Super Mario 64 Speedrun Guide: Beginner Routes and Tech

Most games make you fight the engine to speedrun them. Super Mario 64 hands you the controller and gets out of the way. The moveset is expressive, the levels are open, and the routes are legible enough that you can watch a world record, understand roughly what happened, and go replicate a chunk of it the same night. That is why it has been one of the most-run games on the internet for over a decade and why it is the game I point new speedrunners at first.

This is the on-ramp: how to pick a category, the beginner star route that gets you a real completed time, the tech that matters on day one, and the timing rules that decide whether your run actually counts.

Everything here targets the Nintendo 64 original. That is not gatekeeping — as you will see, the version you run on literally changes which categories are possible.

The most beginner-friendly speedgame there is

Two things make Super Mario 64 forgiving to start with. First, the glitches a beginner needs are few and learnable. 70-star's rules ban every backwards long jump, every MIPS clip and any other way around a door or star requirement. 16-star is built on those two glitches, but Ukikipedia's 16-star guide says the basic route and strats can be learned in a few hours. Your first time will be slow. It will also be a real, submittable time, which is more than most speedgames let you say after a few sessions.

Second, the improvement curve is steep early. The gap between "I beat the game" and "I beat the game in under an hour" is almost entirely route knowledge and clean long jumps, not exotic glitches. You buy back minutes just by knowing where you are going and not stopping to run when you could be long jumping.

Pick your category first

Do not start grabbing stars until you have decided what you are running. The three categories most runners choose between are defined by how many Power Stars you collect before beating Bowser, and, as the version section below explains, only two of them run on every release of the N64 game:

• 16-star. Beat the game with 16 stars by glitching past the 30-star door, the 50-star door and the endless stairs. Ukikipedia's category page defines it as using a MIPS clip to skip the 30-star door, and every route it lists also uses backwards long jumps (BLJs) to get past the 50-star door and up the endless stairs. It is short, which Ukikipedia gives as a reason it is a popular beginner category.
• 70-star. You collect 70 Power Stars, which is the number the game requires before the endless stairs stop looping you back. Ukikipedia's rules ban every form of BLJ, every MIPS clip and any other way around a door or star requirement, so this is the run that meets every door and star requirement the intended way.
• 120-star. Every star in the game. The completionist marathon, and the category where the top times are genuinely astonishing.

The main leaderboard also has 0-star and 1-star categories, which lean even harder on the backwards long jump (Ukikipedia's route for both opens with a lobby BLJ and uses the same 50-star door and endless-stairs BLJs as 16-star), and they only work on versions that kept the BLJ. Skip them until you have the fundamentals.

Why 16-star is the right starting line

16-star is where nearly everyone should begin, for concrete reasons:

1. It is short. Ukikipedia pitches it at beginners for exactly that reason; its route notes treat sub-20 minutes as the newer-player level and sub-16 as the advanced target. Short runs mean more attempts per session, which means faster learning.
2. The route is fixed and small. You are collecting a specific, memorizable set of 16 stars. There is far less to hold in your head than a 70 or 120.
3. It teaches the skills the bigger categories reuse. Clean long jumps and efficient star grabs carry straight up into 70-star.

The wrinkle: 16-star is built on two glitches. The MIPS clip uses MIPS, the yellow rabbit that appears in the castle basement once you have 15 stars, to clip Mario through the 30-star door. Backwards long jumps then carry him past the 50-star door and up the endless stairs, which would otherwise loop him back until he has 70 stars. Both have beginner methods: Ukikipedia's beginner BLJ advice is a mashing rhythm (aim for about 600 BPM, or nearer 400 if you cannot mash that fast), and its MIPS Clip page has a beginner setup for the 30-star door. If you would rather avoid both glitches, 70-star bans them.

