---
title: '4-2: The History of Super Mario Bros.'' Most Infamous Level'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=i1AHCaokqhg'
video_id: 'i1AHCaokqhg'
date: 2026-08-04
duration_sec: 1229
---

# 4-2: The History of Super Mario Bros.' Most Infamous Level

> Source: [4-2: The History of Super Mario Bros.' Most Infamous Level](https://youtube.com/watch?v=i1AHCaokqhg)

## Summary

This video explores the history of speedrunning Super Mario Bros.'s level 4-2, detailing the evolution of techniques used to complete it as fast as possible. From early glitchless runs to the discovery of frame rules and advanced tricks like the backwards bump and wall clip, the video highlights the dedication and innovation of the speedrunning community over 14 years.

### Key Points

- **Introduction to 4-2** [00:03] — Level 4-2 is a pivotal stage in Super Mario Bros. speedruns, serving as a gateway to world 8. It features a warp zone accessible via a vine, and has caused significant pain for speedrunners due to its precision requirements.
- **Early Speedruns** [01:15] — In the mid-2000s, pioneers like Scott Kesler and Trevor Sean established the basic route: run through the level, climb the vine, and warp to world 8. They focused on optimizing the climb and the initial jump sequence.
- **Exit Zones and Screen Scrolling** [03:30] — The game can only load one exit zone at a time, and the destination changes based on screen scroll position. This mechanic is key to the wrong warp trick, where Mario enters a pipe while the warp zone is still loaded, sending him to the warp zone instead of the underground coin cache.
- **Tool-Assisted Speedruns** [05:30] — Tool-assisted speedruns (TAS) in 2004 demonstrated techniques like wall clipping to push Mario forward 20 pixels, enabling the wrong warp. However, these were initially considered impossible for humans to replicate.
- **Andrew G's Breakthrough** [07:17] — In 2007, Andrew G ignored glitchless rules and developed the backwards bump method, which uses three backwards jumps to gain 21-30 pixels, allowing the wrong warp. This became the standard for years.
- **Frame Rules Explained** [10:33] — Super Mario Bros. only checks level completion every 21 frames, meaning time is gained or lost in increments of 21 frames. This is crucial for understanding why saving a frame rule is so important.
- **Fast 4-2: The Two-Bump Method** [11:59] — The two-bump method, or fast 4-2, requires getting exactly 20 pixels from two bumps to land on the first pixel of the pipe. It saves a frame rule but is extremely difficult and luck-dependent, with a success rate of about 1 in 4 for the pixel gain alone.
- **The Search for Consistency** [14:35] — By 2016, runners sought a more consistent method. Andrew G revisited the wall clip, which became humanly possible in 2017, but it was still inconsistent for most.
- **The Ultimate Method** [18:01] — In 2017, XX420 Blazit XXX discovered a wall clip at the start of the level that works because the sub-pixel values at the start are always the same. This method is fast and consistent, becoming the new standard.

### Conclusion

The history of 4-2 showcases the relentless pursuit of speedrunning optimization, with each new technique building on previous discoveries. The level remains a testament to the community's ingenuity and dedication.

