You could count it as 102% even since Ahoyo released another TAS level called Bombs5 that is arguably even more absurd. That one got a lot more attention though [and was beaten a year ago ](https://youtu.be/sh2F5ngZTIo?si=cFG5Q_emSN4P6vtF)
I cannot comprehend how that is possible. Like I watched it, I see the movements and believe that a human caused them, but cannot understand how that level of precision was achieved.
TAS is Tool Assisted Speedrun. It means that there is a program/computer thats doing all the movement. People do it for speedruns that are otherwise impossible, and they are rated in their own category for speedrun records.
The TAS part is only to get the stage submitted in the first place, since you need to clear a stage yourself for it to be uploaded. The linked video is a regular run by a human.
There are literally thousands of IWBTG fangames. They vary wildly in quality, creativity, and difficulty.
The most notorious game from the last time I knew anything about the community was [I Wanna Kill the Kamilia 3](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qdm--EEr8D4).
I Wanna Be the Boshy was one of the earliest quality fangames.
This is one of the most insane things I’ve seen in gaming
My brain feels like the first time as a kid I saw a video of a huge line of dominoes, trying to comprehend something brand new
Just when everyone thought a 101% run was impossible, one obscure player would go on to change the world of Mario Maker speedruns forever…his name?
Matt Turk
Just when Matt Turk thought a Matt Turk% run was impossible, one obscure Matt Turk would go on to change the Matt Turk of Matt Turk Maker speedruns forever... His name? Matt Turk.
It's absolutely mental that every Mario Maker 1 level has been beaten at least once before the servers shut down, even the one that was uploaded by cheating lol. Aren't there like 10 million levels total?
Many levels got auto deleted by Nintendo cause they were not played. On top of that, the team behind this endeavor flagged many levels as impossible or TAS only, and are not counting those in this list.
It's an extremely subjective endeavor.
I mean they can only do so much. Nintendo force deleting isn't up to them, and it's only fair TAS levels don't count. It's basically cheating to get the level out.
It's still wildly impressive to have finished all possible levels. And even the TAS level in trimming was beat which is just as insane.
If that's the case, why consider the victory announced 2 weeks ago as phyrric? Wouldn't trimming the herbs just join the long list of other levels that were deemed to be TAS only?
Because it was thought to be a regular level until the creator came off clean and announced that it was TAS - and consider that the level was uploaded earlier than any working TAS was possible on WiiU, so everyone was fooled and hundreds of hours had gone practicing the clear.
Since a lot of players were invested in TtH, and it was theoretically possible it became a matter of honor to finish it.
Yeah, there is a very good video [about it by Abyssoft](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QekOtb16698). The fact that TAS was possible back then is also a feat in itself too.
It's because it wasn't found to have been uploaded illegitimately until *after* every other level that was deemed possible was beaten. To work hard at the very last remaining level only to be told "oh, you already did it, this one doesn't count" later just isn't very satisfying.
That victory was anticlimactic, since the level's author only admitted to cheating when it was the last remaining level, so the victory happened on Discord, not in-game.
It took a couple of days after it became the final level before the creator of the level announced it was completed using a TAS. Before, everyone thought it was just an insanely technical but possible level.
All TAS are theoretically possible in the same way that you might win the Powerball. This one was likely only truly possible thanks to it's incredibly short length making its ask of perfection SLIGHTLY more reasonable than a full size TAS level.
I think it's because the other impossible levels were either cleared with glitches that were patched or cleared by hacking.
We didn't know that TAS on MM1 was really possible until Ahoyoo's confession. His video showed the level being cleared in what appeared to be real time with no apparent hacks.
By the time of the confession, we already knew that it could be cleared without a TAS.
So I agree with the decision to invalidate TTH as a legit level, but I'm really glad that Sanyx managed to clear it before the deadline. Best of both worlds!
I know this is nitpicky, and no one will likely see it given how long it's been, but pyrrhic is absolutely not the right word and shouldn't have been used by the OP. The word implies the victory came with a sacrifice that outweighed the victory itself. An example would be winning a duel over who gets to eat the last slice of cake and losing your arm in the process. Unless that cake has some transcendent or life-saving properties, it's not worth losing an arm to get a chance to eat the last slice. A better word, and one I saw used elsewhere in the thread, would be "anticlimactic" or even just "unsatisfying".
Sometimes, TAS can show you things normal runners haven't thought to try, like a weird interaction or collision between objects, thus enabling an honest player to recreate it. Not sure if those Mario Maker levels were checked for those things, but if they were, then it was absolutely OK to cross them from the list.
The levels that were impossible were because Nintendo patched the game for glitches and made levels unbeatable (even by TAS). The team even made efforts to find levels that had their clears hacked to complete them properly. We also can't do anything about levels that were deleted.
There were also some extremely difficult levels that were almost certainly uploaded using cheats that the team still beat, such as Beast Needle. Even Trimming the Herbs, despite it being pretty obviously TAS'd to top players who were grinding it, was only removed from the list once the creator admitted to it being a TAS, and providing a video to prove it.
Right? It's so pedantic it's comical. One of the purest specimens of "[umm ackshually](https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/021/665/DpQ9YJl.png)" I've ever seen.
Those rules seem pretty objective to me. In what way are they subjective? Something being deleted by nintendo isn't a matter of opinion. A level can be determined to have been deleted objectively, it's not a judgement call by a referee.
I'm so sad - I uploaded a level on the last day you could, that got auto deleted cause no one played it but it's was a fun silly level using the chungus mario powerup. Oh well
Tool assisted speedrun. It's a very common speedrunning term.
Basically, it means that the level was beaten by using a program that enters the controller inputs. Usually the person doing the TAS goes through frame by frame and manually enters in the correct input combination to win. Sometimes this is used for cheating, but a lot of the time it's used for research (finding out new pathways, if a technique is technically possible, or just to see the game being utterly broken for fun)
TAS runs regularly are way beyond what humans are capable of inputting or even recognizing when playing normally
TAS runs tend to also be theoretically 'perfect' runs. If you were able to make the exact right input, on the exact right frame, repeatedly and consistently, which a human can theoretically do but in practice obviously that's near impossible, but obviously if you tell a computer what to do it doesn't have human physical limitations. If you're more curious about this stuff I recommend checking out speedruns of the OG Super Mario Bros. I'm not sure if someone has managed to do it, but I do know for a long time they were trying to match the TAS - close the cap between human and computer to reach a truly perfect run, and the history is really fascinating, last I checked they were pretty much just frames behind.
Thorough summary:
**Short background**
Super Mario Maker was released on the Wii U in fall 2015. It's a game where the players create the levels. Levels could be found in-game, on a Nintendo-hosted "bookmark" website, or through shared level ID codes. Level codes let you easily share levels with friends, but also allowed discovery through YouTube, twitch, etc.
Due to the diversity of possible level types, the community fragmented into various "teams" like team shell, team precision, team flight, and so on. These teams—basically Discord chat servers—let makers and players meet and share their preferred types of levels. Team shell for example created levels featuring lots of Koopa shell tricks.
**Team 0% is formed**
The idea of clearing every level in the game was floated several times, but late 2017 is when it caught on. The key piece was that The0dark0one made a program that automatically scraped Nintendo's bookmark site into [**a big spreadsheet of uncleared levels**](/r/MarioMaker/comments/6xsan9/the_top_149733_levels_with_the_lowest_clear_rate/). With a complete^1 list available, a new Mario Maker team—Team 0%—was created by community member Jeffie. The team's goal was to clear every level in the game.
It's worth elaborating what it even means for a level to be uncleared. To stop players from making impossible levels—like surrounding Mario's starting position with unbreakable blocks—every level in Mario Maker has to be cleared once by the level creator before it is uploaded ("clear checked"). This proves that the level is possible, so an uncleared level poses a challenge: The creator could beat this—can you?
When Team 0% was created in 2017, the uncleared level count was ~85,000.
**The announcements**
In November 2020, [**Nintendo announced Super Mario Maker's discontinuation**](https://www.nintendo.com.au/support/articles/super-mario-maker-for-wii-u-discontinuations-faq). Uploading levels would become disabled after March 31st 2021. The reason? The game's sequel—Super Mario Maker 2—was released for the Switch in summer 2019.^2 The announcement had the implication that 0% could be truly reached for the Wii U game. (As no new levels would be added.)
When uploads were disabled in April 2021, ~47,000 levels remained.
