Hi all,
I've been watching TASes for a long time, but this is the first time I've actually tried to make one. I wanted to give myself a fairly easy challenge that would still produce something entertaining to watch, so I made a run of the first level of SMB3 in which I attempt to minimize the number of frames I spend touching the ground or a normal platform, not counting frames during which I am still in the starting position. I managed it in 3; I really want 2 to be possible, and it might be, but I can't figure it out.
You can find the .fm2 at
www.techhouse.org/~jake/smb3lava.fm2.
This being my first attempt at any kind of tool-assisted anything, it is pretty sloppy (though not in terms of the goal of the run). For some reason I don't press start or move to level 1 on the map screen very quickly; I forgot that I did that and started working on it, and then when I noticed i didn't want to redo it all just to make that better. It seems like it should be possible to fix, since no important state changes during the bad part, but I don't know how.
The very end was incredibly frustrating; I tried being big there but it doesn't help. I also thought of trying to bring another shell, from one of the green koopas much earlier in the level, but I don't know if it's possible to pick one up without touching the ground, and even if you can, it would come back to life too soon and there's nowhere to drop it and pick it up again.
I did this entirely on my own (I didn't even re-watch the mario 3 TAS before I started) so I don't use any fancy tricks or anything. If there's a glitch I don't know about that could save a frame of touching the ground, let me know!
If people enjoy this, I might do more levels, or some other wacky challenge. Let me know what you think!