IIPK

*The proper title of this article is **iiPK**, but Fandom forces it to be capitalized.*

**iiPK** (pronounced **iPK**, the acronym of his old username **iPunchKidsz**) is an American Super Mario Maker 2 player and full-time Twitch streamer. He was the first player to attain 7000 points in Multiplayer Versus, and is considered by many fellow players to be the greatest to ever play the mode.

On Twitch he has streamed nearly every Multiplayer Versus match he has ever played, and has garnered a large following from the entire game's community as his viewers watched his incredible skill and him achieving several feats that were thought to be impossible.

## Ranked career

### Early beginnings

iiPK began playing Multiplayer Versus immediately as the game released. As he was one of the greatest Super Expert 100 Mario Challenge No-Skips players in the original Super Mario Maker, his Endless No-Skip runs in Super Mario Maker 2 initially overshadowed his Versus gameplay. He held multiple former world records for the highest score without skipping in the first month since launch, until finally achieving a run with 32 Super Expert clears.

iiPK's mindset when playing Versus, however, stood out from other early top players. As the game came out, players were trying to work out the kinks of Multiplayer Versus in order to get better as soon as possible. With so many high-level players at the time, and four players in one match at a time, they all simply believed that each of them had little more than a 1 in 4 (25%) chance to win, and had to accept that.

iiPK, on the other hand, was routinely frustrated at his win ratio, displayed as part of his Maker Profile in-game. Despite it being nearly 50% through his first 500 matches, he called it "negative", as if he was playing 1v1s. His prior experience with *Super Smash Bros.* may have made him this agitated.

Nevertheless, he soon rose to Rank S, and on July 17, 2019, he reached Rank S+, having played just 491 matches, quite likely lower than any other player up to that point. This was also the same day that he got the 32 clear run in Super Expert No-Skips. The full stream of this day can be watched here. By this point, he realized that he was just as good at Versus as he was at Super Expert.

### The climb to World No. 1

Over the following weeks, iiPK continued his Versus success, while still a part of the minority of top players that were not from Japan at the time. On July 24, for the first time, he became No. 1 in North America, at about 5300 points. He probably traded this spot with Enviosity a few times, but by the 30th, he was a clear runaway, becoming World No. 3. At the time, the top 2 were Japanese players Haruto and Wagyatto, known for wearing the same in-game outfit. It was undoubtedly clear by this point that iiPK was ready to invade them, with his different, but soon-to-be, iconic outfit.

On August 7, he pulled through to become the World No. 1 player in Multiplayer Versus. On the exact moment he did so, he also became North America's first player with a 6000 rating (both Haruto and Wagyatto did it before but dropped, so iiPK was not the first 6000 worldwide). The dynasty that the Japanese clung onto was no more. iiPK became the first American to be World No. 1 since Enviosity all those weeks back, and now it was his turn to enjoy some dominance.

### 6000 is harsh...

Continuing through August, although iiPK, Haruto, and Wagyatto stayed firm in the top 3, their permutation within the top 3 never seemed to settle down. More importantly, pertaining to iiPK, he was far ahead of any other American Versus player in skill level, and he continued to grow his rating, which remained as North America's highest.

There was just one problem: the conditions to rank up further through 6000 were incredibly rough. On average, iiPK would gain about 6 points for winning in a 4 player lobby, and 9 points for losing. His mindset of having a win ratio better than anyone else's could not have been more utilized than right now, fighting to take back the World No. 1 spot from the Japanese, which he rightly knew he would never hold for long.

iiPK would stream for several hours a day, grinding Versus extensively. Often, he would turn his facecam off to focus even more. People who had no initial thoughts of the harshness of Versus at this point certainly did now. Sometimes, he would use a VPN to connect to Japanese servers and play with Japanese players, just as part of his strategy, and to see how the Japanese played. It was not met with criticism and it helped everybody out in the end.

With competing for the World No. 1 spot, there was going to be swift ranking up from these three, and Wagyatto would eventually get 6500 first. It was a very close race, though, as iiPK and Haruto all achieved 6500 within about a 5-day period. Of course, iiPK was the first in North America.

### ...but 6500 is even worse

> "6500 is brutal. +3 for a 4 player lobby. LOL" -iiPK
>
>

Even though people believed 6000 was extremely difficult to climb through, the Big 3 prevailed by the start of September, after the entire month of August. Wagyatto got 6500 first, and chose not to play until he was contested. When iiPK got it, he pushed forward. It did not take him very long to realize that he was basically playing with fire. As a 6500 player, he was basically risking losing even more points for losses relative to what he was gaining for wins. Speaking of what he was gaining, on average it was only about 4 points, while he still lost about 9 for losing.

For a while, this was virtually the killscreen for the top Versus players, including iiPK. Climbing was now slower than it ever was before, and questions immediately arose as to how much further Versus could be pushed.