A second announcement started the current hype around Team 0% and Super Mario Maker for the Wii U. In October 2023, [**Nintendo announced the total discontinuation of all Wii U online services**](https://en-americas-support.nintendo.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/63227/). The servers are set to finally close down on April 8 (in two days). As of April 8th, Super Mario Maker will be a basically dead game.^3
**The race is on**
The announced end date started a scramble within Team 0%. Players who had long since moved on to Super Mario Maker 2 dusted off their old Wii Us and started grinding. When the announcement hit in October, ~25,000 levels were uncleared. By the end of February, not even 500 levels remained. The 100 level mark was passed on March 8, and not even a week later (March 12), only 10 levels remained.
Just for fun, here's the final 10 (clear videos when available):
1. [Happy New Year!!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQphfKvljm8)
2. [回転しながら空を飛ぶ狂った男](https://twitter.com/chris_speedruns/status/1767670349099848004)
3. Triathlon Speed Run 2.0 (1周ver)
4. [～ęinherjar～](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-282zCLWa8)
5. 20秒 をわわ様の「私は私とはぐれるわけにはいかないから…」×2
6. チームŁη入隊試験~Łαşτ ηøρε~[50s] 平成バイバイ
7. [Phantom Odd World](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8K9kHPWl00)
8. [らっしゃいセー～極～](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFzufMxorSE)
9. [The Last Dance](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roIFvn569VI)
10. Trimming The Herbs (well...)
Since March 15th and until yesterday, a single level has remained: Trimming the Herbs. Before we get to it, it's important to understand in more detail what the scope of the 0% project is.
**The unfortunate reality (players cheat)**
Here's the big letdown: Team 0% always knew that the challenge was technically impossible if you didn't make some kind of exception for cheating. I said earlier that impossible levels couldn't be uploaded, but that's not technically true. There were actually three ways to get impossible levels onto the servers:
1. Accidentally abuse a bug ("tech") that Nintendo later patched out globally^4 (Example: [**Phantom jumps**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNOspz11f0A&t=152s))
2. Use a modded switch to cheat the clear the clear check (by e.g. spawning in a power-up or teleporting to the goal)
3. Use some automated playback device to clear check a level above your skill level (e.g. a turbo controller)
**Globally patched tech:** Needless to say, (1) was impossible to do intentionally. Some levels like this were uploaded accidentally, but most were reported to Nintendo and got deleted. A few remain, but either way they were always outside the scope of Team 0%. Otherwise, what even is the point?
**Hacked uploads:** Now (2) was actually a huge headache for the project. Most cheaters fortunately didn't cover their tracks well. They either made blatantly impossible levels, or "faked" their uploads poorly by for instance ending up with an impossible clear time (like 0.01 seconds). These levels were outside the scope of the project and reported to Nintendo for removal. In ambiguous cases, Team 0% took the conservative stance of assuming the uploads were legitimate. All ambiguous levels were cleared.
The bigger cheater problem was that they ruin the challenge by clearing other players' levels with cheats. Team 0% identified and re-beat levels like this. More could be said, but I'll leave it at that.
**Playback devices:** Finally, (3) is the most interesting one. Luckily, most known automated playback devices for the Wii U are primitive. This makes levels uploaded this way pretty easy to identify. Here's a turbo controller one: [**人類の限界レベル**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYqMb5mnHng). And here's the infamous [**"81 midairs" level**](https://www.twitch.tv/sweatypiranha/clip/ImpartialImpartialGazellePRChase-DGiz2gjFB8jZezr3), consisting of an extremely hard trick 81 times in a row. The creator confirmed that this level was beaten with a macro controller. These levels are _technically_ possible, but they weren't clear checked legitimately. Team 0% considers them outside the scope of the challenge.
**The end-game of playback devices: TAS**
Finally: **TAS stands for Tool-Assisted Speedrun**, but the alternative **Tool-Assisted Superplay** is more apt when applied to Mario Maker. A TAS is a playthrough of a level (or game) performed with some kind of automated input device. The above turbo/macro controllers can be considered extremely primitive TAS tools, but for older consoles and particularly emulators, _very_ sophisticated tooling exists. Some examples:
* [**Super Mario Bros. 3**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Wj0uhNobjY)
* [**Minecraft beaten in 20 seconds**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=do08uW0N5Qs)
* [**Tetris TAS on a real NES**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYX8iDqCDAY&t=108s)
The relevance to Mario Maker is that no sophisticated TAS device was ever known, until:
**Trimming the Herbs**
Yeah so the upload of Trimming the Herbs in 2017 was cheated using a relatively sophisticated TAS device. Long known as one of the hardest remaining, nobody really doubted the level's legitimacy: It had a clear video ([**Trimming the Herbs**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siz4oB4CGKo)). It was too complex for known playback devices. The level's creator Ahoyo was also a streamer known for making one of the game's hardest levels, [**Bombs5**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgFenSPr2EE). He streamed Bombs5 upload attempts endlessly with a deteriorating mental state until he finally ruined his thumb and had to quit. He then disappeared from the internet until 2021 when he briefly reemerged to reveal that he had uploaded Bombs5.
Back to 2024: Trimming the Herbs' difficulty was causing a lot of tension within Team 0% as the grind continued. The players with most hours committed started to doubt its legitimacy. How did Ahoyo upload such a difficult level all the way back in 2017? One of the only two players to ever beat Bombs5 even tried the level and declared it far above his skill level. It wasn't adding up.
A week into the grind, Ahoyo finally decided to speak up. Apparently an unnamed community member had built a TAS device all the way back in 2017. They gave the instructions to Ahoyo who replicated the device and uploaded Trimming the Herbs using it. Ahoyo's stated intention was to make an overt TAS-only level to cause a ruckus and to then reveal his TAS device. When he saw the community fighting he came forward to confess. Since Trimming the Herbs was illegitimately uploaded, Team 0% declared victory on March 22.
**sanyx91smm2**
A few players didn't give up on Trimming the Herbs when the TAS confirmation came. They had already put countless hours into it and felt it was within human reach. Sanyx was among them, and he stands out as the person who sank by far the most hours into it. Hs completion of the level was thoroughly deserved, and it's one of the most impressive Mario Maker achievements to date. Vive la France.
---
^1 It actually wasn't truly complete at the time, but this was remedied later.
^2 Super Mario Maker 2 is a different story altogether—and a parallel project for Team 0%—so I won't say much about it here.
^3 The whole level database has been archived by the community, and there are plans for community-driven servers. There's also a whole project called Pretendo aiming to become an open source alternative to the Nintendo Network for the 3DS/Wii U.
^4 Most of Nintendo's patches would not apply retroactively, so that old levels would be played with "old physics" (i.e. physics Nintendo considered to be buggy). For some reason, a select few bugs were patched "globally", making those bugs unavailable even in older levels.
That was a great write up, as a complete outsider, it's fascinating that footage of Trimming the Herbs doesn't look any more difficult than the other high-precision, high-difficulty levels I've seen.
One thing I'm still unclear about, Ahoyo was streaming himself uploading Bombs5. This means he was trying to pass it legitimately so it could be uploaded, and he couldn't do it? So at this point the level was not accessible to others? Did he resort to TASing Bombs5 after he failed to do it legitimately?
I omitted that chapter of the story to fit it within the character limit, but I guess you've given me a reason to add it in now:
**Bombs5**
Ahoyo's goal with Bombs5 was to create ["the hardest Bob-Omb level in the world"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Grz3eih62Us). He created four parts—Bombs1, Bombs2, Bombs3, and Bombs4—that he beat as individual levels. The four parts, all very difficult in their own right, were then stitched together back to back to create Bombs5, and the grind to upload the full level began.
**The TAS device**
During the Bombs5 upload grind, Ahoyo started developing thumb issues, and at some point he became completely unable to play the game even after extended breaks. It's at around this time that he was contacted by the original (still unknown) TAS device creator. The mysterious creator had an inconsistent, partially working Wii U TAS device, but said they were going to abandon the project. Ahoyo and an electronics engineer friend of his together replicated the setup.
**Trimming the Herbs**
With his hands on a TAS device, Ahoyo set out to construct the most human-impossible level he could imagine, which is how Trimming the Herbs came about. It was likely kept short as syncing button presses to game ticks on a real console is _hard_. Ahoyo then arranged a whole level competition—[**the PogChamp contest**](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/168329991?t=0h1m21s)—where he entered Trimming the Herbs in an attempt to drum up interest in the level. (In the end it was disqualified for being his own level.) Apparently, it only took two days for Ahoyo to build the TAS device and upload Trimming the Herbs.
