 blindfolded in under 10 minutes—something that has never happened before. “Imagine telling someone that Super Mario 64 can be completed without seeing it in less than 10 minutes. This would be one of the greatest milestones in gaming history,” says Bubzia.
“I woke up, saw Haribo's video, and my only thought was, 'Oh shit, the blindfolded 1-star is dead.' I walked over to the console, loaded up the game, and in about 5 minutes I was done,” Bubzia explains, demonstrating how quickly he was able to pull off the trick while blindfolded. “It's all normalized. Easy beat counting for the C-up slide. This strategy is crazy.”
