Noki Doki | Daxter - Strip Mine 2 Skip @NokiDoki | Uploaded August 2021 | Updated October 2024, 2 hours ago.
Now that any% is a 20-minute orgy of stored menus and textboxes, the idea of a category without TMS is starting to gain traction. That category would need to defeat the hive queen in Strip Mine 2 to gain access to Emerald Forest 2, but as it turns out, you can ignore the 30 nests scattered around the level. This saves about 2:30 in the level itself, and 1:30 by removing early flame, for a total of 4 minutes (at best).
The first part is pretty simple, just ledgegrab as far into the corner as you can, then drop off by holding away from the ledge and pressing X. Watch out for the slippery ground when navigating out of bounds here, you can easily slide into the eco.
Jumping over the tunnel is fairly tricky and will likely take a good amount of practice to get down. First I get the camera inside the tunnel and rotate it as far right as it'll go, then position Daxter inside the small metal bar that sticks out. His facing angle also seems to matter.
Once in position, I double jump and spin with a neutral stick. If done correctly and in the right spot, Daxter gets pushed to the right and stands inside the rock for a split second. At that point I start holding up on the stick and double jump right after. If you don't get the double jump, you're usually still out of bounds ready to try again. If you do, hover onto the breakable wall and hold O to get another hover when you slide off. The hard part is over, but watch your step as you head towards the elevators, for reference I jump from the edge of the solid floor at 0:39.
The elevators are pretty self-explanatory, and there's a checkpoint at the start of the section. So falling off isn't a problem, and if you end up clipping in bounds between two walls, you can just save and load, and try again.
The rest of the video is just showing the queen fight, since I usually rely heavily on the ultrasonic. Without it, 4-cycle is pretty lenient, and 3-cycle is possible but tricky: twitter.com/Qbe_Root/status/1431451671733878787
Now that any% is a 20-minute orgy of stored menus and textboxes, the idea of a category without TMS is starting to gain traction. That category would need to defeat the hive queen in Strip Mine 2 to gain access to Emerald Forest 2, but as it turns out, you can ignore the 30 nests scattered around the level. This saves about 2:30 in the level itself, and 1:30 by removing early flame, for a total of 4 minutes (at best).
The first part is pretty simple, just ledgegrab as far into the corner as you can, then drop off by holding away from the ledge and pressing X. Watch out for the slippery ground when navigating out of bounds here, you can easily slide into the eco.
Jumping over the tunnel is fairly tricky and will likely take a good amount of practice to get down. First I get the camera inside the tunnel and rotate it as far right as it'll go, then position Daxter inside the small metal bar that sticks out. His facing angle also seems to matter.
Once in position, I double jump and spin with a neutral stick. If done correctly and in the right spot, Daxter gets pushed to the right and stands inside the rock for a split second. At that point I start holding up on the stick and double jump right after. If you don't get the double jump, you're usually still out of bounds ready to try again. If you do, hover onto the breakable wall and hold O to get another hover when you slide off. The hard part is over, but watch your step as you head towards the elevators, for reference I jump from the edge of the solid floor at 0:39.
The elevators are pretty self-explanatory, and there's a checkpoint at the start of the section. So falling off isn't a problem, and if you end up clipping in bounds between two walls, you can just save and load, and try again.
The rest of the video is just showing the queen fight, since I usually rely heavily on the ultrasonic. Without it, 4-cycle is pretty lenient, and 3-cycle is possible but tricky: twitter.com/Qbe_Root/status/1431451671733878787
![Red Coins in Ricco Tower – 0x A Presses [H/R]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Gv07c-AjDPc/hqdefault.jpg "Red Coins in Ricco Tower – 0x A Presses [H/R]
I collect the Ricco 9 Shine without pressing the A button, using only the Hover and Rocket Nozzles.
