Uploaded March 2022 | Updated September 2026, 19 hours ago

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Date Driven: March 15, 2022

Welcome back! Happily making some more time trial progress so far during 2022.

Koopa Cape. This track is tricky. Koopa Cape has always been one of my better tracks from back in the day with lots of potential, and maintained WW tops for a period of time throughout the innumerable strategy changes this track went through in the 2009-2012 period. I'm like many who have never quite achieved their full potential here given the nature of the track. I've had splits for low 2:18 for several years. Traditionally, the shroomless cut and the ending pipe strategy are frustrating enough to make the track off-putting to time trial completely, which was the case for me. This is my first time giving a dedicated effort since my old 2:20.184 a little over a year ago.

Although not exactly my biggest goals of a 2:18 and moreover returning to WW tops here just yet, I'm excited with this new time. I improved by over half a second in one jump, finally got a 2:19 and this being my first 3/3 run that doesn't fail the faster pipe strategy on any lap.

Lap 1 - 46.471

Pretty average first half of the lap. Not incredibly fast but a steady ~46.2 pace until the pipe section. First real mistake was barely having the wrong alignment for one single wheelie into the u-turn following the first turn exit. Keeping one wheelie here saves a solid amount of time. The other notable time loss was having a bad pipe clip. I spent far too much time in the wall itself before being propelled forward. Having a keen eye when you watch future runs, a really good pipe clip is when you near instantaneously just glide against the pipe and go forward right away. A wide exit from the pipe clip and a lackluster shroom ended the lap for a 46.4.

Lap 2 - 46.540

Started this off with a bad landing on the first trick, losing some time. I had a solid shroomless cut but I turned slightly too early for the drift to catch back into the river. You do drift storage here to make this work, holding drift in the air just before landing at the end of the shroomless, enabling you to just simply turn in your wheelie entering back into the river current without needing to manually rehop. I had to fight for the mini turbo as a result and wasn't very clean. My mistakes made it so going for the aforementioned one wheelie strategy in the pipe as mentioned above was too risky, so this lost time as well. I had a much better pipe clip and ending shroom to make up some of the time loss incurred.

Lap 3 - 46.544

Underrated spot for time loss is the upward slope alongside the wooden ramp before the u-turn prior to the start of the river. All the bounces I got lost quite some time, and is far more evident when you do some ghost comparisons. I had a perfect shroomless cut for the approach that I did this lap; you can compare the difference mostly to lap 2 to see the difference between an ideal shroomless exit. I wasn't too sure about the zapper cycles on the pace I was on, but went for the one wheelie strategy in the pipe anyway and was rewarded. I further had no clue for the zapper cycle on this pace at the end which made me hold out my mini turbo and further have to rehop at the very end, which loses more than you'd expect as the priority is just being at maximum speed when you exit the river. I was slowly accelerating as a result of reinitiating my wheelie dodging the zapper just before. I probably would have saved close to .2 on this lap if I just went for a straight alignment right away and didn't have to judge the zapper cycle. Another solid pipe clip and average shroom completes my first 2:19 run.

All in all an "average" run that checks off all the boxes for 3/3 shroomless cuts and 3/3 proper pipe clips at the end ("average" for my own personal driving standards versus the best laps and paces I've hit). I hit a few solid 2:18 paces into lap 3 before this run, which is the next target to get to. I look forward to sticking this grind out to get closer to what I can really do here. Thanks for watching.

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Credits:
• Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze - Current Capers
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