I’ve heard of people knowing games inside out and even dreaming about playing them, but this takes things to a completely new level. When Gonzo says that he knows the story of A Christmas Carol like the back of his hand in Muppets Christmas Carol, I could probably believe him, but for someone to know all of the intricate details of Super Mario so well that they don’t even need to look at a screen… well that’s a pipe dream, surely?
Bubzia is a Super Mario 64 speedrunner who proves that you don’t need to be in the Warp Pipe business to make pipe dreams come true. He’s been training to complete one of the most notorious speedrun challenges in the game – the 16 Star Challenge – while blindfolded. He has already racked up multiple records for speedrunning the game blindfolded including achieving all 120 stars, but the 16 Star Challenge has become his main focus of late.
For those of you wondering what on earth the 16 Star Challenge is, it’s a speedrunning challenge where players complete the game while skipping the 30-star door, all using MIPS Clip. It’s hard enough to understand whether you’re blindfolded or not in all honesty and, as shown by Bubzia, requires a knowledge of the game which exceeds the levels of mere mortals.
Bubzia already has the previous record for completing the Super Mario 64 challenge blindfolded but wanted to get nearer to the non-blindfolded time of 14 minutes and 35 seconds. Games Radar spilled the beans about the incredible feat first, noting that Bubzia had completed it after a ‘118-day grind’ spread over 10 months. I wonder how long it would take me to play Banjo-Kazooie blindfolded… I spend most of the time before I’m gaming trying to find where I put my glasses, so probably quite a while.
Until I wrote this article, I never even knew that there was a blindfolded speedrunning category, but it’s opened my eyes (pun intended) to the levels of gaming brilliance people aspire to. Head over to our socials and comment under this post to let us know which game you think you could speedrun blindfolded!
