I have spent 3 hours, 14 minutes, and 44 seconds covering the world record history of a 3 minute
long flash game made by a concrete mixer salesman back in 2009. That’s how long it took to cover 41
records set by 13 different runners over the span of 12 years. In the previous part, Red
Ball Speedruns - Beyond the 3 Minute Milestone, we explored how the time went from a 2:57 by Caramel,
the first sub 3, to a 2:48 by Yak27, the first sub 2:50. This was made possible thanks to a few
frame dependent strategies that revolutionized the game, namely Bird 3, Max 6, Resetless 10,
and PBird 11. However, these discoveries, enabled by a tool-assisted speedrun mod created in 2021,
were widely believed to be almost all that the game had to offer in terms of viable real-time
setups. Sure, the TAS of the game was a sub 2:30, and the segmented sum of best wasn’t too far off,
but the stuff that people could pull off in actual runs wasn’t even close to matching
those individual level accomplishments. However, if you glanced at the length of this video before
clicking, then you know that we have a lot to discuss. For Red Ball’s time to be pushed lower,
more and more of these setups needed to be found and implemented in each level,
replacing variable movement with binary outcomes. This quest for perfection was
the next chapter in Red Ball’s story, and indeed, just a month after the first sub 2:50,
there was already a massive discovery that blew the game’s ceiling wide open. Let’s take a look.
6 frame perfect inputs for around 2.5 seconds of time save. Four years earlier,
UltraAug discovered that a frame perfect bounce pad jump could get you to the top
of the level earlier, and world record contenders had been using the same route ever since. However,
by thinking outside of the box, NotVeryGood was able to combine the top and bottom routes through
the level into something much greater, and it became known as Mug 7. A version of this hybrid
route had already made its way into the TAS, but it required dozens of frame perfects. Now,
it had a good chance of being incorporated into runs, especially after BirdBanana reduced the
frame perfect count to 5. Former world record holder NorXor even managed to hit it twice in
a row during practice later that month. However, with the visual cues for most inputs being quite
awkward and easier time saves being present in the run, it wasn’t worth going for… yet.
As is typical whenever a large barrier is shattered, the hype around top level competition
died down for a while after Yak’s 2:48. It wasn’t until May of 2022 that we would see another world
record set, that being a 2:47.935 by Big_Mukmuk. He missed the corner boost setup in level 4
to save a cycle on the death warp, but he still had the potential to break the record by a wide
margin going into level 11 thanks to his excellent movement throughout the run. Unfortunately,
he barely messed up the train strategy that he was going for. Back in June of 2021, BirdBanana
had discovered a setup to complete the train level in under 16 seconds, collecting the flag
before it went under the ground triangle. This required just a handful of frame perfects, but the
unclear visual cues made it very difficult to pull off. Pearce and InsaneJetman later evolved the
setup into a way to back up the traditional PBird strategy if you mistimed your first right press,
coining it PJet. Even though this variant required an extra frame perfect, the more distinct visual
cues for each input made it a lot easier, causing top runners to consider incorporating it. Mukmuk
nailed the beginning of the setup to get past the large spikes, but he unfortunately mistimed
this jump off the black platform, causing him to miss the corner boost. This tiny mistake cost him
two seconds, but he still scraped by with a new world record. However, the most notable takeaway
was that the sum of Mukmuk’s best segments was a 2:37. Indeed, with Mug 7 and sub 16 train,
a sub 2:40 was on the cusp of being feasible. Another discovery or two is likely all that was
needed to piece together a viable route, but in the meantime, runners were focused on optimizing
the strategies they already had at their disposal. On June 21st, NorXor made it to the late game on
easy sub 2:50 pace, despite having lost 2 seconds from missing Bird 3. After hitting resetless 10,
his nerves shot through the roof. It all came down to level 11…
With a heart rate of 188, NorXor choked a sub 2:50 at the last possible moment. Regardless,
in an era dominated by new age runners, NorXor proved that us old timers still had
the potential to make a splash. However, across the board, Red Ball still had a
distinct lack of enthusiasm that was holding back its potential development. Thankfully,
there was an event in the pipeline that sought to shake things up.
Super Mario 63 is one of the most iconic flash games ever created. An ambitious mashup of
several mario games in a single 2D package, it is a hallmark of the bustling creativity that
the Flash platform provided. With a world record history that is almost as storied as Red Ball’s,
it only made sense for the two game’s communities to combine forces at some point. Dignity pitched
the idea of having members from each community learn and speedrun the other game for a week
to see what kind of time they could get. The top 3 runs for each game would be averaged together,
and whatever community was closer to the world record from a percentage standpoint would win.
The SM63 community had a lot of talent to draw from, most notably Vertic, who had the game’s
Any% world record by a mile. Vertic had also swept every world record in the original Vex trilogy,
another set of flash game platformers. It would be interesting to see what kind of
times himself and other Mario 63 runners would be able to pull off in a limited time frame:
June 24th to June 30th. Vertic speedran Red Ball for the first time on day 1, and then on day 3…
In just 391 attempts, Vertic got a sub 3, a feat that had taken most runners thousands of tries and
months of effort. Setting a time only 7% slower than Mukmuk’s world record, this was equivalent
to achieving a sub 6:45 in sm63 in the context of the competition. The best time that the Red
Ball community ended up setting was a 7:53 by me. The competition was set to be an absolute blowout,
but right before the final results were tallied, someone ended up lessening the blow.
