It’s easy for someone from outside the gaming community to look at it and think that all gamers play titles the same way. After all, they’re video games; they’re meant to be played a certain way. Or, at least, they were for a long time. However, as gaming evolved, people started reworking their thinking on how they should play the games and what new ways they could push themselves through the titles. This led to things like speedrunning, where you try to get through a game as fast as possible. Or, in the case of Super Mario 64, beat the game without doing a key gameplay mechanic.
This tale of head-scratching gameplay comes from a speedrunner named Marbler. They decided to play and beat Super Mario 64 on the Nintendo 64 without pressing the A button. Yes, this is real. We’re not sure how they pulled this off, but they did it. However, as the tweet below highlights, they didn’t exactly do it in a timely fashion.
For some people, including some in the Twitter comments, this might be viewed as a “waste of time.” After all, does anyone NEED to know whether you can beat this game without pressing the A button? Probably not. However, it did show that it could be done, and we certainly didn’t think it could be done when we first heard of the challenge! Think about it! One of Mario’s most iconic abilities IS his jump! Furthermore, as this was his first 3D title, you’d think that the jump would be more important than ever and vital to his getting through the various worlds he entered. Apparently not!
Another true irony here is that this is just one of many challenges that speedrunners put themselves through so that they can try to “achieve the impossible.” When the latest adventures with Link arrived on the Nintendo Switch, people used tricks and glitches within the two games’ code to beat the massive adventures in no time flat.
One person went into a certain game by FromSoftware and did an entire run without using a dodge roll, and another did it without dying a single time!
That’s the beauty of gaming. Some gamers are fine with taking the games as they are and attempting to beat them, while others see the potential for specialized runs and want to do all they can to complete them that way.
