Luigi_Fan2
Improved with new strats. :D Decided to check speedrun.com and found that another person did a speedrun of this. Took his strats and came up with a little new stuff to get this. Started timing at 17.617 and ended timing at 1:16.403.
updated 7 years ago
There are some strat differences compared to the (former) WR ghost:
-Opening strat, 0:15: I move to the right of the track at the start. Gives a slightly better line.
-First turn after cannon lap 1, 0:29: I hit the brakes here. That lets me stay on the inside of the turn without getting launched into the air.
-Entering the dirt area, 0:38: I had a hard time replicating the WR strat where it uses the bump on the left wall, so I'm doing this instead. My strat is a bit slower.
-Gap cut, 0:42: This is a UMT strat that I came up with before the track released. I don't hit the brakes during the hops, but I release the gas partway through. I'm guessing it's slightly slower, but I'm not sure?
-Exiting cannon, 1:00: I glide to the left instead of the right. The intent is to get a better line for the next turn. I don't know whether this is faster or not.
The improvement mainly came from the vehicle build. Although I did a few other things different compared to the previous runs. Shroom strat on lap 1, skipping a boost panel on the left near the end, hitting the brakes on the sharp turn on lap 3 (to avoid hitting the bomb car), probably some other differences too.
It's actually possible to get the coin that I barely miss about 21 seconds into the run, although it doesn't matter too much.
Guess that's probably it for these videos on my channel. Hope you enjoyed the runs I did here! There were some weeks where I didn't get around to grinding for a high score/fast time, but I don't think I'll go back to those cups.
As for future videos, I don't know what I'll do next. Splatoon 3 is coming out and I'll be playing that a lot, but that's just regular gameplay. Not sure if I'll do more speedruns there.
Anyway, regarding this run... I didn't optimize quite as much as usual, but I'm still happy with it. Some parts are fairly tricky to execute, and the Wario segment at the end requires some precision. There's also a bunch of RNG, although most of it has a small effect on your time.
Got a really good balloon segment here, and that made the run. Actually messed up the ledge cancel and some of the other movement, but the time still turned out to be good because of the balloons.
I don't think there are any standard timing rules for this. I started my time on the frame when the last character creation selection is made, and ended it on the frame when the controls start to fade away from the UI. According to my video editor, those times are 0:38.101 and 1:39.120, which makes a difference of 1:01.019.
Notable strats are dropping to the bottom in game 3, targeting the ring on the opposite side in game 8, and grabbing the key with the tongue in game 12. It's possible to finish game 9 before the animals jump if the fourth seat is open, but missing that isn't too bad. There's enough good RNG in here already.
Quick tip: You can quickly tap the button to make Mantis jump, but not high enough to attach to the roof in most cases. Then while Mantis is airborne, press the button again, and hold it. That lets you move Crygor without switching Mantis's gravity. Useful for some games such as the vacuum one.
(Why did I stay up so late doing this???)
Aug 6 edit:
The main interesting thing here is the shroomspot. The current WR is using a shroom right after the cannon, but when trying things out, I don't think that spot saves as much time. Not 100% sure on that though; needs more testing. Should note that it's important not to shroom too early for it, as you want the speed to carry over into the jump.
Also, for the coins near the boost ramp jump: IDK if the WR's trick on the jump is faster. But anyway, lap 1's lines seem to be nice for grabbing the coins on the long turn. Lap 2's MT strat before the jump is kind of nice for grabbing the coin on the far left, although it makes it awkward to grab the coins on the turn afterwards.
Thankfully, I managed to get this run fairly soon afterwards. The characters aren't bad this time (no 9-Volt or Kat?), so it's possible to go pretty far.
There's a strat with Penny that I didn't use here. For the water cup at the end, you can pre-fire shots upwards before the cup appears. (This gives the water droplets some air time before they fall down.) That gives you a "head start" to filling the cup. However, in this run, I hovered pretty close to the roof by accident. As a result, I'd risk hitting the roof if I aimed upwards, so I simply aimed downwards instead.
Also worth noting, I used button remapping via the Switch system settings. Some of the button mashing in this run can be difficult, especially 9-Volt's quick yo-yo shots. To make it easier, I remapped X to ZR and Y to ZL. That allowed me to press buttons with multiple fingers instead of relying on a single button.
(Was busy last week, so didn't upload a video for that cup. I played in it, but only for roughly 10 minutes. Felt like that wasn't worth a video upload.)