2:44.484. Poguin shattered the world record by 3 and a half seconds, making it the largest record
jump since rare.eg’s iconic 3:07. In the era of tool-developed setups, something like this was
completely unprecedented. The run had almost no mistakes, and it even implemented a few
new strategies. Firstly, he had a new level 6 setup called Star 6, which only required 2
frame perfects instead of 3. Not only was this strategy easier, it also completely removed the
reaction time barrier that was present with Max 6, since the inputs came much later after the level
transition. Next, he implemented a 4 frame perfect setup in level 7 that built up enough speed to
skip the moving platforms without using the top route. This was around a second slower than Mug 7,
but it proved to be a decent bit easier. The only mistake present in the run was missing
the corner boost at the end of PJet 11, costing around 2 seconds. It is also worth noting that
this was the first world record performed on the Tournament Edition of the game, which included an
in-game timer and printed the date at the end of each run. The timer truncated to 3 decimal places,
which is why the milliseconds of Poguin’s record read .483 instead of the properly rounded .484.
While the timing of runs in the past had always been a bit ambiguous, since a 31 frames-per-second
game does not cleanly fit into either a 30FPS or 60FPS video, any run performed on this version
would have a 100% accurate retime. Some runners still preferred playing on the standard version,
but the tournament edition would become more and more commonplace moving forward.
Even factoring in Poguin’s improvement to the world record, the Super Mario 63 community still
beat the Red Ball community by over 17% in the competition. Vertic had proved himself capable of
being a top Red Ball runner, but only time would tell if he’d continue to push his personal best.
After Poguin’s 2:44, another world record wasn’t expected to happen any time soon,
and if one was, it would more than likely be by a tiny margin. Yak27 was attempting to reclaim his
record with the same route at Poguin, hoping to gain an edge by nailing PJet. He got a run that
missed the corner boost during bottom route 7, which lost around 1.5 seconds. However,
his levels 8-10 were optimal, and he had the ability to close the gap in 11.
Yak27 beat the world record by just 6 frames. Though he was now back on top,
he wanted to push the record further, as did the man that he just bested. Poguin and Yak both knew
that the current route could get a 2:42, but they both decided to implement Mug 7, pushing that
potential even lower. In August, they were still far ahead of everyone else on the leaderboard,
and the record was ready to fall at any moment. On August 15th, Yak had a run that missed resetless
4, meaning that he had to wait to get the death warp on the back of the axe. He nailed Mug 7,
but he unfortunately didn’t press left for long enough before the super bounce, causing him to
bonk the red wall. These two mistakes combined lost around 2.5 seconds, but since he had messed
up a slower level 7 strategy in his world record, it was a bit of a wash. He took the lead after
nailing a new strategy called Carline in level 8. With a frame perfect left to right switch at
the start of the level and a jump on the ramp in a two frame window, Red Ball gets enough
height to clear this barrier without slowing down, saving almost a second. He extended his
lead after getting a near perfect plunger jump, and a perfect PJet put him on pace for a 2:43.
That accidental corner jump in level 12 cost him the 2:43, but LiveSplit showed a new world
record by 0.09 seconds. However, upon frame counting, the real time of the run was revealed
to be 2:44.258: just a single frame faster. A week later, Poguin had a run that got Star 6
on the second try and nailed all the other setups. However, since his hood launch and plunger were
a bit less than optimal, the run clocked in at 2:44.065, another 6 frame improvement. So,
despite three new world records being set in the past month, the time only dropped by 13 frames,
or 0.419 seconds. It truly seemed like the game was running into a wall in terms of optimization,
and hope of another sizable record ever being set was dwindling by the day. Yes, an optimal
run with Poguin and Yak’s route could certainly get a 2:41, but it seemed like the road to get
there would be extremely long. However, that’s not the path that the record history ended up taking.
Well, that’s more like it. In one run, Yak27 improved the world record by six times what
the previous three records had combined. He nailed 2 corner jump, resetless 4, Star 6,
Mug 7, resetless 10, and PJet 11 first try. He did omit Carline this time around,
but he added in Cookie 3, which saves around a third of a second over Bird 3.
His hood launch and plunger weren’t perfect, but he still achieved a run that was near the
limit for this route. The implementation of another strategy or two is likely all that
a sub 2:40 would need. He included a bold prediction in the description of the run:
“3x will happen in 2022!”. With only 4 months left in the year, it would almost certainly be himself
or Poguin claiming this final milestone should his prediction become a reality. Well, not so fast.
By the time Yak set his 2:41, Vertic had shot up to 3rd place on the leaderboard with a 2:44.613,
placing the top 3 in a dead heat. After Yak demolished the record, Vertic knew that he
had to implement more strategies to increase his odds of breaking the record and possibly setting
the first sub 2:40. He added Mug 7 to match Yak’s route, and he brought Carline 8 back in from the
sidelines. He also incorporated a setup in level 12 that NotVeryGood used in a TAS back in July
of 2022. With a frame perfect jump release at the start and a frame perfect jump on the pillar,
Red Ball can bounce in the spike pit without dying. By jumping after the recoil,
Red Ball will avoid bonking into this ceiling, saving around half a second. Furthermore,
by frame perfectly jumping out of the tunnel, Red Ball will be set up for a corner jump off
this stair, saving another full second. This strategy was the final piece in the puzzle
of a viable 2:3x route, and since it was also the very last thing that had to be performed,
it was aptly named 3x choker. Vertic was the most prepared out of anyone to shatter the game’s
final 10 second barrier, and just a week after setting his 2:44, he had his first opportunity.
Going into level 11, he was only one and a half seconds behind his sum of best of 2:37.95. With
PJet and 3x choker, this could easily be the one. Let’s see what Vertic made of it.
