Viewers Anxiously Cheer as Blindfolded Super Mario 64 Speedrunner Approaches World Record
A blindfolded speedrunner named Bubzia comes close to breaking a world record while his audience watches in suspense, unaware that a webcam failure has rendered the attempt invalid.
Viewers of Super Mario 64 speedrunner, Bubzia, presumably spent an entire 60 minutes chewing off their fingernails—not because he was doing poorly, but because he was doing rather well. See, Bubzia is a special kind of speedrunner, choosing to tackle his game of choice with a blindfold on, and he’s been grinding at his world record for over two months.
However, not being able to see makes you oblivious to your stream chat (probably a positive, if we’re being honest) and, crucially, any hardware failures. This is a huge problem, because any blindfolded run needs full video evidence—an uninterrupted webcam recording—to be considered valid.
As reported by our friends over at GamesRadar+, Bubzia very nearly ran into this issue after grinding his own world record in the 70-star category for over 70 days—at roughly 26 minutes into the run, his webcam broke, invalidating the entire attempt.
Unable to hear the digital screams of his viewers or even understand that something had gone wrong, Bubzia started to smash it. Every segment saw him setting a world-record pace, even though his little hardware mishap would’ve rendered it all null and void. What follows is about 60 minutes of nail-biting hilarity as his viewers engage in a bizarro-world outpouring of support by hoping he’d mess up.
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An hour later, as Bubzia approaches the world record—missing it by less than a minute—the chat erupts in cheers and GGs, thankful that he hadn’t completely screwed himself out of a hard-earned win. You can see the exact moment the coin drops in the above video at around 3:03:00. “If this would’ve been a world record, I would’ve cried. I would’ve quit Super Mario 64, man.”
In a later post on X, Bubzia expresses that he’s considering finding a run-legal extension that can warn him if his camera fails, or just having a few trusted friends give him a call if something is up: “That is probably a good idea,” he states.
To give you an idea of just how close he came to unclaimable glory, the previous world record, set by Bubzia in 2023, stands at one hour, 25 minutes, and 11 seconds. This recent run was one hour, 26 minutes, and nine seconds—a difference of just 58 seconds. One or two fewer mess-ups in the run, and he would’ve successfully snatched a victory he couldn’t celebrate. If there was ever a good time to use the phrase ‘mission failed successfully’, I reckon it’s here.
