Submission #10193: xTASz's Wii Mario Party 9 "solo" in 1:55:11.183

Greetings, I'm xTASz. And I bring on this site what seems to be everyone's most favorite Mario Party game with multiple mods for unused characters and colors, also including the freaking car, Mario Party 9. A game that some people nowadays have a hatred flavor for just because of how it turned out in the end. But from my point of view, it's popularity and the amount of mods that include that HD upscale and the Project Hudson created by Nintega Dario, It is still a masterpiece Mario Party up to date, following Mario Party DS and Mario Party 8. The reason why it was the most hated was due to the new car era of Mario Party, where rather than taking turns rolling a dice all players ride the same vechicle around and head to the Boss zone, also a new addon to Mario Party after DS. Much of things in this TAS won't be what you'd expect in a original speedrun, no, this TAS goes under 2 hour long. Yep, the first and ONLY Mario Party 9 speedrun to go under this length. Let me explain how I did it and why I choose to do what I've mishaps throughout the run:

Only player one's emulated Wii remote + Nunchuk and zero GameCube controllers

Just like NDCubes previous game, Wii Party, you where required to press both A and B at the same time to open the game up. Same thing goes for this game, but once you go into the mode selection screen, you get the basic Party Mode, Minigame Mode, etc. But the game has two secret unlockable characters that is getable by a very special gamemode, Solo. Which is used to unlock said characters who go by Shy Guy and Kamek. Koopa was supposed to be the ally of the two of them but instead he is the helper of the Mario crew, which is why we're using him for this TAS and no other character who isn't a turtle. As for Koopa Troopa, his clones don't seem to appear as much as himself do. So working on this using him made doing the TAS more open to me. Versions of this game plays on USA English, Japan Japanese, Korea Korean and China Chinese (at least from what I know).

As shown many times in the TAS, I manipulate RNG by pressing B and going forward with A multiple times. This tricks the game into thinking that number which wasn't select was supposed to be your regular dice number. But RNG for the COMs is much different because they don't back or forward on their dice blocks like the player-- instead, they are manipulated by waiting to press A on a specific dice block they carry or by default. Main point is that you are able to manipulate just by waiting, shaking the dice block or what I said above. It's tricky, but will eventually get you to the appropriate spot on the board.

So it's usual for us to start off with two CPUs. One of them (Toad) having the same color and style just like Shy Guy. So I pretended that he was the Toad version of Shy Guy to keep things in example. At the beginning of the run, we start off with a 4, and save the ministars to our partner Toad. Which then advances us through the board. For the first boss, Lakitu, we have to hit the 3 bullet bill block icons to end the boss game the earliest. Later on the board, we had to play a minigame because we didn't require the 1-10 dice block like as shown in the niconico 999 ministar TAS (link: https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm36909357 at 11:22). So we then ended Wiggler with the final hit being on a purple dot instead of the orange one (worth 3 points).

I had to back out of this one to re-rotate the un-rotatable RNG that was originally given to me. Because unlike Toad Road, Bom-Omb Factory and onward changes the RNG by itself, meaning I have no control over what the COM players roll unless I back and forth on my dice block multiple times. I managed to get the RNG I wanted in TAS-timing, but still could've been a little better. The whomp boss is where I let the actual Shy Guy get crushed the most to gain extra points and save frames. It does go out and in, partly when Whomp is angry and sets the number circle from "0" to "1". That's where I fix it up to the "2" and get Shy Guy crushed more then one time instead of Koopa Troopa. We go into the next segment of the carrier bomb, which explodes after just 8 or so turns. RNG wanted the bomb to explode on Shy Guy instead of me for some reason to keep things balanced. I didn't mention Captain events in Toad Road, but this one will be brutal if it isn't the right pattern. Finally, we get to King Bom-Omb and finish him off as a team with the Shy.

Third board of the game. Looks pretty simple, right? Wrong. but unlike Bom-omb Factory, this board actually gave me a chance to manipulate RNG at the beginning and the end. I did say that "Bom-Omb Factory and onward," but the later boards does give you an option to change the RNG to what you perfer, which the last board didn't. I used a 1-10 dice block to land on the Lucky space to save a-lot of time going to Dry Bones, whom was previously a playable character in Mario Party 8 then made a Boss appearance in Mario Party 9 (probably the reason why Koopa is playable instead of Dry Bones in this one). Next mansion, I decided that our team should skip going indoors to just go straight forward, we end up playing the second but only second minigame, Goomba Bowling, in which Koopa uses a shell from one of his buddies instead of his own (for whatever purpose). Attacking the mice who ran off with our ministars and rolling a 6 to the end goal, I show off the craziest way to do puzzles but in Tool-Assisted motion.

