What is the lowest possible score you can achieve while beating NES classic Super Mario Bros.? 600 points, and we’ve got proof.
On June 27, a thread was created on the SydLexia.com forums containing footage of a player completing Super Mario Bros. while only scoring 700 points. The site’s resident retro gaming deity (he calls himself “Not Sure,” so we’ll go with that) immediately decried the clip, saying it was created using savestates within a NES emulator, and that he could complete a legitimate run with an even lower score.
Surprisingly, no one scoffed, which I can only take as a testament to Not Sure’s famed prowess in the field of platforming titles from two decades back.
Fast forward to July 1, and the thread is host to another clip, this one created by Not Sure and documenting his 600-point, no death trip through Nintendo’s classic title. As far as I can tell, everything in the clip is legit, albeit occasionally edited for time, and just like he said, Not Sure bested the earlier clip’s efforts.
The majority of us common folk will never find a reason, or the dedication to complete a task like this, but, like the Olympics or those awesome World’s Strongest Man competitions on ESPN 7, the resulting footage makes for compelling entertainment. The lengths Not Sure goes to in this clip in order to not score points are just hilarious. Dodging goombas, waiting out the clock, leaping over question mark blocks; it’s so antithetical to everything we know about Super Mario Bros., that you can’t help but be transfixed by the absurdity of the entire thing.
Scratch that last metaphor I made about this being like the Olympics. If anything, this is like watching a penguin trying to fly a plane. Everything it does is so patently wrong, that you can’t help but laugh when he somehow manages to figure the whole thing out.
Source: SydLexia