## Transcript

Mario Bros. It doesn't really look that menacing. An area at the start with no floor, sure, and an elevator gap just after. And as soon as you enter 4-2, you're able to exit it. If you hit these blocks to reveal this fine, you can
climb up it and you'll be above ground. And there you can warp to either world 6, 7, or 8. This stage has seemed so pivotal to speedrunners who have been trying to beat Super Mario Bros. as fast as possible for years. It's a gateway to
world 8, arguably the most dangerous part of the game. So, this is a level that's going to make or break your speedrun. But as short and simple as this level may seem, little do most people know that 4-2 has caused more
pain and agony than just about any other level in the game. [Music] Come on, Come on, [Music]
[Music] man. Oh,
welcome to the mid200s. This is when the first Super Mario Bros. speedruns were completed. Runners such as Scott Kesler and Trevor Sean were the pioneers, and they knew that 4-2 is a simple level with a simple goal. run through it,
climb up the vine, and warp to world eight. Doing that quickly wasn't too hard. Doing it as fast as humanly possible, on the other hand, definitely It was obvious to most back then that the start of 4-2 is really
straightforward. You jump across this gap, stomp on a gloomba, and then continue jumping forward until you're on the platform. Then you jump off the platform to hit the block that makes the warp zone vine appear. But this is where
it got really tough. You have to tap left to slow down to nearly a stop and then jump to reveal this invisible block. Then you tap left again just enough to completely stop, landing just to the right of the invisible block you
revealed. Finally, you jump on top of the block, onto the top platform, and onto the vine. Doing this in real time at full speed requires a ton of precision, and it took runners quite a bit of time to get good at it. This is
bit of time to get good at it. This is Scott Kesler's 510 from April 2004. As climbing on the blocks and clipped through the vine by accident when he was trying to climb up onto it. Yeah, the hit detection in Super Mario Bros. is a
little bit weird at times, but runners eventually got better at this section. In Trevor Sean's 507 from a few months later, you can see that he was able to get a smoother climb to the vine, ultimately ending the section with a 376
on the timer, which counts down from 400 when you start the level. And when he improved his run to a 506 a few weeks later, he once again improved 4-2, getting it smoother than ever before with a 377 on the timer. So, all right,
speedrunners had established a way of getting through 4-2 very quickly. And given how short the level was, you might wonder what else could possibly be found for speedrunners to go through the level quicker. After all, you already directly
to the warp zone as fast as you could. But if there's one thing you should never do, it's doubt the ability of speedrunners to figure out something speedrunners to figure out something even faster.
When you're playing through Super Mario Bros., you're occasionally able to leave the screen you're on to enter another screen. Sometimes this other screen is an underground coin cache, sometimes it's a bonus section, and sometimes it's
a warp zone. Every time you can exit the screen you're on to access one of these zones, be it a pipe, a vine, or whatever, I'll be referring to as an whatever, I'll be referring to as an exit zone. Now, 4-2 is a little bit
unique. Almost immediately after beginning the level, it has two of these exit zones back to back. The first one is the vine that you take to the warp few blocks down that takes you to an underground room with coins. But there's
a catch. The game can only have one of these zones loaded at the same time. It here, but if you go down the pipe, you'll go here. So, the way the game works around that is by changing what the one destination is depending on how
far the screen is scrolled. For example, if you're standing here and manage to game will send you to the above ground warp zone. Now, when we move forward closer to the pipe, suddenly the next zone gets loaded. So, if you manage to
activate an exit zone, then you'll go to the underground section. What this means is that if you're somehow able to get into this pipe while the game still has the warp zone loaded as the exit zone destination, the game will send you to
climbing the vine cutscene that it normally does. The only known way to do this is by moving Mario closer to the right side of the screen. The game thinks Mario's farther back than he actually is, so it loads the exit zone
destination from where the screen position is. In this case, it's the warp zone. So players had to figure out how to get Mario closer to the right side of the screen for this trick to work. You couldn't just run forward since whenever
you pass 112 pixels from the left side of the screen, the screen automatically starts scrolling, locking Mario at that 112 pixel position. One of the earliest methods of doing this was worked out in the mid200s by
tool assisted speedrunners. Toolass assisted speedruns are a little They're not performed in real time by a human, but rather somebody goes inside an emulator and manually tells the game which buttons will be pressed on each
frame from start to finish. In 2004, Mana published a tool assisted speedrun that showed Mario clipping into the wall at the start. This pushed Mario forward at the start. This pushed Mario forward exactly 20 pixels. Those 20 pixels were
just enough to stop on the first pixel of the pipe, go down it, and be taken to the warp zone. any farther than the first pixel of the pipe and the screen would have scrolled too far, causing Mario to go into the coin cache. This
wall clip, however, was essentially impossible for a human to ever pull off, which is our main focus of interest here. It required jumping in just the right way at just the right angle and then mashing the jump button in just the
right way once you're in the wall. Nobody thought that these inputs could be done back then. Simply put, this method of moving to the right was completely out of the question for a human. But another method was found also
