Meet the 19-Year-Old That’s Now the World’s Best ‘Super Mario 64′ Player

For most mere mortals, beating Super Mario 64 takes around 12 hours. Unless you happen to be Twitch streamer Cole “GreenSuigi.” In that same time frame, the 19-year-old player could easily clear the game a dozen times or more, in a handful of different ways. Actually, with half a day at his disposal, Cole could probably finish it, stop to take a nap, and then leisurely wake up only to find most of us only halfway through. And he’d do it without collecting a single star, too. 

Realistically, though, few of us would go through the trouble of booting up a 27-year-old game just to blitz through it. To the average person, appreciating the elements that crowned Super Mario 64 a groundbreaking game back in 1996 requires at least some wandering around its world. But Cole (who prefers to keep his last name private) is not an ordinary gamer. He’s a speedrunner. For him, the fun is in getting to the end of the experience as quickly as possible. He’s damn good at it, too. So good, in fact, that after breaking an elusive record in late 2024, fans have started discussing the possibility that Cole could be one of the most skilled gamers of all time. 

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“This isn’t just the biggest achievement in speedrunning history, it’s quite possibly one of the biggest achievements in gaming history,” says one Redditor. It might sound like hyperbole, but for those who follow speedrunning, Cole is spoken of like the Michael Jordan of video games. Threads and YouTube videos breaking down his extraordinary Super Mario playthroughs are as breathless as they are incredulous — and this was true even before Cole began sweeping major records.

What is speedrunning?

As a playstyle, speedrunning may sound foreign, but there’s a whole community of people just like Cole, who love to push video games to their limits. Often, the practice is done with the help of glitches. Sounds like cheating, right? Speedrun communities, however, generally develop self-imposed rules for what is considered legitimate in a run. Provided you’ve got the skill to pull it off — some techniques are barely possible with normal human reaction times — exploits are simply another tool used in the service of developing an optimized playthrough. 

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Glitches also explain how Cole can set a record for getting to the end of Super Mario 64 without collecting any stars — a set number of which are normally required to progress. Instead of doing it the normal way, he finds methods to brute force Mario through the closed doors and invisible walls that are meant to prevent the rest of us from skipping ahead. You might’ve even seen these exploits without realizing. Footage of Mario looking possessed as he jumps backwards up the red carpet stairs that lead up to Bowser levels have cumulatively amassed millions of views online. Despite their ubiquity, the “backwards long jump” is also one of the hardest tricks to nail for a speedrunner. 

Though it is a niche playstyle, speedrunning as a whole has exploded in the last decade with the advent of influencers with dedicated followings. To wit, the time-attack hobby has sprouted big events such as Games Done Quick, a livestreaming extravaganza that raises millions of dollars for charity every year. Events like the Streamer Awards also have categories for “Speedrunner of the Year,” an honor Cole was nominated for in 2024, although the win went to Squeex, another popular Super Mario 64 streamer.

Though many games have speedrunning communities, they are particularly prevalent in platformers that are primarily centered around precise movement, like Sonic the Hedgehog or Astro Bot. Within that cadre, Super Mario 64 is by far the most popular. To date, nearly 8,000 contestants have vied for a shot at a Super Mario 64 record. Together, they’ve submitted nearly 50,000 playthroughs of the game on the biggest online leaderboard. For contrast, a best-selling modern game like Elden Ring, which regularly makes headlines over the novel speedrunning antics of its players, only has 334 official runners in its roster. 

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It makes sense, really, if you consider Super Mario 64’s revolutionary design.

For those who don’t recall, the landmark game was developed alongside the Nintendo 64 in the mid-Nineties. The title was meant to be a showcase of the new console’s hardware and its upgraded power over its predecessor, the Super Nintendo. Though earlier consoles from companies like Atari provided joystick controls, most of it was cumbersome. 3D graphics were novel in 1996, and Nintendo established a blueprint for how they could look and feel. Before Super Mario 64, playing in 3D was much more cumbersome. 