By releasing jump a frame early at the start, Vertic ended up dying in the spike pit, choking
3x choker. He also flubbed his second attempt, requiring him to implement a frame-dependent
backup to still get the corner jump on the stairs. Despite the heartbreaking failure, the run still
had significant context in the overall quest for perfection with Red Ball speedruns. Never
in the game’s history had a top-level runner been able to play the first 11 levels of the
game anywhere close to within 1.5 seconds of their theoretical cap. In fact, rare.eg’s 3:07,
a run that was hailed as essentially being perfect for the strategies used, was still the closest
a world record had ever gotten to the runner’s sum of best, over 3 seconds away. At this point,
every single level in the game involved a frame-dependent strategy except for 1, 5, and
9. And, since level 1 just involves a single jump over this barrier, and level 5 just requires a
jump up this slope and then to the flag, the only level that fully relied on non-fixed movement was
level 9. While it had taken a while for runners to master this new era of Red Ball speedrunning,
it finally seemed like the end game had arrived. If you wanted to set a top level time,
you simply selected a frame-dependent setup for each level, added the times that they yielded,
left a second or two of wiggle room for the bits that were still variable,
and that is the time that you could expect to get. All that it came down to was whether
you hit all of the frame perfects or not, of which, the sub 2:40 route had roughly 23. And,
on the subject of frame perfect counts, every single time that I mention them,
I get plenty of people commenting the exact same thing. “Are you serious? Geometry Dash has levels
with over a hundred frame perfects. Hitting 23 is so easy!” Alright, alright, geez dude calm down.
Give me a few minutes to explain why analyzing the difficulty of frame perfects isn’t that simple.
Red Ball is a 31FPS game, meaning that each frame should last for about 32 milliseconds. In theory,
hitting 23 frame perfect inputs in a row with that window shouldn’t be too bad. In fact,
here’s a video of me hitting 23 “frame perfects” in a row on my first try!
Yeah, every input may have had equal spacing with a distinct visual cue,
but that was still 23 inputs, each with a 32 millisecond window. Now, here’s me hitting
200 “frame perfects” in a row… so I guess I must be ready to beat Tidal Wave! Alright,
so the context behind frame perfect inputs clearly matters when determining how difficult they are,
so let me break down the factors that make frame perfect inputs in
Red Ball much different from other games. First of all, Red Ball has four buttons to
keep track of, while the examples that I have shown thus far only require one. The
more inputs that you have to keep track of, the harder your job is going to be.
Next up, you have the impact of rhythm. Generally, the more rhythm-based the inputs are, the
easier they are to perform. Even complex “click patterns,” as they are called in Geometry Dash,
can produce a distinct rhythm that can become more and more refined through practice. With many of
the setups in Red Ball, the frame perfect inputs can take place seconds apart from
each other, yielding no such pattern. Rhythm is also related to the audio and
visual cues that the game provides. For my a dance of fire and ice demonstration, I just had to hit
a button with the consistent beat of a metronome… it doesn’t get any easier than that. Even without
audio, there is a very distinct visual cue to look out for, the ball overlapping the path. With the
balls moving extremely fast, this only happens for a brief moment in time. Compare that to the
first right press in PJet 11. This is the frame before, this is the frame that you need to hit it,
and this is the frame after. There is almost no distinction. Even with Geometry Dash,
the visual change over the same time frame is often immense in comparison.
Regardless, the best proof that “frame perfect” counts aren’t a universal measure of difficulty
comes from the results of people who have actually played multiple frame-dependent games at a high
level. Thankfully, we have a great example of this, since one of the world’s best Geometry Dash
players, Trick, managed to get a mid 4:56 in Super Mario Bros., a feat which requires roughly 20
frame perfects at 60FPS. On paper, this is so much easier than his completion of Tidal Wave that he
should have been able to just boot up the game and get it on like his 10th try or something. But no,
it actually took him weeks of practice and dozens of hours of attempts to pull off. Don’t
get me wrong, achieving a mid 4:56 that fast is still extremely impressive and practically
unheard of… but it didn’t happen instantly, like this graph would lead you to believe.
Going even further, there is something baked into Flash Player itself that makes frame perfect
inputs less consistent than they otherwise should be. If you have seen my Red Ball TAS explained
video, then you should be aware that the time that each frame takes up is not the same. The
frame rate that is specified for any Flash game is simply a target that it is trying to hit. In
other words, frames can be shorter or longer than 32 milliseconds, so long as the average framerate
comes out to around 31. On good machines, this error is usually just a few milliseconds or so.
However, upon opening Adobe Scout, an official tool for profiling the performance of Flash
Player, the truth is revealed to be much more severe. On my computer, every 15-16 frames,
Flash throws in a frame that is half the length, compensating for all of the other frames being
a bit longer than they should be. As you can imagine, if you need to perform a frame perfect
input on any of these half frames, you are far more likely to miss it. And, for slower
machines like my laptop, the spikes and dips are even worse. To demonstrate how bad this is,
I will examine the exact input and frame time data when performing Resetless 4 on both my
desktop and my laptop for 5 runs each. You can see that jump must be pressed on frame 149,
released on frame 150, and then pressed again on frame 152. However, if we extend the exact
input timings from the first trial to each of the others, you can see that only 5 of the remaining
9 would have succeeded. Yes, this is a small sample size, but the overall lesson here is
that a certain level of randomness is involved with almost every single frame perfect input
in Red Ball. We will discuss how this impacts the human limit of the game later in the video,
but just know for now that any frame perfect count that I list in this video is not directly
comparable to other games. Now, with that out of the way, let’s merge back on the road to 2:3x.