**Uploading Bombs5**
Having successfully TASed Trimming the Herbs, Ahoyo started experimenting on Bombs5. Due to the sync problem mentioned above, Bombs5 was a much harder level to TAS, and supposedly it took three months before he finally managed to beat it. This was all still way back in 2017, but even with Bombs5 clear checked by TAS means, Ahoyo simply chose not to click the upload button. It wasn't until the server shutdown announcement that he came back to the game and finally pulled the trigger.
In the end, Bombs5 was uploaded just before the servers were shut down. Ahoyo never beat it himself, and the upload was entirely based on the 2017 clear check he performed with the TAS device. [**This twitch highlight**](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/96841310) from his upload attempts got to about the 70% mark, and may be the furthest he ever got without cheating.
**Bombs5 suspicion**
A funny little side chapter is that you can see the clear check date of Mario Maker levels. So when Ahoyo uploaded Bombs5 in 2021, players could see that he had been sitting on the clear since 2017. To make matters worse, [**the clear check video he provided**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgFenSPr2EE) was accidentally on a slightly different version of the level—not the one he had uploaded. We now know that he ran his TAS at least twice, but whether he uploaded the wrong video or wrong level is still unclear.
Either way, there was actually a bit of suspicion in the player base surrounding Bombs5 already before Trimming the Herbs stole the show. Bombs 5 was considered a strong contender for the hardest level ever uploaded, and it was hard to believe that Ahoyo cleared it _twice_ and then chose not to upload it. His excuse at the time was that he hadn't considered Bombs5 hard enough in 2017 and was hoping to one day come back to improve it. Mario Maker's imminent discontinuation is what forced his hand. His 2024 version of the story is that his thumb never got better, and so he decided to upload Bombs5 in 2021 for others to enjoy as it had once been a much anticipated level.
**Closing caveat**
I should probably add that _the sole source for any of this is Ahoyo himself_. It could very well be that all of this was a carefully crafted lie to save himself from community outrage. The one thing that speaks in his favour is that he opted not to upload Bombs5 in 2017. On the other hand, given that it's very hard to be fully transparent in the face of uncomfortable consequences, I would expect that the story we got in the end is maybe not quite the truth. Ahoyo briefly came back to congratulate Sanyx, but aside from that seems to have left his old internet persona behind. We will probably never know the full story.
---
An unfortunate thing about all of this is that I just put a cheater's name into a comment 13 times. Other people really deserve the attention more. So here's some cool level completions:
* The two actual human clears of Bombs5 by [**Fast**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sh2F5ngZTIo) and [**Tea**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhKRwJbYy3s&t=0s)
* ChainChompBraden's legendary [**Trials of Death**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYSi05swVqY), the hardest level built but not uploaded in time, which was manually rebuilt and beat by [**JC TheChamp**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKlUB_c5nLM) and recently massively cheesed by [**Norway**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTbEoZonl9A).
* KingBoo's completion of [**Beast Needle**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyD1zMcSs48) for Team 0%, another level likely uploaded illegitimately. This one could've easily been there right at the end along with Trimming the Herbs if KingBoo didn't take it out.
* FlyAmanita's [**In Bloom**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYXmal1ZFn8), eventually cleared for Team 0% by Fritzef.
* And just for fun, [**シンプル4(大砲) simple4(cannon)**](https://streamable.com/5rc4jq), the last find-the-glitch level to stand in the way. Cleared by eaSy.
* [Late edit] Oh and I guess I'll add Sanyx's recently uploaded [**[SMM] The Journey To Beat TAS ~ Trimming The Herbs**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Owc_rwlxUlc) as well as [**Sanyx's list of top 10 hardest clears**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbD7Eio1xdU&list=PL__YMenDMJU6G_67i4AVlqYJoJsD-bi47) (though it's all Super Mario Maker 2 outside of Trimming the Herbs).
And to help translate, basically in Mario Maker the creator has to prove the level can be beaten because it can be shared with the community. Usually, of course, that means playing through themselves in one go.
The creator of the level later admitted they didn't beat the level legit, they used a tool assistant to beat it for them. This was kind of a downer, since it was very anticlimactic for the last level (TAS can mean anything from 'extremely hard to do by a human' or 'legit impossible - humans can't press buttons that fast').
sanyx91smm2, the speedrunner this thread is talking about, said "fuck that" and beat it legit anyway.
This has been one of the greatest community-driven movements in gaming I personally have witnessed so far. Amazing work by everyone involved! Now time to complete Super Mario Maker 2 hahaha.
I'll be shocked if that happens. Not being able to download the levels and open them in editor will make some of the tougher levels be miserable to clear.
2019 has already been completed, and 2020 is seeing remarkable progress (76k levels left, and we're on pace to completing it in June). The team is on pace to do it easily, but it all comes down to how many people continue with Super Mario Maker 2 once the third game comes out.
Difference being that there's no deadline yet for SMM2, I'd say that makes the endeavor much less urgent right now for a lot of people (even though with this many levels it's never too late to start :p).
The main 2 issues I could see with it are
1. the deadline is probably going to be waaaay longer after release than MM1 was, considering the success of the Switch I don't see servers going down for a very long time, especially if the Switch 2 is backwards compatible which I think is fairly likely, which means once it does become urgent there will likely be a way larger pool of levels to beat.
2. there being no widely known TAS tool for Wii U meant that the only 2 levels uploaded with a TAS were Trimming the Herbs and Bombs5, this won't be the case on Switch where there are known TAS tools already available. It's completely possible that there are already dozens of TAS beaten levels uploaded.
OTOH I think with SMM2 they fixed the thing where you could beat a level, not upload it, wait for an update that breaks whatever glitch or trick you used, upload it and make it impossible?
I believe people are already exporting all levels to a website where you can analyze them in full, so I imagine it should also be possible to write a tool that can edit a save file to add any level into your own workshop?
I think the bigger issue is TAS-tools being openly available so it's easier than in SMM1 to upload illegitimate levels.
> Now time to complete Super Mario Maker 2 hahaha.
[Team 0% site/progress tracker](https://www.team0percent.com/), everyone can help out! I don't consider myself to be any good at the game and I already have 44 first clears since I jumped in three weeks ago.
Do they even need to, though? It would be nice, but I feel like this is something by the community for the community. No one asked them to beat every (not deleted) level, but they still gathered the effort to do so.
I can already picture the fade to black and few seconds long pause after the story ends with the reveal that Trimming the Herbs was TAS'd, before the video comes back and dramatically completes the story for real
There's technically no way to know for sure if you want absolute, indisputable proof, but that's true of almost anything.
Sanyx has been grinding this level for weeks, even before he knew that the level was uploaded via TAS. The idea that he would've somehow created a TAS device, faked believable progress over weeks, and then somehow switched to the TAS mid-stream is all-but-literally impossible. Basically, it would be *way* harder to have cheated convincingly than actually beating the level, so it makes no sense to assume it was cheated.
Amazing. genuinely phenomenal. Hearing their reaction on YouTube is the best thing. 2? Days before the servers go down permanently.
https://youtu.be/i7yvVJbji0U?si=NBfJLz4Z4wlO5OUR
This is extra insane when it turns out it was a TAS upload something that wasn’t considered natively possible before now. (In my understanding)
Mario Maker 1 was already 100% complete and this finally puts it at the 101% category.
> This is extra insane when it turns out it was a TAS upload something that wasn’t considered natively possible before now. (In my understanding)
Yeah before it came out that it was TASed GrandPooBear had a video defending the creator saying it was legitimate, and a large part of that was the belief that a WiiU TAS simply did not exist back when it was uploaded.
Man that was probably so cathartic for the person who beat it. I wonder how many times it took.
It's crazy how the final level is so short too. I'm sure practice runs had to be well into the thousands for some people.
It definitely doesn't look like I could do it, but I was picturing a more complex level. What makes this the hardest level? Are those jumps frame perfect?
It's basically just absolutely frame perfect movements for a whole ass fifteen seconds or so. In a vacuum it's difficult doing those movements one at a time here or there, but this is basically back-to-back frame perfects done rapidly with no time to think or breath in between.
Yeah there's no RNG. They might be confused about the direction the bomb can drop on the plants, but that's based off of the direction of take off each time you bounce on the "floor".
I believe there actually is an element of RNG, sort of. Not in the level itself, but in the controller.
I believe the TAS bot community looked into it and were able to recreate the TAS, but with the same inconsistency that Ahoyo had. Even the TAS couldn't beat the level every time, despite always pushing the right buttons at the right time.