The beginner 16-star route in plain English

The exact modern route has small optimizations that shift over time, but the shape is stable and worth understanding before you memorize inputs. The core idea: 16 stars will not open the 30-star door or the 50-star door, or stop the endless stairs looping, so the route grabs 16 quick stars and glitches past all three gates.

Ukikipedia's standard route without the lobby BLJ, in broad strokes:

• Bob-omb Battlefield for one star, then Whomp's Fortress for five.
• Cool, Cool Mountain for two, then Bowser in the Dark World for its red coin star and the first Bowser fight.
• Shifting Sand Land (two stars), Lethal Lava Land (one), the basement Toad's star (he appears at 12 stars), and Hazy Maze Cave (two).
• The MIPS clip through the 30-star door, then Dire, Dire Docks for Board Bowser's Sub and on into Bowser in the Fire Sea.
• BLJs past the 50-star door and up the endless stairs, then Bowser in the Sky to finish.

Ukikipedia's beginner variant swaps the Dark World red coins for Swimming Beast in the Cavern in Hazy Maze Cave. Do not chase optimality on run one. Pick a written star order from a current community route, follow it slowly, and finish. A completed slow run teaches you ten times more than a fast run you keep resetting.

The tech you actually need day one

Four movement skills are worth having clean before your first real attempts. All four are covered in depth in the Super Mario 64 movement guide; here is why each one matters to a run.

• The long jump (run, hold Z, press A). This is the whole game. The long jump moves Mario faster than his top running speed, so chaining long jumps instead of running is where beginners find most of their early time savings. If you only drill one thing, drill this.
• Wall kicks. Several star routes take a wall kick to reach a ledge faster than the intended path. The A press has to land during wall contact or Mario just bounces off, so practice on the castle pillars first.
• Dive rollouts. Press A or B as Mario lands from a dive and he rolls out of the belly slide instead of skidding to a stop. Per the Super Mario Wiki, holding back on the stick also ends the slide, but only the button cancels keep his momentum. The roll does not cancel fall damage, though: in the decompiled code a dive landing runs the same fall-damage check as any other landing, measured from the dive's highest point.
• The triple jump. Some star grabs want the extra height. Needs a short runway, so line it up before you commit.

That is the movement toolkit. A 16-star run also needs the two route glitches covered above, the MIPS clip and the BLJs at the 50-star door and endless stairs, and Ukikipedia's guide pages for both have tutorial videos. Drill them in practice before full attempts; 70-star needs neither.

The tech you can skip for now

It is easy to watch a world record, see a wall clip, and assume you need it. You do not. Park these until your fundamentals are solid:

• The lobby BLJ (LBLJ). The advanced 16-star route opens with an extra backwards long jump in the castle lobby. Ukikipedia recommends that beginners start on a route without it and improve their fundamentals before switching to the harder, more reset-heavy LBLJ route. The BLJs at the 50-star door and the endless stairs are a different matter: every 16-star route uses them.
• Advanced sequence breaks and precise cannon setups. The optimized routes stack tricks that only save fractions of a second each. They matter at the top and are noise for a beginner. Get a clean completion first.

The through-line: the difference between a beginner and an intermediate 16-star runner is almost never a fancy glitch. It is cleaner long jumps and fewer stops.

Timing your run so it counts

If you plan to submit to a leaderboard, timing has rules, and getting them wrong invalidates an otherwise good run.

• Timing starts on power-on or reset. Per Ukikipedia's timing guide, Super Mario 64 follows the JRTA convention: the run starts when you power on or reset the console (on emulator, when you load the ROM or reset), not at file select. Super Mario 3D All-Stars runs, which go on a separate Category Extensions leaderboard, are the exception and are timed from file select.
• Timing ends on the grab. The run ends when you grab the final Grand Star from Bowser in the Sky — the moment of collection, not when the credits or the ending cutscene play.
• Record your gameplay. Leaderboards want video. Set up capture or at minimum a phone on a tripod before you start grinding attempts, or your best run will be the one you cannot prove.
• Know your load timing. On emulator and on original hardware, load times differ, which is one more reason categories and leaderboards separate by platform.