Though Vertic was still quite a bit behind Yak, his 2:43 proved that he was likely the
favorite to be the first to get a sub 2:40. He just needed to get that pace again and
then hit 3x choker. How hard could it possibly be? Well, the very same day,
he got a run that missed the first frame perfect of Cookie 3, so he reset the level to get it on
his second try. Similarly, he messed up the left right switch at the start of Carline 8 and had to
quickly reset to fix it. Another second lost to his sum of best. Even though 3x was dead,
he still continued the run since the world record was barely within his grasp. Plunger?
Check. Resetless 10? Check. PJet? Check. All he needed was 3x choker, and the record would be his…
Well, he messed up the start, but he nailed the backup to still get the
corner jump off the stairs. Still, he found himself 4 frames off the record.
At this point, the only people who had ever gotten a sub 2:50 were Yak, Poguin, Vertic, Mukmuk,
and Caramel. Though there was obviously a clear time gap between the top 3 and everyone else,
Mukmuk wasn’t as active as he used to be, and Caramel had long since left the game behind.
There were just three guys that had a chance of breaking that milestone, and it seemed pretty set
in stone that no one else would get to their level before the glass was finally shattered. However,
that certainty was eroded the very next day, as another sub 2:50 came from an unlikely source…
To explain why on earth Niftski, the greatest Super Mario Bros. speedrunner to ever live,
set a 4th place run in Red Ball out of seemingly nowhere, let’s wind the clock back to January
2021, when the rise of Red Ball began. As thousands of speedrunners flooded to the Red
Ball community, largely as a result of my videos being thrust into the good graces of the YouTube
algorithm, Niftski was one of the runners who decided to give the game a shot. On January 19th,
he followed the beginner speedrun tutorial that I had created to get a sub 4-minute time on his
first day. This eventually led to many other Super Mario Bros. speedrunners trying the game out,
including AldynSpeedruns, JeremyMKW, Saywer0622, Hitzcritz, and more. Miniland,
who had the world record in Super Mario Bros. at the time, even popped into the
Red Ball Discord for a little while, though he wasn’t interested in playing the game.
Red Ball had so many new players that, near the start of February, it had over double Super Mario
Bros.’ active player count on speedrun.com. While the two games were very different in their design,
one was a physics sandbox while the other was a fixed-speed platformer, they were similar in
the fact that they were short, easy-to-pick-up speedgames with no RNG. Well, aside from spike
glitch, since this was the pre-deterministic patch era. Niftski was obviously capable of
getting much more than a 3:53, and on February 18th, he improved his PB to a 3:27. For the
next two months, he put his full focus towards grinding Super Mario Bros., culminating with
him setting the first 4:54, shattering the game’s final second barrier. He eventually found his way
back to Red Ball, and in June of 2021, he hit the infamous sub 20 train strategy for the first time,
using the newly found PBird setup. Four months later, he managed to set a 3:17.065,
a good time that would have flown largely under the radar… had it not been for him hitting sub 20
train in the run. This actually set the record for the slowest personal best with a first try sub 20
train. Surprisingly, it wasn’t until June 20th, 2022 that he came back again, setting a 3:11.645
and a 3:05.968 on the same day. The keen eyed among you may have noticed that, despite one and
a half years passing, Niftski’s attempt counter sat at just 544. Niftski found massive success by
practicing way more than doing attempts, the same approach that he took to Super Mario Bros. As a
hint to any up and coming speedrunners out there, in platformer games without RNG, this is always
a winning strategy. Niftski’s approach would continue to pay dividends, as that same night…
Niftski got a sub 3 in just 602 attempts, clutching it out with a gold level 11
and a gold level 12. This was the record for the least attempts to get a sub 3 until Vertic
did it in 391 a week later during the SM63 crossover event. In the span of just 8 hours,
Niftski pushed his personal best from a 3:17 to a 2:59, something that was completely unheard
of and almost unimaginable until he somehow made it happen. As you heard from that popoff,
Niftski genuinely thought that he was never going to touch the game again,
but Red Ball has a unique ability to drag people back in.
In late August, Niftski got a sudden spike in motivation to go for sub 2:50. On August 30th,
he jumped all the way down to a 2:52.903.
Indeed, PJet and a better level 12 is all that he needed for the 4x. Two days later, he got this.
Niftski started livestreaming on his alternate account, and 11 attempts later,
he had a run that was a bit behind going into level 12. 3x choker could
have granted him another PB, but he didn’t know it or the backup…
A week later, he was easily on 4x pace going into level 11, and he opted to do PBird
instead of PJet since he thought that he had enough wiggle room. However, he forgot that he
had done the setupless stair jump in his personal best, and he ended up coming up just short. But,
as you saw earlier, he managed to get the 2:47.871 later that same day. With how fast
Niftski had been able to improve each time that he returned to the game, it truly seemed
like he may position himself as a 3x contender. However, he again stated at the end of the run…
Whether he was being truthful this time had yet to be seen. Still, Niftski’s emphatic return to the
game had finally motivated another high-profile mario speedrunner to give the game a shot.
On September 19th, Miniland managed to get a sub 3 in just 185 attempts, demolishing
Vertic’s record. Believe it or not, it only took him 17 attempts to get to level 11 on sub
3 pace for the first time. Again, an experienced mario 1 speedrunner had found enormous success by
applying a practice-heavy approach to Red Ball speedruns. And by heavy, I mean that Miniland
spent an entire week practicing the game before doing any attempts. Miniland estimates that his
ratio of time spent practicing versus doing runs ended up being around 90 to 10. However,
it wasn’t just the sheer amount of time spent practicing that brought him success. What you
practice and how you practice it is even more important. Miniland made sure to laser
in on the most difficult pieces of the run, namely Cookie 3, Resetless 4, 8 Cycle Skip,
and PBird, utilizing savestates, the frame offset display, and the heads-up display mod to make his
practice as efficient and effective as possible. In the description of his run, Miniland stated,
“I will be going for a time in the 2 minute 40 second range, which would place me comfortably in
the top 10, and who knows what will happen after that.” At this point, Red Ball speedrunning seemed
like it had all the momentum in the world, with multiple people actively gunning for the game’s
most formidable milestone. Given all the hype, the community felt like it was a great time to
organize a special event to showcase everyone’s talent. Welcome to Red Ball: Break the Record.