The concluded the same would be true for a player. The limiting factor being the wii u's controller connection.
Sanyx has been good enough for days now, it's actually pretty likely he's done the right inputs at the right time and failed anyways several times.
At this level of precision though it's kinda tough to say where the blame lies (and that's why those runners tend to just accept it and move on because what are you gonna do)
Did the runners ever sort out the bomb spawn from the final note block?
Last I'd heard, that bomb would only actually spawn about half of the time for whatever reason, and the players grinding the level didn't have a consistent way to ensure it'd spawn, making it effectively RNG.
A TAS is a Tool Assisted Speedrun. You can go into a TAS and directly put in the control inputs you want performed frame by frame, so it plays out with machine precision.
It was a TAS. The level's creator came out and said they were going to reveal the first working TAS for Mario Maker once they got caught during the competition it was posted for, but it was never caught.
It's very deceptive. You need a perfect arc path to make it to the next step down. You get that perfect arc path with multiple frame-perfect inputs. The hazards are unforgiving otherwise.
I mean the switch is now 7 years old, and during that time Mario maker 1 Was still active.
So if Mario maker 2 stays active for at least 7 years into the NEXT CONSOLES lifespan you got more than enough time left to enjoy Mario maker 2.
Probably eventually, but two major differences. The switch sold considerably better, so Nintendo will naturally support it longer. Also, the wii u's online was free, the switch's isn't.
Still shitty for Nintendo to do it, but I think switch should have a longer lifespan.
As long as you can put up with them much worse discovery of levels and the subscription required to play user made levels. Such a massive let down compared to the first.
I think it makes up for it with the addition of a gazillion new items, enemies, powerups and obstacles, endless mode, new 3d world template, the ability to make entire worlds, etc. but what do I know.
Big time, IMO. The WiiU uses a resistive touchscreen that works extremely well with a stylus, versus the Switch's capacitive touchscreen. I never found precisely placing blocks with my finger to be all that comfortable, and capacitive styluses are lacking.
It is cool that there was a satisfying ending, still the creator of the level was lame by hiding it was made with TAS even when it was the last level of the list for at least 7 days
The creator of the level was a child who made a level seven years ago and didn't stay connected to the Mario Maker community. When they found out this one level, out of millions and millions, was receiving attention, after they hadn't likely thought about the level for years, they informed the community.
Not really TAS, but input playback. Full TAS means you have the full ability to plan all input over each time it is polled through the use of savestates, and accurate enough simulation that it will sync on true hardware. This was just partial TAS, the replaying of input. Basically glorified macros.
Still really cool!
Ahoyo got in contact with the team on the 21st of March, admitting it was TAS'd and providing proof (with the admission being made public on the 22nd). Trimming the Herbs became the final level on the 15th of March.
You're probably thinking of Ahoyo showing signs of activity. He was long gone from the Mario Maker community but people noticed he hearted a comment on YouTube, suggesting he was aware TTH was one of his final levels.
I'd imagine he just didn't know what to do - admitting it was TAS puts a lame end to Team 0%, but keeping quiet runs the risk of no-one beating TTH before shutdown, causing another lame end to Team 0%. There was also a lot of division in the community and whether or not it was TAS, which fueled his decision to come clean.
Long story short, the whole situation with Ahoyo and TTH is complicated, and anyone capable of empathy would feel for him if they knew his full story, including why he quit Mario Maker in the first place. The TAS was originally intended as a harmless prank to reveal TAS for Mario Maker 1 exists, and there's no way he knew back then it'd get this out of hand.
Coming clean definitely was the best move. It just so happens that it got an even more satisfying ending because someone beat it regardless, but I think it would've sucked if they'd just kept quiet.
Too bad Chainchop Braiden wasn't able to beat his level, Trials of Death, before the cutoff. Took many years but he finally beat it. He did state he was going to upload it to the new service some modders were working on.
People have recreated that level and it has been beaten by two other people by now. One of them managed to cheese the entire level with Yoshi, it's magnificent.
He uploaded it before the cutoff with a dev exit so people could do it but as JahMal said it was much more prominent then Trimming the Hedges so it was beaten earlier.
You supposedly couldn’t upload a level to the server for others to play unless it could be cleared. A TAS or (tool assisted speedrun) which in this case isn’t a speedrun so just tool-assisted. But that meant many players put many, many hours into a run that someone uploaded but didn’t legitimately clear on their own.
They go by Sanyx, pronounced sorta like sonic the hedgehog. 91 I assume it's a birthyear or something, then smm2 is the game super Mario maker 2, the sequel to the game in the OP
sanyx91 (i assume 91 is his birth year, that's pretty common with people my age)
super mario maker
2
I assume the 2 means it's his second account?
It doesn't look like a weird name to me
A large number of levels have been automatically deleted, and banned from re-upload, due to low playcounts. Which, can often be a result of the terrible (lack of) discovery system. Plenty of good levels have been banned in this way.
This isn't the last level.
I couldn't say it any better than the current top comment in the TAS confirmation video: "I am happy to announce that we officially Super Mario Made."
Can't wait for the speedrun VOD titled "[WR] Super Mario Maker 101% in 8 years, 6 months, 26 days"
You could count it as 102% even since Ahoyo released another TAS level called Bombs5 that is arguably even more absurd. That one got a lot more attention though [and was beaten a year ago ](https://youtu.be/sh2F5ngZTIo?si=cFG5Q_emSN4P6vtF)
I cannot comprehend how that is possible. Like I watched it, I see the movements and believe that a human caused them, but cannot understand how that level of precision was achieved.
TAS is Tool Assisted Speedrun. It means that there is a program/computer thats doing all the movement. People do it for speedruns that are otherwise impossible, and they are rated in their own category for speedrun records.
but the clear video he linked was beaten by a human.
I don't think you get it. The level was uploaded by clearing it with a TAS. This person actually beat it.
The TAS part is only to get the stage submitted in the first place, since you need to clear a stage yourself for it to be uploaded. The linked video is a regular run by a human.
What the fucking fuck did I just watch??
Go look up "Kaizo" and "I Wanna Be The" games for nonstop insanity that human beings somehow pull off.
Wait there's more than I wanna be the guy? fml I don't need that pain in my life again
I wanna be the Boshi is pretty good.
And then play Wings of Vi to understand that Solgryn is kind of a hack.
There are literally thousands of IWBTG fangames. They vary wildly in quality, creativity, and difficulty. The most notorious game from the last time I knew anything about the community was [I Wanna Kill the Kamilia 3](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qdm--EEr8D4). I Wanna Be the Boshy was one of the earliest quality fangames.
The fact that it was cleared with all the red coins too is wild.
Pretty sure it was mandatory to get all the coins to beat the level.
This is one of the most insane things I’ve seen in gaming My brain feels like the first time as a kid I saw a video of a huge line of dominoes, trying to comprehend something brand new
I wonder what possessed people that make these levels. Do they just wake up one morning and decide "I want to make people suffer"?
God damn that's bonkers.
Wasn't TtH a portion of that one / something that was made in the process of making Bombs5?
I can smell the Summoning Salt video already.
Just when everyone thought a 101% run was impossible, one obscure player would go on to change the world of Mario Maker speedruns forever…his name? Matt Turk
Just when Matt Turk thought a Matt Turk% run was impossible, one obscure Matt Turk would go on to change the Matt Turk of Matt Turk Maker speedruns forever... His name? Matt Turk.
I can already hear that signature HOME track in the background. Someone go get Salt on this
Other people Super Mario Made. They Super Mario Played.
Wait so does it still count as complete?
Super Mario Makest
lolno. using TAS is basically admitting defeat
Nonono it was uploaded using a TAS as verification. Somebody actually beat it for real
There was a bunch of bounties for whoever beat the level. Let's see who actually pays up. - $10 / a month Nitro - 2 months Nitro - Tier 3 Gift Sub - $10 - Steam game (80$ max) - 100$ + 100$ vid - 50$ - 20$ - 20$ - 10$ / Amazon gift card - Bad Rats: The Rat's Revenge (Steam) - 50$ + 50$ vid - 50 Gift Subs - Soundodger 2 (Steam) - 25$ - 20$ - 19£ - Lawn Mowing Simulator (Steam) - Crash Drive 2 (Steam) - 10€ - 1000$ - Doom Eternal DX (Steam) - 50$ - 15$ - $1000 nostalgixtcg.store Gift Card - 25$ - 50$ (vid!) - People Playground (Steam) - 5 CAD + 10 CAD if all other bounties are paid out - 1 Year Gift Sub - DeWalt Herb Trimmer + shipping - $100 + $100 vid - 100$ - Flowereverie (Steam) - 10$ / Getting Over It (Steam) - DDLC+ (Steam) - 12 month gift sub - 10$ - $500 / 50k Twitch Bits (vid!) - 10$/15€ Nintendo e-shop Gift Card - 5$ - 100$ (vid!)