### The Royal Family begins

Just after reaching 6000, iiPK experimented with other ways to play Versus. He was notably one of the first players to ever embrace waiting at the flag at the end of the level, to allow the other players to catch up and lose less points for finishing themselves. Later, he took it upon himself to create a second ("alt") account named WaitAtFlag, that he would use in-game whenever he needed a break from the agony that was the journey on his main iiPK account. He was able to do this with the Nintendo Switch Online family membership plan, which entitled him to play online with up to eight accounts on just his one Switch; instead of his real family, he had a different family in mind.

When iiPK first appeared in matches on WaitAtFlag, many top players were baffled as to how they were winning so often against them, despite their low rating; this would become an everlasting issue with "alt" accounts in Versus. Eventually, people caught on to this being a secondary identity of iiPK. He took WaitAtFlag to Rank S in 99 games, then to S+ in 263 games, in his trailblazer for alts in Versus. He created a third account called SenpaiiPK, a pun on "Senpai" and his name, as a tribute to the Japanese players he enjoyed competing with. He wanted to compete with them more directly, so this was the account for which he often appeared in Japan servers.

He ended up pushing SenpaiiPK way, *way* further than anyone anticipated, himself included. The Big 3 remained firm as the three greatest in Versus, but SenpaiiPK was up to 6000 on September 2, then skyrocketed to 6500 in the next nine days. This was the world's fourth account from only three people to reach this benchmark. He also became the first player to reach the World No. 1 spot with two different accounts on the 11th as well, which by that point required 6540 points. He held the top 2 spots on the leaderboard.

On September 23, he achieved the third top spot with WaitAtFlag. A ribbon is displayed on the Maker Profile of the three highest rated accounts of Multiplayer Versus, and iiPK was the sole possessor of all three at this point. The Royal Crown and Royal Attire costumes are granted to any account that achieves World No. 1 on any leaderboard in the game, and iiPK was (and still is, besides Maker Points Weekly) the only player to have it on two accounts. Thus, the nickname "iiPK Royal Family" was made out of this dynasty.

### Sluggish era

iiPK was both strongly praised and heavily criticized for his moves with alts. Some people used it as the undeniable skill which made him the single best Versus player ever, while others lambasted it for taking up spots on the leaderboard.

He stepped back from the alts for a brief time after taking WaitAtFlag to 3rd place, and more so because Wagyatto became the first 6600-rated player in the game. iiPK took the phrase "two can play that game" a bit too literally, and ranked both his main iiPK account and SenpaiiPK to 6600 as well.

On September 17, there was a tie for World No. 1 between him and Wagyatto at 6610. Wagyatto broke it with at least 6615, before losing almost 500 points over the next two days and never being able to recover. Haruto had also slowly disappeared through September, so it seemed like the Royal Family was here to stay, whether people wanted it or not. iiPK was disappointed to not have competition.

iiPK spent most of October ranking up a fourth account, DpadSux (originally MatePK), to the top as well. The name DpadSux came from iiPK's frequent troubles with the d-pad on his controllers while playing, which most often caused him to grab onto vines (often of decoration) by accident. Sure enough, he had all of the top four spots on October 18. The next day, after almost a month of the highest rating ever recorded standing at or a little above 6615, iiPK got 6642 on his main, but started the day after with a loss and stagnated in between 6400 and 6600. SenpaiiPK remained at the top with 6608 for a long while. Japanese player Maru, in an often forgotten moment, was once three points away from passing SenpaiiPK's rating; this inadvertently began a long curse with players trying to up iiPK for the number one spot.

After several months of growth and immense progress in Versus, it became a snoozefest with 6500 being almost impossible to climb in. At least ten players had achieved 6500 by this point, but only four got 6600 (iiPK twice) and none attained 6700. Yuu had come the closest thus far, striking with as high as 6683, a month after the 6642.

The rest of October and November saw more top-level play from iiPK, despite the inability to reach new heights; his four alts were still some of the only ones to ever be 6500, and everybody could watch it live on Twitch. With over a month having elapsed since Yuu's 6683, it seemed like the greatest streak of luck and/or dominance was needed to go further. In the meantime, iiPK completed his royal family, by allowing WaitAtFlag and DpadSux to briefly hold the top spot, giving them the royal costumes. He had full control over the top spots.

Something interesting occurred on November 30; iiPK had two other accounts, now called ButtlickPK and WhyPK, which were not ranked up as highly as the others at this time. However, upon a request from pumpitendo, iiPK was able to have all six of these accounts attain a different one of the six medals available for Multiplayer Versus, which was only possible since three of them were the top three, a fourth was top 100 but not top 3 (specifically, fourth), while ButtlickPK was between ranks 101-200 and WhyPK was between 201-1000.

