Noki Doki
Red Coins of Windmill Village – 0x A Presses [H] (OUTDATED)
updated
Since you have to be on solid ground to get the red button's textbox, there's no better place to start than the crane platform... at least, no better place above water. There's the seafloor right under the first coin, but sadly, just swimming down to it won't trigger the textbox. We need to momentarily cancel the swimming action, which can be done using a grab.
Sounds simple, until you realize there are two sources for grabbable objects (namely fruits): the infamous fruit machine, and the coconut tree on a high ledge in the farthest corner of the level. The fruit machine seems much more convenient to reach, and the RNG wouldn't be an issue since we just need any fruit except durian, but it has a special property: its fruits despawn after 40 seconds, instead of 2 minutes for any other fruit in the entire game. It's just not enough to clip under the water, drop the fruit, store the button and come back, so the coconut tree is the only option left.
Getting there is not so bad, but there's nowhere safe to throw the coconut once you get it, so you have to swim with it. I use the rocket nozzle platform to skip some of the swimming and get to the vertical crane, which is both the way back to land and the way to get pushed out of bounds. Here I have to be careful about the water surface, as swimming off the edge of it can downwarp me into the void or softlock me, but also about not getting back in bounds too high, as Mario will act like there's a water surface wherever he reenters. Despite that, the coconut doesn't despawn here, so I can put it down under the arrow platform, store the red button, get in position, use the coconut to trigger the textbox, and simply wait for Mario to float back up to the surface!
And then fail the starting Y storage. A lot. Or take way longer than I'd like to admit to realize that holding forward during the spinjump from 2nd to 3rd coin was aiming the turbo nozzle up, pushing me down and making the jump practically impossible. This was only my 4th time successfully sticking to the route up to the 3rd coin, and first time getting any further, but 1:39.65 should be possible... given enough patience
Getting close to 1:39 👀
Did this without Free Pause to show you can do switch storage with pause instead of the Z menu. On the frame after you land the ground pound on the switch, Mario's airborne, so pausing won't work, but it does on the QF you land on the switch, and for the 3 frames after landing on the pressed switch. The advantage is that since you can't pause in mid-air, you can mash Start during the ground pound without fear of getting the menu before the switch is pressed! But if you have Free Pause, that advantage goes away, and you just risk pausing on the frame that doesn't work in vanilla, making the attempt invalid.
EDIT: Actually, there are no route requirements, it just always works! But it can be combined with the text skip if you happen to get that.
Inside the level, all you have to do is read the sign after starting the race, then complete the race and line up with the flagpole and the Pianta, just close enough that the B prompt to talk to her shows up when you spray her. You also need to be facing within 1024 angle units (5.625°) of her.
So what's going on? Well, the game uses scripts to handle things like NPC dialogue. Normally scripts are free to run as long as they need to each QF, but the script interpreter has a special (debug?) mode that only runs up to 32 instructions at a time, and that mode triggers based on an uninitialized variable, so it may or may not activate depending on what was in memory before the level loaded.
If that mode is active, the script that ends the race and triggers Piantissimo's text is too long to run in one QF, so it can't assign the right dialogue properties in that first QF. This is not always a problem, because the script starts running as soon as the dialogue is triggered, whereas the textbox only needs its properties once Mario is done turning towards the NPC.
But if Mario's close enough to facing the NPC, he'll complete his turn in that first QF, and since the script isn't finished yet, the textbox will reuse the properties from the last displayed textbox, in this case the sign, and start appearing instantly!
