It's only been about a week since Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury released, and players are already jumping into the new expansion title to beat it in increasingly impressive times. This wouldn't come as much of a surprise to the larger Mario speedrunning community, but there is something incredible about seeing the game getting dominated so quickly for casual players.
Some players like speedrunner Chinoe have already started to break down the finer points of Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury to perfect gameplay and find as many tricks and skips as possible. However, at this early point, where even the highest level Mario players are still learning the ins and outs of the game, its likely that the coveted World Record is going to be passed around for quite some time.
In a recent showcase of what speedrunners are capable of, one player who goes by the name of Chinoe online has recently uploaded a run that clears Bowser's Fury in 37 minutes and 31 seconds. This is drastically lower than the 3-6 hours Bowser's Fury will take most players to complete on their first run through the new levels being introduced to Super Mario 3D World. Given that this is an Any% run, meaning all that's required is to progress from the start of the game to the credits, that means Chinoe shaved roughly two and a half hours off the standard time.
At the time of this writing, the current speedrun records for Bowser's Fury stand at 36 minutes and 41 seconds for Any% and just under an hour and a half for the much more involved 100 Shines run. The second category is a much more involved run that requires players to unlock the Cat Shines in Bowser's Fury as quickly as possible. Considering how difficult some of these can be, players can likely understand why this would take speedrunners an extra hour to complete, though that time will likely come down drastically over the next few months.
One advantage that players have when jumping into Bowser's Fury for impressive speedruns now, is that many speedrunners are likely already familiar with Mario's moveset from the Wii U version of the game. There are naturally some new features and level designs in the new Switch release of Super Mario 3D World that could throw a wrench in the works, but these players are quick to adapt to whatever Nintendo has to throw at them. Fans of Mario speedrunning have an exciting few months ahead of them now, as new strategies and routes will be tested for players to eventually reach for the World Record title.
Super Mario 3D Bros + Bowser's Fury is available now for Switch.
Source: Speedrun.com