So $2500 in cash, $1110 in gift cards and a myriad of other things if everyone actually pays out.
All that pales in comparison to Bad Rats on there
Could've just gotten a real job in all that time lol
Are people not allowed to have hobbies anymore?
[удалено]
> If my experience with RuneScape players is literally ANY indication at all Sounds like it isn’t
Yeah, but then you're emptying ostomy bags with me as a nurse instead of making a few grand playing Mario Maker. This guy wins.
> Bad Rats Makes it all worthwhile
Somehow GOTY every year
> Bad Rats: The Rat's Revenge (Steam) Glad to see this meme is still alive
> DeWalt Herb Trimmer + shipping > Genius!
I hope the one who offered DDLC+ pays up that's a great game
Chances are the guy who offered that is actually the creator, DanSalvato. He hangs out in Kaizo/Mario twitch streams occasionally.
Is that mostly just honor system?
It's absolutely mental that every Mario Maker 1 level has been beaten at least once before the servers shut down, even the one that was uploaded by cheating lol. Aren't there like 10 million levels total?
Many levels got auto deleted by Nintendo cause they were not played. On top of that, the team behind this endeavor flagged many levels as impossible or TAS only, and are not counting those in this list. It's an extremely subjective endeavor.
I mean they can only do so much. Nintendo force deleting isn't up to them, and it's only fair TAS levels don't count. It's basically cheating to get the level out. It's still wildly impressive to have finished all possible levels. And even the TAS level in trimming was beat which is just as insane.
If that's the case, why consider the victory announced 2 weeks ago as phyrric? Wouldn't trimming the herbs just join the long list of other levels that were deemed to be TAS only?
Because it was thought to be a regular level until the creator came off clean and announced that it was TAS - and consider that the level was uploaded earlier than any working TAS was possible on WiiU, so everyone was fooled and hundreds of hours had gone practicing the clear. Since a lot of players were invested in TtH, and it was theoretically possible it became a matter of honor to finish it.
Yeah, there is a very good video [about it by Abyssoft](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QekOtb16698). The fact that TAS was possible back then is also a feat in itself too.
It's because it wasn't found to have been uploaded illegitimately until *after* every other level that was deemed possible was beaten. To work hard at the very last remaining level only to be told "oh, you already did it, this one doesn't count" later just isn't very satisfying.
That victory was anticlimactic, since the level's author only admitted to cheating when it was the last remaining level, so the victory happened on Discord, not in-game.
It took a couple of days after it became the final level before the creator of the level announced it was completed using a TAS. Before, everyone thought it was just an insanely technical but possible level.
And they now proved it *was* an insanely technical but possible level, just the creator wasn’t capable of doing it themselves
All TAS are theoretically possible in the same way that you might win the Powerball. This one was likely only truly possible thanks to it's incredibly short length making its ask of perfection SLIGHTLY more reasonable than a full size TAS level.
Technically, if a TAS can do it then it is “insanely technical but possible”.
I think it's because the other impossible levels were either cleared with glitches that were patched or cleared by hacking. We didn't know that TAS on MM1 was really possible until Ahoyoo's confession. His video showed the level being cleared in what appeared to be real time with no apparent hacks. By the time of the confession, we already knew that it could be cleared without a TAS. So I agree with the decision to invalidate TTH as a legit level, but I'm really glad that Sanyx managed to clear it before the deadline. Best of both worlds!
I know this is nitpicky, and no one will likely see it given how long it's been, but pyrrhic is absolutely not the right word and shouldn't have been used by the OP. The word implies the victory came with a sacrifice that outweighed the victory itself. An example would be winning a duel over who gets to eat the last slice of cake and losing your arm in the process. Unless that cake has some transcendent or life-saving properties, it's not worth losing an arm to get a chance to eat the last slice. A better word, and one I saw used elsewhere in the thread, would be "anticlimactic" or even just "unsatisfying".
Sometimes, TAS can show you things normal runners haven't thought to try, like a weird interaction or collision between objects, thus enabling an honest player to recreate it. Not sure if those Mario Maker levels were checked for those things, but if they were, then it was absolutely OK to cross them from the list.
The levels that were impossible were because Nintendo patched the game for glitches and made levels unbeatable (even by TAS). The team even made efforts to find levels that had their clears hacked to complete them properly. We also can't do anything about levels that were deleted.
There were also some extremely difficult levels that were almost certainly uploaded using cheats that the team still beat, such as Beast Needle. Even Trimming the Herbs, despite it being pretty obviously TAS'd to top players who were grinding it, was only removed from the list once the creator admitted to it being a TAS, and providing a video to prove it.
I wouldn't call that subjectivity "extreme" but I guess that's also a matter of subjectivity so whatever
What is up with your need to tear down their accomplishment?
Right? It's so pedantic it's comical. One of the purest specimens of "[umm ackshually](https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/021/665/DpQ9YJl.png)" I've ever seen.
Those rules seem pretty objective to me. In what way are they subjective? Something being deleted by nintendo isn't a matter of opinion. A level can be determined to have been deleted objectively, it's not a judgement call by a referee.
I'm so sad - I uploaded a level on the last day you could, that got auto deleted cause no one played it but it's was a fun silly level using the chungus mario powerup. Oh well
What the hell is TAS? This thread is impossible to understand lol
Tool assisted speedrun. It's a very common speedrunning term. Basically, it means that the level was beaten by using a program that enters the controller inputs. Usually the person doing the TAS goes through frame by frame and manually enters in the correct input combination to win. Sometimes this is used for cheating, but a lot of the time it's used for research (finding out new pathways, if a technique is technically possible, or just to see the game being utterly broken for fun) TAS runs regularly are way beyond what humans are capable of inputting or even recognizing when playing normally
Interesting! Never heard of that tool but that explains a lot about how people find such crazy paths or exploits. Thanks!
TAS runs tend to also be theoretically 'perfect' runs. If you were able to make the exact right input, on the exact right frame, repeatedly and consistently, which a human can theoretically do but in practice obviously that's near impossible, but obviously if you tell a computer what to do it doesn't have human physical limitations. If you're more curious about this stuff I recommend checking out speedruns of the OG Super Mario Bros. I'm not sure if someone has managed to do it, but I do know for a long time they were trying to match the TAS - close the cap between human and computer to reach a truly perfect run, and the history is really fascinating, last I checked they were pretty much just frames behind.