The sorting game (first seen at 1:52) caused the most issues for me. I can't track those movements at higher speeds... Not sure if that's something most people really struggle with, or if it's just me being bad at it.
It's easy to lose small amounts of time all over the place, although it's not worth resetting for all of those. Just avoid the bigger mistakes, and you'll get a decent time.
There's one significant place with RNG in game 15. You can lose over a second by getting the wrong spot selected... But outside of that, the RNG isn't too bad. I played game 8 by shooting blindly, but waiting for the numbers to show up doesn't cost a lot of time. (Games 1 and 6 have RNG too, but most variations are still good for those.)
Also, for those wondering how the pop the balloon game works... For some reason, Penny's projectiles can pop the balloon while they're falling. So you aim up, and let a droplet land on the balloon. (The balloon moves to the opposite direction that you press. In the video, I press down to move the balloon above me.)
An important tip here is that the game will launch the yo-yo whenever you press any of A, B, X, or Y. Even if one of the buttons is held down, pressing one of the other buttons will still launch the yo-yo. As a result, you can press multiple buttons to mash a lot faster than you could with a single button.
In particular, you can see this in games 1, 5, and 16. I used my right hand to press the X button while my left hand to pressed Y and B repeatedly. Which gives you some pretty silly fast mashing.
That said, this cut is more difficult than it looks. It's hard to get the distance required, and you need to get it aligned properly too. So it's useless for online.
As for time trials, it's probably useless there too. The ending jump is kind of slow... But if people somehow optimize this to the point where it's close to the top route... I guess it could be a lap 2 coin strat?
Note that I hit the brakes at the second-last bump on the roof. If you hit it at full speed, you'll fly over the last bump.
Anyway, in case anyone's interested, you can view the full lap 1 here: youtu.be/cCB7fuGaLEA
Spent awhile trying different crew members, but I think this is the best group for this challenge. Some characters can make a few games easier, but they have issues with other games. The sorting game is probably the most difficult one, although none of the characters make it significantly easier.
In a few spots in this video, you might notice me shooting pretty fast. For example, 5:00, and 5:40. My natural button mashing speed is kind of slow, so I'm actually pressing all of the buttons in those instances. (A, B, X, and Y all work for shooting projectiles. So I sort of "rolled" my thumb across all of the buttons.) I needed it for some of the games at max speed.
My run has a couple execution errors that aren't too hard to spot, and some games would be faster with a different crew member. (For example, 18-Volt can snipe the dirty stuff really quickly in the "turn the faucet on" game.) But I think this is the optimal crew if you're willing to reset a fair bit.
This week's cup is kind of cruel, lol. Even after practicing, I still found myself failing games on level 1 occasionally. Double play with these characters isn't easy.
Fair bit of RNG here. Getting a single bomb layout for Red kind of made the run. Some execution mistakes, but no major time losses, thankfully.
In case you don't know why I'm saying that, there's a bunch of RNG in this cup. You select your crew of 3, but which crew member you get for each game is randomized. In addition to that, a bunch of the games have slower variations that you can randomly get. So not only do you have to get an optimized run, but you also have to get really lucky. And for some reason, I went ahead and grinded it out, lol.
I do think this is one of the strongest timed cup runs I've done though. Could elaborate more on the crew choice, but just for some brief notes... Penny is basically an auto-include crew member because she saves a ton of time on the extinguish game. (But you also have to luck out to get her on that game!) After that, went with Jimmy and Ashley because they're fast in nearly all of the games.
I find that 18-Volt has a pretty significant learning curve. Not that he's hard to control, but he often has to clear games in unintuitive ways. Additionally, some of the games in this cup are pretty difficult with him.
By the way, if you happen to be following this channel really closely, you might've noticed that I never uploaded a video for last week's Wario Cup. It was a pretty easy cup with 15 games; most of them being at moderate speeds. Felt like it wasn't really worth an upload. (I might skip uploads again for later cups with a fixed number of games. With those cups, I can't offer anything interesting compared to pretty much any other run on YouTube.)
Although... I have no idea how 1:02 worked. My strat involved hitting the wrecking ball the other way first, but I messed up and it still turned out fast anyway? Guess I'll just take it, lol.
Used Ashley at first, but switched to Mike after some attempts. He's just a bit more "braindead" to use, so I found it easier here. The vertical projectile is enough for these games.
(I might go for higher later? I'm not sure.)
