Alex Tan (born March 13, 1996), better known under the screen names PangaeaPanga, PePanga and formerly penangbenny, is an American ROM hacker, speedrunner and

tool-assisted speedrun A tool-assisted speedrun or tool-assisted superplay (TAS; ) is generally defined as a speedrun or playthrough composed of precise inputs recorded with tools such as video game emulators. Tool-assisted speedruns are generally created with the go ...

ner. He is best known as the creator of difficult ''

Super Mario World ''Super Mario World'', known in Japan as '' is a 1990 platform game developed by Nintendo EAD and published by Nintendo for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). The player controls Mario on his quest to save Princess Peach and Dino ...

'' ROM hacks and ''

Super Mario Maker is a 2015 platform game and game creation system developed and published by Nintendo. An entry in the ''Super Mario'' series, the game allowed players to create, play, and share courses based on previous ''Super Mario'' titles including ''Sup ...

level Level or levels may refer to: Engineering *Level (optical instrument), a device used to measure true horizontal or relative heights * Spirit level or bubble level, an instrument designed to indicate whether a surface is horizontal or vertical *C ...

s. His notable work includes ''Super Mario World'' ROM hack ''Super Dram World'' and ''Super Mario Maker'' levels "P-Break" and the "Pit of Panga" series. He has also played through ''Super Mario World'' blindfolded.

Personal life

Tan is from Rocky Hill,

Connecticut Connecticut ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York (state), New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. ...

, and is a graduate of

Rocky Hill High School Rocky Hill High School is a four year high school in Rocky Hill, Connecticut. Overview The school was constructed in 1980, and has a rated capacity of 750. The school underwent a $50 million, 3-year renovation from 2014-2017, which expanded th ...

. His fastest

mile run The mile run (1,760 yards, 5,280 Foot (unit), feet, or exactly 1,609.344 metres) is a middle-distance running, middle-distance foot race. The history of the mile run event began in England, where it was used as a distance for gambling ...

is 4:23.13. In 2018, he graduated from the University of Connecticut School of Business with a degree in

management information systems A management information system (MIS) is an information system used for decision-making, and for the coordination, control, analysis, and visualization of information in an organization. The study of the management information systems involves peo ...

, and was an

NCAA Division I NCAA Division I (D-I) is the highest division of intercollegiate athletics sanctioned by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in the United States, which accepts players globally. D-I schools include the major collegiate athlet ...

cross country runner for the

UConn Huskies The UConn Huskies (or Connecticut Huskies) are the College athletics in the United States, intercollegiate athletic teams that represent the University of Connecticut, with its main campus located in Storrs, Connecticut. The school is a member of ...

during the 2014–2015 season. He also plays the

piano A piano is a keyboard instrument that produces sound when its keys are depressed, activating an Action (music), action mechanism where hammers strike String (music), strings. Modern pianos have a row of 88 black and white keys, tuned to a c ...

and

trumpet The trumpet is a brass instrument commonly used in classical and jazz musical ensemble, ensembles. The trumpet group ranges from the piccolo trumpet—with the highest Register (music), register in the brass family—to the bass trumpet, pitche ...

Speedrunning career

PangaeaPanga was the world record holder for speedrunning ''Super Mario World'' in 2015, having beaten the game in 1 minute and 38 seconds using

arbitrary code execution In computer security, arbitrary code execution (ACE) is an attacker's ability to run any commands or code of the attacker's choice on a target machine or in a target process. An arbitrary code execution vulnerability is a security flaw in softwa ...

, though this record has since been beaten. PangaeaPanga started playing ''Super Mario World'' while

blindfold A blindfold (from Middle English ') is a garment, usually of cloth, tied to one's head to cover the eyes to disable the wearer's sight. While a properly fitted blindfold prevents sight even if the eyes are open, a poorly tied or trick blindfo ...

ed on June 16, 2015, and completed a full run of the game this way eight days later. He has stated that he got the idea from fellow player of ''Super Mario World'' DavisKongCountry, who played portions of the game blindfolded. To beat the game in this way, PangaeaPanga memorized a route that was "easy and consistent", using musical cues from the game to know when to carry out certain actions. The run took 23 minutes, despite playing as the character

Mario Mario (; ) is a Character (arts), character created by the Japanese game designer Shigeru Miyamoto. He is the star of the ''Mario (franchise), Mario'' franchise, a recurring character in the ''Donkey Kong'' franchise, and the mascot of the Ja ...

, dying a few times, and getting lost. After having his world record beaten on July 20, 2016, in a time of 17:46, he reclaimed the title a few days later on August 8, 2016, with a time of 15:59 using the Japanese release, before once again having his world record beaten on May 24, 2017, with a time of 13:31. In September 2015, shortly before ''Super Mario Maker'' was released,

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

removed the majority of PangaeaPanga's tool-assisted speedrun videos from his channel after a

Digital Millennium Copyright Act The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a 1998 United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or ...

claim was made by

Nintendo is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational video game company headquartered in Kyoto. It develops, publishes, and releases both video games and video game consoles. The history of Nintendo began when craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi ...

