Super Mario 64 Speedrunner Breaks 'Impossible' Record

And they said it couldn't be done.

Earlier this morning, popular speedrunner Cheese05 collected all 120 stars in Super Mario 64 in one hour, 39 minutes, and 57 seconds.

That's fast enough to give Cheese the Super Mario 64 speedrunning record: the previous winning time, one hour, 40 minutes, and five seconds, was set just a couple of days ago by Batora324. More importantly, this is also the first time that anybody has ever completed a 120-star Super Mario 64 run in under 1:40:00, a time that many members of the speedrunning community thought was impossible.

Cheese05 burst onto the Super Mario 64 speedrunning scene in 2015, and has quickly become one of the community's most popular members. Kotaku notes that Cheese05 had come close to the 1:40:00 milestone a couple of times, but miniscule mistakes kept coming back to haunt him. Last month, Cheese came incredibly close to breaking the 1:40:00 mark, but a spammer in his Twitch chat window divided his attention between the game and the stream, making Cheese miss a crucial Bowser-throw.

In the YouTube description for the video of Cheese05's record-setting run, Cheese notes that the whole project has been incredibly stressful, and that he even contemplated quitting forever. Thankfully, he stuck with it. At the end of the video, an emotional Cheese05 celebrates with his family—including his grandmother, who seems both excited and just a little perplexed.

Super Mario 64 is one of the most popular games among speedrunners, and with good reason: the platformer, which debuted in 1996, redefined Mario and established a formula that 3D platformers are still using today. The game has only gotten better since then, too, as speedrunners and Mario enthusiasts have discovered a number of glitches—some useful, and some that are just plain weird—that have kept the game feeling fresh for over 20 years.