Uploaded November 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
This song has the same energy as Shockwave with the single periodic strums in the middle of fast HOPOs, only this one has the hard part in the middle instead of the very end. Also, the long part doesn't last as long. Also, the hard part doesn't have any trills on your pinky so it's much more reasonable to one hand, meaning you can strum the whole thing if you so choose.
I do the DS equivalent of taco strumming the entire last trill because I absolutely could not get it to work just tapping it normally. This took about an hour.
This song has the same energy as Shockwave with the single periodic strums in the middle of fast HOPOs, only this one has the hard part in the middle instead of the very end. Also, the long part doesn't last as long. Also, the hard part doesn't have any trills on your pinky so it's much more reasonable to one hand, meaning you can strum the whole thing if you so choose.
I do the DS equivalent of taco strumming the entire last trill because I absolutely could not get it to work just tapping it normally. This took about an hour.
![SSL: Stand Tall on the Four Pillars 0xA 8:56.84 [RTA]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/phMD2AroR1w/mqdefault.jpg "SSL: Stand Tall on the Four Pillars 0xA 8:56.84 [RTA]
This is not a community improvement in the total A press, rather this is simply a time improvement. This was first done by Ex320kyt and can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcvEhVSLaYg
I took a breather from RTABC and worked on TAS a little bit, namely because the thought of doing both WDW stars was simply terrifying. I came back to it today intending to practice Express Elevator, and just as I had expected it was incredibly frustrating. The main issue with it is the direction Chuckya throws you is dependent on what direction Mario is facing when he drops Chuckya. The precision needed is about 5 degrees, which is practically imperceptible, so its effectively RNG. Thats on top of the 50% RNG Chuckya gives when he throws Mario with the setup, so I decided to revisit SSL.
The issue with Eyerok is that the record done by Ex320kyt used SDC, which requires cork box coin duplication to get up to 100 coins. This means that best case scenario, it takes around 10 minutes to retry. Thats unacceptable, so I looked at the TAS method for it, and found that theres a relatively easy way of getting the Goombas position somewhat normalized. This isnt good enough for the angle needed for a knockback bounce SDC, but its good enough to predict when the Goomba will step close enough to its home to trigger a jump. From there, it was simply a matter of finding a movement option that will quickly normalize Marios position, then finding a movement option that can bounce on the Goomba and hit the corner of the pillar to do a floor clip. This is the result of that.")
![BitDW: Red Coins + Clear 0xA 21:27 [RTA]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/q1Y3o_VknQQ/mqdefault.jpg "BitDW: Red Coins + Clear 0xA 21:27 [RTA]
This took way too long to do but holy hell its finally done. Took 11 minutes to get the misalignment at the end but I did get it. I finally get to join the club :D")
![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.")