in 2004. Michael F posted a tool assisted speedrun that confused the game into wrapping Mario to the other side of the screen using the vine. This method saved about 2 seconds over the standard method of climbing the vine, and it was
a humanly possible trick. However, still realtime speedrunners didn't use it. You see, this method of vine warping was considered to be a glitch. And for many years, because of rules from websites like Twin Galaxies, glitches were
discouraged and usually outright banned from humanly played speedruns. So, the speedrunners playing through 4-2 by running through and climbing up the vine. But eventually, one guy had enough. That one guy was Andrew G. While
he had followed the glitchless rule set for many years, by 2007, Andrew decided to ignore it. So, he began to look at the options he had in 4-2. Method one, the block clip method, wasn't humanly possible, so he quickly ruled it out.
Method two, the vine teleporting glitch, did save a couple of seconds, but Andrew wanted something better. 4-2 is such a small stage, though. Was there really anything else he could squeeze out of it? But after a while of searching,
forever change the way speedrunners played 4-2. This was method three, the easiest and fastest humanly possible strategy, the backwards bump method.
Mario cannot naturally move past the 112th pixel from the left side of the Mario Bros. that displays how many pixels you are from the left side in the upper right corner where the time usually is. See, it's locked at 112
pixels. But check this out. If you run right in front of a wall, tap left to turn around, and then jump while brushing up against the top of it, this meaning that Mario has moved forward that many pixels. You usually get Mario
to move forward somewhere between 7 and 10 pixels from doing backwards bumps like this. And once again, you needed to be 20 pixels further to the right for the wrong to work at all. And the more pixels past 20 you were, the more pixels
you had to go down the pipe. If you managed to get Mario to exposition 132, pipe. If you manage to get him to exposition 133, you could go down the first or second pixel, and so on. Since it was very difficult to immediately
stop on the first pixel or the first few pixels, Andrew wanted to give himself some leeway with his pixel gain. So, he elected to do three backwards jumps in order to guarantee somewhere between 21 and 30 pixels of gain, letting him stop
basically anywhere on the pipe that he wanted. The puzzle that Andrew G then had to figure out was where to do these three backwards jumps. Look at how long there's too many different combinations he could try. But some jump locations
involved waiting for piranha plants to move, and some were impossible to get if you did others first. This was the first three bump method used in April 2007.
middle of the pipe and the wrong warp still works. That's because these three bumps were able to push him far past the minimum 20 pixels needed. When he returned to the game a bit more than 3 years later, he had a new route.
Brushing down on this section and then the same two pipe jumps as before. But finally, a year later, in December 2011, Andrew was able to get some help from another guy, Weirwindle 111, to figure
out the ultimate threebump strategy. [Music]
It was able to get him into the pipe at a 375 instead of a 374 and ultimately ended up saving one frame rule over the previous three bump methods. Oh yeah, you might not know what a frame rule is.
rule is. [Music] rule, you can only lose or gain time in increments of 21 frames or seconds in Super Mario Bros. in every level other than 8-4. This is because at
the end of every level, the game only checks for completion every 21 frames instead of every frame. To quote current world record holder Darbian, it's as if at the end of every level, a bus arrives every 21 frames to bring you to the next
level. Even if you miss the bus by just one frame, you still have to wait 20 frames for the next one to arrive. Sometimes though, you'll arrive just before a bus comes, and you'll hardly have to wait at all. Anyway, for years,
this particular three bump method was the fastest method that any runner was attempting to complete 4-2 in a speedrun of Super Mario Bros., but Andrew G did know of one potential faster method. If done correctly, you would go into the
pipe at 376 and save a frame rule over the fastest three bump method. However, at the time, this was by far the hardest and most random method any runner had ever come up with to complete any stage in Super Mario Bros., let alone just
4-2. It would lead to years of resetting speedruns over and over again in 4-2 just to save those.35 seconds. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the two and gentlemen, I present to you the two bump method, better known as fast 4-2.
bump method, better known as fast 4-2. [Music] get Mario to exposition 132 from exposition 112 for the wrong warp to work. Those 20 pixels were possible to obtain from two bumps. Since you get
between seven and 10 pixels from each backwards bump that you do. So if you got 10 pixels from each one, then you could be exactly on exposition 132, stop on the first pixel of the pipe, go down it, and be taken to the warp zone. Doing
save another frame rule over the old three bump method. Andrew figured out greatest chance of getting 10 pixels each were right here. You could sort of control how many pixels you got from each bump, but not reliably. It was so
precise that getting 10 pixels was essentially just luck. On average, you'd get the 20 pixels you needed, maybe one in every four tries. But that was just the beginning. If you happen to make it to exposition 132, you then had to stop
on the first pixel of the pipe and go down it. If you stopped even a pixel too soon, you couldn't go down the pipe. And if you're a pixel too late, you would go down to the coin cache instead of to the warp zone. Believe me when I say that
doing this was ridiculously hard. But doing this combined with needing 10 pixels from each of your two bumps nearly impossible. And to illustrate just how difficult I'm talking about, I'm going to refer to a
