Noki Doki | The Sand Bird is Born – Buttonless @NokiDoki | Uploaded April 2020 | Updated October 2024, 2 hours ago.
The entry is a strat I theorized years ago for the ABC but never got around to TASing. It looks simple, but three things make it surprisingly hard to pull off. First, the Cataquack has a very limited vertical range; even a regular jump at running speed is enough for it to lose interest. This means I can’t be too far uphill from it. Second, while Mario’s grounded on a slope, his horizontal speed gets cut down depending on the steepness of the slope. Since this doesn’t affect the Cataquack, I can’t get too close to it or it’ll easily catch up, toss me in the air, then walk away. And third, on most of the hillside I have to navigate, any time I’m facing downhill in the slightest, I start a buttslide that is very hard to exit buttonless.
But the climb is possible nonetheless, and once the Cataquack is in the upper section, it can toss me up to the secret area. It might be possible to get tossed directly into it without the trampoline but the fixed angle the Cataquack gives you isn’t great, and I can’t use Y cam to change it.
Inside the secret area, 3 of the red coins are too far off the ground for Mario to grab while standing on the sand bird. I use the starting cloud to get one of them, enter another cloud from below so it eventually clips me upwards into the second coin, and grab the third as the bird tilts sideways. I was surprised I didn’t even have to framewalk for this. It’s at the top of the tower that things get tricky; unfortunately, a buttslide doesn’t let you get the top coin and return to the sand bird before it’s too high, so I have to use a Beyblade instead, which uses the R trigger. The alternative is simply waiting for the sand bird to take another lap around the tower, and R is an analog input just like the sticks, so I figure this is fine.
This video is TAS, recorded on Dolphin 5.0-6022 with the PAL version of the game.
Rerecords: 202
The entry is a strat I theorized years ago for the ABC but never got around to TASing. It looks simple, but three things make it surprisingly hard to pull off. First, the Cataquack has a very limited vertical range; even a regular jump at running speed is enough for it to lose interest. This means I can’t be too far uphill from it. Second, while Mario’s grounded on a slope, his horizontal speed gets cut down depending on the steepness of the slope. Since this doesn’t affect the Cataquack, I can’t get too close to it or it’ll easily catch up, toss me in the air, then walk away. And third, on most of the hillside I have to navigate, any time I’m facing downhill in the slightest, I start a buttslide that is very hard to exit buttonless.
But the climb is possible nonetheless, and once the Cataquack is in the upper section, it can toss me up to the secret area. It might be possible to get tossed directly into it without the trampoline but the fixed angle the Cataquack gives you isn’t great, and I can’t use Y cam to change it.
Inside the secret area, 3 of the red coins are too far off the ground for Mario to grab while standing on the sand bird. I use the starting cloud to get one of them, enter another cloud from below so it eventually clips me upwards into the second coin, and grab the third as the bird tilts sideways. I was surprised I didn’t even have to framewalk for this. It’s at the top of the tower that things get tricky; unfortunately, a buttslide doesn’t let you get the top coin and return to the sand bird before it’s too high, so I have to use a Beyblade instead, which uses the R trigger. The alternative is simply waiting for the sand bird to take another lap around the tower, and R is an analog input just like the sticks, so I figure this is fine.
This video is TAS, recorded on Dolphin 5.0-6022 with the PAL version of the game.
Rerecords: 202
![The Yoshi-Go-Rounds Secret – 6x A Presses [Y]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/6xTVAFZaDs4/hqdefault.jpg "The Yoshi-Go-Rounds Secret – 6x A Presses [Y]
I collect the Pinna 6 Shine by pressing the A button only 6 times, using Yoshi but not FLUDD. This is an improvement over Frog7ribbits now-deleted EYG video from June 2017, which also used the Spray and Hover Nozzles.
This EYG is quite different from Frogs 3-Stu strat, which mostly followed the 2-Stu plan from normal speedruns, but added a pink platform into the mix in order to raise Yoshi up to the purple platform headed to the go-round. At the time it seemed that making the purple platform lower to the ground would either cause it to break against the go-round, or leave Yoshi unable to get onto the go-round.
The first part is unlocking Yoshi, which is where spraying was required. Thankfully we can simply use sea water to get a fruit out of the ground, then carry it to Yoshi without breaking FLUDDs peaceful slumber. I use a pineapple here for speed, but its possible to reach a coconut and a papaya too. I couldnt get either of the bananas though.
After the original video went missing, my first idea was to try out 1-Stu, which has become the best strat for normal runs. In the A Button Challenge, Yoshi is pretty broken thanks to infinite ground pounds, but his one weakness is getting off the ground in the first place; on Pinna beach, the only ledges he can reach 0x and run off of are the cannon base, and the slippery hill that slopes off the ground near the papaya. So well have to resort to making our own ledges using juice platforms. It doesnt seem like they should be able to help, but what makes them useful is that they move.
