Interview: “The Mexican Runner” The Man Who Completed Every Licensed NES Game!

Piotr Delgado Kusielczuk (better known as “The Mexican Runner” or TMR) has recently completed the incredible feat of speed running (and completing) every single licensed NES game ever released (that’s 714 if you were wondering) culminating with the much-loved Super Mario Bros. 3.

Having completed speed runs for various games, he decided to take on the monumental task back in 2014 when a friend joked that he should try it. TMR decided to take up the challenge (dubbing it NESMANIA) with the ‘speedrun’ being completed 3435 hours, 12 minutes, and 24 seconds later.

“The Mexican Runner” (being a super awesome guy) spoke directly with eTeknix.com when we wanted to know some of the details about his run.

What made you decide to do this in the first place?

TMR – “I needed to have a break from speedrunning and somehow I thought doing NESMania would be a nice break, I didn’t know how long it was going to be when I started but I just did it.”

From your own personal perspective of speed running, which was your favourite game?

TMR – “Battletoads was, is and will always be my favorite NES game. I like platforming games for speedrunning (especially the hard ones) because of the execution you need to master with the controller inputs.”

Adversely, which was the worst? (bearing in mind some of his speed runs are in excess of 10 hours)

TMR – “While there were a few games that I didn’t enjoy for example Paperboy 2, Taboo, Kick Off, Ghostbusters and Wayne Gretzky Hockey (they all received the lowest rating by me), but even with that, the worst is not only enclosed to the games, also being lost in a game for hours isn’t enjoyable.”

If you had to do it all again, would you?

TMR – “Without hesitation, NESMania has been one of the greatest projects I have done in my life and also brought together a community of retro gamers.”

Might sound crazy, but are you planning to be the first person to complete the licensed SNES library next?

TMR – “Not at the moment, trying to beat all licensed SNES games would be a few years challenge at least and right now I want to focus more in my personal life.”

We decided at this point we’d impeded on his time enough and left him with our most grateful thanks.

We would like to congratulate him for this brilliant project and of course, we would like to thank Piotr Delgado Kusielczuk again for taking the time to speak to us at eTeknix. If you have the time, we’d really love it if you could check out his Twitch stream or YouTube channel (he’s still in the process of uploading his videos, currently on 524/714) to see some of the work that went into this achievement.

Incidentally, to confirm his credentials as a legitimate speed runner, see the video below of his WORLD RECORD any % run of ‘The Lion King’ on the SNES completed shortly after the completion of NESMANIA.

Awesome work, kudos, and muchos gracias to “The Mexican Runner”

Please note that there is some colourful language (mostly in Spanish); viewer discretion is advised.