On October 1st and 2nd, the Red Ball Community ran an event that featured several top runners
aiming to beat the 12 Levels world record. The talent included TheEgglet, Pearce, NorXor, Sprong,
Mukmuk, Poguin, Yak, and, of course, Vertic. For 8 hours each day, the runners could put up as many
attempts as they wanted, with the goal of setting the best time possible. The 4 players with the
best runs during the event would get a portion of the prize pool, with $100 reserved for anyone who
set the first 2:3x during the stream. This kind of event is exactly what the Tournament Edition
of the game was made for. The built in timer avoids having to retime runs, and the date display
ensures that nobody is streaming pre recorded attempts. While the event was a success, it's hard
to say much about it, since only a small amount of video has survived. The most notable thing
that happened was Vertic getting a world record paced run into level 12 that ended as a 2:42.129,
just short again. Soon after, he managed to set a 2:43.774, which he evidently wasn’t very happy
about. Still, he ended up finishing first place in the event by a mile, clearly cementing himself
as the frontrunner to set the first sub 2:40. Off the heels of this successful and entertaining
showcase, I started planning another Red Ball: Break the Record that would feature a larger
prize pool, more runners and commentators, and a more professional broadcast. While the event
was set to be much shorter, just 5 hours instead of 16, the greater presence of hype and talent
meant that a new world record could easily be set. Well, on the very first run of the event…
Vertic got a 2:55 on demand, and Pearce also managed to get a sub 3. Viewers were
certainly in for a treat, and it didn’t take long for Vertic to move the goalposts further.
Around the two hour mark, the top of the event leaderboard was starting to get a
bit crowded. However, when Vertic got an opportunity to pull away…
After being the only person to set a sub 2:50 in the first Break the Record,
Vertic became the first to do it here, a time that likely could have won him the event. However,
there was still three hours left for runs, and his aspirations were much
larger than a 1st place spot. Here’s a run that he got less than an hour later.
The man had a 3x paced run past the large spikes in level 11, but he didn’t get the corner boost.
He didn’t quite nail the starting inputs for 3x choker, and he just took the ending safe
instead of resetting at the checkpoint flag to attempt the backup. 2:43.516. This is the best
run that anyone ended up getting during the event, meaning that Vertic was in first place
for the entire thing. Sprong ended up being the only other runner to even get a sub 2:50,
further cementing Vertic’s perceived dominance over the category, despite him still not having
the world record. Well, the next weekend, he had an excellent opportunity to fix that.
The strategy you just saw is known as 9x3, a 4 frame perfect setup to jump off the plunger
a whole cycle early. Since he got the Star 6 inputs on his second try, Vertic needed that
to stay on 3x pace. Let’s watch the rest.
The ending of PJet trolled him yet again, but he still clutched 3x choker to claim a new world record of 2:40.355.
Now, it may look like Vertic was pretty far away from collecting the flag before it went underground,
but Red Ball’s hitbox is often larger than it should be due to a certain box-in-box
phenomenon. By replaying his inputs as a TAS, we find that, on this frame, Vertic was 0.0017 units
away from contacting the flag. We can convert this value to find that the gap which separated Vertic
from Red Ball glory was around a seventh of a pixel at 1080p. This man could not catch a break.
Still, Vertic continued streaming attempts for the rest of October and all through November,
but he couldn’t quite close anything out. He even had another run make it to level
12 on 3x pace that missed 3x choker. It wasn’t until December that the top of the leaderboard
saw any kind of movement. You’d probably expect Yak or Poguin to be the one to finally shake up
the race to 3x, but that momentum ended up coming from a very unlikely source.
Remember when Miniland said that he would go for a sub 2:50 at some point in the
description of his sub 3? Well, he ended up achieving that goal just 8 days later.
Indeed, this 2:46.645 launched him to 4th place, just ahead of Niftski. The run was nearly flawless
for the route he was going for, which included a train strategy that saved half a second over
PJet. On paper, this strategy was more difficult, since it had 5 frame perfects instead of 4, but
for whatever reason, Miniland and Niftski found it to be a good bit easier. Since the Super Mario
Bros. speedrunners had found more success with it compared to everyone else, it was coined SMB11.
Miniland stated that he could comfortably quit the game after this run and still be satisfied,
but we all know how that usually ends up going. Towards the end of November,
Miniland had a sudden burst in motivation to hunt for the first sub 2:40. He spent some
time learning and practicing strategies from Vertic’s 3x route, including Mug 7,
Carline 8, and 3x choker. However, he decided to switch out Cookie 3 with a setup for TAZ 3,
adding 2 frame perfects to save 0.8 seconds. TAZ 3 involves getting a boost off the platform itself
instead of from the back corner, something which is extremely precise and almost impossible to do
without a frame-dependent setup. It actually has a rich history dating back to early 2021,
with InsaneJetman having made a 20 minute long video documenting the strategy’s discovery by
BirdBanana and his own attempts to replicate it in real time without a frame-dependent
setup. With the extra wiggle room that TAZ 3 provided, Miniland also subbed out 9x3
for an easier strategy called EasyJet 9, which avoids the plunger entirely and loses around a
second. With his new route prepared, Miniland was ready for runs, and on November 30th,
he got a 2:43.645, moving him to 3rd place ahead of Poguin. And then, on December 4th…
The race to 3x had suddenly turned into a dead heat between Vertic and Miniland. The only reason
that this run wasn’t a 3x is because Miniland messed up resetless 4, losing around 2 seconds.