You see, Yoshi mostly shares Marios physics while hes on his back, but when left alone, hell switch to much coarser collision checks, ignoring walls and ceilings, and snapping onto floors from much lower than Mario would. So if we make a platform near the ground and dismount as it grows towards Yoshi, hell snap onto it. Better yet, the platform rotates as it forms, so Yoshi will start to rotate with it, and with the right positioning, he can get carried into another ledge and snap onto it as well. Once on that ledge, I can finally use the latest hottest tech to clip into the park. As it turns out, there is a platform height that fits all the criteria of letting Yoshi snap onto it, not breaking against the go-round, and letting Yoshi snap onto the go-round, so we reach the secret entrance just a few seconds slower than a top execution with the A button.
The beginning of the secret is frustrating, as the very first gap is barely out of reach. In fact, if we could dive off the peak of the last rotating block, then cancel the dive while keeping its horizontal and vertical speed, Mario would be able to grab the ledge. After some testing, this doesnt seem possible, but this first A press may be shaved off once we reach SM64 levels of science. For now, if we need to press A, might as well make the most out of it! I gather a bunch of speed by landing on a slippery slope right before it becomes safe, carry it up and pull off a massive spinjump straight to the red egg block.
Navigating egg blocks is pretty easy, they move so we can dive in front of them and ground pound for height, and theyll pick Mario up. Thats the only way we knew of back in 2017, but I accidentally found out that you can even just dive straight from one to the next in at least some cases so thats nice. However the gap after the last egg block is not so nice, and requires another A press. Once again, I go big and use that A press to reach the platform from the green egg block, skipping the red one.
Then we get to the final structure, which normal speedruns climb with a spinjump to the wall facing the ice block, 3 wallkicks to land on the brick block above it, and a spinjump-dive to the Shine, or 5 A presses total. The one improvement we can make was found by SMS TASer extraordinaire zelpikukirby: by dive-grinding on the edge of the moving platform, we can carry more speed into the first spinjump, which makes it reach higher. Using a Y-turn, we can redirect it towards the ice block, then ledgegrab the brick block after only 2 wallkicks. One last spinjump-dive to grab the Shine, and Bobs your uncle!
This video is TAS, played on Dolphin 5.0-6022 with the PAL version of the game.
Rerecords: 1646")
![[April Fools] 4YG](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/7Nc5qhUoSgg/hqdefault.jpg "[April Fools] 4YG
This video is an April Fools joke! In reality, horizontal spam-spray recoil exists in the code, but it scales with a parameter that is set to 0, so spam-sprays can only affect vertical speed. Furthermore, Yoshis render matrix is initialized when the level loads and whenever he returns to his egg, meaning its impossible for junk data to affect the properties of a spam-spray.
Early Yoshi-Go-Round (EYG) has long been known to be possible in every episode of Pinna Park, except the fourth, the only one to not feature any enemy that can both move around and be turned into a platform by Yoshi. Because of this, its impossible to follow the same route as other episodes, so no ones really been trying to make 4YG a thing anymore.
I was thinking about hyperhover the other day, and why it couldnt work with other nozzles: turbo and rocket both need to charge, making it impossible to use them before theyre properly initialized, and spray is the default nozzle, meaning its initialized before you can possibly wake up FLUDD. But Id never really thought about Yoshi: he can spam-spray at any time, and doesnt fully initialized until he gets out of his egg, so surely it could work!
So heres the plan: hatch Yoshis egg so that he spawns on the first QF of a frame, mount him on that same QF, and spam-spray to gain backwards speed based on junk data from a previous level. Lining up the QFs was surprisingly easy: hatching the egg is based on collision detection between the fruit and the egg, and mounting Yoshi is based on collision detection between Yoshi and Mario, so it all pretty much works out automatically as long as you dont pause beforehand, I just need to carry the fruit to Yoshi so Marios close enough to mount.
Horizontal spam-spray recoil is usually unnoticeable, but when you read junk data as a direction vector, it can give Yoshi any amount of backward speed! Here I hacked the initial render matrix to give me around -120k speed but just like hyperhover, it just depends on what happens to be in that memory location at that time. Once you got the speed, just land while holding a direction, and the speed cap is off for a few frames!
Back to the actual strat, there are a few issues: first, Yoshi cant redirect that hyperspeed as easily as hover, so we need to start close enough to the right direction (carrying the fruit also helps to set Yoshis spawning angle). The second issue is that the go-round is elevated compared to the beach, so reactivating the speed by landing at ground level sadly wont do. Instead I have to land on the cliff, which requires a spinjump and a Y-turn to maneuver around the invisible wall. Its probably possible to go with a lower point on the cliff and land directly inside the loading zone rather than on the roof, but this is good enough for a demo.")