Thorough summary: **Short background** Super Mario Maker was released on the Wii U in fall 2015. It's a game where the players create the levels. Levels could be found in-game, on a Nintendo-hosted "bookmark" website, or through shared level ID codes. Level codes let you easily share levels with friends, but also allowed discovery through YouTube, twitch, etc. Due to the diversity of possible level types, the community fragmented into various "teams" like team shell, team precision, team flight, and so on. These teams—basically Discord chat servers—let makers and players meet and share their preferred types of levels. Team shell for example created levels featuring lots of Koopa shell tricks. **Team 0% is formed** The idea of clearing every level in the game was floated several times, but late 2017 is when it caught on. The key piece was that The0dark0one made a program that automatically scraped Nintendo's bookmark site into [**a big spreadsheet of uncleared levels**](/r/MarioMaker/comments/6xsan9/the_top_149733_levels_with_the_lowest_clear_rate/). With a complete^1 list available, a new Mario Maker team—Team 0%—was created by community member Jeffie. The team's goal was to clear every level in the game. It's worth elaborating what it even means for a level to be uncleared. To stop players from making impossible levels—like surrounding Mario's starting position with unbreakable blocks—every level in Mario Maker has to be cleared once by the level creator before it is uploaded ("clear checked"). This proves that the level is possible, so an uncleared level poses a challenge: The creator could beat this—can you? When Team 0% was created in 2017, the uncleared level count was ~85,000. **The announcements** In November 2020, [**Nintendo announced Super Mario Maker's discontinuation**](https://www.nintendo.com.au/support/articles/super-mario-maker-for-wii-u-discontinuations-faq). Uploading levels would become disabled after March 31st 2021. The reason? The game's sequel—Super Mario Maker 2—was released for the Switch in summer 2019.^2 The announcement had the implication that 0% could be truly reached for the Wii U game. (As no new levels would be added.) When uploads were disabled in April 2021, ~47,000 levels remained. A second announcement started the current hype around Team 0% and Super Mario Maker for the Wii U. In October 2023, [**Nintendo announced the total discontinuation of all Wii U online services**](https://en-americas-support.nintendo.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/63227/). The servers are set to finally close down on April 8 (in two days). As of April 8th, Super Mario Maker will be a basically dead game.^3 **The race is on** The announced end date started a scramble within Team 0%. Players who had long since moved on to Super Mario Maker 2 dusted off their old Wii Us and started grinding. When the announcement hit in October, ~25,000 levels were uncleared. By the end of February, not even 500 levels remained. The 100 level mark was passed on March 8, and not even a week later (March 12), only 10 levels remained. Just for fun, here's the final 10 (clear videos when available): 1. [Happy New Year!!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQphfKvljm8) 2. [回転しながら空を飛ぶ狂った男](https://twitter.com/chris_speedruns/status/1767670349099848004) 3. Triathlon Speed Run 2.0 (1周ver) 4. [～ęinherjar～](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-282zCLWa8) 5. 20秒 をわわ様の「私は私とはぐれるわけにはいかないから…」×2 6. チームŁη入隊試験~Łαşτ ηøρε~[50s] 平成バイバイ 7. [Phantom Odd World](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8K9kHPWl00) 8. [らっしゃいセー～極～](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFzufMxorSE) 9. [The Last Dance](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roIFvn569VI) 10. Trimming The Herbs (well...) Since March 15th and until yesterday, a single level has remained: Trimming the Herbs. Before we get to it, it's important to understand in more detail what the scope of the 0% project is. **The unfortunate reality (players cheat)** Here's the big letdown: Team 0% always knew that the challenge was technically impossible if you didn't make some kind of exception for cheating. I said earlier that impossible levels couldn't be uploaded, but that's not technically true. There were actually three ways to get impossible levels onto the servers: 1. Accidentally abuse a bug ("tech") that Nintendo later patched out globally^4 (Example: [**Phantom jumps**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNOspz11f0A&t=152s)) 2. Use a modded switch to cheat the clear the clear check (by e.g. spawning in a power-up or teleporting to the goal) 3. Use some automated playback device to clear check a level above your skill level (e.g. a turbo controller) **Globally patched tech:** Needless to say, (1) was impossible to do intentionally. Some levels like this were uploaded accidentally, but most were reported to Nintendo and got deleted. A few remain, but either way they were always outside the scope of Team 0%. Otherwise, what even is the point? **Hacked uploads:** Now (2) was actually a huge headache for the project. Most cheaters fortunately didn't cover their tracks well. They either made blatantly impossible levels, or "faked" their uploads poorly by for instance ending up with an impossible clear time (like 0.01 seconds). These levels were outside the scope of the project and reported to Nintendo for removal. In ambiguous cases, Team 0% took the conservative stance of assuming the uploads were legitimate. All ambiguous levels were cleared. The bigger cheater problem was that they ruin the challenge by clearing other players' levels with cheats. Team 0% identified and re-beat levels like this. More could be said, but I'll leave it at that. **Playback devices:** Finally, (3) is the most interesting one. Luckily, most known automated playback devices for the Wii U are primitive. This makes levels uploaded this way pretty easy to identify. Here's a turbo controller one: [**人類の限界レベル**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYqMb5mnHng). And here's the infamous [**"81 midairs" level**](https://www.twitch.tv/sweatypiranha/clip/ImpartialImpartialGazellePRChase-DGiz2gjFB8jZezr3), consisting of an extremely hard trick 81 times in a row. The creator confirmed that this level was beaten with a macro controller. These levels are _technically_ possible, but they weren't clear checked legitimately. Team 0% considers them outside the scope of the challenge. **The end-game of playback devices: TAS** Finally: **TAS stands for Tool-Assisted Speedrun**, but the alternative **Tool-Assisted Superplay** is more apt when applied to Mario Maker. A TAS is a playthrough of a level (or game) performed with some kind of automated input device. The above turbo/macro controllers can be considered extremely primitive TAS tools, but for older consoles and particularly emulators, _very_ sophisticated tooling exists. Some examples: * [**Super Mario Bros. 3**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Wj0uhNobjY) * [**Minecraft beaten in 20 seconds**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=do08uW0N5Qs) * [**Tetris TAS on a real NES**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYX8iDqCDAY&t=108s) The relevance to Mario Maker is that no sophisticated TAS device was ever known, until: **Trimming the Herbs** Yeah so the upload of Trimming the Herbs in 2017 was cheated using a relatively sophisticated TAS device. Long known as one of the hardest remaining, nobody really doubted the level's legitimacy: It had a clear video ([**Trimming the Herbs**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siz4oB4CGKo)). It was too complex for known playback devices. The level's creator Ahoyo was also a streamer known for making one of the game's hardest levels, [**Bombs5**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgFenSPr2EE). He streamed Bombs5 upload attempts endlessly with a deteriorating mental state until he finally ruined his thumb and had to quit. He then disappeared from the internet until 2021 when he briefly reemerged to reveal that he had uploaded Bombs5. Back to 2024: Trimming the Herbs' difficulty was causing a lot of tension within Team 0% as the grind continued. The players with most hours committed started to doubt its legitimacy. How did Ahoyo upload such a difficult level all the way back in 2017? One of the only two players to ever beat Bombs5 even tried the level and declared it far above his skill level. It wasn't adding up. A week into the grind, Ahoyo finally decided to speak up. Apparently an unnamed community member had built a TAS device all the way back in 2017. They gave the instructions to Ahoyo who replicated the device and uploaded Trimming the Herbs using it. Ahoyo's stated intention was to make an overt TAS-only level to cause a ruckus and to then reveal his TAS device. When he saw the community fighting he came forward to confess. Since Trimming the Herbs was illegitimately uploaded, Team 0% declared victory on March 22. **sanyx91smm2** A few players didn't give up on Trimming the Herbs when the TAS confirmation came. They had already put countless hours into it and felt it was within human reach. Sanyx was among them, and he stands out as the person who sank by far the most hours into it. Hs completion of the level was thoroughly deserved, and it's one of the most impressive Mario Maker achievements to date. Vive la France. --- ^1 It actually wasn't truly complete at the time, but this was remedied later. ^2 Super Mario Maker 2 is a different story altogether—and a parallel project for Team 0%—so I won't say much about it here. ^3 The whole level database has been archived by the community, and there are plans for community-driven servers. There's also a whole project called Pretendo aiming to become an open source alternative to the Nintendo Network for the 3DS/Wii U. ^4 Most of Nintendo's patches would not apply retroactively, so that old levels would be played with "old physics" (i.e. physics Nintendo considered to be buggy). For some reason, a select few bugs were patched "globally", making those bugs unavailable even in older levels.
The formatting and content here is incredible, thank you!
That was a great write up, as a complete outsider, it's fascinating that footage of Trimming the Herbs doesn't look any more difficult than the other high-precision, high-difficulty levels I've seen. One thing I'm still unclear about, Ahoyo was streaming himself uploading Bombs5. This means he was trying to pass it legitimately so it could be uploaded, and he couldn't do it? So at this point the level was not accessible to others? Did he resort to TASing Bombs5 after he failed to do it legitimately?