Miniland was rapidly improving, and a sub 2:40 was likely to be his in a matter of days. If
Vertic wanted to be the first, he had to act now. After spending several months just barely coming
up short, it was time for him to show off his full potential. Let’s see what happened the next day.
Well, that missed cycle skip and bad hood launch in 8 was practically a
death sentence. Even a perfect ending with 9x3, Resetless 10, PJet 11, and 3x Choker
wouldn’t be enough for the sub 2:40. That is, unless he had a trick up his sleeve.
When it mattered most, Vertic clutched up. The man pulled out a strategy that seemed
forbidden for us normal speedrunners to use, and it saved his run. I guess his experience
with Super Mario 63 really did pay off. The accomplishment brought much celebration, and
Yak’s prediction that a sub 2:40 would happen in 2022 had become a reality. And, as it turned out,
another monumental moment for the Red Ball Community was just around the corner.
So yeah, the day after Red Ball’s last 10 second barrier was finally shattered,
I hit 100,000 subscribers on YouTube! I was able to celebrate the occasion with dozens
of others on Red Ball Online, a multiplayer mod of the game that was created by smartcube, Sage,
and ImPurpl3. Fittingly, I hit 100k just as I finished Train, the level that was responsible
for the video that thrust my channel into the spotlight back in 2021. I spent most of the stream
running simultaneous races with everyone for fun, and included in that swarm of balls was Niftski,
who hadn’t done attempts for a few months. However, for the past week, he had put in some
practice with the newer strategies, namely TAZ 3, EasyJet9, SMB11, and 3x Choker. My celebration
stream was the last bit of motivation that he needed to finally return to doing runs, and he hit
the ground running right after the stream ended. And, just 30 minutes into his attempt session…
This dude is a machine. Yeah, he took quick resets for TAZ 3 and Star 6,
he had a less than optimal hood launch in level 8, and he hit the backup for 3x choker,
but everything else was flawless. This was a good first step towards a sub 2:40,
but he still had a long grind ahead of him if he chose to take that path. I mean,
he was still in 5th place after all. Niftski could have easily called it a night here, but,
for whatever reason, he decided to keep going. And, it’s certainly a good thing that he did.
Alright, so remember earlier when I said that it was “almost unimaginable” that Niftski had
improved his PB from a 3:17 to a 2:59 in a span of just 8 hours? That doesn’t even
hold a candle to the miracle that he pulled off during this attempt session. He demolished the
world record by over two seconds, leaping all the way from 5th place to 1st. He had
improved his PB by over 10 seconds in a span of less than 2 and a half hours. The cherry on top
is that he could have still gotten the record without 3x Choker, but he went for it anyways,
making it the largest world record jump since Poguin’s 2:44.484. It’s no wonder
that Niftski cited this run as possibly being the biggest fluke in his speedrunning career.
This was the first time in Red Ball’s speedrunning history that someone had made it to the precipice
of full-game perfection. Aside from getting an even better hood launch than the already excellent
one that Niftski got, you could not improve this run without incorporating harder setups into the
route. The good news is that there were still a few more strategies on the sidelines waiting to
be thrown in. We had already seen Carline 8 and 9x3 used in previous world records,
leaving at least a second and a half of time save on the table. However, that just wasn’t enough to
compel people to keep going for the record, and incorporating both setups would come at the cost
of 6 frame perfects. Red Ball desperately needed another strategy to push its human ceiling a bit
higher and give any record-hopeful runners enough wiggle room to justify going for it. Thankfully,
on December 19th, that need was filled, as Carline 8 would become supercharged.
With 3 frame perfect one-frame-long jumps, Red Ball could get an insane launch off
the tip of the car. However, unlike most frame dependent strategies in the game,
all 3 of these inputs had pretty distinct visual cues, and if you missed any one of them,
you could usually still get a decent hood launch and continue your run. Miniland immediately took
notice of the strategy, and he started getting the hang of it pretty quick. Funnily enough,
he began drawing some similarities between this setup and a strategy known as pl8-1 in Super
Mario Bros. It had a similar position in the run, and the left to left to right inputs at the start
of the level were somewhat similar to the perfect fast acceleration that pl8-1 required. Miniland
suggested that the strategy be called pl8-8 as a result, and it instantly stuck. (in a plate?).
Miniland titled his first perfect pl8-8 “a sneak peek of the next red ball wr,” indicating that
he had clear intentions of claiming it with this strategy. That very same day, he had a run that
got the Carline portion of pl8-8 but failed the ending, still placing him ahead of the record.
He extended his lead to 1.1 seconds by nailing 9x3. He got resetless 10 but had a slow ending,
shrinking the lead to .2. Still, he had just gotten the best ever exits out of levels 8,
9, and 10, and he readied himself for SMB11.
So… Miniland clearly pressed the up button, as indicated by his input display,
but Red Ball just didn’t jump. Unfortunately, most flash games, including Red Ball,
poll inputs in a flawed manner that makes this possible to happen. If an input is
pressed and released within the span of the same frame, the game won’t register the input at all.
This jump in SMB11 must be a single frame long, so Miniland is aiming to press the button for around
32ms to give him the best chance of having his input pulled just a single time. However, this
is extremely difficult to do, and even if you were a robot that could press a button for 32ms every
single time, it still wouldn’t be 100% consistent. Because of all the frame time shenanigans that I
mentioned earlier, a perfect 32ms input still has a chance of being pulled for 0 frames or 2 frames.
