I counted 52 WRs, since a few CEs have multiple separate categories within them.
No, not even close. You'll see when the Minimum A Presses TAS is released in 15 hours.
NTSC is faster than PAL for RTA, but PAL is faster than NTSC for TAS.
A TAS would save: 20 frames in 1-1 15 frames in 1-2 not sure how many frames in 4-1 20 frames in 4-2 4 frames in 8-1 7 frames in 8-2 not sure how many frames in 8-3 So that's at least 66 frames saved, plus some extra time in 4-1 and 8-3, meaning that without framerules, the TAS can go down to around 4:52.6xx.
@WolfAttacK 8-1, 8-2 and technically 8-4 have 0 frames to spare, 1-1 and 1-2 have only a few frames to spare, 4-1, 4-2, and 8-3 can have some frames to spare, so I think it would sum up to about half a second.
There's actually a decent bit to optimize in SMBFlow. See my TAS of it:
Clipping through walls also push you to the right side of the screen, and it is usually faster than backward bumps.
8-3 FFPG is possible as shown in the warpless walkathon TAS, but is much slower than completing the level normally.
Well, you must also consider that there's multiple people speedrunning SMB, and when old ones retire, new ones would improve enough to be a WR contender.
I believe the perfect run is the sum of every trick that humans had done individually, which would be 1 frame behind the no L+R TAS since there's a frame in 8-4 first room that requires R, nothing, R, L, R inputs which looks humanly impossible. No matter how many attempts it take, as long as the probability of getting every individual trick is non-zero, someone will pull it off. That would probably take at least a few centuries though.
Yes, but it only loses ~0.5 seconds over a 5-minute run
No, since in Both Quests you start from 8-1 of the second quest, while in Second Quest, you start from 1-1.
No slowdown FPG saves 19 frames and not 18 frames in 8-1, and similarly, fast acceleration saves 2 frames and not 3. There's no 3 frame window in the FPG setup since everything must be done frame perfectly. There's not always 0 frames to spare in 1-1 depending on how well you did the underground section. The frame perfect, 1 frame jump is the harder part of 1-2. The difficulty of 4-1 FPG and 1-1 FPG are pretty similar, but most people go for 1-1 FPG first because that's earlier in the run. The inputs for fast acceleration are left+b, b, right+a+b, right+b, and not left+b, a+b, right+b. TAS 8-2 saves 3 framerules over normal 8-2. The 8-3 FPG setup is easier than the 8-1 setup. It is technically possible to get 4:54 with an 8-4 with no fast accelerations, but most runners go for 1 in the third room.