![Il Piantissimo’s Sand Sprint – 0x A Presses [Ø]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/8NTo7j7FyK8/hqdefault.jpg "Il Piantissimo’s Sand Sprint – 0x A Presses [Ø]
I collect the Gelato 5 Shine without pressing the A button or using F.L.U.D.D. at all.
The first step is to get a waterslide going, so I simply go back to the sea and dive from it. I then spam-dive up the hills to the flagpole and win the race!
This video is RTA, played on PAL Wii.")
![Wiggler Ahoy! Full Steam Ahead! – 0x A Presses [H]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/8d9M6Dt1IjQ/hqdefault.jpg "Wiggler Ahoy! Full Steam Ahead! – 0x A Presses [H]
I collect the Gelato 3 Shine without pressing the A button, using only the Hover Nozzle.
The first two hits can be landed by hovering from the Dune Bud that flipped Wiggler over, but for the final hit, Wiggler stops too far away. Fortunately, it ends up in the water, a bit lower than the rest of the beach, which lets us hover on top of it anyway.
This video is RTA, played on PAL Wii.")
![Red Coins on the Water – 0x A Presses [S]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/8xq2oyQqcUo/hqdefault.jpg "Red Coins on the Water – 0x A Presses [S]
I collect the Ricco 6 Shine without pressing the A button, using only the Spray Nozzle.
Grassdigger came up with this entire strat, but the time limit called for TAS-level execution so here we are! The first step is getting to the red coin switch, as Grassdigger already showcased in his Ricco 2 video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWT9dljYN9I I skip the pole ride on the boat by frame-walking onto the hull, but the rest is pretty much exactly the same.
Getting the first 7 red coins goes almost like in a normal run, except I obviously skip the one in the air for now. Then I use the swimming Pianta to lose the Blooper Racer, reactivating what must have been the longest Y storage ever.
At this point I have less than 90 seconds to swim, climb and dive my way to the chuckster, in a way that might remind you of Grassdigger’s Ricco 5 video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkQWVkZZ8lg Except this time I just triple bounce and dive off of him to barely reach the final coin.
Finally, I swim across the level and repeat the same process I did at the beginning to get onto the pier and grab the Shine!
This video is TAS, played on Dolphin 5.0-6022 with the PAL version of the game.
Rerecords: 1325")
![Soak the Sun – 0x A Presses [S/H]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/960CbeStErA/hqdefault.jpg "Soak the Sun – 0x A Presses [S/H]
I collect the Pianta 10 Shine without pressing the A button, using only the Spray and Hover Nozzles.
The tree in the middle of the village has some pretty weird collision going on, some of the geometry is treated as very steep slopes and some as walls. This kind of prevents us from directly hovering to the top of the tree, but for some reason, there’s a spot near the top where Mario stutters, and when you stop hovering there, you may or may not grab an invisible ledge for a single frame. This puts Mario back into a falling state, where he can start hovering again, but this time he can get away from the tree and reach the highest platform. From there I can simply hover to the top.
But we’re not done with this Shine just yet. We need to get on top of that weird structure on top of the tree. And that might just be my new definition of a tricky hover. If you start hovering any further away from the structure than I did, the hover runs out before you make it there. But if you start any closer, you’re too low to grab the ledge. But Fortunately, there’s still about half a floor triangle that is both high enough and close enough.
This video is RTA, played on PAL Wii.")
![Gooper Blooper Breaks Out – 0x A Presses [S]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/AxrGOvxaWvc/hqdefault.jpg "Gooper Blooper Breaks Out – 0x A Presses [S]
I collect the Ricco 1 Shine without pressing the A button, using only the Spray Nozzle. This is an improvement over my previous strat, which used the Hover Nozzle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8OgPlBggBs
The important part of this strat was shown over a year ago by Hazel Elaine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDs7Kp-PbY0
First, I head to the top of the first ship and slide off one of the supporting beams, which gives me enough speed to clear the gap and reach the tower. I can then go near the top section and have a first Blooper notice me (somehow?).
I get this first Blooper to spit some ink, and go stand further in the corner. Not only is this the best place to catch the second Blooper’s attention, it’s also just the right distance from the ink spot for Goobles to spawn.
Finally, I manipulate a Gooble to spawn, stun the first Blooper, and bounce onto both of them as the second Blooper starts falling off the ledge. I get the third bounce on it as it falls, which lets me grab the ledge and progress to Gooper Blooper.
A possible improvement on this would be to get the second bounce from mid-air rather than from the ground, allowing the third bounce to start from a higher point as well. This would make it possible to skip the ledgegrab and waterslide immediately, saving a few seconds.
This video is TAS, played on Dolphin 5.0 with the PAL version of the game.
Rerecords: 515")
![Beach Treasure – 0x A Presses [H]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/CJsFkbid_DA/hqdefault.jpg "Beach Treasure – 0x A Presses [H]
I collect the Beach Treasure Shine without pressing the A button, using only the Hover Nozzle.
This video is RTA, played on PAL Wii.")
