Player Achieves Lowest Possible Score in ‘Super Mario Bros.’

YouTube user NotEntirelySure has posted a video of their run through the first Super Mario Bros. video game, originally for the Nintendo Entertainment System, where they earn the lowest score possible — 500 points — without continuing. This is only possible by not killing any enemies, gathering any coins, and intentionally running out the game’s clock before finishing any given level. Other than speeding up the wait to run out the clock at the end of the level, no digital trickery was employed in the making of the run.

How tough is that jump in 8-1? Well, the timing of the liftoff, the duration of holding the jump button, and the timing of the wall jump are all frame perfect. NES games run at 60 frames per second, which means all the necessary inputs need to be timed within 1/60 of a second. In addition, the starting position before running I used not only has to be on the right pixel, but also the x sub-pixel has to fall within a certain range (technical stuff blah blah blah). In short, it’s a pretty annoying jump.

via Digg