To celebrate his speedrun world record video hitting one million views on YouTube, Japanese speedrunner Akki livestreamed 100 consecutive playthroughs, clocking in at a total time of 30 hours, 54 minutes and 5 seconds, beating the previous world record by just over 53 minutes.
On May 15th this year, speedrunner Akki set a world record of 14 minutes and 59 seconds in the 16-star category of Super Mario 64, making for one of the most historic barrier-breaks in one of the world's most popular speed games. To celebrate this video breaking the million view milestone on his YouTube channel, Akki organized a 16-star marathon, in which he completed the category 100 consecutive times in a little under 31 hours. Through the duration of the stream, Akki only took one break - a three-hour nap at the start of the 88th run. Excluding that time, the average run worked out to be 16 minutes and 33 seconds. His best time was 15 minutes and 19 seconds, which would place 8th on the world rankings. The full video of the 100 runs can be found in three parts on YouTube.
Super Mario 64, regarded by many as the greatest platformer of all time, has established itself as the king of speed games in the speedrunning community, with more players than any other game ever released. Of the five main categories: 120-star, 70-star, 16-star, 1-star, and 0-star, the category which is the most commonly run by far is the 16-star category, making its record one of the most prestigious in all of speedrunning. The objective of the category is to complete the game, earning only 16 of the game's 120 stars. Runners typically require 70 stars to unlock the final area, but by glitching through the 30-star and 50-star doors, and backwards-long-jumping up the infinite staircase (which typically requires 70 stars to climb), runners can get to "Bowser in the Sky" with only the 15 stars needed to spawn Mips the Rabbit and the one star in "Dire, Dire Docks" required to unlock "Bowser in the Fire Sea".
It was discovered in 2004 that only 16 stars were required to beat the game, though the total has since gone down, first to just one star, then to none. Ever since the discovery of the 16-star route, that category has remained the most competitive for players. This is due do its relatively short time of 15-20 minutes in length, which is not too long as to be a day-ruiner when you have to reset, but not too short as to be a run-ruiner when you make one tiny mistake. Akki remains the only person in history to beat the game in less than 15 minutes, as well as the only person in the world to beat the game 100 times in less than 31 hours.
Source: Akki