While it is possible to enter and navigate the secret area without the Rocket Nozzle, the third and fourth red coins are way too high to reach 0x A with the Hover Nozzle. As for the rest of the red coins, the Rocket Nozzle actually makes them harder to get: you need to charge rockets while keeping up with the platforms’ rotation, the rocket gets cancelled if you stop running at the wrong time, and if you thought of using a ground pound to lock your position once you’re above a coin, you’ll discover soon enough that Mario ground pounds in a diagonal and falls to his death.
This video is RTA, played on PAL Wii.")
![Blooper-Surfing Sequel – 0x A Presses [H]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/H0uWw7Qz1Yk/hqdefault.jpg "Blooper-Surfing Sequel – 0x A Presses [H]
I collect the Ricco 10 Shine without pressing the A button, using only the Hover Nozzle.
This is pretty much the exact same route as Ricco 2, only requiring the Hover Nozzle to get onto the logs.
This video is RTA, played on PAL Wii.")
![The Caged Shine Sprite – 0x A Presses [H]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/H28DLCFfhr0/hqdefault.jpg "The Caged Shine Sprite – 0x A Presses [H]
I collect the Ricco 3 Shine without pressing the A button, using only the Hover Nozzle.
I first go to the port, then climb up to the rooftops using the mesh and the crane. You can actually hang on the ledge of the roof, even though it really looks like you shouldn’t be able to. Then I make my way onto another crane, waterslide from the top of it to have just enough speed and height to grab onto a ledge near the first trampoline. From there, I just have to run up to each trampoline and dive onto it to progress to the Shine.
The hover from the crane isn’t actually that simple. First, the crane’s arm has a pretty glitchy hitbox and you can’t stand on its end as it’s all the way up or down, which makes it hard to use the entire arm as a runway. Second, if you slide straight to the arm’s base, you will slide down to the foot of the crane before you take off and get to hover. In that case, the slope gives you enough momentum to reach the next beam, but you’re way too low to grab onto it. This is also true of the crane base, so I had to waterslide at an angle to hit the spot between the arm and the base, which broke the slide and allowed me to hover.
This video is RTA, played on PAL Wii.")
![[LOTAD] Super Mario Sunshine Arbitrary Code Execution: Any% in 34:28](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/I7E4huWppvc/hqdefault.jpg "[LOTAD] Super Mario Sunshine Arbitrary Code Execution: Any% in 34:28
RTA timing: 34:13.385
TAS timing: 34:28.300
Rerecords: 131,338 (probably way more from unsaved brute force sessions)
DTM download: https://drive.google.com/file/d/16t8-mEJ1VXXcXU_pOmoj3Mi5mhhWFTJm/view?usp=sharing
First, I unlock Bianco, and save before both Ricco and Gelato are unlocked. Then I enter the eel fight with 0 lives left, get eaten 3 times, then spawn the Shine. That way, the Shine spawn cutscene loads into the 4th cutscene slot, and doesnt get overwritten later. Then I game over in order to reload the saved plaza state without loading the title screen FMV, which would result in all cutscene slots being cleared.
Once back to the plaza, I start by spraying water and doing an insanely precise sidestep to make sure one of the splash effects that appear on the ground ends up at a very specific coordinate relative to the camera. That coordinate translates to a memory address inside the spin buffer, which stores the sticks angle every quarterframe for spinput checks.
Finally, I prepare for cutscene underflow, which occurs when a Shine Get cutscene tries to start while another cutscene is playing. While waiting for that other cutscene to start, I write arbitrary code into the spin buffer, using pause buffering to control my stick angle on every in-game quarterframe, rather than every frame. Once cutscene underflow triggers, the game reads my splash effect coordinate, which leads code execution into the spin buffer, where my code achieve 4 things:
- set the Bowser fight as the next area;
- set the current cutscene as the last one to play (otherwise the game would play the following invalid cutscenes and crash);
- overwrite the games code to lower the Bowser fights handle count requirement from 5 to 1;
- branch back to game code safely.
Then the Bowser fight starts, and swiftly ends because of the aforementioned code patch.