What set Super Mario 64 apart was its design ethos, led by creator Shigeru Miyamoto. “As long as a player’s jump was close enough,” Miyamoto once explained in a Japanese strategy guide, “you’d make it.” It was an astounding approach compared to Mario’s 2D adventures, which punished jumps lacking pixel perfect exactitude. Nintendo staff at the time reportedly rejected it initially, and even early players complained that Mario felt too slippery in the game. Years later, Miyamoto stands vindicated. History remembers Mario’s movement as intuitive and Super Mario 64 as one of the best games of all time. 

The game breaker

Watching Cole play, even on a practice run, brings the beauty of Mario’s maneuvering to the forefront. He controls the character so economically, it’s almost like watching an AI chart a theoretical perfect path forward. The cherubic streamer has only been competing for a few years, but it didn’t take long for him to start making waves in the community. Currently, Cole holds a whopping five records, each corresponding to a major category in the game. 

When it comes to speedrunning, categories are determined by the number of stars a player must collect. As programmed, the minimum number of stars needed to complete Mario 64 is 70, while the maximum number someone could have at the end of the game is 120. Speedrunners have developed a variety of methods to complete the game with fewer stars than either of those, including zero stars, one star, and 16 stars.

Cole has a record in every single one of these categories. The most recent of these was nailed in late 2024, when he finished the 70-star category in 46:26. In the footage, Cole spends most of his playtime with a steely gaze, occasionally punctuating a star grab by wiping his hands clean of sweat. Though you can’t see the controller, you can hear every button-press land crisply. By the time Cole arrives at the final Bowser showdown, the pieces start falling into place. He throws and catches the boss without missing a beat; Mario is exactly where he needs to be. With a laugh, Cole almost doesn’t seem to believe it. But as it starts to sink in, his face turns red.

“Five,” Cole cries out, face clasped in his hands. “Five! I’m the fucking best!” In a torrent of expletives and all caps, the chat lauds his accomplishment at an unreadable clip. 

To put into perspective: by claiming his last record, Cole is now the highest decorated player in the world’s most competitive speedrunning game. The closest runner-ups are all at a distant second according to the official leaderboards. Previously, only a handful of runners over the game’s 28-year lifespan have ever had up to three of these records at a time. Only one person has ever held four at once, and that was back in 2010. Until Cole pulled it off, some fans thought sweeping all the major categories might be impossible. 

It’s even more impressive once you know that none of the records can be accomplished using the same methods; each one requires a different expertise. Shorter runs, like one-star and zero-star, demand constant perfection amid routes that have been hyper optimized over time by others. The tricks are also much harder, which adds to the tension. “I find the stress of the lower categories is just so much higher, because it’s just constant stress of having to go as fast as possible, [without] mistakes,” Cole said in a 2023 interview with the YouTube channel Geenix. Unsurprisingly, there’s not a ton of overlap between runners who excel at shorter runs and those who prefer longer ones. 

Sweating every moment of brief runs was blessing in disguise for Cole. Categories like 70 and 120 stars can take anywhere between 45 to 90 minutes. The runway is long enough that a small mistake won’t necessarily ruin your chances of getting a solid time, but you’d still need to manage fatigue and be consistent, of course. But ironically, knowing he has room to breathe during lengthier runs is what allows Cole to effectively harness the cutthroat approach he honed by dominating shorter categories. 

A lifelong obsession

While the idea that a runner could “innovate” by simply trying harder than others almost sounds too obvious, the reality is few people have the technical mastery Cole does — and even fewer can pair it with the same level of extended focus. Simple tricks can sometimes take a long time to master, especially when facing a ticking clock before a live audience reacting to your mishaps. Undoubtedly, Cole started developing a sense of inner calm from a young age. 

The Twitch streamer tells Rolling Stone that the first game he can remember playing was with his babysitter. “I grew up playing a lot of video games,” he says. The first I can remember is Battletoads on the NES when I was four-years-old, which is still one of my favorite games ever, and the only other game I’ve done full speedruns of.” Despite barely being old enough to attend kindergarten, Cole was already cutting his teeth with a game that some have deemed to be the hardest of all time. 

Cole was introduced to his soon-to-be favorite game that same year when he was given a blue Nintendo DSi with a handheld version of Super Mario 64 for his birthday. That port of the game, which was released in 2004, was updated from the original to include new playable characters and a multiplayer mode. Cole only discovered the original N64 iteration when he turned eight.

