Recent research released by UK electronic retailer Ebuyer has revealed the games with the most and fastest speedruns of all time with Nintendo’s 1996 Super Mario 64 in the top spot with over 28,000 runs and the best time coming in at 01:37:53.
For those who don’t know, speedrunning is a popular activity among gamers that has players trying to break records by finishing games in as little time as possible. To do this, gamers will avoid wasting time exploring game worlds, only sticking to what is absolutely necessary to progress in the game, sometimes using glitches or advanced techniques to move along faster in the game. The best-timed speedruns often require a lot of skill and dedication from players as they need to concentrate for an hour straight or more to beat their personal best or even achieve a world record. Both can require multiple attempts with gamers needing to restart runs several times in the event of scuffed runs.
To view the list of games in the order of the most runs, see the table below.
| Game | Number of runs | Country with fastest time | Best Time (Hours:Minutes:Seconds) |
| Super Mario 64 | 28426 | United States | 01:37:53 |
| Super Mario Odyssey | 18460 | Italy | 00:57:21 |
| Celeste | 13780 | Germany | 00:26:23 |
| Mario Kart 8 Deluxe | 12348 | Japan | 01:54:16 |
| Portal | 11510 | United Kingdom | 00:14:45 |
| Super Metroid | 10132 | Palau | 00:40:46 |
| Getting Over It | 9227 | Canada | 00:01:03 |
| Super Mario World | 9037 | Japan | 01:21:39 |
| TLOZ: Ocarina Of Time | 8290 | Canada | 00:06:49 |
| Super Mario Bros. | 8127 | United Kingdom | 00:04:55 |
| TLOZ: A Link to The Past | 7743 | Germany | 01:23:03 |
| SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom | 7232 | United States | 00:44:15 |
| Resident Evil 2 (2019) | 7198 | United States | 00:51:37 |
| Outlast | 5567 | United States | 00:08:06 |
| Hades | 5479 | United States | 00:05:32 |
| Undertale | 5291 | United States | 00:52:38 |
| TLOZ: Breath of The Wild | 4986 | United States | 00:24:57 |
| Portal 2 | 4292 | United States | 00:57:57 |
| Luigi’s Mansion | 3970 | Netherlands | 00:55:38 |
| Super Mario Bros. 3 | 3814 | United States | 00:03:02 |
| Cuphead | 3733 | Italy | 00:23:16 |
| The Simpsons: Hit & Run | 3648 | Australia | 01:19:53 |
| Sonic Adventure 2 Battle | 3570 | Canada | 00:21:15 |
| Banjo-Kazooie | 3203 | Canada | 01:56:32 |
| Spyro The Dragon | 3052 | Congo, Democratic Republic | 01:21:32 |
The top spot for Super Mario 64 by an American player came after they beat the former world record holder from a player in Japan. The new record is an impressive 30 seconds faster than the Japanese record holder who had held the record for six months. For a game as competitive in the speedrunning scene as Super Mario 64, records don’t typically last more than a few months. It will be interesting to see how long the current record holder can hold their place.
According to the data, Mario seems to be a popular franchise for speedruns as second place is Super Mario Odyssey with 18,460 speedruns and a fastest time of 00:57:21. Similarly to Super Mario 64, the previous record was only held for seven months. The speedrunning community is an interesting one. The innovative ways players find to speed up their runs is always fun to watch. With how many speedruns Super Mario Odyssey currently has, it may catch Super Mario 64 in a few years and with how new the game is compared to its N64 brethren there’s probably a lot more time to be taken off the current records.