Splits: splits.io/ay5s
0:00 Airstrip
3:28 Bianco 2
11:01 Bianco 3
12:19 Bianco 4
14:29 Bianco 5
17:40 Beach Shine
18:54 Gelato 8
20:28 Gelato 7
21:25 Pianta 1
23:07 Pianta 2
24:35 Pianta 3
26:41 Pianta 4
28:03 Pianta 5
29:41 Pianta 6
32:34 Pianta 7
33:37 Pinna 1
36:03 Pinna 2
39:02 Pinna 2 reds
40:26 Pinna 3
42:14 Pinna 4
43:44 Pinna 5
45:42 Pinna 6
47:47 Pinna 7
48:53 Grass Pipe
50:32 Lilypad
52:51 Bianco 6
54:37 Bianco 7
55:27 Ricco 1
57:59 Ricco 2
59:35 Ricco 3
1:00:25 Ricco 4
1:01:47 Ricco 5
1:03:20 Ricco 6
1:04:44 Ricco 7
1:05:41 Sirena 1
1:08:41 Sirena 2
1:10:19 Sirena 3
1:11:21 Sirena 4
1:13:05 Sirena 5
1:16:23 Sirena 6
1:18:19 Sirena 7
1:19:28 Noki 1
1:21:19 Noki 2
1:22:27 Noki 3
1:23:54 Noki 4
1:26:28 Noki 5
1:28:20 Noki 6
1:29:59 Noki 7
1:30:51 Pianta hidden
1:35:17 Pianta 8
1:37:41 Pianta 5 reds
1:39:37 Pianta 100
1:42:41 Gelato 1
1:44:15 Gelato 1 reds
1:45:59 Gelato 2
1:48:46 Gelato 3
1:50:49 Gelato 5
1:52:40 Gelato hidden
1:53:42 Gelato 100
1:59:31 Gelato 6
2:01:44 Gelato 4
2:04:27 Beach Pipe
2:05:12 Pinna 6 reds
2:09:55 Pinna 8
2:12:21 Pinna 100
2:15:16 Box Game 1
2:16:09 Noki hidden
2:17:51 Noki 100
2:21:49 Noki 8
2:24:35 Noki 6 reds
2:26:53 Sirena 2 reds
2:28:57 Sirena 4 reds
2:30:40 Sirena 8
2:32:32 Sirena 100
2:37:09 Left Bell
2:37:58 Gold Bird
2:39:07 Cop Secret
2:40:13 Underbell
2:40:33 Right Bell
2:41:15 Lighthouse
2:41:57 Shine Gate
2:42:37 Pachinko
2:43:49 Box Game 2
2:46:11 Chuckster
2:47:00 Airstrip reds
2:48:42 Delfino 100
2:49:16 Bianco 1
2:50:39 Bianco 8
2:52:49 Bianco 100
2:58:58 Bianco 3 reds
3:00:47 Bianco 6 reds
3:03:22 Ricco 2 encore
3:05:00 Ricco 4 reds
3:06:46 Ricco 100
3:11:53 Ricco 8
3:14:14 Bowser
Stream highlight: twitch.tv/videos/1802782430
Splits: splits.io/ap2h
0:00 BV1
2:40 Matrix
8:24 CS1
17:07 BV2
19:28 Jak Chase
20:50 Tanker 1
32:05 Tanker 2
42:57 Palace
53:11 Prison
1:05:51 Final Boss
1:08:35 SM1
1:14:02 SM2
1:20:08 Braveheart
1:25:46 LotR
1:34:11 Indy
1:39:40 Matrix 2
1:48:33 LotR 2
2:01:41 CS2
2:08:53 Hotel
2:16:38 Mill
2:27:24 Brewery
2:33:57 Transit
2:40:01 Train Chase
2:41:09 Distillery
2:46:29 Cannery
2:56:11 Emerald
---
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, it's impossible to follow the same route as other episodes, so no one's really been trying to make 4YG a thing anymore.
I was thinking about hyperhover the other day, and why it couldn't work with other nozzles: turbo and rocket both need to charge, making it impossible to use them before they're properly initialized, and spray is the default nozzle, meaning it's initialized before you can possibly wake up FLUDD. But I'd never really thought about Yoshi: he can spam-spray at any time, and doesn't fully initialized until he gets out of his egg, so surely it could work!
So here's the plan: hatch Yoshi's 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 don't pause beforehand, I just need to carry the fruit to Yoshi so Mario's 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 can't 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 Yoshi's 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 won't do. Instead I have to land on the cliff, which requires a spinjump and a Y-turn to maneuver around the invisible wall. It's 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.
Last PB before my run at SpeeDons, this Saturday at 7am CET! twitch.tv/mistermv
Stream highlight: twitch.tv/videos/1760608603
Splits: splits.io/ajel
0:00 BV1
2:24 Matrix
4:35 Hotel
10:27 CS1
12:34 Queen 2
17:56 Mill
23:27 Distillery
29:33 Cannery
35:46 Emerald 2
37:59 Tanker 2
39:51 Palace
43:01 Prison
49:12 Final Boss
Explication pour les reviewers Gaming Rouen Métropole : docs.google.com/document/d/1IBusAzBDs1jck5KDviErZYumOL1HVb6x9S3k02UerJ0
Stream highlight: twitch.tv/videos/1722463863
Splits: splits.io/aedx
0:00 BV1 Entry
0:32 BV1
2:22 Matrix
4:34 CS1 Entry
6:43 CS1
7:36 T2 Entry
9:08 Tanker 2
10:14 Palace
13:22 Prison
19:08 Final Boss
Previous WR: 44.79 by me (youtube.com/watch?v=QSrrUYTxjAE&t=141)
This EYG is quite different from Frog's 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 FLUDD's peaceful slumber. I use a pineapple here for speed, but it's possible to reach a coconut and a papaya too. I couldn't 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 we'll have to resort to making our own ledges using juice platforms. It doesn't seem like they should be able to help, but what makes them useful is that they move.
