Runner pannenkoek2012 announced his bounty in the video above, offering tools to aid in discovering and documenting the glitch.
The glitch, which has been captured only once on live video and never duplicated, allows Mario to warp through ceilings and emerge on the other side of level geometry instantly. The glitch could spark radical change within Super Mario 64 speedrunning strategies, potentially shaving a large amount of time off of established world records.
The Mario 64 ceiling exploit is thought to be a result of Mario arriving at the precise intersection of two different ceiling heights. Wall positioning may also play a role in the glitch’s execution. If the glitch can be documented and exploited at will, speedrunners may be able to forge speedier paths through vertically oriented levels like Tick Tock Clock and Tall Tall Mountain.
“Recently, a video by twitch user DOTA_TeaBag was brought to my attention, in which he did an upwarp in Tick Tock Clock,” pannenkoek2012 wrote. “I believe this is a new, unexplored glitch, but unfortunately I have been unsuccessful at recreating it myself. Thus, I’m putting a bounty of $1000 on the glitch. In other words, the first person to recreate the glitch and send it to me will earn $1000 from me.”
Players interested in pursuing the bounty must record the feat using emulation software. Input records will then allow the glitch to be analyzed and dissected for other potential applications.
Super Mario 64 hosts a dedicated speedrunning community, with dozens of players attempting to achieve world record times across multiple categories. Given that the game has been so thoroughly explored by a large community in the nearly two decades following its initial release, the discovery of a new glitch is a rare watershed moment.
Super Mario 64‘s current world record, which uses glitches to skip many of the roadblocks leading up to its final level and boss fight, clocks in at under seven minutes. A more traditional “70 star” route has been completed in under 50 minutes.