FAQ
Is this specific to PAL? What is possible on other versions?
Italian PAL just happens to be the version where I did my research, but its not unlikely that a similar setup could work on any other GC version. PAL only gets more chances because each language has a different set of possible setups. As for 3D All-Stars, the glitch doesnt seem to be patched (unlike shinehax), but to my understanding, Nintendos emulator cant execute code directly from its emulated GC memory, so wed only get to call existing game functions (similarly to SRM on the Master Quest edition of Ocarina of Time).
Is there potential for a faster setup?
Absolutely! The eel Shine is one of the slowest spawn cutscenes to reach from new file, so it only gets better from here. I looked into 435 different setups before making my original cutscene underflow demo, and that was only scratching the surface, which is why Im planning to make a tool that will allow anyone to help without technical knowledge by simply playing on Dolphin.
Will this ever be done RTA?
Not with the current setup. Getting the splash to stop at a usable coordinate took 2 weeks of automated brute forcing (on and off because Dolphin would crash every hour), and the next steps depended on the exact value I got. But assuming we find a way for humans to get that first pointer right, camera setups could be found to make the rest possible. The player would only need to hold the stick at specific angles and pause on the first possible frame after unpausing, a couple times in a row, with the ability to immediately try again on failure.
Droplets or splashes?
The cutscene underflow demo I made in May 2020 was pretty rushed, and in particular I said I was hacking water droplets instead of water splashes. In reality, there are two setups in the eel fight: if you spawn the eels Shine, youll need to manipulate a splash on the plaza, and if you spawn the 100 coin Shine, youll need to manipulate a droplet. I got the two mixed up and since I was hacking in values either way, I didnt have to question which one it was. But in practice, splashes were more convenient to work with.")
![Petey Piranha Strikes Back – 0x A Presses [S/H]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/IVgnQyDT6Rg/hqdefault.jpg "Petey Piranha Strikes Back – 0x A Presses [S/H]
I collect the Bianco 5 Shine without pressing the A button, using only the Spray and Hover Nozzles.
I’ve already beaten this level without the Hover Nozzle before, but that involved waiting for Goobles to help me up the cliff, and waiting for Petey to get in a spot where I could hit him. Looking back, I think I could improve a lot on that video but it still wouldn’t be nearly as fast as using the Hover Nozzle, so since hoverless isn’t part of the ABC, here comes the faster way!
This video is RTA, played on Dolphin 5.0 with the PAL version of the game.")
![Il Piantissimo’s Crazy Climb – 0x A Presses [S]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/JXzFY3PuhDw/hqdefault.jpg "Il Piantissimo’s Crazy Climb – 0x A Presses [S]
I collect the Pianta 2 Shine without pressing A, using only the Spray Nozzle. This is an improvement over Venick409’s strat, where they used the Hover Nozzle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3uq_UYazzA
Getting to the flag hoverless, or even FLUDDless, is fairly simple. The only real obstacle is to get onto the platform around the hot springs, and there’s a Pianta nearby who can help us up. But unfortunately, that’s not enough to beat Il Piantissimo…
So when the race starts, I waterslide around the village all the way to the beehive at the back. I spray that beehive off the tree while sidestepping to avoid getting hit by the bees, and dive on it as it falls. The bounce gives me just enough height to dive onto the platform, allowing me to beat Il Piantissimo by mere seconds.
This video is TAS, played on Dolphin 5.0 with the PAL version of the game.
Rerecords: 1079")
![Blooper Surfing Safari – 0x A Presses [H]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/JYZ47PjKq9Y/hqdefault.jpg "Blooper Surfing Safari – 0x A Presses [H]
I collect the Ricco 2 Shine without pressing the A button, using only the Hover Nozzle.
Note that the Hover Nozzle is only required to get onto the first set of logs, as it is then possible to dive from one log to the next. The rest of the strat is pretty much how you normally play this level in the first place.
This video is RTA, played on PAL Wii.")