### The race to 7000

Yuu made a massive statement to the Versus world on December 8 by finally topping 6700 points. iiPK coincidentally began that day with 6642 (this was not the same 6642 as from October), and curiously stopped at 6699. On the 9th, he was the second person to claim 6700, but it didn't mean much with Yuu almost at 6800 by that point. Yuu got 6800 on the 11th, only three days after breaking the once-thought impossible barrier of 6700. iiPK came up a bit short of him on the same day, exactly ten points under that milestone by the end of his stream.

How fast the Versus scene grew competitively during this time is remembered fondly by many of the original players. Really, however, it was just iiPK and Yuu fighting each other, possibly to obtain the dream rating of 7000 points. From the 12th to the 16th, the two traded the top spot; iiPK had peaked at 6830 while Yuu had doubled the last two digits at one point. Both of these players reached about 200 points higher than any other player; Maru, the third highest-rated player, peaked at 6643, now relatively low.

The first Ninji Speedrun, Rolling Snowballs, also released around this time, and Yuu had the world record for the competition. He was one of only three players to complete the course in under 19.8 seconds. iiPK, on the other hand, finished a distant 50th. He finally found himself on the winning side of the race to 7000, though, by getting to 6900 first on December 17. Yuu did so too, early the next morning. After months of the best possible rating being in the 6600s, two players were now on the homestretch to 7000 in just a week.

All of this competition between the two occurred with the understanding that they would gain about 4 points per win, while the number of points lost often increased to 10 or more for being much higher than 6500. By losing while still reaching the flag within five seconds of the winner (in only levels that have flagpoles), the points lost decreased by 80%, to an average of 2; this was critical in their climbs.

iiPK started up a stream on December 18 with a goal of 7000. After a start to the session that seemed to signify evening out at 6900 in the end, he starting climbing quickly once it hit midnight on the 19th. Viewers were monitoring the leaderboard closely, seeing that Yuu's rating was changing as often as iiPK's, since iiPK committed to playing in the middle of the night.

At 2:40 AM on the 19th for iiPK, he did it; he achieved exactly 7002 points and concluded what is widely considered to be the greatest race in Multiplayer Versus history. It took just that one stream after getting 6900 for it to happen, and the accomplishment was celebrated everywhere. Yuu continued the curse begun by Maru months back, however, since although he too got 7000 just 24 hours after iiPK, he wanted to win another match since he was one point below iiPK, but could never do so; he has not played Versus since 2019.

### Really sluggish era

With Yuu gone, absolutely no one could contend with iiPK, or come even close. iiPK saw no reason to play on his main account, and decided to rank up his alts only for several months. iiPK spent the rest of 2019 and the beginning of 2020 primarily ranking up ButtlickPK to the top, making it his second account to 7000, and his fifth to get to the top spot. Upon opening the leaderboard for Versus, one can only see the top five players without having to scroll down, and these five at the time were all iiPK's accounts. Someone had actually reported the username of ButtlickPK to Nintendo around this point, so it was changed to "BttlickPK", dropping the 'u' to make it only appear less suggestive.

iiPK received only one legitimate source of competition for the top spot between December 19 and May; Japanese player Nabeyaki peaked at 6882 in late February, while about four others could get to just over 6700. In the meantime, iiPK set out to improve the ranking of his alts. Now the entire top five at this point, WaitAtFlag, SenpaiiPK, and KawaiiPK (the new name of DpadSux) attempted to match what ButtlickPK did in early February by attaining 7000. All three of these got to 6700, then 6800, and eventually 6900 by May before the end of this era. No player besides Yuu had ever achieved 6900 by this point, and iiPK did it five times.

It was a little bit difficult for iiPK to finish off getting everything to 7000, especially since WaitAtFlag was memorable for a fall from about 6800 to 6500, something that never happened to that degree on iiPK's main account; during that time, iiPK's entire focus was on WaitAtFlag. None of this really mattered for him, since nobody was able to climb through 6500 like iiPK or Yuu did, and iiPK was doing it all in great fun.

Meanwhile, iiPK had to play one game on his main account each month, because the game removes an account from the Versus leaderboard if it does not play Multiplayer Versus for 30 straight days. The first of these came just 5 days after he got 7000, as a test to see what that rating had to offer for the point system, and it is known that it was a 3-player game with Raymega, a 6000-rated player and future top 3 worldwide, and possibly an S+ player. iiPK won and got +4, to the surprise of him (he expected a +3). The next monthly game was played presumably on January 23, and he improved to 7010. From there, he tried to play a little bit more seriously, but it got exhilarating when he fell to 6971 at one point, before going on what he called "the greatest 6-win streak of my life" and returned to 7000 exactly. By the end of all of the monthly matches until May, the main account was 7002 while ButtlickPK was 7001 and the other three accounts were above 6900 and seeking 7000 as well.

