The fastest players of Super Mario Bros. have pushed the NES classic to an extraordinary limit. LeKukie’s latest world record is only 100 milliseconds away from the game’s theoretical perfect time.
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LeKukie sets a record-breaking pace
Brazilian runner LeKukie completed Super Mario Bros. in 4:54.365 on 2 June 2026. The run improved the previous world record, set in August 2025, by 15 hundredths of a second and left only one tenth of a second separating the result from the theoretical ideal.
His route to the top of the leaderboard has been unusually difficult. LeKukie began playing in 2019 with a PlayStation 2, an emulated copy of Nintendo’s game and a controller affected by noticeable input lag. After acquiring an NES in 2022, he quickly recorded a world-best performance in Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels.
That result was later removed from official consideration when it became clear that Brazilian NES consoles use a component variation that makes the system run slightly more slowly than NES hardware elsewhere. Recognising his ability, members of the speedrunning community supplied LeKukie with an official NES and recording equipment so he could compete under accepted conditions.
He subsequently matched the Super Mario Bros. world record, but hardware problems returned. Within six months, his NES controllers had worn out, with replacements difficult to find while other runners continued to reduce the benchmark. The controller issue was resolved late in 2025, allowing his progress to accelerate again.
A perfect 8-4 changes the ceiling
By May 2026, LeKukie had reached World 8-4 with a perfect run, only to fall into the lava. A few days later, he completed the stage without missing a single frame and established the current record. The performance also cut half a second from his previous personal best.
That detail matters because 8-4 had long represented one of the run’s most demanding sections. As highlighted in a new video from former SMB world record holder Kosmic, LeKukie’s result demonstrated that a flawless 8-4 can be combined with world-record-level execution across the rest of the game.
Further analysis has narrowed the remaining opportunity. With the earlier stages already performed perfectly, just six frames of improvement were identified in 8-4. Runners have since completed the stage perfectly hundreds of times in isolation, and LeKukie has also managed a flawless sequence from World 4-2 through the end of the game.
Why the final tenth is so difficult
At this level, success depends on inputs made with extraordinary precision. Players must repeatedly change Mario’s direction on individual frames, creating movement that looks almost choreographed. The required techniques combine deep game knowledge, timing, dexterity and highly consistent hardware control.
The community experimented with keyboards to make some of the most precise inputs easier. Recent advances in controller techniques have shifted attention back towards traditional gamepads, with LeKukie contributing unusual methods of holding the controller, distinctive flicking techniques and highly refined movement strategies.
The remaining 100 milliseconds are not one simple shortcut waiting to be discovered. They represent the accumulated difference between near-perfect execution and ideal movement throughout the entire game. That is why a theoretical perfect run, once treated as impossible, now appears close enough to be within reach.
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The perfect run may be days away
Kosmic’s assessment is striking: the first genuinely perfect Super Mario Bros. speedrun may no longer be a distant theoretical exercise. With 8-4 repeatedly solved on its own and longer perfect segments now being linked together, the community could be only days away from seeing every critical movement align in one complete run.
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