The same day, he got a run that hit all the frame perfects in pl8-8 except for the last, placing him
a second ahead of the record. Again, he had the fastest ever exit from level 8 but failed 9x3.
The next day, he finally managed to hit all of pl8-8 in a run, but 9x3 eluded him yet again.
For the rest of December, Miniland kept pouring in attempts, steadily
making progress towards the record. And, on the 28th, he had another opportunity at level 11.
Miniland had a 3x choker attempt that looked almost exactly like the real thing, but sadly,
it was a counterfeit. After some investigating, he found that this can only happen if the jump
off the pillar is a single frame long, so he made sure to always do a 2 or 3-framer in the future.
Miniland continued to post steady progress through February of the next year, even streaming on
Niftski’s alternate Twitch account a few times. While he had achieved various best exit records,
he still hadn’t closed out a sub 2:40. He was overdue for a massive pb, and he got confident
enough to stream 2:35 attempts to his main Twitch account. 2:35 was the upper limit of the route
he was going for, which, I’ll remind you, was Niftski’s 2:37 route with 9 more frame perfects
added from pl8-8 and 9x3. It was incredibly unlikely that Miniland would be able to jump
straight to a time like that, but he was certainly capable of achieving it a few personal bests down
the road. Well, on his 3rd main channel stream, he finally got his first sub 2:40.
The man skipped straight to the 2:35, getting it by a single frame. A quick reset at the start of
8 to retry the left-right inputs was the only mistake in the entire run. 2 corner jump,
TAZ 3, Resetless 4, Star 6, Mug 7, pl8–8, 9x3, Resetless 10, SMB 11, and 3x Choker.
It all came together. Funnily enough, the top of the Red Ball leaderboard was now… almost
identical to the top of the Super Mario Bros. leaderboard. Their hostile takeover was now
complete. With the reservoir of RTA viable setups having finally dried up, Miniland’s record stood,
and stood, and stood. Eventually, it became the first world record since Flower’s 4:04 back in
2016 to stand for over a year. Vertic continued doing attempts from time to time, eventually
getting a 2:37 and some 17 Levels records, but the top two spots on the 12 Levels leaderboard
still eluded him. Though top-level play was expected to remain stagnant for even longer,
as I have said many times in this video, Red Ball has a unique ability to draw people back to the
game, even those who have claimed to be completely done with it. A small spark is often all it takes
to reignite that passion, and for me, creating the 3-minute milestone video was exactly that.
For almost a month, I had been practicing the game in secret, equipping myself with the tools
that I needed to contest for the record. I kept track of my consistency with each strategy on a
spreadsheet, which highlighted my weak spots and estimated how many attempts it would take
me to beat the record. The only difference between my route and Miniland’s was RBZ9,
a new setup for level 9 that was a good bit easier than 9x3 without losing any time. I had done a
handful of attempts offline as a sanity check, and I ended up getting an optimal 1-6 and 1-7 pretty
quickly. I didn’t want to place too much pressure on myself until I was truly ready to dive in,
so the only person that I kept in the know about what I was up to was Niftski. At this point,
the two of us had become close friends, and I started motivating him to return to the game as
well during my preparation. And, on March 30th, he sent me the exact message that I’d been hoping
for. We agreed that some friendly competition would be a great way to motivate each other,
and I finally made my announcement. The race to world record was officially on.
With my personal best still being the famous 2:55, I had a lot of catching up to do. On day
3 of attempts, I got my first sub 2:50.
Though I had beaten my PB by 6 seconds,
the pop off was almost non-existent because I was still so far off of my goal. As I got
distracted by school, my grind started tapering off, while Niftski went full steam ahead. Though
our routes were almost identical, he included some additional frame perfects at the end of levels 7
and 10 that saved around half a second combined, giving himself 2:34 potential. Since he also went
for optimal jumps in levels 1 and 5 as well, this meant that every single piece of his route was
entirely frame dependent except for the plunger jump in level 9. Aside from any quick resets,
it was essentially all or nothing. On April 8th, he had a run with a second try left right switch
in level 8, matching Miniland in that regard. His additional optimizations meant that he was still
on record pace, but after nailing the first jump of resetless 10… he somehow missed the
pillar. This came as no fault of his own; he buffered right through the level transition,
but the game didn’t pick up the input until frame 2, throwing off the setup. This has a chance of
happening whenever the level transition lands on one of those half frames that I
mentioned earlier. Shoutouts again to Flash for being a technological dumpster fire. Despite
having to take a costly reset there, he still finished the run a few frames ahead of his PB.
The next day, he got a run that missed the 4th frame perfect in pl8-8, causing a 1.3 second
time loss. After a perfect levels 9, 10, and 11, he barely messed up the start of 3x Choker and had
to hit the backup.
Since this was another small PB, he was able to keep his composure and lock
in on 17 levels. At this point, the world record in that category was a 4:04, exceptionally close
to that 4 minute milestone. This was the final minute barrier that the game had to offer, and
since Niftski’s level 12 split was over 7 seconds ahead of the record, he was easily on pace for it.
The missed jump from the moving platform in level 13 killed the sub 4,
but he still set a new 17 Levels world record of 4:01.387. Knowing that a 12 Levels world record
could happen any run now, he began streaming attempts to his main Twitch account the next
day. While Niftski demonstrated incredible consistency on his first and second streams,
he wasn’t quite able to put together the run that he was looking for. However,
perfection can only elude this man for so long. Here’s what happened on day 3.
While Niftski’s 2:37.710 had come extremely close to perfection for that route, this masterpiece was
the real deal. You could not beat this run by more than a few frames without faster setups.
