In the long story of Super Mario 64 speedrunning, a few players feel like gravity wells. They bend the routes, the rivalries, and even the culture around themselves. For more than a decade, Devin “Puncayshun” Blair was one of those forces. From the moment he started threatening Siglemic’s early 120 Star records, through his world record duels with Cheese, to a late career run that finally pushed 120 Star to 1:37:34, his name became shorthand for relentless grinding, marathon consistency, and a very particular idea of what it meant to “no life” Mario 64.
This profile traces that arc across two main peaks. First came the mid-2010s era when he wrestled 120 Star away from Siglemic and drove the record deep into the low 1:40s, while also becoming one of the best 70 Star players in the world. Then came his return years later, when he resurfaced after a public retirement, reclaimed the 120 Star world record in 2023, and shifted into a role as veteran, occasional record holder, and enduring benchmark for the community.
From Kentucky Streamer To SM64 Contender
Devin Blair is an American speedrunner from Kentucky who first came to wide attention in the Super Mario 64 scene in the early to mid 2010s. Coverage of the game’s top runners in that period often framed him as the hungry rival to established names. An Engadget feature on Cheese’s rise in 2017 described Blair as a 23 year old from Kentucky and Cheese’s closest competitor, noting that both had invested thousands of hours into a single Nintendo 64 game.
By that point Blair had already built a reputation on Twitch for brutally long practice sessions and a willingness to reset runs deep into their final minutes if the pace was not perfect. Forum posts from 2014 capture viewers watching him flirt with 1:42 in 120 Star and remarking on how quickly he had caught and then surpassed Siglemic’s early world records.
Under the handle “puncayshun” he became one of the first truly modern SM64 grinders. He streamed constantly, iterated on movement lines frame by frame, and treated run attempts as the public side of a much larger private practice schedule. That style would influence the next generation of runners who came after him.
Dethroning Siglemic And Rewriting 120 Star
When most viewers first encountered Super Mario 64 speedrunning, Siglemic’s 120 Star runs defined the category. His 2012 world record of 1:44:52 set a standard for full game completion that seemed almost impossible at the time.
Blair entered that landscape as the challenger. Community compiled timelines and forum threads show him taking the 120 Star world record in June 2014 with a 1:43:42, then lowering it multiple times over the next months, eventually pushing the category into the low 1:43 range. Through 2015 he continued to chip away at his own records. A record history table referenced on the Cheese Wikipedia entry and associated spreadsheets lists Puncayshun with several 120 Star records in 2015, including times around 1:40:59, 1:40:52, and 1:40:44.
Those numbers can blur together at a distance, but in the moment they represented minutes shaved off of a category that many spectators thought had already been pushed close to its limit. The way Blair ran the game mattered too. Viewers remember a style that combined risky movement with late game calm, especially in the final Bowser throws where a single mistake could cost the record. Contemporary forum posts describe him clutching out a 1:42 range run by the “hair on his chin” and note that thousands of people were already tuning in to watch his attempts live.
By the end of that phase, he had taken 120 Star from a time associated with one famous runner to a much lower mark associated with a new generation of specialists. Even before the category dipped under 100 minutes, Blair had already redrawn the map.
Dominance In 70 Star And The Marathon Stage
Although 120 Star became his signature category, Blair was equally feared in 70 Star. That category focuses on the minimum number of stars needed to beat the game without using certain major glitches. It is shorter than 120 Star but still long enough to demand consistency across many worlds.
In May 2019 a Reddit thread and YouTube upload announced “SM64 70 Star WR 47:23 by Puncayshun,” celebrating his new world record in the category. A later breakdown of 70 Star world record history lists him at 47:23 on May 18 2019, placing his name alongside other all-time greats in that category.
Marathon organizers took notice. Blair featured in multiple Games Done Quick events. At Awesome Games Done Quick 2016 he joined Cheese and Simply for a 120 Star race, giving viewers a rare chance to see three of the game’s best players on stage at once. At Summer Games Done Quick 2018 he faced Cheese in a headline 70 Star race that outside coverage pointed to as one of the best runs of the entire marathon. Articles recapping the event highlighted how both runners showed “incredible discipline and highly practiced maneuvers” across nearly every major star.
League formats also grew around this rivalry. The GSA SM64 70 Star League and PACE events in the late 2010s consistently placed Blair in top billing, often framing him as one of the most consistent “marathon safe” players in the scene, someone who could bring world class times to a live stage without collapsing under pressure.
By the late 2010s, between 120 Star and 70 Star, his name alone meant a particular level of seriousness. If a tournament list included Puncayshun, viewers expected to see endgame times that would hold up to record pace on a good day.
Retirement, Return, And The 1:37:34 World Record
On July 30 2018, Blair publicly stepped away. In a tweet transcribed and archived on the r/speedrun subreddit, he wrote that he was “officially retiring from speedrunning” and that the run he had just finished would be his final one. He explained that it had been an amazing journey, that he wanted to try to start a life outside of speedrunning, and that he would still stream casual games and help test new discoveries if they appeared.
