Collaborative challenges aren’t a brand-new concept for Games Done Quick–the twice-yearly speedrunning charity event–but KingJO444 took things just a little bit further for Awesome Games Done Quick 2026. On January 10 in Pittsburgh, he gathered a group of 70 players together to attempt an absurdly chaotic challenge: Collect 70 stars in Super Mario 64 with 70 different players. Somehow, he and the community were successful, completing the challenge in under two hours.
It wasn’t an easy feat to come up with an estimated time for the run, at all, because of the 70 people who participated–each getting exactly one star before passing off the controller–only between 15-20 had any serious experience running the game. Of the remaining players, some had not played Super Mario 64 since childhood, and others had never played the game at all.
“You never know how much someone’s going to practice, or what’s going to happen on stage,” KingJ told us in a post-run interview. He set the estimated time to complete the run at an hour and 40 minutes, but this was only slightly longer than the current world record.
