Uploaded March 2025 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
Holy shit this took me much much longer than the other 46 songs. Oddly enough, it didn't take *that* much longer than Smoke on the Water, I guess I was really struggling with learning the HOPOs for that one. As for this one, I was struggling so hard with the fast part. Compared to my FC of this back in 2010, not being able to strum the first note makes it so much more difficult to get started. Additionally, not just in this song but in every song, I was struggling using any taps anywhere. Whenever I go to tap and divert my attention from one hand to both hands, I inevitably would freeze up for a fraction of a second, which is enough to hit one note too late and miss all of it.
I ultimately settled on a method where I would use the HOPOs to step up all the way to position 3 on the frets, which took my pinky out of the equation for the start, then I would slide back down to position 2 to hit the red. Once I started doing that, I was hitting the start of the fast section every single time, but I was still very poor with my consistency during the tapping bits. Eventually, I came up with a slide back up to position 3 after the very last red, which is quite tricky to do as slides up require 2 frets to be held down (for me at least), but once I did that, I finally started hitting the fast part. Even twice in a row at one point. This FC came shortly after that.
This makes 47/47 songs FC'd with no strummed HOPOs. FGFC.
Holy shit this took me much much longer than the other 46 songs. Oddly enough, it didn't take *that* much longer than Smoke on the Water, I guess I was really struggling with learning the HOPOs for that one. As for this one, I was struggling so hard with the fast part. Compared to my FC of this back in 2010, not being able to strum the first note makes it so much more difficult to get started. Additionally, not just in this song but in every song, I was struggling using any taps anywhere. Whenever I go to tap and divert my attention from one hand to both hands, I inevitably would freeze up for a fraction of a second, which is enough to hit one note too late and miss all of it.
I ultimately settled on a method where I would use the HOPOs to step up all the way to position 3 on the frets, which took my pinky out of the equation for the start, then I would slide back down to position 2 to hit the red. Once I started doing that, I was hitting the start of the fast section every single time, but I was still very poor with my consistency during the tapping bits. Eventually, I came up with a slide back up to position 3 after the very last red, which is quite tricky to do as slides up require 2 frets to be held down (for me at least), but once I did that, I finally started hitting the fast part. Even twice in a row at one point. This FC came shortly after that.
This makes 47/47 songs FC'd with no strummed HOPOs. FGFC.
![SSL: 100 coins HOLP setup [RTA]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/rpjTm8i42vo/mqdefault.jpg "SSL: 100 coins HOLP setup [RTA]
Setup found by @pannenkoek2012 after making and running a brute forcer to look for setups compatible with RTA inputs.
To see a proper execution of this setup, check out this video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDBE-BDNFRc")
![WDW: Express Elevator - Hurry Up!! 0xA 4:26.88 [RTA]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/sHkB6m8X6Dw/mqdefault.jpg "WDW: Express Elevator - Hurry Up!! 0xA 4:26.88 [RTA]
Apologies for the double audio, there was an issue with OBS that I have since fixed.
This is neither an A press improvement, nor a community time improvement. Its actually not even a PB, my PB for this star is 4:03. However, what this is is a consistent way of doing the transport CWT required for the star. See, the way it works is...
Theres a hidden mechanic for Chuckya. It might have been to try to prevent throwing Mario OOB, it might have been a failed attempt to prevent it from throwing Mario off of a ledge, Im not sure. I cant retrospectively read the developers minds. But if theres no floor within 50 units vertically of a point exactly 150 units in front of Chuckya, then it will not throw Mario. It will instead continue turning (unless it has already continued turning in this way 15 times). This means if there is a floor at *some* point in front of it, then there are 16 out of the 32 possible directions it can throw Mario which will successfully find that floor. With careful planning, we can abuse this to take what should be a 6.25% chance of a successful throw and turn it into a 50% chance of a successful throw. Theres a catch, though. The throw angle to have Mario land on the plank is so precise that the amount he turns every frame can actually skip over the angle range we want, meaning that theres effectively a human element of randomness to the throw as well. This is simply unacceptable.
So what I did is, with a bit of a change to where I initially grab the Chuckya, I managed to find a setup that gets Mario and the Chuckya BCA, which means that I will *always* [have a 50% chance to] get the correct angle on the throw. This not only increases the overall success rate of the transport CWT, but just in general makes it less frustrating to do.
The setup is, theres a seam where the floor triangles meet. Stand on the point of that line where it meets the water, when the water is at the bottom of its oscillation, then go c right and c left to reset the camera. Do a tiny movement straight forward to change Marios facing angle to be in line with the camera, then go into Mario cam and follow that up with fixed cam. Press c left once, wait for the camera to come to rest, then walk forward for 6 frames. Once Mario comes to a stop, walk backwards for 6 frames. Press c right 3 times (or spam it until the camera buzzes) then wait for the camera to come to rest. Press b and start on the same frame, then do as short of a pause buffer as you can, and finally unpause and wait for Chuckya to throw Mario. If done correctly, there will be a 50% chance of Chuckya throwing Mario in the correct direction. If you fall short of the plank, then you need Chuckya to be further to his left when you initially grab him. If you land on the plank but then fall off before you regain control of Mario, then you need Chuckya to be further to his right when you initially grab him.")