Version matters more than you think

This is the thing new runners trip on. Super Mario 64 exists in several revisions, and they are not interchangeable for speedrunning.

The backwards long jump — the trick 16-star and the 0-star and 1-star categories all depend on — was an oversight in the original release. Per the Super Mario Wiki it was fixed in the Rumble Pak Compatible Version, the iQue Player release, and Super Mario 3D All-Stars, and it does not work in the Super Mario 64 DS remake. Since the 3D All-Stars collection is built on the Rumble Pak revision, it cannot BLJ at all. The same wiki says the BLJ is not fixed in the Virtual Console or Nintendo 64 – Nintendo Classics releases, but that does not hold for every regional copy. Ukikipedia says the Japanese Wii and Wii U Virtual Console releases are the Rumble Pak revision and have no BLJ, while the English Wii and Wii U Virtual Console releases keep it. It says the Nintendo Switch Online version keeps it too, but AUTOMATON reported at its October 2021 launch that this is the North American app: the Japanese app is built on the Rumble Pak revision and has no BLJ.

The practical takeaway: only 70-star and 120-star work on every release of the N64 game. 70-star bans every BLJ, and a 120-star run collects every star, so no door or staircase ever needs skipping. 16-star does not: every Ukikipedia route uses BLJs to get past the 50-star door and up the endless stairs, and Ukikipedia's Virtual Console page says 0-star, 1-star and 16-star cannot be completed on the Rumble Pak (Shindou) edition. The DS remake is a separate case: per the Super Mario Wiki its endless stairs need 80 stars, and Mario as the character, so 70 stars will not get you up them there. The safe choice is an original N64 cartridge (not the Rumble Pak revision) or an accurate emulator of one; check your leaderboard's platform rules before running a re-release. Do not spend a week failing a BLJ on 3D All-Stars and conclude you are doing it wrong — the code simply will not let you.

Where 70 and 120-star go from here

Once 16-star feels comfortable, 70-star is the natural next step. It reuses all the movement you already built (though not 16-star's glitches, which Ukikipedia's 70-star rules ban) and mostly adds route length — you are collecting more stars from more courses, so the challenge shifts from execution to stamina and memorization. Because the endless stairs require 70 stars to stop looping and the rules ban every way around them, this category never touches a stair skip.

120-star is the endgame: every star in the game, including the brutal ones like the 100-coin stars and the toughest secret-course stars. It is a different kind of run — a marathon of consistency where one bad course can sink 40 minutes of work. Ukikipedia recommends learning 70-star before 120, since most of the stars in a 70-star run are done the same way in 120.

Whichever way you go, the foundation is the same: pick a category, learn the route, make your long jumps clean, and finish runs instead of resetting them. If you are still filling in the basics of which courses open when, the Super Mario 64 beginner guide covers the star-door quotas that 70-star meets in full and 16-star glitches past at the 30 and 50-star doors.

Quick Action Checklist

• Pick 16-star as your first category — it is short, the route is small, and it teaches skills the bigger categories reuse. Pick 70-star instead if you want to avoid the BLJ and MIPS clip or you play on 3D All-Stars.
• Learn a written star order from a current community route and follow it slowly; finish a run before you chase speed.
• Drill the long jump until it is automatic — it is faster than running and it is where beginners find most of their early time.
• Get wall kicks, dive rollouts, and the triple jump clean; for 16-star, also practice the MIPS clip and the stair BLJs before full attempts.
• Skip the lobby BLJ and advanced sequence breaks until your fundamentals are solid.
• Start your timer when you power on or reset the console and stop it the instant you grab the final Grand Star in Bowser in the Sky.
• Record your attempts before you grind, or you cannot submit your best run.
• Run 70 or 120-star on any release of the N64 game; 16-star and the low-star categories need a version that kept the BLJ.