![[TAS] Super Mario Galaxy 2: Gravity Gauntlet Green Star 2 in 22.50s @PurpleSunTAS](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/t_XlCtFpokg/maxresdefault.jpg)
Uploaded August 2020 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Luigi lavaboosts towards a Green Star with P2 playing healer in 22.50 seconds [IGT, 1350 frames].
This is an interesting level for overall routing.
The usual strat is to use only the coin to heal and just do 3 boosts and land near the first Whomp. But, there is a way to pull back far enough to get an extra boost, allowing for fast lava boost speed up towards the star.
Because of the use of the Life Mushroom, this strat is ~0.7s slower in in-game time than the usual one.
However, this strat would mean no coins required, which would save 0.88s in menuing post-level, but specifically in a 242 run; a Green Stars run starts on a file with 9999 coins so coin textboxes never appear.
Ideally, we could try to get a second coin mid-boosting, however, the Magikoopa takes too long to kill. The coin I grabbed is the only other coin that is accessible, but it goes off camera literally 1 frame before P2 would pick it up, and there's no way to manipulate the camera in that scenario.
Moving further down or up to get a different coin would cost too much time.
Why can't P2 just grab multiple coins smh
Oh, as for the other strats, this is not optimised for in-game time as hitting the fireballs at the start would be slightly faster than the triple jump if they were a bit further in their cycle.
The weirdly low spin before the lava boosting was a mid-air Z spin cancel except it didn't cancel the spin animation but did cancel the properties so there was no knockback against the wall and not as much height gained.
The tilted triple jump to the star was ~0.2s faster than long jumping on and backflipping.
#SuperMarioGalaxy2 #ToolAssistedSpeedrun
Luigi lavaboosts towards a Green Star with P2 playing healer in 22.50 seconds [IGT, 1350 frames].
This is an interesting level for overall routing.
The usual strat is to use only the coin to heal and just do 3 boosts and land near the first Whomp. But, there is a way to pull back far enough to get an extra boost, allowing for fast lava boost speed up towards the star.
Because of the use of the Life Mushroom, this strat is ~0.7s slower in in-game time than the usual one.
However, this strat would mean no coins required, which would save 0.88s in menuing post-level, but specifically in a 242 run; a Green Stars run starts on a file with 9999 coins so coin textboxes never appear.
Ideally, we could try to get a second coin mid-boosting, however, the Magikoopa takes too long to kill. The coin I grabbed is the only other coin that is accessible, but it goes off camera literally 1 frame before P2 would pick it up, and there's no way to manipulate the camera in that scenario.
Moving further down or up to get a different coin would cost too much time.
Why can't P2 just grab multiple coins smh
Oh, as for the other strats, this is not optimised for in-game time as hitting the fireballs at the start would be slightly faster than the triple jump if they were a bit further in their cycle.
The weirdly low spin before the lava boosting was a mid-air Z spin cancel except it didn't cancel the spin animation but did cancel the properties so there was no knockback against the wall and not as much height gained.
The tilted triple jump to the star was ~0.2s faster than long jumping on and backflipping.
#SuperMarioGalaxy2 #ToolAssistedSpeedrun
![[TAS] Super Mario Galaxy 2: Gravity Gauntlet Green Star 2 in 22.50s](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/t_XlCtFpokg/mqdefault.jpg "[TAS] Super Mario Galaxy 2: Gravity Gauntlet Green Star 2 in 22.50s
Luigi lavaboosts towards a Green Star with P2 playing healer in 22.50 seconds [IGT, 1350 frames].
This is an interesting level for overall routing.
The usual strat is to use only the coin to heal and just do 3 boosts and land near the first Whomp. But, there is a way to pull back far enough to get an extra boost, allowing for fast lava boost speed up towards the star.
Because of the use of the Life Mushroom, this strat is ~0.7s slower in in-game time than the usual one.
However, this strat would mean no coins required, which would save 0.88s in menuing post-level, but specifically in a 242 run; a Green Stars run starts on a file with 9999 coins so coin textboxes never appear.
Ideally, we could try to get a second coin mid-boosting, however, the Magikoopa takes too long to kill. The coin I grabbed is the only other coin that is accessible, but it goes off camera literally 1 frame before P2 would pick it up, and theres no way to manipulate the camera in that scenario.
Moving further down or up to get a different coin would cost too much time.
Why cant P2 just grab multiple coins smh
Oh, as for the other strats, this is not optimised for in-game time as hitting the fireballs at the start would be slightly faster than the triple jump if they were a bit further in their cycle.
