Nintendo's newest 2D platformer has only been out for a few weeks, but the speedrunning community has already figured out how to skip most of the game.
Super Mario Bros. Wonder released on October 20 and managed to impress both players and critics alike — myself included! But its speedrunning community isn't interested in any of that, of course, as they want to know how to play as little of it as possible as fast as possible. Which is turning out to be surprisingly easy, actually, since they've already found exploits letting them skip most of the game!
WE CAN LITERALLY GO OUT OF BOUNDS ANYWHERE ON THE MAP WHERE THERES A DOTTED LINE STARTING!!!! MARIO WONDER SPEEDRUNNING IS CRAZY DUDE! pic.twitter.com/diJZEBHIEo
— KingJ PACE Fall 2023 (@Kingj0444) October 29, 2023
It seems like doing some shenanigans with a Player 2 characters in the game's overworld maps will let that Player 2 go out of bounds and access any level in that map out of order. This has also led to players discovering that you actually only need to beat the last 3 Worlds to access the final section of the game. In other words, the vast majority of Wonder's levels can be completely skipped already.
Mario Wonder Speedrunners Say No To Roads
Naturally, this has already shaved speedrun times down to a fraction of the duration of a regular playthrough. A casual player usually beats the game in about 8 hours, while the current speedrun world record sits at 1 hour and 37 minutes as of the time of this article. And I expect that number to have gone even lower by the time this is published, since records usually don't last very long so soon after a game's release.
Super Mario Bros. Wonder is already plenty of fun to play casually, but its speedruns might turn out to be really entertaining as well! If you're into speedrunning at all, even just as a casual viewer, you might want to keep an eye on this game.