![HMC: Watch for Rolling Rocks 0.5xA Faster PU Route [TAS]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/sKytFn1EgZk/mqdefault.jpg "HMC: Watch for Rolling Rocks 0.5xA Faster PU Route [TAS]
I collect the star Watch for Rolling Rocks in 0.5x A presses, in 1°491677. This is TAS. This is a timesave over the previous record of 5°262210 by @pannenkoek2012 which can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgNMKnkZEKY
A few months back I had theorized that instead of Hyperspeed Walking up to the syncing speed of the island triangle and then doing the standard PU routing of waiting out the speed loss for the further syncing speeds of each triangle, you could instead just use jump kicks to ascend the hill between the lake and the elevator. The previous route used triangles that had descending syncing speeds, which allows you to ascend up to 312 units in a single frame, but here I simply use jump kicks, which always have a syncing speed of 262144 as its air movement. The catch is you can only ascend 98 units every 4 frames at best, although in practice youll only be able to ascend 83 units roughly every 20 frames. One major benefit of this change in strategy, however, is that you can get yourself QPU aligned with the landing frames, whereas with the other strategy you must keep yourself QPU aligned throughout the entire strategy, or it causes a console crash upon trying to move partial frames.
I gained a newfound appreciation for this star when trying to do the final movement, though, that section is an absolute nightmare. Now remember that when Pannen did this all those years ago, he didnt have STROOP. STROOP wasnt made yet. He did this entirely with ramwatch and a calculator. Absolutely insane.")
![SMSR: Bowsers Rainbow Rumble Clear 0xA Without Preset HOLP [TAS]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/tmF9Nj4Ej7c/mqdefault.jpg "SMSR: Bowsers Rainbow Rumble Clear 0xA Without Preset HOLP [TAS]
We collect the star in the overworld after clearing Bowsers Rainbow Rumble in 0 A presses. This is TAS. This is an improvement off of the previous record of 0 A presses, which was done by me and can be found here https://youtu.be/hOF0fDg47Kc
Note that the start of this TAS is the same as the 1xA variant done by lemon, and can be found here https://youtu.be/JZrxorc5BtI
Since then, there had been discussion about a 65 star run potentially being possible, as a Glitchy Ledge Grab to clip past the 80 star door to get to the warp was known to exist, and there was research being done on whether or not it could be done 0xA. Doing this, unfortunately, was assumed to need to use the crazy box to get up to where a misalignment exists. This turned out to not be necessary, and maybe Ill make a video on that soon too, but I decided to look into doing this star HOLPless regardless. This had already been looked into a bit by lemon here https://youtu.be/JZrxorc5BtI but neither lemon nor myself were able to figure out how to get past the last brown block. I had a couple ideas using CWT, but nothing panned out due to needing to not get thrown too hard, lest you fall off the block from the inside of the platform.
The main issue with it is that the ledge *after* the block is too high to dive recover onto, and theres no accessible misalignment, which is why you need to get on the inside of the tower. From there, its simple to do a dive recover and clip out once youre high enough to land on the floor. So when revisiting this, I picked up mentally where I had left off before around a year ago, and had the idea of using a type 2 CWT, otherwise known as a throw arc CWT, coupled with a chuckya escape. Chuckya escape solves the issue of getting thrown with too much speed, but it has the consequence of not getting as much height out of the throw, so in theory getting the extra height from the trajectory the chuckya takes from being thrown could cover that extra height. And as it turns out, it indeed does solve the issue, getting Mario to the inside of the tower on the brown block. From there, finishing out the level is trivial.")
![SM64: Unlock Upstairs 1xA in 36:14.09 [RTA][WR]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/uNT1SlW1br0/mqdefault.jpg "SM64: Unlock Upstairs 1xA in 36:14.09 [RTA][WR]
Been working on making this category a bit more polished. We have this as a category for a short one, since theres no way to beat the game with fewer than 70 stars, meaning this is our 16 star category. Timing ends on X cam for door touch.
Join the discord: https://discord.gg/73JKC6f")
![DDD: Board Bowsers Sub 0x [RTA]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/v4EHFPlAWbk/mqdefault.jpg "DDD: Board Bowsers Sub 0x [RTA]
I found a setup that goes as follows: Actively manipulate the camera so that its as close to directly behind Mario as possible. Sidle against the wall, the closer to the ledge the better since time is of the essence. Neutral joystick, then with the camera directly behind Mario, walk straight forwards and press Z. If the camera isnt directly behind Mario, youll have to adjust the joystick slightly. By walking straight forwards and pressing Z, youll go into crawling immediately. Turn to the right for 3 frames, then stop and start crawling to give the camera a moment to catch up. Crawl right up to the ledge, which will be when you can see half a fist sized bit of water between Mario and the cork box. Stop crawling, then do a standing punch. Neutral joystick for 2 frames, then full left strain for 2 frames. This gets Mario in the misalignment every time, and even with a little bit of wiggle room for if you didnt get the camera movement perfectly right.
Some people have decent luck with just yoloing it. I absolutely d0 not, and can not do this without the setup.")
![Pannens Ice Hack: Coins Amassed in a Maze + 100c [RTA]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/vMOIuae_5D0/mqdefault.jpg "Pannens Ice Hack: Coins Amassed in a Maze + 100c [RTA]
@pannenkoek2012 made a romhack that replaced all of Marios movement with ice physics. Initially intended for a 16 star run, I decided to take it a step further and go for max stars, and this is easily one of the more frustrating stars.")
![TTM: Scale the Mountain 0xA 3:01.97 [RTA]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/vsrN8bHtSLM/mqdefault.jpg "TTM: Scale the Mountain 0xA 3:01.97 [RTA]
After I figured out what I was doing wrong for the ghost rollout, I said I was gonna take a break to give my thumb a rest. Well this star was too alluring to leave alone and I had to go for the record.
This is an improvement over the previous record by over 2 minutes.")