The weirdly low spin before the lava boosting was a mid-air Z spin cancel except it didnt cancel the spin animation but did cancel the properties so there was no knockback against the wall and not as much height gained.
The tilted triple jump to the star was ~0.2s faster than long jumping on and backflipping.
#SuperMarioGalaxy2 #ToolAssistedSpeedrun")
![[TAS] SMG: Freezeflame Secret reaching the summit without Fire Flower](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/t_c1OOvRAG0/mqdefault.jpg "[TAS] SMG: Freezeflame Secret reaching the summit without Fire Flower
I will note here that Nim (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCG_b-lywDked3HfbZQXU8Gw) had spent several hours TASing this challenge with different methods, and that his last attempt did reach the sloped area at 0:46 before having to stop. As this was a simple final stretch, he already had it in the bag but hasnt had the ability to TAS recently.
Skip to 0:28 for the good stuff, I messed about with different slope jump ideas for a little bit beforehand.
Freezeflame Secret was the next most likely star to be proven itemless/transformationless, with walljumps being really close to getting up to the secret area to skip the sling star.
Freezeflame Purple Coins is free as there is no black hole covering the easiest route (slope jumping up from Baron Brrs arena). But there is a black hole here.
The main tricks here are an outer corner walljump and a hard-angled walljump, both aided by neutral walljump strain.
An outer corner walljump mirrors the well-known inner corner/90 degree walljump trick - rather than straining left or right to angle a walljump *towards* a 90 degree wall to grab it, you instead angle the walljump *away* from a 270 degree? wall.
By going neutral on the joystick after walljumping, you bypass a fixed speed and can strain harder than before.
The hard-angled walljump is done exactly like a 90 degree walljump.
Getting through the secret area itemless is the common speedrun route. For fun, I tried a weird route from the snowman, managing to get three walljumps off the same wall - first was normal, but the second was an adjoining walljump aka double walljump, where you grab a wall right at the joining between two perpendicular (inward corner) walls. You kick off one wall, but the game likely reads you as kicking off the other wall, as you can then regrab the kicked wall, which led to the third walljump.
#SuperMarioGalaxy")
![[TAS] SMG2: Flip-Swap Green Stars](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/thBX2MD5tpA/mqdefault.jpg "[TAS] SMG2: Flip-Swap Green Stars
Green Stars TAS WIP
Star order has no actual time difference, however, the cycles of the electric fences are slightly different, being further behind with cutscenes.
This has no time difference because it can be manipulated by turning the camera away or freezing with P2, but to make things easier, I chose GS1 first so the cycles dont need manip for GS2.
Green Star 1 - 6.56 IGT - 8:45.50 real-time split (1:03.17 segment)
Nothing big of note here if youre used to the speedrun strat; the spin cancel jump setup is slightly faster than spinning off the edge, as it gets the flip panel jump earlier and gets a lower jump to touch the star earlier.
Green Star 2 - 16.71 IGT - 9:45.68 real-time split (1:00.18 segment)
Buffered crouch acceleration is used at the start - this is where you hold Z until the first frame you gain control. Luigi quickly crouches and stands back up, getting a little bit of a kickstart in running.
As Mario, this would allow you to long jump 1 frame earlier, but that doesnt work for Luigi (which is why it isnt particularly useful in a lot of stars), however he does get up to top speed a bit faster. This helps to run to the optimal long jump spot 2f earlier.
From there, its simply a long jump to the next set of red panels, and a chain of flip-panel jumps to the star.
P2 was used to hit the checkpoint so that Luigi wouldnt lose speed hitting it with the spin to panel jump.")
![[TAS] SMG: Gusty Garden 1 in 1:12.43 (Luigi)](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/u4hAFpTUsRk/mqdefault.jpg "[TAS] SMG: Gusty Garden 1 in 1:12.43 (Luigi)
Luigi zooms off flowers to a star in 1:12.43 (real-time, from star select to star get cutscene).
Could be some more improvements but Im happy enough with what I did to call it a proper TAS.
The floaty fluff boost was found by Tackleshift: https://twitter.com/tackleshift8/status/1651605488528953344
It requires you to wait a little for the fluff to rise before riding, and then 2P jumping into it. The boost seems to be timing-dependent as waiting too long wont get it.
The first boost was much more vertical than expected, and might actually be able to skip a planet but I didnt try it out enough, and it loses a lot of speed quickly whereas keeping the regular path has a lot of speed overall.
