Submission #9154: Chall99 & RemyMS's DS Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games "all Superhard Staff Ghosts" in 05:57.92

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This DS game is the 2nd generation of games of the "Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games" series and the first winter games, released along with the Wii version. It consists of several minigames called "Olympic Events", some of which you can play in a Time trial mode (there also exists a Story Mode, not relevant for this submission).

It is infamously known to DS players for having a challenge of Ghosts created by the staff of Sega (the "Staff Ghosts"), organized as "Normal", "Hard" and "Superhard" ghosts, unlike the other entries. This TAS defeats all the Superhard ghosts made by the Sega staff as fast as possible (so, each event showcases the fastest known TAS, beating the 5 events as fast as possible and maxing out the Final times in a few of them).

The TASes of every event have been on the works for years independently from each other and they are the result of continous improvements. We decided to unify them under this TAS project. These are:

Luge: Maxed out.

Skeleton: Maxed out.

Speed Skating: Maxed out.

Bobsleigh: 10+ iterations of this TAS have been made, this TAS contains the definitive version (45.562 seconds). Though it can be improved, it's hard enough I'm uncertain it can go below 45.500 seconds.

Alpine Skiing: The most interesting event from a TASing perspective.

You have to fill the gauge and stay inside the yellow line. After months of on and off research, the last milisecond of Luge was finally saved the previous year. This accomplishment was first made by the TASer Romario in 2021, a person known for impersonating runners, lying, threats and spamming, but he would never share his legendary TAS. It remained a mystery whether the TAS was real or a bluff, but I managed to replicate the IGT.

The Start forces you to dash with the stylus and mount the "skeleton", then you race to the finish line (sometimes, you can boost). The online rankings hinted towards an unknown strategy existing, because some users had unsual times. But the online rankings were known for the hackers in previous entries, we didn't know what to believe. As it turns out, the developers made a programming mistake that enables the player to do circles instead of dashing at the Start (Remy figured it out).

You can save 1 ms by delaying a boost. This happens because when you boost the character moves further inside the screen to create the feeling of speed. This last optimization was a happy accident of Romario, who happened to delay a boost, then he never shared the TAS. When we figured Skeleton out, his claim on Luge became believable.

You alternate between R and L to move faster, to turn you have to hold R and smash L, sometimes you can boost. Remy achieved an incredible time after several improvements back to back. Romario could only tie him, later on.

The developers commited one mistake with Speed Skating: You can go faster by holding R during the whole run and mashing L. This strategy is TAS-only. Other minor strats were discovered: waiting until the last moment to boost after turning, mashing L + R while boosting, and using Yoshi.

I made this section and nobody could defeat it. Bobsleigh was a very misunderstood event, and has the most hated ghost. First of all, you select 2 characters (tipically, Bowser and Vector), the Start comes down to mashing: you alternate B + Down. The Sega Staff performed a very tough start by mashing very fast, so most players immediately reset. Then you mount (RNG) and you race. The game has a few in-game tutorials, but they won't say much.

I was watching (useless) tutorials years ago and I found some commentators who knew what was wrong with this event. As it turns out, turning with the character sitting on the front of the "bobsled" makes you lose insane amounts of speed. Then it's a matter of turning the least you can with Vector, to prevent speed loss. The more Technique "skill" the character has, the easier it turns, so Bowser sits at the back and Vector leads the way.

If I have to point towards anything worth noting, beyond the history, that'd be that spreading the button presses that correspond to Vector is better than pressing for a while. Because it's faster to lose a bit of speed and watch it immediately increase, rather than decreasing it too much and waiting for the speed to go back up.

Alpine is a (complicated) TouchScreen event, TASed by Remy. You have to touch the gates to dash and move with the stylus, swiping increases your speed. After several TASes, he achieved a sub 39 second TAS.

The IGT champion reported a glitch that allows you to achieve a "double dash", which is so rare that it has been regarded as a TAS-only glitch. It requires the Player to wiggle in a very specific angle inside the gate. Remy has implemented it as much as it is possible, but the glitch is awfully restricted to the angle. We believe a revolution for Alpine Skiing is near, but after months of testing we remain dumbfounded. This submission has been halted for long, we didn't want to submit this TAS until we found something new related to the glitch. However, there is no possible time save with the knowledge we have achieved of this wiggle glitch.

The mysteries of the other events that I have explained took years to be fully figured out, so we believe the future is bright for Alpine Skiing. Plus, none of us can write lua scripts, so we have been working with a restricted number of tools.

It is worth noting that swiping constantly does not make you go faster and it actually can slow you down in some sections, specially the ending. There is a timing and pacing. There are random bumps that launch Bowser high up only when you go too fast (it's a glitch, not a feature). Also, you don't really need to release the "stylus" when you TAS, which enables us to immediately swipe again. The Champion believes that 2 of the gates used for the TAS were suboptimal (that we should have used the gates from the opposite side), however after testing we have not managed to go faster, so it's currently being explored.

After defeating all ghosts you receive the "Ghost Master Badge". "All Ghosts" is an speedruning category found in "All Misc", that currently holds no submitted runs, because the sheer difficulty daunts most runners. Plus, the main attraction are the minigames (IL).

ViGadeomes: Claiming for judging.

ViGadeomes: The movie seems good. The verification movie uses a good dump while this one doesn't but if you regenerate a new movie copying everything from this submission by taking the generated SaveRAM from the verification, it still syncs.

Changing the Goal to reflect the actual name in the game and the difficulty. Since Eazy, Medium & Hard would produce the exact same movie, there is no need to do a second movie for this. the only thing that matters is the trophy at the end of the Hard difficulty, a defeat all staff ghosts branch would be more: starting from clean save to beat Eazy, Medium & Hard Staff ghosts to reach the Medal but it wouldn't add much as the IGT would be the same 3 times in a row for each categories...

Spiking the inputs, Credits aren't reachable from there so stopping on the Medal screen seems good for me.

Thanks to adelikat & McBobX for their reviews.

Accepting.

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