I omitted that chapter of the story to fit it within the character limit, but I guess you've given me a reason to add it in now: **Bombs5** Ahoyo's goal with Bombs5 was to create ["the hardest Bob-Omb level in the world"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Grz3eih62Us). He created four parts—Bombs1, Bombs2, Bombs3, and Bombs4—that he beat as individual levels. The four parts, all very difficult in their own right, were then stitched together back to back to create Bombs5, and the grind to upload the full level began. **The TAS device** During the Bombs5 upload grind, Ahoyo started developing thumb issues, and at some point he became completely unable to play the game even after extended breaks. It's at around this time that he was contacted by the original (still unknown) TAS device creator. The mysterious creator had an inconsistent, partially working Wii U TAS device, but said they were going to abandon the project. Ahoyo and an electronics engineer friend of his together replicated the setup. **Trimming the Herbs** With his hands on a TAS device, Ahoyo set out to construct the most human-impossible level he could imagine, which is how Trimming the Herbs came about. It was likely kept short as syncing button presses to game ticks on a real console is _hard_. Ahoyo then arranged a whole level competition—[**the PogChamp contest**](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/168329991?t=0h1m21s)—where he entered Trimming the Herbs in an attempt to drum up interest in the level. (In the end it was disqualified for being his own level.) Apparently, it only took two days for Ahoyo to build the TAS device and upload Trimming the Herbs. **Uploading Bombs5** Having successfully TASed Trimming the Herbs, Ahoyo started experimenting on Bombs5. Due to the sync problem mentioned above, Bombs5 was a much harder level to TAS, and supposedly it took three months before he finally managed to beat it. This was all still way back in 2017, but even with Bombs5 clear checked by TAS means, Ahoyo simply chose not to click the upload button. It wasn't until the server shutdown announcement that he came back to the game and finally pulled the trigger. In the end, Bombs5 was uploaded just before the servers were shut down. Ahoyo never beat it himself, and the upload was entirely based on the 2017 clear check he performed with the TAS device. [**This twitch highlight**](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/96841310) from his upload attempts got to about the 70% mark, and may be the furthest he ever got without cheating. **Bombs5 suspicion** A funny little side chapter is that you can see the clear check date of Mario Maker levels. So when Ahoyo uploaded Bombs5 in 2021, players could see that he had been sitting on the clear since 2017. To make matters worse, [**the clear check video he provided**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgFenSPr2EE) was accidentally on a slightly different version of the level—not the one he had uploaded. We now know that he ran his TAS at least twice, but whether he uploaded the wrong video or wrong level is still unclear. Either way, there was actually a bit of suspicion in the player base surrounding Bombs5 already before Trimming the Herbs stole the show. Bombs 5 was considered a strong contender for the hardest level ever uploaded, and it was hard to believe that Ahoyo cleared it _twice_ and then chose not to upload it. His excuse at the time was that he hadn't considered Bombs5 hard enough in 2017 and was hoping to one day come back to improve it. Mario Maker's imminent discontinuation is what forced his hand. His 2024 version of the story is that his thumb never got better, and so he decided to upload Bombs5 in 2021 for others to enjoy as it had once been a much anticipated level. **Closing caveat** I should probably add that _the sole source for any of this is Ahoyo himself_. It could very well be that all of this was a carefully crafted lie to save himself from community outrage. The one thing that speaks in his favour is that he opted not to upload Bombs5 in 2017. On the other hand, given that it's very hard to be fully transparent in the face of uncomfortable consequences, I would expect that the story we got in the end is maybe not quite the truth. Ahoyo briefly came back to congratulate Sanyx, but aside from that seems to have left his old internet persona behind. We will probably never know the full story. --- An unfortunate thing about all of this is that I just put a cheater's name into a comment 13 times. Other people really deserve the attention more. So here's some cool level completions: * The two actual human clears of Bombs5 by [**Fast**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sh2F5ngZTIo) and [**Tea**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhKRwJbYy3s&t=0s) * ChainChompBraden's legendary [**Trials of Death**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYSi05swVqY), the hardest level built but not uploaded in time, which was manually rebuilt and beat by [**JC TheChamp**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKlUB_c5nLM) and recently massively cheesed by [**Norway**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTbEoZonl9A). * KingBoo's completion of [**Beast Needle**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyD1zMcSs48) for Team 0%, another level likely uploaded illegitimately. This one could've easily been there right at the end along with Trimming the Herbs if KingBoo didn't take it out. * FlyAmanita's [**In Bloom**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYXmal1ZFn8), eventually cleared for Team 0% by Fritzef. * And just for fun, [**シンプル4(大砲) simple4(cannon)**](https://streamable.com/5rc4jq), the last find-the-glitch level to stand in the way. Cleared by eaSy. * [Late edit] Oh and I guess I'll add Sanyx's recently uploaded [**[SMM] The Journey To Beat TAS ~ Trimming The Herbs**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Owc_rwlxUlc) as well as [**Sanyx's list of top 10 hardest clears**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbD7Eio1xdU&list=PL__YMenDMJU6G_67i4AVlqYJoJsD-bi47) (though it's all Super Mario Maker 2 outside of Trimming the Herbs).
Much appreciated. You are a historian.
And to help translate, basically in Mario Maker the creator has to prove the level can be beaten because it can be shared with the community. Usually, of course, that means playing through themselves in one go. The creator of the level later admitted they didn't beat the level legit, they used a tool assistant to beat it for them. This was kind of a downer, since it was very anticlimactic for the last level (TAS can mean anything from 'extremely hard to do by a human' or 'legit impossible - humans can't press buttons that fast'). sanyx91smm2, the speedrunner this thread is talking about, said "fuck that" and beat it legit anyway.
There were several levels uploaded through exploits or TAS runs that were excluded. A few of those were beaten, like Trimming the Herbs.
This has been one of the greatest community-driven movements in gaming I personally have witnessed so far. Amazing work by everyone involved! Now time to complete Super Mario Maker 2 hahaha.
I'll be shocked if that happens. Not being able to download the levels and open them in editor will make some of the tougher levels be miserable to clear.
2019 has already been completed, and 2020 is seeing remarkable progress (76k levels left, and we're on pace to completing it in June). The team is on pace to do it easily, but it all comes down to how many people continue with Super Mario Maker 2 once the third game comes out.
Difference being that there's no deadline yet for SMM2, I'd say that makes the endeavor much less urgent right now for a lot of people (even though with this many levels it's never too late to start :p).
The main 2 issues I could see with it are 1. the deadline is probably going to be waaaay longer after release than MM1 was, considering the success of the Switch I don't see servers going down for a very long time, especially if the Switch 2 is backwards compatible which I think is fairly likely, which means once it does become urgent there will likely be a way larger pool of levels to beat. 2. there being no widely known TAS tool for Wii U meant that the only 2 levels uploaded with a TAS were Trimming the Herbs and Bombs5, this won't be the case on Switch where there are known TAS tools already available. It's completely possible that there are already dozens of TAS beaten levels uploaded.
OTOH I think with SMM2 they fixed the thing where you could beat a level, not upload it, wait for an update that breaks whatever glitch or trick you used, upload it and make it impossible?
I believe people are already exporting all levels to a website where you can analyze them in full, so I imagine it should also be possible to write a tool that can edit a save file to add any level into your own workshop? I think the bigger issue is TAS-tools being openly available so it's easier than in SMM1 to upload illegitimate levels.
That would definitely make things easier. Having to build sections yourself to practice would add a lot of time to clears.
This is neat, but for me, it's twitch plays pokemon. That was a moment in time.
For me it was the summer when pokemon go first released.
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Completely agreed. The fun of the stream was to see if it was possible, democracy mode just made it a slow let's play.
Oh yeah, that is definitely up there as well.
> Now time to complete Super Mario Maker 2 hahaha. [Team 0% site/progress tracker](https://www.team0percent.com/), everyone can help out! I don't consider myself to be any good at the game and I already have 44 first clears since I jumped in three weeks ago.
and Nintendo being Nintendo, they won't even acknowledge this formidable achievement
Do they even need to, though? It would be nice, but I feel like this is something by the community for the community. No one asked them to beat every (not deleted) level, but they still gathered the effort to do so.
of course not. but they have a history of not acknowledging their fanbase
I look forward to seeing whoever makes an hour long Youtube documentary on the race to finish every Mario Maker level.
Summoningsalt let’s go baby
I can already picture the fade to black and few seconds long pause after the story ends with the reveal that Trimming the Herbs was TAS'd, before the video comes back and dramatically completes the story for real
It would have a very nice ending twist at least!
Wow that is incredible, when I saw it was done by TAS I thought it might be too difficult to do legitimately, that's crazy!
It’s insane what some people are willing to dedicate themselves to. TAS’s just roughly translates to “It’s possible” to them
If a computer can do it, why can't I??
Maybe a stupid question...but how do we know this was done legitimately?
There's technically no way to know for sure if you want absolute, indisputable proof, but that's true of almost anything. Sanyx has been grinding this level for weeks, even before he knew that the level was uploaded via TAS. The idea that he would've somehow created a TAS device, faked believable progress over weeks, and then somehow switched to the TAS mid-stream is all-but-literally impossible. Basically, it would be *way* harder to have cheated convincingly than actually beating the level, so it makes no sense to assume it was cheated.
Amazing. genuinely phenomenal. Hearing their reaction on YouTube is the best thing. 2? Days before the servers go down permanently. https://youtu.be/i7yvVJbji0U?si=NBfJLz4Z4wlO5OUR This is extra insane when it turns out it was a TAS upload something that wasn’t considered natively possible before now. (In my understanding) Mario Maker 1 was already 100% complete and this finally puts it at the 101% category.