For many viewers that sounded final. The post traveled quickly, was archived in community threads, and for a time it seemed like his record chasing days might truly be over.
What followed instead looked more like a slow return. Blair continued to stream on Twitch, gradually picking Mario 64 back up, entering leagues, and taking part in PACE and other events. Clips platforms record his channel pulling tens of thousands of views for high stakes races and practice streams in the early 2020s.
The culmination of that second arc came in October 2023. During a live stream that later circulated widely as a Twitch clip titled “It’s 1:37:34, Puncay (New 120 Star WR, –1 Second),” Blair finally achieved a 120 Star world record in the modern “carpetless” era. The time, 1:37:34, pushed the category forward by a single second in a stretch of history where every improvement required deep routing changes, intense grinding, or both.
Games journalism and community commentary described the run as a landmark. One article on recent SM64 records called it one of the most dramatic and emotionally charged world record streams in recent memory, in part because Blair had been chasing a return to the very top for so long. His own YouTube channel later uploaded the run under the title “First 120 Star World Record Carpetless Speedrun,” underlining the fact that he had finally claimed a record in the new standard route that avoids the once mandatory carpet ride in Rainbow Ride.
That record would not stand forever. Other runners soon lowered it further, and by early 2025 the official 120 Star board showed Blair ranked around thirteenth with a 1:37:26 personal best, reflecting later improvements after his record run. But in the long view his 1:37:34 world record marked the moment when a player from the Siglemic era reappeared at the front of the pack in a very different technical landscape.
Damageless 120 Star And Category Extensions
Even as the main 120 Star and 70 Star records moved to new names, Blair continued to find ways to push the game in more specialized categories. Super Mario 64 Category Extensions developed into a playground for alternate rulesets, and one of the most demanding was “Damageless 120 Star” a full completion run where Mario cannot take a single point of damage.
On speedrun.com, Blair is listed as the world record holder in Damageless 120 Star with a time of 1:42:17 on N64 hardware, submitted about one year prior to January 2026. The Super Mario 64 Speedrun Wiki, which tracks current records and their holders, also lists him as a current category extension record holder in that discipline.
In practical terms, this meant reworking already dense 120 Star routes to avoid any stray hitboxes, firebars, lava burns, or enemy collisions that might shave seconds in normal runs but instantly void a damageless attempt. It demanded an even higher level of consistency and risk management. For a runner known in his early years for aggressive movement and resets, turning that energy toward damageless completion felt like a fitting late career challenge.
As with many of his achievements, the damageless record says something about his relationship to the game itself. Even when no longer holding the flagship 120 Star record, he was still looking for new ceilings to break inside the same cartridge.
Personality, Interviews, And Representation
Blair’s importance to Super Mario 64 appears not only in leaderboards but also in the media that later tried to explain the scene. The 2023 documentary film “Running with Speed,” narrated by Summoning Salt, lists him among its featured players, putting his story alongside other long time speedrunners.
Interviews and podcasts capture a runner who mixes dry humor with seriousness about the craft. A PACE Summer 2023 interview titled “Puncayshun: The Man Who Surpassed Siglemic” frames him as someone who helped carry the game from its early Twitch era into a more organized, league driven one. Appearances on shows like The Two Dads Podcast gave him a chance to talk about mindset, motivation, and the pressures of chasing thousandth-second improvements live on camera.
His occasional social media posts during record chases also became part of the community’s informal record of the era. When he joked on X in August 2024 about retiring from SM64 and wrote that “2012–2024” had been a long run, community responses quickly labeled it a “fake retirement” once he clarified that he was not actually stepping away during an ongoing PACE event. That back and forth underscored how closely people still watched his career and how easily a single tweet could send waves through a scene he helped shape.
Legacy In The Super Mario 64 Canon
From a legacy standpoint, Devin “Puncayshun” Blair occupies a rare position. He was one of the key figures who moved 120 Star from the 1:44 era into the low 1:40s, who then traded records with Cheese as the category finally broke the 100 minute barrier, and who returned years later to set a world record in the modern carpetless era. At the same time he held the 70 Star world record in 2019, competed in multiple GDQ races, and later added a damageless 120 Star record to his list of achievements.
On speedrun.com his current placements show him outside the very top of 120 Star and 70 Star, which is inevitable in a game that continues to evolve. Yet his best times, especially the 1:37:26 120 Star personal best and the 1:42:17 damageless record, still sit in ranges that most runners will never approach.
Perhaps more importantly, his name is woven into the narrative the community uses to explain how Super Mario 64 reached its modern form. In forum posts from 2014, in Polygon and Engadget articles from 2017, in PACE recaps and Twitch clips from the 2020s, Blair appears again and again as the player who answered Siglemic’s early challenge, who pushed Cheese to new heights, and who kept finding ways to chase improvement even after public retirements and long breaks.
For the purposes of a Speedrun Legacy Profile, that is what stands out most. Devin “Puncayshun” Blair was not only a world record holder. He was one of the clearest through-lines connecting the first great era of SM64 speedrunning to the one that exists today. His career shows how a single runner, given enough time, can redraw the boundaries of a game more than once.