Though the DS version of Super Mario 64 is enhanced with more features, you’re still relegated to playing it on a cramped tiny gaming pad. Not so on the Nintendo 64. It wasn’t long until he fell in love with the acrobatics and their ease of control. 

“Whenever you have momentum in the game, you can keep it,” Cole said in the Geenix interview, where he explained what he loved best about the game. “Nothing will get rid of your momentum, like landing or doing jumps over and over again, like in the newer games. I don’t really know how to describe it, but it’s really fast. I feel like you have lots of control over every move. The game doesn’t really do anything for you.”

Cole did pick up other interests amid his burgeoning Mario obsession growing up. He played plenty of Minecraft, he says, and spent some of his youth being forced to play piano. None of these things stuck quite like Super Mario did. By the time he turned 15, Cole was on his way to completing the game for the 100th time. That’s when an online friend who was well-versed in the ways of speedrunning issued him a challenge.

“He wanted somebody that he could do races against, so my first ever runs for a few months were just racing my friend,” Cole says, noting that his earliest runs were for the 16-star category. 

The rest is history.

Then again, Cole would insist that some of his achievements are luck. Despite his following on Twitch, he’s humble and doesn’t like being the center of attention. It’s hard to argue against him, considering that Cole’s zero-star record was attained by pure accident while he was attempting a one-star run. 

Still, some aspects of the game can be practiced. Cole does plenty of it. He spends a few hours every day doing “streaks,” that is, collecting specific stars over and over again. Learning the ins and outs of 120 stars took him nearly a year of repetition. Even so, he’s still at the mercy of randomization. Some stars task Mario with collecting 100 coins which are accrued by exploring the world, hitting coin boxes, and defeating enemies. But the boxes and enemy deaths spurt currency in unpredictable directions at variable speeds. Tough spreads are inevitable, but that’s part of what makes the whole gambit exciting. 

During one of his record-breaking 120-star runs, for example, Cole’s timer wasn’t looking promising. He was a minute behind schedule, and starting to worry the attempt was a bust. Then, the coins spread in his favor. He went from being behind on time to saving nearly half a minute overall. What are the chances someone else might be able to play perfectly and get some easy coins? Cole seems skeptical that he could even recreate it. 

A less stressful path forward

Though he’s fresh out of high school, further studies are currently on pause. Cole plans to spend the next year focusing on speedrunning, ideally in a more relaxed way. “I’ve always been motivated by competition, and stressed out by it as well,” Cole says. “That won’t change, but I’m excited to be able to continue playing without ever having to worry about getting five out of five records again.” 

Impressive as his streak has been, getting to this point has weighed on Cole. The more records he gets, the more people expect from him. For a stint last summer, he almost burned out and gave up. The way Cole saw it, getting five out of five records was implausible to begin with. But he figured that if he was going to do it, then didn’t have much time to get there. 

“Before I got the 120 record, it felt like something that I could maybe do, but would more likely than not miss my window and have too many people catch up to my crazy leads in the other categories before I could do it,” Cole recalls. “I’m only one person, so eventually, five out of five would be out of reach. It was thought impossible for a long time.”

A year later, doubts have been laid by the wayside and he’s riding the wave while he can. One day, he figures, he’ll want to settle down and get a financially stable job. Maybe he’ll follow up being the best gamer in the world by becoming an electrician. 

Despite all the hype, it hasn’t gone to his head. Viewers might believe that Cole’s unbelievable records prove he’s the most gifted gamer out there, but Cole is deferential to older Super Mario 64 players with impressive runs at the top, like Weegee and Cheese.

“It’s hard to deny that I am the best player at the moment,” Cole muses. “In the grand scheme of Mario speedrunning, it’s harder to make that argument, and I don’t know if I’d agree. Some have even said I’m the best speedrunner of all time. I understand the excitement over my crazy achievement but to say that is pretty ridiculous.”

“It’s like saying a swimmer is the best athlete of all time,” he adds. “There are hundreds of sports, it just doesn’t make sense to crown a ‘best athlete’ in any circumstance, and the same goes with speedrunning.”