Incredibly, for the first time ever, it seems like a perfect Super Mario Bros. 1 speedrun is actually going to humanly happen. Both LeKukie and Niftski are now explicitly aiming for a perfect run, something which was previously absurd to me as someone who has been following SMB1 (no L+R) any% progress for the past decade. The current world record at time of market creation is only 6 frames off of perfect.

Resolution happens when someone gets a 4:54.265 (namely, 17,685 frames of gameplay) that is verified on the any% page on speedrun.com. If the current input swapping ruleset kerfuffle causes contention I'll defer to the speedrun.com leaderboard. In the unlikely event that a new strategy is discovered that lowers our notion of "perfect" (which hasn't happened in over 15 years!) I will continue to evaluate based on the first person to get the current 4:54.265 goal time that everyone is competing over.