Topic by TASVideoAgent

Super Mario World 64 is the 64th game in the iconic series of Super Mario World games, notable for being on a rival console.

Game objectives

Emulator used: Bizhawk 1.11.5
Heavy glitch abuse
Takes damage to save time

Supe Mario World 64 is a bootleg. Not much to say about it; it's also notable and 'popular' for its horrendous control scheme and being consisted entirely of stolen music.

Mechanics, tricks and glitches

Like what the title suggests, this game is mostly a complete ripoff of SMW, with worse controls.

Movement

Mario can walk by holding either left or right. This is walking speed, at a grueling pace of 1px/f. Like SMW, the P-meter, a value in 0114 in memory tracks Mario's movement: it increases for each frame of movement. If it reaches 64, Mario starts running at 1.5px/f, and if it reaches 112 while holding A, Mario starts sprinting at a whooping 3px/f. An interesting thing is that, unlike SMW, Mario can actually gain running speed in midair (but not sprinting speed.)

While running or sprinting, if Mario stops, he will slide for a bit. This can be stopped by simply pressing Left+Right for one frame.

By crouching, Mario can carry over his speed for a bit (and still keep the P-meter intact if done for a sufficiently short amount of time.) Crouching is needed to go in 1-block gaps, even if Mario are small (for whatever reason.)

Jumping, bouncing

Mario has two jumps at his arsenal: the jump and the spin jump. Each of them makes horrendous sounds, with the spin jump sound being noticably worse (so I use it at every single opportunity.) While the jump can reach higher up, and has a more curved trajectory, the spin jump spends more time at peak height; this mean the usage of jump when at walking or running speed is situational. When at sprinting speed, the jump becomes superior, because it is the only one which can carry over sprinting speed.

One very annoying thing about jumping is that upon landing, the P-meter is reset to 0. This means whenever Mario jumps, he loses all his acceleration. This is not true in three cases: in the case where Mario bounces on an enemy, in which case he retains running speed (but not sprinting speed); in the case where Mario grabs a wireframe for one frame, as the game doens't have time to update the P-meter; or in the case of moving platforms or certain yellow blocks, which don't reset the P-meter.

While jumping, if Mario picks up an item while in mid-air, his animation is reset. This can allow him to make noticably bigger jumps.

Cape exploits

The cape itself is so broken it needs its separate section here.. it's as broken as the one in SMW, if not more.

3/7 gliding

If Mario jumps with the cape while not at sprinting speed, after reaching the peak of his jump, he will fall with his cape up. Pressing B while doing so will allow him to fall slower. Each time B is unpressed, C41F (the adress controlling animations) is reset to 0. If B is held when C41F goes up to 7, it will be reset to 0 (to simulate gliding.) Combining these two techniques togheter create 3/7 gliding (with both being the highest respective values C41F reach), allowing to carry Mario airbone for a much longer amount of time than normal gliding in case where getting sprinting speed is impossible.

Frame pumping

Pressing the opposite direction of Mario's facing direction (left if he is facing right) will make Mario pump his cape, then normally followed by him quickly depumping his cape (what would normally make a swoop.), making him slowly fall. However, by dropping the pump input for one frame, then pumping again, you can skip the 'depumping' and gain height very easily.

Cape clipping

Starting to fly while in cramped spaces will make Mario usually clip into the nearby block. In this case, he will fly upwards a little bit faster.

Fast dashing

While flying, holding Mario's facing direction will make him dash downwards very quickly in that direction. By alternating this direction and a blank frame (for example, R > blank > R) C41F is reset every frame, making Mario fall much slower (even slower than holding the opposite direction to slowly glide.)

Level-by-Level comments

Level 1 (Music: Super Mario World - Overworld)

The aim of the run is simple: jump as little as possible. If needed to jump, stay airbone as long as possible until there's an opportunity to gain sprinting speed.

Otherwhise, there's not a lot happening here, apart from a bounce chain in the middle of the level which saves a very large amount of time. You might notice I take damage at the Banzai Bill; this is intended, since damage boosting has no penalty.

At the end of the level, the game displays our HIT RATE and DEFEAT RATE, as in the number of times we have hit enemies and the number of killed enemies.

Level 2 (Music: Talespin (Genesis) - Jungle)

Pretty much the same stuff as in Level 1. There's more moving platforms here, so more occasions to get sprinting speed.

Level 3 (Music: Super Battletank - Main Theme & Talespin (Genesis) - Sea Duck)

Major abuse of frame wiregrabbing to retain running speed. This Level is dictated by a cycle, an unkillable red koop. I don't try to regain running speed after because of the backgrounds fireballs (which misleading can kill Mario.)

Level 4 (Music: Talespin (Genesis) - Jungle)

I get the cape, which is good because we get to see less of this shitty bootleg.

Level 5 (Music: Jeopardy- Final Jeopardy)

I fly over the level.

Level 6 (Music: Talespin (Genesis) - ???)

This is an annoying level because there's no way to fly over the level (you can do it, but there's no way back in.) As such, this level is mostly abuse of 3/7 gliding.

At the start of the level, I have to do a tight maneuveur with the poision mushroom, which follows Mario's every move, to keep him up and be able to gain sprinting speed.

Near the end of the level, I do a tricky cape fly to gain enough height to skip one part of the level, saving around 5 seconds.