Mario touches grass in his most important speedrun yet

Mario
(Image credit: Nintendo)

Mario has been the star of some of the most impressive and beautifully executed speedruns in the history of games, and thanks to YouTube j0rts, he's now the star of one of an amazingly silly one that many people can aspire to: touching grass.  

"People keep telling me to touch grass so that's exactly what I did...by seeing how fast you can touch grass in every Mario game," the YouTuber says. The player starts with Super Mario Bros on the NES, where it takes almost 2 minutes before they finally get their hands on the green stuff. Super Mario Bros 2 has touchable grass much earlier, at around 19 seconds into the game.

It's definitely worth giving the whole video a watch, but if you want just the highlights, then Super Mario Land 2 offers the speediest path to grass at just over 6 seconds, followed by Super Mario 3D World at around 18 seconds. At the other end of the scale is Super Mario Odyssey, where it takes around 3 minutes 34 seconds to touch grass, closely followed by Super Mario World 2 with 3 minutes 38 seconds. The Mario game that you'll have to play the longest is Super Mario Sunshine by quite a margin, as grass isn't touchable in the 2002 GameCube title until around 7 minutes 30 seconds, although this is largely down to the introductory cutscenes and tutorials.

You can see what other "mostly pointless things in video games" j0rts likes to do by checking out their YouTube channel. And in case you were wondering, no, they've never actually worn a pair of jorts.

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Anne-Marie Ostler
Freelance Writer

Originally from Ireland, I moved to the UK in 2014 to pursue a Games Journalism and PR degree at Staffordshire University. Following that, I've freelanced for GamesMaster, Games TM, Official PlayStation Magazine and, more recently, Play and 12DOVE. My love of gaming sprang from successfully defeating that first Goomba in Super Mario Bros on the NES. These days, PlayStation is my jam. When not gaming or writing, I can usually be found scouring the internet for anything Tomb Raider related to add to my out of control memorabilia collection.