With how wacky and wild the world of speedrunning is, there must be something that will be crowned the wildest. Well, Summer Games Done Quick delivers. Paper Mario speedrunner JCog began his run the way that all great speedruns start: by playing Ocarina of Time.
“By the end of this we are going to use a glitch known as ‘SRM’ in Ocarina of Time to put a piece of code on the Expansion Pak that we will then use a glitch with Paper Mario to execute and in between we’re going to Banjo-Kazooie-style ‘Stop ‘N Swop’ and switch cartridges really quickly,” JCog outlines in a brief introduction to the wildest run of the year so far.
JCog goes into detail in this PasteBin. Basically, after doing some very specific steps in Ocarina of Time and utilizing Stale Reference Manipulation (SRM), the runner turns off the console and swaps out Ocarina for Paper Mario. Usually, the game that is inserted will erase what is stored in the Expansion Pak of the N64. However, Paper Mario just ignores it and boots off of that information. From there, it’s a straight Paper Mario speedrun — until it just transports him to the end credits.
Most of the action happens at the beginning of the run and a little bit towards the end. It is incredibly complicated but the commentators really know their stuff, making this difficult run really accessible to newcomers.
All of this begs the question: Where does Paper Mario fit in the Zelda timeline?