You see, Yoshi mostly shares Mario's physics while he's on his back, but when left alone, he'll 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, he'll 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 doesn't 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 they'll pick Mario up. That's 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 that's 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 Bob's your uncle!
This video is TAS, played on Dolphin 5.0-6022 with the PAL version of the game.
Rerecords: 1646
The theory-crafting behind this strat was one of my favorite moments in SMS ABC. Thanks to the pirate ships and the ramp above them, getting up to the Electro-Koopa isn't much of a challenge, but then we need to defeat it by flipping the grate below it, which normally requires hanging off it and pressing A. Well, there's another way to flip a grate: ground pounding it from above. Using cheat codes, samgodro43 confirmed that flipping the grate that way would indeed defeat the Electro-Koopa, but attempting it in the normal game would always result in Mario getting shocked and pushed away. If only there were a way to make Mario invincible without cheats...
That's where Gregoire271873 stepped in, and brought up the fact that Mario is invincible during cutscenes, such as the ones you get by cleaning a linked graffiti. And so we had a plan: stand on top of the arch going over the grate, spray the O graffiti that's barely reachable from there, and just as it's about to spawn a blue coin, drop off the edge and ground pound. From there you can simply ride a cabin up to the Shine.
This video is TAS, played on Dolphin 5.0-6022 with the PAL version of the game.
Rerecords: 640
Stream highlight: twitch.tv/videos/1453335615
Previous community gold: 1:54.97 by me (youtube.com/watch?v=P93juiiNi_Y)
Also first PB I got on stream, at twitch.com/nokidoki
Splits: splits.io/98cg
0:00 Bianco 2
4:50 Bianco 3
6:05 Bianco 4
8:23 Bianco 5
11:43 Gelato 8
13:42 Gelato 7
14:32 Pianta 1
16:22 Pianta 2
17:48 Pianta 3
18:46 Pianta 4
20:15 Pianta 5
21:44 Pianta 6
23:37 Pianta 7
24:28 Pinna 1
26:58 Pinna 2
28:21 Pinna 3
29:56 Pinna 4
31:26 Pinna 6
33:30 Pinna 7
34:31 Ricco 1
36:20 Ricco 2
37:54 Ricco 3
38:44 Ricco 4
40:04 Ricco 5
41:36 Ricco 6
42:59 Ricco 7
43:49 Bianco 6
45:42 Bianco 7
46:35 Sirena 1
49:30 Sirena 2
51:05 Sirena 3
52:04 Sirena 4
53:35 Sirena 5
56:29 Sirena 6
57:58 Sirena 7
58:59 Noki 1
1:00:39 Noki 2
1:01:42 Noki 3
1:03:09 Noki 4
1:05:31 Noki 5
1:07:10 Noki 6
1:08:37 Noki 7
1:09:25 Bowser
First ever sub 45 entry
Splits: splits.io/8s0l
0:00 BV1
2:31 Matrix
4:39 Hotel
10:31 CS1
14:08 BV2
16:13 Chase
17:47 Tanker 1
23:35 Distillery
27:43 Cannery
33:54 Emerald 1
36:07 Brewery
37:50 Transit
43:39 Queen 1
45:45 CS2
49:59 SM1
53:46 SM2
57:26 Queen 2
59:33 Mill
1:04:44 Emerald 2
1:07:46 Tanker 2
1:10:38 Palace
1:13:53 Prison
1:21:24 Final Boss
TAS timing: 34:28.300
Rerecords: 131,338 (probably way more from unsaved brute force sessions)
DTM download: drive.google.com/file/d/16t8-mEJ1VXXcXU_pOmoj3Mi5mhhWFTJm/view?usp=sharing
First, I unlock Bianco, and save before both Ricco and Gelato are unlocked. Then I enter the eel fight with 0 lives left, get eaten 3 times, then spawn the Shine. That way, the Shine spawn cutscene loads into the 4th cutscene slot, and doesn't get overwritten later. Then I game over in order to reload the saved plaza state without loading the title screen FMV, which would result in all cutscene slots being cleared.
