Despite Super Mario Odyssey being over three years old now, speedrunners are still finding new ways to crack the game. Just this week, a new glitch was discovered that has lead to massive progress in the Super Mario Odyssey Minimum Capture category, fundamentally changing the nature of that run.
Gamers who have played Super Mario Odyssey are familiar with Cappy, the new side kick introduced in Odyssey. He's a sentient hat that, when thrown on an enemy, allows Mario to transform into it. Throughout the game Cappy is used to transform Mario into everything from a T-rex, to a Goomba, to pure electricity. The capture mechanic is unique to Odyssey, and one of the the games big selling points. So of course, speedrunners are trying to figure out a way to beat the game without using Cappy at all.
Like most games, Super Mario Odyssey has multiple categories of speedruns. One run, known as Nipple%, has runners competing to unlock the Mario underwear skin as quickly as possible. In the Minimum Capture run, players are trying to beat the game with the minimum amount of Cappy captures. Until recently, it was believed that there were a minimum of nine captures needed to beat the game. However, the newly discovered skip drops that number to just three.
In order to activate the glitch, runners have to control both Mario and Cappy at the same time. This means that players control one Joy-Con with their hands and one with their feet.
This run was recently demonstrated by popular Mario Runner Smallant1. Smallant1 essentially glitches a Cappy throw, making Mario teleport to checkpoints that should be inaccessible. This allows him to skip huge portions of the game, including 6 captures there were once necessary for the run.
Never content with the status quo, speedrunners are already trying to figure out how to skip the last three captures. Some say that this is impossible, but considering a seemingly impossible Super Smash Bros. Melee speedrun was just beaten after a decade of trying, impossible just sounds like a challenge.
Super Mario Odyssey is available now for Nintendo Switch.