video from a guy named Patrick Lemieux. Lemieux took a stream of hundreds of world record attempts from Andrew G and overlaid them on top of each other. overlaid them on top of each other. Like technically could be possible. Like
Like technically could be possible. Like I'm not I'm not usually Whenever an attempt died, Lemieux simply removed that run from the overlay. For Andrew G's were tied with each other to the frame. Those same Andrew G's entered
the frame. Those same Andrew G's entered 4-2 to attempt fast 4-2. But out of all those hundreds, just one made it to the warp zone on fast 4-2 pace.
4-2, Andrew fell silent. The voices of a 100 Andrews that were active just a minute before now didn't say a word. [Music] These fast 4-2 attempts continued for months and eventually years. Andrew G
lost at least 95% of his speedruns that made it to 4-2 because he needed to save a third of a second. Eventually, runners stopped trying for fast 4-2 because other easier time saves were found in other levels. But by 2016, the world
record got back to the point where the fast 4-2 frame rule needed to be saved for a good chance at the world record. But runners hated doing 4-2. It was stupidly hard and largely out of your control. Derbian, Cosmic D12, Andrew G,
none of these guys really wanted to do Fast 4-2 anymore. Was there anything else they could squeeze out of such a small stage? Remember before how I mentioned that Weirwindle 111 helped Andrew discover the best three bump
method to fast forward S2? Well, it turns out back in 2011, Weirwindle also discovered something else. [Music]
Using a task, we window was able to clip partially inside of a block and get pushed forward several pixels. Runners didn't look into this trick anymore back in 2011, however, because it didn't actually push you enough pixels ahead to
actually push you enough pixels ahead to get the 20 pixels needed, only about 17. And the inputs that Weir was doing required pushing left and right on the controller at the same time, which wasn't possible for a human. So, runners
forgot about it for a couple of years. But one day in 2016, Andrew G realized a couple of things. One, you didn't actually need to press left and right at the same time to get this to work. And two, you could just do a bump earlier to
make up for the pixels you're short of 20. If you did all this really quickly, you would potentially have a few more pixels to go down the pipe and still be pixels to go down the pipe and still be taken to the warp zone. Unfortunately,
pixels from this clip while still being fast enough to save the frame rule needed to match fast 4-2. So, Andrew G went back to the drawing board. He remembered the old tool assisted method of clipping into the blocks at the
start. His attempts at this trick from years in the past nearly universally resulted in him not clipping in. And on the extremely rare occasions when he did clip in, it was far too slow to match the fast 4-2 frame rule. But that had
been a long time ago. He had gotten a lot better at the game since then. So he tried this method again one day in early 2017.
Oh my gosh. Wait. [Music] I can't believe this. About 100,000 more times. What in the world?
times. What in the world? [Music] Holy crap. Holy crap. Unbelievably, the once considered impossible task method was now humanly possible. If done correctly,
it could just barely be fast enough to match the fast 4-2 frame rule. And while Andrew G did find some immediate success with this trick, in the long run, his success rate with the trick started to go down. and no other top level runner,
Cosmic T12, Derbian, or some West for instance, was having any notable success with it. So 4-2 still needed some universally agreed upon fastest and best method. The block clip and wall clip methods were just a bit too
inconsistent, and standard fast 4-2 was just ridiculous as well. But then in just ridiculous as well. But then in 2017, the ultimate method for 4-2 was found, and it came from perhaps an unlikely source. This guy's name was
unlikely source. This guy's name was XX420 Blazit XXX. He noticed another old tool assisted method of clipping into the wall a few blocks above the ground. The reason why speedrunners never attempted this was because clipping into
a wall in this way almost entirely depends on what Mario's sub pixel is. Sub pixels are values smaller than the pixel that tell your position on a very precise scale. You cannot normally control what your sub pixels are as they
rapidly change as you play a level. So most people simply ignored this wall clip method, but not 420 Blaze it. He realized that your sub pixel values are always the same when you start a level. And this wall was right at the start of
the level as well. And it turned out the sub pixels you needed to clip into the wall just so happened to be the same that you started the level with. So 420 Blazet ran up to the wall without doing anything else first and jumped into it
while tapping left to clip in. A couple more quick jumps and boom, he was in and pushed forward 20 or more pixels to the right. He usually had a few pixels of leeway to still go down the pipe. And yes, it was fast enough to match fast
forward for D-2. Runners were a little skeptical of this method's viability, but soon runners like Mav 6771 were showing it off in practice with great success. He could get it one in every few attempts, and slowly other world
record contenders began to implement it into their runs. They realized that this was it. A decade and a half of playing 4-2 and this method was able to send them to world 8 in the fastest time with the best consistency. And it was all
the best consistency. And it was all thanks to a guy named 420 Blaze It over the course of 14 years. The amount of work that speedrunners have spent on 4-2 is remarkable. Game developers designed this level over 30 years ago,
and I doubt they could have imagined how many people would tear it apart, to discover every little jump, every possible region that could be exploited to save time. Every few years, something new has been discovered that makes the
stage even faster and more consistent. And I doubt the journey is done quite And I doubt the journey is done quite yet. Thanks for watching.
You guys should come follow me at twitch.tv/summoningsalt. I speedrun stuff there sometimes. Thanks.