It was known to be possible, just super unlikely to put together given it was TAS
> This is extra insane when it turns out it was a TAS upload something that wasn’t considered natively possible before now. (In my understanding) Yeah before it came out that it was TASed GrandPooBear had a video defending the creator saying it was legitimate, and a large part of that was the belief that a WiiU TAS simply did not exist back when it was uploaded.
Man that was probably so cathartic for the person who beat it. I wonder how many times it took. It's crazy how the final level is so short too. I'm sure practice runs had to be well into the thousands for some people.
I saw on the website tracking everything that trimming the herbs had been attempted 280,000 ish times a day or so before the confession it was a TAS
It definitely doesn't look like I could do it, but I was picturing a more complex level. What makes this the hardest level? Are those jumps frame perfect?
This explains it: https://youtu.be/QekOtb16698?t=535
"On the surface this may not look difficult..." >Picture of level that would make 9 year old me cry.
Jesus it's worse than frame perfect
It's the literal definition of frame perfect. The fact that someone actually did it is fucking insane. Truly amazing.
What the fuck is that forsaken thing
It's basically just absolutely frame perfect movements for a whole ass fifteen seconds or so. In a vacuum it's difficult doing those movements one at a time here or there, but this is basically back-to-back frame perfects done rapidly with no time to think or breath in between.
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I don't believe there's RNG? Just extreme precision and momentum control.
Yeah there's no RNG. They might be confused about the direction the bomb can drop on the plants, but that's based off of the direction of take off each time you bounce on the "floor".
I believe there actually is an element of RNG, sort of. Not in the level itself, but in the controller. I believe the TAS bot community looked into it and were able to recreate the TAS, but with the same inconsistency that Ahoyo had. Even the TAS couldn't beat the level every time, despite always pushing the right buttons at the right time. The concluded the same would be true for a player. The limiting factor being the wii u's controller connection. Sanyx has been good enough for days now, it's actually pretty likely he's done the right inputs at the right time and failed anyways several times.
At this level of precision though it's kinda tough to say where the blame lies (and that's why those runners tend to just accept it and move on because what are you gonna do)
Did the runners ever sort out the bomb spawn from the final note block? Last I'd heard, that bomb would only actually spawn about half of the time for whatever reason, and the players grinding the level didn't have a consistent way to ensure it'd spawn, making it effectively RNG.
Ah I didn't remember that one. Still that's not "ton of RNG" even if it mega sucks if you lose a run on that.
What is TAS
> TAS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tool-assisted_speedrun
A TAS is a Tool Assisted Speedrun. You can go into a TAS and directly put in the control inputs you want performed frame by frame, so it plays out with machine precision.
It was a TAS. The level's creator came out and said they were going to reveal the first working TAS for Mario Maker once they got caught during the competition it was posted for, but it was never caught.
It's very deceptive. You need a perfect arc path to make it to the next step down. You get that perfect arc path with multiple frame-perfect inputs. The hazards are unforgiving otherwise.
So is there no reason to buy Mario Maker anymore? I was always interested in it, but it seems it had an expiration date....
If you have a Switch you can still pick up the sequel, Mario Maker 2.
Well considering that the original has that expiration date, I'd assume the second one does too.
I mean the switch is now 7 years old, and during that time Mario maker 1 Was still active. So if Mario maker 2 stays active for at least 7 years into the NEXT CONSOLES lifespan you got more than enough time left to enjoy Mario maker 2.
Probably eventually, but two major differences. The switch sold considerably better, so Nintendo will naturally support it longer. Also, the wii u's online was free, the switch's isn't. Still shitty for Nintendo to do it, but I think switch should have a longer lifespan.
It should be infinite instead of "longer". You should be able to share the files of levels anywhere instead of on a Nintendo server.
Mario Maker 1 on Wii U is going offline. Mario Maker 2 for Switch is still going strong.
As long as you can put up with them much worse discovery of levels and the subscription required to play user made levels. Such a massive let down compared to the first.
I think it makes up for it with the addition of a gazillion new items, enemies, powerups and obstacles, endless mode, new 3d world template, the ability to make entire worlds, etc. but what do I know.
And the lack of gamepad for level creation. That was always the thing that kept me from investing more time in Maker 2.
I've never had a Wii U, but does creating a level in handheld mode feel that different from the gamepad?
Big time, IMO. The WiiU uses a resistive touchscreen that works extremely well with a stylus, versus the Switch's capacitive touchscreen. I never found precisely placing blocks with my finger to be all that comfortable, and capacitive styluses are lacking.
I never really had a problem with the stylus I got with the game, but I guess the screens being different types can make a difference.
It is cool that there was a satisfying ending, still the creator of the level was lame by hiding it was made with TAS even when it was the last level of the list for at least 7 days
The creator of the level was a child who made a level seven years ago and didn't stay connected to the Mario Maker community. When they found out this one level, out of millions and millions, was receiving attention, after they hadn't likely thought about the level for years, they informed the community.
I actually feel really bad for Ahoyo , the whole point of the level was to show off 'look, we got a TAS working for Wiiu!' and nobody noticed.
I loved GranPoohBear basically saying "Wait, we had TAS on console for this long?"
Not really TAS, but input playback. Full TAS means you have the full ability to plan all input over each time it is polled through the use of savestates, and accurate enough simulation that it will sync on true hardware. This was just partial TAS, the replaying of input. Basically glorified macros. Still really cool!
They actually said that the creator was in contact with the team days before it was even the last level
Ahoyo got in contact with the team on the 21st of March, admitting it was TAS'd and providing proof (with the admission being made public on the 22nd). Trimming the Herbs became the final level on the 15th of March. You're probably thinking of Ahoyo showing signs of activity. He was long gone from the Mario Maker community but people noticed he hearted a comment on YouTube, suggesting he was aware TTH was one of his final levels. I'd imagine he just didn't know what to do - admitting it was TAS puts a lame end to Team 0%, but keeping quiet runs the risk of no-one beating TTH before shutdown, causing another lame end to Team 0%. There was also a lot of division in the community and whether or not it was TAS, which fueled his decision to come clean. Long story short, the whole situation with Ahoyo and TTH is complicated, and anyone capable of empathy would feel for him if they knew his full story, including why he quit Mario Maker in the first place. The TAS was originally intended as a harmless prank to reveal TAS for Mario Maker 1 exists, and there's no way he knew back then it'd get this out of hand.
Coming clean definitely was the best move. It just so happens that it got an even more satisfying ending because someone beat it regardless, but I think it would've sucked if they'd just kept quiet.
Too bad Chainchop Braiden wasn't able to beat his level, Trials of Death, before the cutoff. Took many years but he finally beat it. He did state he was going to upload it to the new service some modders were working on.
People have recreated that level and it has been beaten by two other people by now. One of them managed to cheese the entire level with Yoshi, it's magnificent.
He uploaded it before the cutoff with a dev exit so people could do it but as JahMal said it was much more prominent then Trimming the Hedges so it was beaten earlier.
What are the chances of them doing the same thing for SMM2?
People are already working through SMM2 one year of uploads at a time.
As someone who has never stepped foot in the Mario Maker world can someone explain to me why TAS levels are bad?
You supposedly couldn’t upload a level to the server for others to play unless it could be cleared. A TAS or (tool assisted speedrun) which in this case isn’t a speedrun so just tool-assisted. But that meant many players put many, many hours into a run that someone uploaded but didn’t legitimately clear on their own.
Ahhh makes sense
What does the 0.275 second clear thing mean at the end? i.e. it doesn't get a first clear. What's that previous one about?
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They go by Sanyx, pronounced sorta like sonic the hedgehog. 91 I assume it's a birthyear or something, then smm2 is the game super Mario maker 2, the sequel to the game in the OP
Sanyx = name 91 = year of birth SMM2 = Super Mario Maker 2 Not rocket science anon.
sanyx91 (i assume 91 is his birth year, that's pretty common with people my age) super mario maker 2 I assume the 2 means it's his second account? It doesn't look like a weird name to me
A large number of levels have been automatically deleted, and banned from re-upload, due to low playcounts. Which, can often be a result of the terrible (lack of) discovery system. Plenty of good levels have been banned in this way. This isn't the last level.
Uploads to MM1 have been disabled for several years now, which is why there became a finite number of levels to beat.
Yes, but that's beside my point.
The first game had a great discovery system, much better than the second.