Once back to the plaza, I start by spraying water and doing an insanely precise sidestep to make sure one of the splash effects that appear on the ground ends up at a very specific coordinate relative to the camera. That coordinate translates to a memory address inside the spin buffer, which stores the stick's angle every quarterframe for spinput checks.
Finally, I prepare for cutscene underflow, which occurs when a Shine Get cutscene tries to start while another cutscene is playing. While waiting for that other cutscene to start, I write arbitrary code into the spin buffer, using pause buffering to control my stick angle on every in-game quarterframe, rather than every frame. Once cutscene underflow triggers, the game reads my splash effect coordinate, which leads code execution into the spin buffer, where my code achieve 4 things:
- set the Bowser fight as the next area;
- set the current cutscene as the last one to play (otherwise the game would play the following invalid cutscenes and crash);
- overwrite the game's code to lower the Bowser fight's handle count requirement from 5 to 1;
- branch back to game code safely.
Then the Bowser fight starts, and swiftly ends because of the aforementioned code patch.
=== FAQ ===
Is this specific to PAL? What is possible on other versions?
Italian PAL just happens to be the version where I did my research, but it's not unlikely that a similar setup could work on any other GC version. PAL only gets more chances because each language has a different set of possible setups. As for 3D All-Stars, the glitch doesn't seem to be patched (unlike shinehax), but to my understanding, Nintendo's emulator can't execute code directly from its emulated GC memory, so we'd only get to call existing game functions (similarly to SRM on the Master Quest edition of Ocarina of Time).
Is there potential for a faster setup?
Absolutely! The eel Shine is one of the slowest spawn cutscenes to reach from new file, so it only gets better from here. I looked into 435 different setups before making my original cutscene underflow demo, and that was only scratching the surface, which is why I'm planning to make a tool that will allow anyone to help without technical knowledge by simply playing on Dolphin.
Will this ever be done RTA?
Not with the current setup. Getting the splash to stop at a usable coordinate took 2 weeks of automated brute forcing (on and off because Dolphin would crash every hour), and the next steps depended on the exact value I got. But assuming we find a way for humans to get that first pointer right, camera setups could be found to make the rest possible. The player would only need to hold the stick at specific angles and pause on the first possible frame after unpausing, a couple times in a row, with the ability to immediately try again on failure.
Droplets or splashes?
The cutscene underflow demo I made in May 2020 was pretty rushed, and in particular I said I was hacking water droplets instead of water splashes. In reality, there are two setups in the eel fight: if you spawn the eel's Shine, you'll need to manipulate a splash on the plaza, and if you spawn the 100 coin Shine, you'll need to manipulate a droplet. I got the two mixed up and since I was hacking in values either way, I didn't have to question which one it was. But in practice, splashes were more convenient to work with.
The first part is pretty simple, just ledgegrab as far into the corner as you can, then drop off by holding away from the ledge and pressing X. Watch out for the slippery ground when navigating out of bounds here, you can easily slide into the eco.
Jumping over the tunnel is fairly tricky and will likely take a good amount of practice to get down. First I get the camera inside the tunnel and rotate it as far right as it'll go, then position Daxter inside the small metal bar that sticks out. His facing angle also seems to matter.
Once in position, I double jump and spin with a neutral stick. If done correctly and in the right spot, Daxter gets pushed to the right and stands inside the rock for a split second. At that point I start holding up on the stick and double jump right after. If you don't get the double jump, you're usually still out of bounds ready to try again. If you do, hover onto the breakable wall and hold O to get another hover when you slide off. The hard part is over, but watch your step as you head towards the elevators, for reference I jump from the edge of the solid floor at 0:39.
The elevators are pretty self-explanatory, and there's a checkpoint at the start of the section. So falling off isn't a problem, and if you end up clipping in bounds between two walls, you can just save and load, and try again.