. PangaeaPanga described his YouTube channel as "wrecked" on

Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...

and stated that he finds it a "shame" that content creators "are restricted to … ''

'' instead of the way we have always done."

''Super Mario'' levels

ROM hacks

Through

ROM hacking ROM hacking is the process of Modding, modifying a ROM image, ROM image or ROM file to alter the contents contained within, usually of a video game to alter the game's graphics, dialogue, Level (video games), levels, gameplay, and/or other elemen ...

, PangaeaPanga has made several difficult levels for ''Super Mario World'', the most famous of which is "Item Abuse 3". This level, which took three years to create and beat, has been described as "the hardest ''Super Mario World'' level ever". The level is impossible to beat without making use of tool-assistance to allow individual frame button input. PangaeaPanga has declared that "Anyone who can complete this is pretty much mentally insane." In addition to the ''Item Abuse'' series, PangeaPanga has also created three additional hacks inspired by the ''

Kaizo Mario World also known as ''Asshole Mario'', is a series of three ROM hacks of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System video game ''Super Mario World'', created by T. Takemoto. The term "Kaizo Mario World" is a shortened form of the title The series was cr ...

'' series titled ''Super Dram World'', ''Super Dram World 2'', and ''Super Foss World'', of which the former two have been speedrun live at a

Games Done Quick Games Done Quick (GDQ) is a semiannual video game speedrun charity marathon held in the United States, originally organized by the Speed Demos Archive and SpeedRunsLive communities. Since 2015, it has been handled by Games Done Quick, LLC. Held ...

event.

''Super Mario Maker''

In September 2015, 10 days after the American release of ''

'', PangaeaPanga uploaded "Pit of Panga: P-Break". The level, which took five hours to create, had to be beaten beforehand to be uploaded to ''Super Mario Maker'' servers, as the game prevents players from uploading levels before clearing them in order to minimize the number of impossible levels in the game. PangaeaPanga beat the level in nine hours, all of which he streamed on

Twitch Twitch may refer to: Biology * Muscle contraction ** Convulsion, rapid and repeated muscle contraction and relaxation ** Fasciculation, a small, local, involuntary muscle contraction ** Myoclonic twitch, a jerk usually caused by sudden muscle c ...

. "P-Break" was a sequel to "Bomb Voyage", another difficult level PangaeaPanga created. It took the ''Super Mario Maker'' community a collective total of 11,000 tries before speedrunner Bananasaurus Rex beat this level. By the end of October 2015, "P-Break" was beaten 41 times. After stating that "in an ideal world, no more than ten clears would satisfy me", PangaeaPanga went on to create the even more difficult "Pit of Panga: U-Break", which was later awarded the world record for the "Most difficult level created in ''Super Mario Maker''" by

Guinness World Records ''Guinness World Records'', known from its inception in 1955 until 1999 as ''The Guinness Book of Records'' and in previous United States editions as ''The Guinness Book of World Records'', is a British reference book published annually, list ...

. PangaeaPanga influenced several other people to create unusually difficult ''Super Mario Maker'' levels. In an interview, PangaeaPanga has stated that he never really tried to build easy levels, as he enjoys to "force players to take a single specific route", in contrast to the autonomy video games usually offer players. Furthermore, PangaeaPanga has noted that he aims to make levels "both fair and fun, without being too aggravating or difficult", which he achieves by

playtest A playtest is the process by which a game designer tests a new game for bugs and design flaws before releasing it to market. Playtests can be run "open", "closed", "beta", or otherwise, and are very common with board games, collectible card games, ...

ing his levels extensively. One of his ''

Super Mario Maker 2 is a 2019 platform game and game creation system developed and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Switch. It is the sequel to '' Super Mario Maker'' and was released worldwide on June 28, 2019. The gameplay is largely retained from that o ...

'' levels
"Cyber Security 101: Brute Force"
required players to enter two random eight-digit numbers, giving a player a 1 in 10

quadrillion Depending on context (e.g. language, culture, region), some large numbers have names that allow for describing large quantities in a textual form; not mathematical. For very large values, the text is generally shorter than a decimal numeric repres ...

chance of winning on a random attempt. Another level of his creation
"#SkipThis - Are We There Yet?"
is the longest level in ''Super Mario Maker 2'' when considering the real elapsed time from start to completion. This level takes 19 hours and 36 minutes to complete by combining several in-game mechanics together to pass as much real-time as possible while incrementing the in-game counter as little as possible. On June 1, 2021, Canadian speedrunner Warspyking became the first player to consecutively beat all 47 levels created by PangaeaPanga in ''Super Mario Maker 1'', setting the record at 8 hours, 55 minutes, and 7 seconds.

References

External links

PangaeaPanga's Twitch.tv channel

YouTube channel

Profile
on Speedrun.com {{Speedrunning Video game speedrunners Living people American esports players 1996 births People from Rocky Hill, Connecticut UConn Huskies men's cross country runners American people of Chinese descent American people of Malaysian descent People in information technology Mario players American Twitch (service) streamers UConn Huskies men's track and field athletes American male middle-distance runners 21st-century American sportsmen