I let go early to conserve as much speed as possible in backwards falling, and then used backwards momentum again on the next planet to swing around and bounce on the Piranha plant.
Momentum was used again to bounce off the Piranhas on the next planet.
The last boost led to two possibilities - 1. get back to the windstream and go all the way to the half-sand planet or 2. hop off early to keep speed over to the Piranhas. The latter turned out to be 40f faster, despite the former being able to immediately set up a fast triple jump from hopping off the fluff and landing in neutral.
#supermariogalaxy #toolassistedspeedrun")
![[TAS] SMG2: Honeybloom Secret in 6xA Presses [Luigi]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/u8YwkbMHRnE/mqdefault.jpg "[TAS] SMG2: Honeybloom Secret in 6xA Presses [Luigi]
Luigi hops up a few times to the tree and star in 6 A presses.
The A presses are to:
#1: Jump off the swing
#2: Walljump to the starbit alcove
#3-6: Walljump to the tree
With careful starbit shooting, the Goombas can be moved about to bounce off and get up to the swing 0xA.
P2 could be used to grab and hold the coin grabbed from swinging, which would save a menuing A press after the star.
Optimising the height of the swing jump and first walljump is enough to land on the ledge in the alcove, although it is not very tight as you are also able to glitchy ledgegrab there.
A spin from there is just enough height to save needing an extra walljump going to the top, and neutral walljump strain is used to get little bits of extra height, although that was unnecessary in the end.
To grab the star, the ground around the pond/puddle has slippery slopes, and one particular slope cuts off near the bottom so it puts Luigi in the air to spin into the star.
#SuperMarioGalaxy2 #AButtonChallenge")
![[TAS] SMG2: Cosmic Cove GS3 in 3xA Presses [Mario]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/uPzcwFYrmLo/mqdefault.jpg "[TAS] SMG2: Cosmic Cove GS3 in 3xA Presses [Mario]
The A presses are:
#1: Sideflip up the bubble-spawning walls
#2: Wallkick up those walls
#3: Backflip up from the first platform in the 3rd area
This run also takes a death to remove coins, which would save an A press in the post-star textboxes.
The key trick in this level is weak shake water jumping, where, as you can spin out of water by shaking at the surface, you can also jump out by lightly shaking the Wiimote/Nunchuk.
To help with this, there is also jump state storage, as well as long jumping out of water by jumping and pressing Z at the surface.
By holding Z or sliding into water, you store a long jump state or sideflip state respectively, and can do these jumps out of water, and can combine them with weak shaking to get long jumps and sideflips without pressing A.
You can also weak shake at the surface and press Z on the same frame to long jump, which is what I do to grab the star.
Luigi can already do this 2xA, but it is good to get an idea of what Mario can and cant do. This was previously 4xA as Mario, so an A press was saved, that press being long jumping to the star.
Luigi can skip the 3rd A press with some spin knockback jank, but I have no idea if Mario can do this and theres no video of the strat to show how to do it.
But it may actually be the case that Mario can do this, and the 3rd A press that was previously counted was in fact getting over the spiky plant after the wallkick section, which would mean Mario is also 2xA for this level, and ties Luigi for GS2 (2xA) and the second regular star (3xA) as well.
Also, at the start of the level, I went to the icy waterfall to get bumped up into the air, which removed hard landing state, allowing me to control the spin knockback used to bounce on the Lil Brr.
#SuperMarioGalaxy2 #AButtonChallenge")
![[TAS] Super Mario Galaxy 2: Fearsome Fleet Green Star 1 in 12.98s](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ubBjFiyfrek/mqdefault.jpg "[TAS] Super Mario Galaxy 2: Fearsome Fleet Green Star 1 in 12.98s
Luigi, Yoshi and P2 flutter under an Undergrunt Gunner to collect a Green Star in 12.98 seconds [IGT, 779 frames].
The start is the same as GS2,; a long jump from the Bowser Jr. statue is faster than going around: https://youtu.be/3R1MdYG6iDM
Getting up to full flutter speed is confusing to work out but from testing, it seems that doing longer flutters to start with will accelerate a bit faster; this also benefits from getting the height needed to reach the star.
Once reaching top speed (30-32hspd during flutters, 34 when falling), rapid flutters are better to keep getting that faster falling hspd.
I tried various timings and heights for the dismount and optimised it to what is shown, where a flutter is released a few frames before for a little bit of floatiness to stay high up while also having falling speed (2 units/frame faster than flutter speed) that is conserved in the dismount.