The rest of the video is just showing the queen fight, since I usually rely heavily on the ultrasonic. Without it, 4-cycle is pretty lenient, and 3-cycle is possible but tricky: twitter.com/Qbe_Root/status/1431451671733878787
Splits: splits.io/885t
0:00 Airstrip
3:30 Bianco 2
10:48 Bianco 3
12:02 Bianco 4
14:36 Bianco 5
17:51 Gelato 8
21:19 Pianta 1
22:45 Pianta 2
25:24 Pianta 3
27:31 Pianta 4
29:01 Pinna 1
32:16 Pinna 2
35:19 Pinna 3
37:58 Pinna 4
39:28 Gelato 6 blues
43:58 Gelato 7
44:50 Gelato 4 blues
47:44 Pianta 5 + Pianta 6
57:42 Pianta 7
58:41 Pianta 8 blues
59:44 Pinna 6
1:02:32 Pinna 6 blues
1:05:53 Pinna 7
1:07:05 Ricco 1
1:11:05 Ricco 2
1:12:53 Ricco 3
1:13:43 Ricco 4
1:16:29 Ricco 5
1:18:01 Ricco 6
1:19:36 Ricco 7
1:20:39 Ricco 8 blues
1:22:51 Sirena 1
1:25:35 Sirena 2
1:27:08 Sirena 3
1:28:08 Sirena 4
1:29:57 Sirena 5
1:33:37 Sirena 6
1:35:24 Sirena 7
1:39:41 Bianco 6
1:43:30 Bianco 7
1:44:22 Noki 1
1:47:10 Noki 2
1:48:26 Noki 3
1:49:53 Noki 4
1:53:24 Noki 5
1:56:36 Noki 6
2:01:17 Noki 7
2:02:05 Corona blues
2:05:10 Airstrip blues
2:05:53 Bianco 8 blues
2:09:46 Trade in
2:12:52 Bowser
Splits: splits.io/7vt8
0:00 Gateway
9:40 Good Egg 1 [53]
14:48 Good Egg 2
18:43 Honeyhive 1 [32]
21:51 Honeyhive 2 [35 O]
24:18 Honeyhive 3 [32]
26:49 Loopdeeloop
29:49 Flipswitch
31:53 Megaleg
34:37 Space Junk 1
38:36 Space Junk 2
41:43 Rolling Green
44:29 Battlerock 1 [88]
47:29 Battlerock 2 [40]
51:27 Space Junk C
54:05 Battlerock 3 [51]
57:36 Battlerock C [30]
59:05 Bowser 1
1:03:28 Beach Bowl 1
1:06:09 Beach Bowl 2
1:07:51 Beach Bowl S [52]
1:10:07 Ghostly 1 [24]
1:12:53 Sweet Sweet
1:15:09 Honeyhive C
1:16:59 Good Egg L
1:17:55 Beach Bowl 3
1:20:24 Beach Bowl C
1:22:05 Ghostly S [25]
1:24:18 Bubble Breeze
1:26:00 Airship Armada
1:28:37 Hurry Scurry
1:31:10 Battlerock L [76]
1:34:00 Gusty Garden 1
1:37:33 Gusty Garden 2
1:41:40 Gusty Garden S [39]
1:43:29 Gusty Garden 3 [40]
1:46:17 Gusty Garden C
1:48:08 Freezeflame 1 [30]
1:50:47 Freezeflame C [32]
1:52:37 Freezeflame 2
1:55:47 Freezeflame 3 [58]
1:58:19 Freezeflame S
2:01:06 Honeyclimb [155]
2:03:30 Bowser 2
2:09:47 Gold Leaf 1
2:13:20 Gold Leaf 2 [25]
2:17:06 Gold Leaf 3 [15 O]
2:19:35 Gold Leaf S
2:20:51 Gold Leaf C
2:22:27 Sea Slide 1
2:25:04 Sea Slide C
2:26:48 Sea Slide 2
2:29:26 Toy Time 1 [90]
2:33:09 Toy Time S
2:36:02 Toy Time C
2:38:13 Toy Time 2 [70]
2:40:34 Buoy Base 1 [25 O]
2:44:11 Buoy Base S
2:45:29 Drip Drop
2:47:31 Honeyhive L
2:49:02 Fate of the Universe
The sewer blue coins are an interesting case in the A Button Challenge: they're very easy to reach, but once you're in the sewers, the only way out is to jump or use a rocket. Or so we thought until tonight, when I stumbled upon a seam in the sewer floor collision near the left sewer coin.
Note that this couldn't be used to skip the textbox, even if we had a seam closer to the coin: Mario first downwarps (way too far to touch the coin anymore), then dies a whole second later. We may or may not have a completely separate theory on how to skip the textbox...