Same of which applies to Bom-Omb Factory, Blooper Beach has a bigger RNG issue that instantly required me to back out again. Although it is my favorite board in this game, there was really no business of there being 3 CPUs instead of 2. This would've made the Cheap Cheap and Blooper easily doable without maximum time waste. But I managed to get through both of them and still beated the bosses in TAS-timing. It took hours of trying to get Yoshi to use the 1-10 dice block, but failed miserbly, causing us to go to the lucky spaces and regarding the path of going straight to the boss gate.

We begin here by rolling the perfect number, letting Kamek dash and dash us to the directions pole, where we're instructed to pick this way or that. I manipulate this by making everyone go the same path as me. The first boss Spike, fastest way to finish him off will require us to collect the golden and normal spiked hammers. Chain Chomp needs you to choose a railing that's closer to a character. But sometimes Shy Guy makes us lose time by hitting the button on the left side of the railing tracks and not his direction which is the right side.

I know it says "Bowser's Station" in the title, but not only Bowser himself, but his son, Bowser Jr. yeah, I am a Jr, too. but I wasn't born bad like Bowser Jr. His boss soundtrack is the best thing ever. Anyway we begin as like the other 5 boards by speedly hitting the dice block to the nearest fastest number available. there are three Captain events, one of them featuring a setting that is completed within 3 dice rolls from just that one player, one completed by hitting B-I-N-G-O on a number set (with 3 6 9 being the numbers for my discord about me Logitech M-UR69 USB 3 Button Scroll Mouse for Tik Tok Instagram Facebook (#186514995639) April 7, 2012), then the final Captain event goes to picking a side for each player and the second one seems to be the fastest one that was suddenly taken by Kamek from Shy Guy. The Bowser Jr boss seems funnily happy to watch overall, but the Final Battle will be a suprize to you in the YouTube 4K encode of my TAS.

I'd like to say that many of the TASers who tried TASing Mario Party 9, including the Time Attack mode, has a huge thank you outta me. I absolutely love Mario Party 9 for the purpose of the character Koopa Troopa. NDCube's first Mario Party with the car, but special secret characters like Shy Guy and Kamek changes the entire way we play this game! I'm looking forward to seeing more Tool-Assisted related videos of Mario Party 9 just for the sake of there being game modes that just need it. My older brothers and I really enjoyed playing this and I believe it is decent enough even 14 years later! I should add on that we were forced to play another Minigame in Bowser’s station.

nymx: Claiming for judging.

nymx: This has been quite a headache, but here’s the situation: I’m not entirely sure if the game has major optimization issues, as there’s been a lot of back-and-forth about what has and hasn’t been done. The explanations from both sides seem reasonable, so I’m leaning towards this idea...It doesn’t seem blatantly obvious—since I’m not particularly familiar with this game's speedrunning strategies—that the optimization is terrible. However, I do notice a few things that could be improved.

In general, waiting around to manipulate the game is not ideal. Some of these issues could probably be resolved by adjusting the final move of a previous maneuver (for example, defeating a boss one frame later). If it’s like games I’ve TASed before, this could save some time instead of waiting for the perfect moment. Walgrey made some good points, but xTASz countered with reasonable explanations that make sense.

I remember a conversation I had with Samsara when I first became a judge, during a Super Metroid submission. Now, that’s a game I’m very familiar with. Initially, I was going to reject the submission, but I was asked to consider it from a different perspective: "Would everyone agree this is a bad run?" The answer, of course, is no—because not everyone is an expert. So, I can’t just dismiss it outright.

As with some submissions, I’m sticking to the prime directive here: A submitted run must beat all known records, and this one does—by about 30 minutes. That’s impressive, even though there’s potential for it to be faster. We’ll see how things go with future submissions.

Accepting to "Standard" for the "Solo" mode.

nymx: xTASz, we have been discussing several concerns regarding potential improvements to the current movie. The feasibility of implementing these changes will help determine the direction of this publication. Walgrey has also raised some important points, and we will be granted additional time to allow for supporting evidence to be presented.

Please note that the length of this TAS is considerable, and addressing these concerns now will significantly alleviate the pressure associated with publishing a movie of this magnitude. As you might be aware, we are short on staff and need to eliminate any future obsoleting submissions as much as possible.

Publisher...please hold off until we get this resolved.