### Dethroned

On April 20, 2020, Nintendo announced the "final major update" for Super Mario Maker 2, to be released on the 22nd. Although not explicitly mentioned anywhere, the update changed the method that levels were selected for ranked Versus; many levels seemed to recur very often, and had a high number of plays in Multiplayer Versus, a statistic that appeared prior to this update but apparently wasn't factored into the level selection until then. Versus players, most notably people like Cadeinn by a year later, now did it by memory; they learned strategies that could be developed by replaying the level over and over since they often appeared multiple times per player. iiPK, unfortunately, was not one of these people; he based his gameplay only on raw skill.

This update, along with the global stay-at-home orders imposed around this time, ushered in a horde of players, mostly veterans who had been highly ranked but unable to triumph iiPK. The movement had a clear frontrunner, Japanese player Ryo, who was the first player since that December 19 to beat iiPK. On May 4, he achieved 7041 points, which topped iiPK's 7039. The day before, Ryo achieved exactly 7000 points before falling to the 6800s after exactly what happened to Yuu the last time he played; wanting to win one more to steal the top spot from iiPK (7002). At last, the curse was broken on Ryo's second attempt after an incredible resurge on the 4th, but it didn't come without iiPK seeing the first attempt as a threat anyway, and ranking ButtlickPK up to 7020, then the main account to 7039.

iiPK spent 136 straight days at World No. 1 in Multiplayer Versus; this is thought to be the longest such reign ever until the 8000 maximum was achieved in September 2021. After Nabeyaki dropped from 6882, iiPK had the entire top five spots until the days before May 4.

The dethroning movement was not made up of just Ryo, though; players like Nabeyaki, pumpitendo, honebon, MW, Zio, ikura, and watch got 7000 in May, after no new 7000s came in the first four months of the year. More players joined this movement after May as well. May 2020 is often considered the greatest month in Versus history.

### Competition

> "I've been number 1 on the leaderboards since mid-December and now I finally have competition once again. This is exciting. It's on, let's see who gets 7100 first :)" -iiPK
>
>

iiPK fought back on May 5 with 7042, after not winning the match while he was at 7039. It seemed to be all him again, because he ranked both his main and his (by now inferred) favorite ButtlickPK to 7100, before anyone else could. Ryo, Nabeyaki, and pumpitendo had reached 7000 on or before May 11, but iiPK hit 7100 first on this day.

iiPK extended it to 7121 (and a 7128 peak at one point) on the 12th, which wasn't topped for 10 days, though there were still many seeking the bragging rights for doing so. Finally, honebone brought himself up to 7123 on the 22nd, and pumpitendo tied that seven hours later. Without giving iiPK even a chance, however, honebone decided to break through 7200 on the 23rd.

iiPK responded to this four days later by becoming the second 7200-rated player ever, with a 7203 that beat honebon's 7201. Unfortunately, that was short-lived when pumpitendo became the third player in the world to get 7200; he reached 7204 just an hour after iiPK ended his stream that day.

### "De facto" retirement

Since then, iiPK held the top spot with either his main account or ButtlickPK a few times because of players not being able to stagnate at a rating above 7200, while iiPK settled down from playing on his top two accounts and started playing for fun again after the craziness that May was. He ranked up WhyPK, his sixth account, to 7000 in June, but it could never reach the top spot because of the scene being dominated by a multitude of players instead of just him.

In fact, it was evident by June that he had lost interest grinding the game for the top spot altogether; he was really enjoying playing for fun, and liked that people other than him were competing against themselves for World No. 1 for a chance. The last time he was in the top spot himself while taking it seriously was a stream where he hit 7283, but lost two games and immediately ended the stream, obviously showing little spirit. The last time he was World No. 1 overall was sometime in late August 2020, where ButtlickPK was 7303, and two players had achieved 7400 or more, and way more had 7300, but couldn't hold on. iiPK was no sooner than the sixth player in the world to get 7300, and even then, pumpitendo was the first in America to do it.

For his birthday stream in November 2020 (and about one or two days after that), he played long sessions on his main account, peaking as high as 7326. He has never returned to taking the game as seriously as he did, though he continues to play for entertainment to this day. He actually "deranked" his main account to 4000 by intentionally losing matches to start climbing up again, since he wanted a fresh start, and is currently sitting in the 7100 range or so. It isn't impossible for him to get past 7326 again, though he has stated he will not seek the maximum rating of 8000.

As of May 2022, his peak rating is the tenth-highest of all North American players. He is believed to be tied with Cadeinn for the most owned accounts ever rated 7000, with six.

## Tournament career

iiPK won John Wayne's 1v1 Tournament, Versus League in GSA, and the January and February Monthly GSA tournaments, among about three sextillion others lol (write later)