This video is TAS, played on Dolphin 5.0-6022 with the PAL version of the game.
Rerecords: 81
Fighting the manta spray-only was never an issue (though this fight is a bit lackluster because I couldn't get a better one to sync for some reason), but we couldn't figure out how to grab the Shine without hovering. The closest we could get was by diving from a nearby tree, but the only attempts that ever made it onto the post used a jump to setup.
But now that we live in the future, we know that Mario's sprinkler spray is more powerful than it seems, as it can be used to build up some nice speed on slippery slopes. Unfortunately the A Button Challenge hype has kind of died down in the meantime, so it took me some time to come back to this riddle and realize that when you step on one of the tree's lower leaves, it tilts in such a way that its end becomes slippery for a split second. That's all we need to setup a Beyblade, which easily lets Mario ledgegrab the post. By grabbing the ledge at a specific spot, the ledgegrab is immediately canceled into a normal landing on top of the post, which conveniently allows Mario to dive without a running start, then ground pound into the Shine.
This video is TAS, played on Dolphin 5.0-6022 with the PAL version of the game.
Rerecords: 101 (more like 600-700 if you count the desynced attempts)
1:30 Reverse queen strat found by Rane
Since I was hacking droplets anyway, I also put my payload there, but it would be possible (and more practical) to put it somewhere else.
More info: pastebin.com/H7jutG6w
The game has 8 “slots” to store active cutscenes, numbered 0 to 7. It also keeps track of the slot number of the last cutscene that started and the slot number of the last cutscene that ended. When a cutscene starts, the last started cutscene slot number increases, cycles back to 0 if it would go past 7, and the new cutscene gets loaded into that slot. Once the cutscene ends, the last ended cutscene slot number increases in turn, becoming equal to the last started cutscene slot number. Since both slot numbers are equal, the game knows it ended as many cutscenes as it started, so there are no more cutscenes to process.
Since there’s usually no way to end more cutscenes than you start, and the slot numbers are being used in a cycle, any time the last started and ended slot numbers don’t match up, that must mean there are cutscenes left to process, even if the last ended cutscene seems to be ahead of the last started cutscene. But when a Shine Get cutscene starts during another cutscene, for some reason, it ends twice, leaving the game with -1 cutscenes left to play, which it sees as 8-1=7.
Now, you rarely need all 8 cutscene slots in normal play, so the remaining ones are just filled with garbage data leftover from what you did before. When the game tries to process those 7 cutscenes that never existed to begin with, it can’t make sense of that leftover data and that’s why it crashes. But if you played enough cutscenes in the area beforehand, all the slots actually contain cutscenes, so the game is able to replay them all, although you can’t see most of them because of the Shine Get fadeout. It looks like a softlock for a while, but then the save box finally shows up like nothing happened at all!
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
Anyway here’s a breakdown because this one has a lot going on:
Coin 1: I was initially worried about optimizing the bullet climb on the right end of the room, but all I had to do was hit the wall next to the first spring before landing on it. This allows the first two cannons to spawn, but not the third, giving it the perfect delay for a bounce on the third bullet, then the second, then the Goombas.
Coins 2 and 3: Probably the hardest rooms in normal play, but their exits are conveniently placed at the top of the level, so you can just jump over the one-ways.
Coin 4: This room normally has blocks around the Bob-Omb, so the goal is to bounce off Goombas until the path gets cleared, but because of the level’s layout, the Bob-Omb and flamethrower were both able to spawn while I was in the first challenge room, that’s what causes the slight screen shake you can see at 0:21.
Coin 5: Using the leftover Bob-Omb from the previous room, I can skip waiting for the Bob-Omb in this room. But the only way to destroy both blocks from the outside is to hold the Bob-Omb inside the wall, simply throwing it won’t do, so I have to take a detour to get the leaf from one of the skipped challenges.
Coin 6: The short wait at 1:49 is to give the winged platform some time to rise up, a detail that took me way too many deaths to realize was necessary for the boot skip to work. I then take further advantage of the leaf I got by skipping the flying boot section, since the one-ways are too low for Super Mario to get caught under them.
So yeah, the level is made in such a way that you can complete rooms in any order, but the speedrun route ends up being pretty much set in stone.
This probably helps more with bingo than ABC, but I made it 0x because why not. Afaik this is the only way to get this blue coin without Yoshi or extra nozzles. Shoutouts to Yoshyegg for emailing me about this challenge and getting me to finally TASing it!