I had made this one alongside GS2 but never recorded it until now lol.
#SuperMarioGalaxy2 #ToolAssistedSpeedrun")
![[TAS] Super Mario Galaxy: Gold Leaf 2 in 54.75s](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ukQRNKFt_TQ/mqdefault.jpg "[TAS] Super Mario Galaxy: Gold Leaf 2 in 54.75s
Mario cataquacks to the skies in 54.75 seconds [3285 frames].
This emulates a full-game run by including cutscenes, which gives a deficit of ~13s compared to IL runs.
The first section was fairly simple, freezing a boulder so it doesnt get in the way, and using a 2P jump from a wallkick to get up to the launch star.
The next section has the most room for improvement - long jumping to the grass cube is the fastest method, but there could be better angles to land earlier and set up the triple jump earlier.
A spin was better than a 2P jump following the triple jump, as it didnt stop to change gravity and meant I could fall further backwards, allowing me to pull off a fast swinging route around the planet until the penultimate Cataquack flung Mario up the last point.
As a backflip 2P jump to the launch star wasnt possible, the fastest method was to wait for the last Cataquack to get around the edge to launch up - a tilted triple jump + 2P jump was possible but slower - and jumping before the Cataquack arrived meant it could launch faster than just standing there.
Finally was the coolest strat of the level. A backflip 2P jump into a glitchy wallkick off the bottom of the flower, into a spin knockback to quickly land on the flower and ground 2P jump off the flower into the star.
#SuperMarioGalaxy #ToolAssistedSpeedrun")
![[TAS] SMG2: Beat Block GS2 in 0xA Presses [Luigi]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/vUIo2HBB80Q/mqdefault.jpg "[TAS] SMG2: Beat Block GS2 in 0xA Presses [Luigi]
Triple bouncing off a Goombeetle again helps with a Green Star.
This branched off the GS1 run, with new input starting when I land next to the Goombeetle used in GS1.
Bloopiero also had already done this as Mario a few years ago, but we like to have videos as both characters.
I managed to get a specific spinbonk that happens instead of a ledgegrab, which gives a lot of height, and it bumped into the ? block, slowing the backwards recoil so I could land on the ledge.
I also used the ground pound spin reset tech to get onto the Goombeetle, which wasnt necessary but looks cool.
#SuperMarioGalaxy2 #AButtonChallenge")
![[TAS] SMG2: Hightail Falls without Yoshi](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/w8HgazzIMb8/mqdefault.jpg "[TAS] SMG2: Hightail Falls without Yoshi
Hightail Falls Hot-Stepping Dash Pepper is possible without Yoshis help.
I had started this in March of last year, but only reached some way up the huge wall on the second planet.
I came back to this recently - with everything Ive learned since then - and slowly figured out how to scale the wall and beat the rest of the level, thanks to these wallkick techniques.
ANGLED WALLKICKS
When moving toward a wall in the air, if you strain to the left or right of the wall, your next wallkick will be angled that way. This angle can be made sharper if you approach the wall with a spin, even getting up to 90°.
DOUBLE WALLKICKS
If you grab a wall in the corner of two adjacent walls and kick off it, you can get a second wallkick off that same wall.
This cornered wallkick can either be the first (0:56) or the second (0:50 & 2:24).
It can even allow for a wallkick off a wall opposite your facing angle (0:57 would not have worked from the green slope without the cornered wallkick at 0:56).
OUTER CORNER WALLKICKS
Inner corner wallkicks are a long-known thing in Galaxy, where you use the sharpest angled wallkicks to climb up two adjacent walls from inside their joining.
Outer corner wallkicks are also possible in this way, but they would not be effective if not for another key technique...
NEUTRAL FRAME WALLKICK STRAIN
If you go neutral (bring the analog stick to centre) for at least 1 frame after wallkicking, you are allowed much harder strain than normal, making it much easier to control your direction.
This is used everywhere in this video, and is particularly helpful for outer corner wallkicks - to get a wallkick off the other wall, youd need to angle the kick away from it, but you can strain backwards with this technique to avoid getting too far away.
And one more thing:
SLOPE JUMP
Galaxy 2 is known for having patched the first games slope jump exploit, however, you are still able to spin after jumping off a slope if the jump is off the very edge of the slope. This was done at 1:21 to be able to bounce off the Goomba high enough to grab the wall above.
#SuperMarioGalaxy2 #MarioChallenge")
