Blindfolded Mario 64 Speedrunner Seconds Away From Heartbreak With Invalid Record-Pace Attempt

The moment of tension one feels when they realize they’re closing in on a record run is palpable. Doubly so if the competitor is a blindfolded speedrunner who can’t see the chat telling him that his webcam is off.

Last week, as spotted by GamesRadar, speedrunner Bubzia was working on beating the world record for a blindfolded 70-star run in Super Mario 64. It’s a record he set himself last June at one hour, 25 minutes, and 11 seconds. He’d spent days — 72, at the time of this incident — trying to topple his own record. And on February 10, while on good pace to break his record, Bubzia’s webcam shut off.

Yesterday, it finally happened. My webcam died in the beginning of a 70 Star run, and I did not know until I finished an hour later. Luckily, it was a few seconds behind World Record 😅😅 pic.twitter.com/7BJzFwYHVH

— Bubzia (@Bubzia1) February 11, 2025

Bubzia had been having some difficulties with his webcam before the run started. “That’s a new one, dude,” he said in a run prior to the big one, where his webcam turned off about one minute and 34 seconds in.

The heartbreaker in question would happen after, at 23 minutes and 59 seconds into a really solid run. You can check out the YouTube VOD of his run to see the chat, in real-time, react. “This could be the funniest WR,” one person in chat said.

The facecam is crucial because it’s required for the run to be valid. On the Speedrun.com rules and regulations, it specifically states: “The player must be visibly devoid of sight during the gameplay, i.e. something must be covering the eyes.” Ergo, if you couldn’t verify Bubzia had his eyes covered the entire time, the run would not qualify.

Having a back-up of some kind, like a notification, might be a thought. But the second category-specific rule says runners can’t have any assistance from other people. This includes hints from a Discord call or text-to-voice chat. After the first webcam failure, Bubzia confirmed he had “everything disabled” to alert him in case of a failure, and had received multiple Discord DMs trying to catch his attention while running.

For some viewers, it might be agonizing to watch someone run a game for over an hour, unaware their attempt has been invalid since the 24-minute mark. Bubzia’s chat even leaned into the irony, hoping for the runner to not set a world record, to avoid the heartbreak when the blindfold came off.

So in that way, it may have been a relief that Bubzia’s time came in a few seconds behind the world record. The pace clock concluded at 1:26:09, almost a full minute behind Bubzia’s standing record.

“If this would have been world record, I would have cried,” Bubzia said, after taking off his blindfold and realizing the facecam had been off. “Dude, I would have quit SM64, man.”

You can follow more attempts from Bubzia, whose facecam is currently working at the time of this writing, on his Twitch here. And for more on speedrunning, check out our Speedrun video series of devs reacting to speedruns of their own games.

Image credit: @Bubzia1.

Eric is a freelance writer for IGN.