Most of the plaza blues have textbox skips based on collecting them while dying, but the coconut lady was one of the last we couldn’t skip. It was clear that fall damage was our only hope, but there were a few issues with that: it’s impossible to take fall damage in sand, and nothing near the island would give us the necessary height anyway. The sand issue could be resolved by placing a barrel and having the coin spawn on top of it, and any of Yoshi, the turbo nozzle or the rocket nozzle would allow us to carry the height from some plaza building to the island, but barrels disappear from the plaza before Yoshi or the nozzles become available.
Fall damage is one of the few mechanics that changed fundamentally between SM64 and SMS, likely to accommodate for the rocket nozzle. In SM64 it was based on the height where Mario performed his last action, but in SMS it relies on the last place where Mario was grounded, and his downward momentum when landing. Fortunately, ledgegrabs don’t count as a grounded state for this, so it’s possible to fall from a high place, grab the ledge of a boat, hover from it to the coconut lady, triple bounce off of her to land with enough downward speed, and take damage from a fall that technically lasted nearly a minute!
This strat is only possible after both Ricco and Gelato have been unlocked (so the boats are moving) but before Pinna is unlocked (so the barrels are still present).
Shoutouts to AverageTrey for finding the quick damage spot I used at 2:09: clips.twitch.tv/BlushingSolidBatTBCheesePull
This video is TAS, played on Dolphin 5.0-6022 with the PAL version of the game.
Rerecords: 971
It’s been almost two years since I found how to get the highest two coins hoverless and planned this video. But I was also very critical of my previous TAS of the level, which had unnecessarily long stretches of Mario just walking or swimming. This one needed to be better. So much better that after hours of attempts at manipulating RNG so I wouldn’t have to swim at all, I got bored, decided to try again later, and the file sat on my desktop until I finally decided to lower my standards.
I still manipulated a Pondskater to bounce into the 6th and 7th coins, and another at the end to bounce up to the windmill. RNG manipulation on a tightrope or while sidestepping isn’t too bad since spraying is always available (unlike normal movement where dives, slides, etc. are common)
Shoutouts to scatter for finding that Mario’s turn around in place conserves vertical speed: twitch.tv/scatter I still used Y camera at times because I TAS with a physical controller, which makes hitting precise angles in ESS positions very tricky.
This video is TAS, played on Dolphin 5.0-6022 with the PAL version of the game.
Rerecords: 2498
Splits: splits.io/49lg
After my pre-Peach right bell IL, I obviously couldn’t stop there, especially after Mikan found a way to get the pillar blue coin that was nagging us this whole time!
Splits: splits.io/495p
0:30 1st barrel
1:05 2nd barrel
2:03 Glitching the manhole
10:03 3rd barrel
20:17 4th barrel
22:46 5th barrel
23:40 Cleaning the bell
28:53 Jump to the Shine
This strat was initially TASed by zelpikukirby: twitter.com/zelpikukirby/status/1055796960110698496
While the TAS only needed to place 2 barrels, doing it RTA required a bit more setup. Putting a barrel down on the box sets it at whatever height it was before it entered the space above the box, meaning we have to get above the box at the right height and stay above it during the entire fall, without ground pounding or the box will break. At the heights we need, the box is offscreen so this can’t really happen RTA. Instead, I start stacking barrels lower down. There are only 2 barrels to work with, which limits the maximum height I can reach, but I can use them multiple times for setup.
For the first barrel, I simply jump out of the nearby manhole. With the camera zoomed out all the way, I can still see the box, so this isn’t too hard. I set the barrel low enough that I can still jump onto it from the manhole while holding the other barrel. Then I spinjump off of it and move sideways to land on the box. Sideways movement is good for this because it has no momentum: I’m instantly moving when I push the stick to the side, and most importantly I stop moving as soon as I let go. Of course this is theory because I still get some forward speed while buffering the spinjump.
This second barrel is now too high to reach with regular manhole jumps, so I glitch the manhole so I can get big jumps off of the cover. Jumping off the cover is step-perfect, meaning most of the time, the window to get the jump falls in between two frames and it’s completely impossible. The main setup to avoid this is to jump out and land on the cover while it’s still flipping, but since I’m holding something, the only way to do this is to ground pound at the exact time I get out of the manhole.