Niftski got the fastest ever exit from level 8, and he never looked back. This route had
over 35 frame perfects, and he hit every single one first try. The quest to perfect a full-game
route developed from the TAS hack had concluded. Knowing that it was impossible for me to beat this
run with my current strategies, I threw in the towel on the most lopsided world record battle
in Red Ball history. Though this run could have easily demolished the 17 levels record,
he understandably struggled to keep his composure through that pop off. There’s
a reason that the last time that someone got both records in the same run was Jonas’
back in 2021. Niftski had no interest in running 17 levels
on its own, meaning that the door to claim the first sub 4 was still wide open. So, that’s the
goal that I shifted my gears towards. On the road there, I got my first 3x in 12 levels, I scored
3rd place with a 2:36, I set the 17 levels record with a 4 flat, and I choked a sub 4 to the final
frame-dependent input in the run. On May 5th, the legend rare.eg had tuned into my stream for the
first time since my return to the game. Fittingly, four runs later, I got my consolation prize.
While my story had certainly found a happy ending, Vertic had yet to find his. The game had cheated
him time and time again, but he was persistent, still pouring in runs whenever he had the time. At
this point, all he wanted was to beat Miniland’s time in 12 levels, a goal that had eluded him
almost a year and a half. Well, on July 29th…
That’s not quite what he was after, but beating
my 17 levels PB by a single frame was certainly welcome. Now, here’s what happened on August 6th.
A sizable 17 levels record… this man was on a roll. He just needed to translate
that success to the first 12 levels as well. Thankfully, the very next day…
He achieved his goal by a single frame. After a year and a half of just barely coming up short,
Vertic was completely overcome with emotion. His
journey was over. Vertic was finally free from Red Ball.
And, that leaves Niftski’s 2:34.613 in 12 Levels and Vertic’s 3:57.452 in 17 Levels as the current
world records in the game. It took over 4 hours of scripted commentary to get here, but we have
finally arrived at where the game may remain for a good while. However, that doesn’t mean that this
is the end of Red Ball’s story. Though sub 2:40 was widely believed to be the game’s final 10
second barrier for a few years, we have thankfully learned enough about Red Ball to know that there
is still more to be done. Sub 2:30 is possible, and I wholeheartedly believe that an extremely
dedicated speedrunner will accomplish it one day. However, to give you a sense of how far off we
still are, let me show you one of the strategies that you’d need to implement to make it happen.
With 18 frame perfects, you can escape the opening tunnel early and complete the level almost 3
seconds faster than SMB11. The movement at the beginning of the level is so precise that you
have to keep the game at a pixel-precise window size to make it work. What you witnessed there
is just a taste of the mastery that speedrunners have managed to achieve on an individual level
basis. Many other crazy strategies that were once thought to be impossible in a real-time
setting have been pulled off, such as this insane death warp in level 9 that involves inverting the
plunger to get it in just the right position. The sum of every individual level world record,
the combination of thousands of hours of effort, comes out to 2:20.065 for 12 Levels and 3:29.516
for 17 Levels. The Tool-Assisted speedrun clocks in just 13 and 14 frames faster respectively. 12
out of 17 levels in the TAS have been tied to the frame, and there’s a good chance that the
human sum of best will come to match it one day. While the crazy accomplishments people have made
from an individual level standpoint are extremely impressive in their own right, it doesn’t
necessarily translate over to full game success. Attempting a single level of the game tens of
thousands of times is completely different from tackling the whole thing, and there are plenty of
runners that are great at one but not the other. If you look at the 10 best individual level
players and the 10 best full-game players, only 5 make an appearance on both lists. While the human
sum of best certainly proves that the game still has a long theoretical runway, it simultaneously
shows that a sub 2:20 is not possible, at least using the versions of Flash Player that
we currently have available. Let’s generously assume that Flash’s inconsistent frame times
result in 5% of otherwise successful frame perfect inputs failing. To get a sub 2:20, you need to hit
over 190 in a row. Even if all of those inputs would have worked given consistent frame times,
you’d only have a 0.006% chance of them all succeeding. Thankfully, some recent developments
have helped improve consistency and level the playing field. Firstly, I discovered that the
minimum keypress length of certain keyboards could be modified. You see, all keyboards have
a built-in debounce time to ensure that single keypresses aren’t registered as multiple,
usually defaulting to 5ms. By changing it to Red Ball’s median frame time, 33ms, it makes 1 frame
inputs a lot more consistent. Then, a few months ago, I confirmed that some older Flash player
versions yield more consistent frame times in the Red Ball games compared to newer ones, especially
on slower machines. I spent days tracking down the optimal version, which came in the form of
an ancient internet plugin, and then developed my own program to use it without having to boot
up Internet Explorer. As a bonus, I was able to add custom features that the stock Flash Player
lacked, making it a win-win. Finally, we’ve also found a way to prevent 2nd frame accelerations,
which have killed many world record paced runs, from ever happening again by shortening the key
repeat delay below the normal range in Windows. These recent developments have been beneficial to
Red Ball and the flash game speedrunning scene as a whole. We can only hope that, one day,
we will have a way to play a 15-year-old, 600kb game without performance issues to
push its potential as low as possible. But, for now, this is where our story ends. From
casual playthroughs, to initial optimization, to movement mastery, to the quest for sub 3,
to the entrance of frame-dependent setups, and finally, the quest for perfection,
this game has certainly been through a lot. Of all the tens of thousands of Flash games that
made their way to the internet, who could’ve known that this is the one that would arguably hit it
the biggest from a modern speedrunning standpoint. Let’s just hope that there is still more history
yet to be written. Thanks for following the complete story of Red Ball speedruns.