No crazy time investment this time, but spent about 2 hours on it. All characters at level 32, except for Kat, 9-Volt, and Ashley, who are at level 45.
Start by holding the control stick down, and a bit to the left. Hold that until you move to the top middle of the screen, then hover. With that movement, you should pop most/all of the balloons on the left half of the screen, and end up above the clouds. After that, you can shoot to select the count. (Since you popped a bunch of balloons, the remaining count will likely be 1, 2, or 3. So your shot to select will likely be towards the left side, which won't have any remaining balloons to interfere.)
My best split for Penny's section is 17.00, and best split for Mantis is 13.37. (Would give a total of 30.37 when starting Lulu's section.)
Not sure what my best split is for Lulu's section, but I messed up a little there. My ground pound stops a little early at 0:58. (Means I don't go far down enough, and I hit the wall a few seconds afterwards.) So I'm guessing you can save another 0.20 or so on that section? Which means a perfect (TAS) run would give you a time of 0:47.6x.
A few notes in case anyone's curious:
-All of the characters are at level 32. Enough to get ahead of anyone who leaves them at level 30.
-Throwing the boomerang probably makes the nose plugging game more difficult compared to simply moving into the spot... But it worked out anyway.
In terms of strategy, there are some games where it's easier to focus on one character instead of using both of them. It's easy to mess up and still try to use both characters anyway though, lol.
A few notes on specific games:
Toothpaste (Squeeze!): The best place to squeeze is near the left edge of the coloured area, or maybe even slightly further left than that. Also, you can warp 5-Volt on top of the tube to make gravity do some of the work for you, which is kind of funny.
Clean the face (Rinse!): Not sure what the best strat is here. But warping 5-Volt to the bottom right, then button mashing seems to be pretty consistent? I failed the game at 3:28, but I moved 5-Volt too far to the left there.
All characters were at level 32 for this (hopefully gets a slight edge on anyone who leaves them at level 30...). It's probably easier to use Cricket instead of Kat, but I had Kat levelled up already.
Notes for anyone who wants to replicate the strats:
Game 8 (Light up!): I accidentally aimed too high up. You can clear this with two diagonal up-right dashes, followed by one diagonal down-right dash.
Game 10 (Erase!): I normally move up and to the top right, then do a dash down-left, then dash right. I sort of missed an A press in my run here, although it worked out anyway.
Game 11 (Stick together!): This game will end your run most of the time. Difficult to be consistent in it, and it has quite a few variations too.
Games 3, 6 and 16 (Draw!, Get Inside!, and Find the star!): At the start of every game, there's an animation where it moves your character to the proper spawn location. In these three games, your spawn location varies depending on whether you have the left/right version of the game. So you can track the movement to figure out which version you got before the game truly starts.
You're supposed to run in this race, but it turns out that you can beat Yoshi with only walking if you take a silly route. It's harder than it looks though, lol.
(Been quite awhile since I last uploaded a public video. Oops?)
Did this for fun. :) Started timing when selecting "Yeah!" to confirm the character choice (20.884 in the video) and ended timing when the screen completely faded to black (1:21.136).
-Not sure if the build is faster, but I wanted faster MT charging to make things slightly easier.
-After the first trick, do a right hop/slide/drift for alignment, then do a left drift with an MT. Saves some time.
-Different shroomspot on laps 2/3. Think it saves about 0.2 compared to the other shroomspot without the low jump that I get on lap 2, not sure about how much the low jump saves.
-Depending on how you approach the lap 2/3 shroomless ending, you'll either have to hop into the right drift at the off-road (seen in lap 2) or fall and start the right drift on landing (seen on lap 3). Same input either way though. Try to jump over the trick ramp with the right drift, as you'll slow down a bit if you land on it.
-The shroomless ending wastes a little more of the trick boost after the finish on lap 3, so maybe it should be done on laps 1 and 2 with shrooming on lap 3.
-It's not seen in my run, but you can get 1 or 2 of the midair coins after the glider pad. I've only been able to do it without tricking and it's inconsistent.
Not completely sure about the optimal combo, but I think this is a decent build. Went for the maximum miniturbo I can get without sacrificing 0.5 or more speed for 0.25 miniturbo.
(I didn't run through section 3 many times, but this is about 0.1 seconds away from my best splits, so I'm pretty happy with this!)
Still pretty improvable, but at least it's a decent run for showing the strats. My best lap 1 is a 26.654 if I remember correctly, and I obviously failed the coin collection here.