So now it’s a frame-perfect ground pound and a frame-perfect jump, back to back. To make things worse, the green side and the blue side of the cover have different animation lengths, so the jump timing depends on which side is up. Unsurprisingly, this is where it gets tricky. I have to do this and land on the second barrel I set earlier to set a third barrel, then repeat to set a fourth one.
For the fourth one, I don’t spinjump off the third as I did previously because I need to set it as high as possible while still being able to jump onto it. I make sure it’s still reachable by carrying a pepper over it (the pepper was just superstition really, at this point I’ve been grinding frame-perfect inputs to land on barrels in the sky for about 20 minutes and I’m starting to lose my sanity).
Landing on the fourth one is alright because it’s hard to overshoot, but now I have to get a running start into the lid jump so every failure takes a bit longer to recover from. I set the fifth and final barrel as high as I can reach, and after a few tries I finally get to the Shine, 30 to 45 minutes faster than the upwarp!
While the execution can obviously be improved, it doesn’t look like this can be a huge timesave, but it’s a fair bit easier than CS1 skip.
The Rocket and Turbo Nozzles are basically equivalent for the ABC, as both require an A press to unlock in each area. In Ricco, the Turbo Nozzle is generally a better choice when possible, as it’s available right next to the starting point and doesn’t require the Hover Nozzle to reach. On top of that, we can combine unlocking the Turbo Nozzle with a blue coin textbox, saving an A press in 120 Shines!
This video is TAS, recorded on Dolphin 5.0-6022 with the PAL version of the game.
Rerecords: 1337
Grégoire found a way to get onto the logs, by sidestepping into them, get stuck between them and the platform, then pressing B as they sank low enough. This saves quite a bit of time and removes the need for the Spray Nozzle!
This video is TAS, recorded on Dolphin 5.0-6022 with the PAL version of the game.
Rerecords: 973
This blue coin was listed as requiring the Rocket Nozzle on the ABC spreadsheet, until today, when Grégoire pointed out that we could just infinite ground pound to it. On its own, this doesn’t save an A press since we still need the rocket in Ricco 4 reds, but there might be something to do about that too.
The infinite ground pound is pretty bad for horizontal movement, since each repetition only lets Yoshi move for one frame, between the two L presses needed to make Mario ground pound back onto Yoshi and Yoshi ground pound in turn. The best option during that frame is to move sideways, since the stick directly affects sideways speed, whereas it only controls forward/backward acceleration. But we still don’t get very far.
This video is TAS, played on Dolphin 5.0-6022 with the PAL version of the game.
Rerecords: 85
Thanks to Grégoire P. for finding a way to get the second coin: youtube.com/channel/UCr1VFbZf2u3GBWKworiibRw
Collecting the actual Shine was always the main issue, since it’s always possible to collect any number of coins, enter a secret stage, exit area, and repeat until the Shine spawns.
As it turns out, the flooded plaza has a different spawn location for the 100 coin Shine than any other version of the plaza: instead of spawning on a remote platform in the middle of the sea, it spawns above the Pianta statue.
Not a whole lot better, unless you know about framewalking: by holding the stick in a direction and releasing it the next frame, Mario can walk up slopes that he would normally slide off of. We can use that to walk up the statue’s cape and reach the Shine.
But there’s another catch: during the flood, the statue’s cape doesn’t actually reach under water, so we can’t swim onto it or ledgegrab it. The only other way is to triple bounce-dive off of Piantas sitting on the nearest roof, but that puts you in a sliding state where you can’t framewalk.
This is where I stopped a few months ago, but I recently realized that all it took was sliding off and back onto the cape to cancel the dive. Derp. Anyway, since most of the coins in the flooded plaza require water to spawn, our options are pretty limited and we were only able to get two coins, meaning the full version of this would take 50 trips in and out of the plaza, and about an hour and a half.
This video is TAS, recorded on Dolphin 5.0-6022 with the PAL version of the game.
Rerecords: 621
Getting the first 5 coins hoverless has been possible for a while now, only requiring a way to get on top of the wall. Here I use a nearby Chuckster instead of the water wheel to save some time.
Then I go get a lilypad and set up a clip discovered by fellow glitch enthusiast Grégoire: youtube.com/watch?v=ZanmYWeNaeU . This lets me bring a Pondskater out of bounds and into the village, and a few bounces are enough to reach the remaining coins and the Shine.
This video is TAS, played on Dolphin 5.0-6022 with the PAL version of the game.
Rerecords: 623