![]() ![]() When Katun moved on, Bubzia took a break from Super Mario 64. It was considered impossible to get 100 coins in both Dire, Dire Docks and Lethal Lava Land until Bubzia did. Katun was the first to reach 70 stars - a significant milestone that proved speedrunners can complete the game without major glitches, by instead proceeding through Bowser’s castle like a casual player would. Other members of the blindfolded Super Mario 64 speedrunning community have also been working on completing the full run prior to Bubzia’s achievement, with the most prominent being Dutch player Katun24. So attempting the full 120 star run in a single sitting is a monumental task. These levels have similar complicated movement but they also have random chances of being knocked off course by enemies. While explaining this to me, Bubzia notes that, in the end, it probably isn’t the hardest star to collect, after all - he thinks that honor goes to collecting 100 coins in Lethal Lava Land or Shifting Sand Land. Even after he gets it, he cheers, “Yes! Super Mario 64 !” before immediately asking, “What?” as he fails to pick up the star that should be right over his head. As he plays, his own heart rate monitor reads 140 beats per minute. ![]() Without sight, the only way to do this is to count the beats of the background music to time jumps - though one particular set becomes desynchronized from the audio, so doing this perfectly comes down to chance.ĭespite knowing that Bubzia pulls it off, watching the VOD of the successful run is nerve-racking. In addition to navigating tricky waters, Mario has to jump between moving poles that are attached to the ceiling. To make matters worse, there are two separate spots in the level that have currents that can pull Mario off course. He also sinks if you stop swimming, so Bubzia has to keep his movements consistent. But pressing faster or slower makes Mario move different amounts. When swimming, he has to count each of Mario’s strokes. It’s much harder to figure out where he is, especially if he gets disoriented. ![]() But in water, which covers most of Dire, Dire Docks, there are no sound cues for hitting obstacles. For most areas in Super Mario 64, Bubzia can locate himself by listening to the noises of Mario walking into walls and corners. With only 106 coins in the level, there’s very little room for error. Bubzia pointed me to a video of Youtuber Abyssoft explaining what makes it so tricky. Take the notoriously difficult Dire, Dire Docks 100 coin star, for example. “It is about learning and optimizing one’s movement and techniques.” But in a blindfolded run, “every single room of a game becomes an exciting logical puzzle that you need to solve.” “In visual speedruns, there are, in many cases, already fixed routes that have established themselves over many years by the community,” he explains. ![]() Bubzia says blindfolded runs are his preference because they allow him to continually come up with new strategies. He was first inspired by Drew “Runnerguy2489” Wissler, who speedran The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time sightless in 2015. (The world record in the blindfolded 16-star run is now 24 minutes, with Bubzia’s own record being just over a half an hour.) “It was the world’s first blindfolded speedrun of Super Mario 64 - the 16-star category in around three hours and 11 minutes,” he tells Fanbyte. This marks not only the very first time this star has been attained without sight, but also makes Bubzia the first person to collect every star in the game while not being able to see what he’s playing.īubzia started watching speedruns in 2015, then completed his first run in October 2017. Relying entirely on audio cues, it takes Bubzia just over 29 minutes. In a regular speedrun, this takes around two minutes - too slow to be included in any category except one that requires every star to be collected. For the final one, he needed to collect 100 coins in the Dire, Dire Docs level. Speedrunner Bubzia has been on a quest to collect every star in Super Mario 64 blindfolded for years. ![]()
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