Game objectives

• Emulator used: DeSmuME 0.9.9
• Advanced Bus-Level Timing OFF and Dynamic Recompiler OFF
• Aims for fastest time
• Uses death to save time
• Takes damage to save time
• Major skip glitch
• Heavy glitch abuse
• Genre: Platform

TASing out of bounds

General comments

Stage by stage comparison

Stage by stage comments

Glitches and Tricks

• Heaven's portal: When you do a slidekick, dive or long jump into a glitchy corner (meaning the character slightly enters the wall), if you do it with a certain angle and while moving downwards, the character is sent upwards to the ceiling above them. Most of the places where you can do a heaven's portal have no in-course ceiling, therefore the ceiling above the character is the hard-coded limit, which is very high. The trick can also be done by going into a wall with high speed. Heaven's portals can be used to do major skips (Moat Skip and the slower method of Endless Stairs Skip used previously) or reach stars faster.
  Here is a more detailed explanation about why these portals happen and how to do them: Integer Overflow Portal Explanation

• Corner clipping: Some glitchy corners allow you to go through the wall instead of sending you into a portal, for example the characters' room right corner.

• Star cancel glitch: When you eat a star as Yoshi, it is possible to skip the celebration for getting the star that forces you to exit the level. After eating the star if you bounce on a fly guy or spindrift, land on a shell, or grab an owl, then you will be able to move around with the star in your mouth. If you walk/run, stand still long enough for the landing animation to finish, or start swimming, then you will do the celebration for the star as usual. However, if you jump out of the landing animation then you will not start the celebration, and can thus delay it indefinitely. By spitting the star towards the loading zone at the bottom of the pyramid, we can lick the star, touch the loading zone before the star reaches Yoshi's mouth, triggering the warp, and then get the star. The warp keeps going and the celebration animation is abruptly stopped, and Yoshi spawns inside the pyramid. The star counts towards our total though! We can then just exit course from inside the pyramid. This saves a lot of time over getting the star normally, then entering the painting again just to exit course.

• No-direction trick: This trick works by not pressing any direction while doing any sort of jump. When doing so, the character's speed will aim to go to 0 by decreasing/increasing (depending on the situation) by 2048, until it reaches 0. It's useful to do it while the character's speed is above normal top speed, since the speed goes down slower than if you pressed any direction. It works with all movement except punches, kicks, dives and slidekicks since their speed doesn't decrease in the same way and/or is locked.

• Direction reset: When pressing the opposite direction from the direction the character is facing while in the air, their speed starts decreasing until it becomes negative (which means the character is actually moving in the opposite direction from the direction they are facing). However, if the speed becomes exactly 0 while decreasing the speed, it will increase (positive numbers) even if you're moving in the opposite direction of the way you're facing. If the direction is backwards (being more than a 16384 angle difference from the facing angle) and you keep pressing the direction while landing, then the character will instantly turn when landing.

• Frame sliding: While walking up a slope you'll notice that your speed decreases every frame. To avoid this, simply press backwards and no-direction every other frame to keep the speed you had. if you don't have enough space to do a slidekick recover (or a kick in a case of a quite flat slope) then this can be useful. It can also be used to preserve a little Y run for each time you do it, and as entertainment for a run (e.g. using it during Moat Skip since there is a lot of straight running).

• Glitchy long jump: Usually, when you do a long jump, it is necessary that the character is facing the same direction he is moving in order to get a long jump with the highest speed. However, while walking, if you turn very fast so that the model angle lags behind the motion angle, by using a specific direction with the touchscreen you can do long jumps with top speed where model angle and motion angle are completely different. Here is a more detailed explanation of this trick: Glitchy Long Jump Explanation

• Delayed long jump: By running and pressing R you can slide for up to 16 frames while maintaining the speed you were running at. This can be useful for preserving Y run.

• Punch and Kick Tricks
  • Before reading these tricks, it is important to note that when doing a punch, your speed will decrease by 2048 every frame if you're on the ground. If you're in the air, the speed becomes locked. When doing a kick, you're not affected by the floor (if it's a moving floor, you are not affected by its movement), and the kick will keep the speed you had until you reach the ground. Also, after a kick you can instantly run after landing. Same with a punch, but your speed will be sent to 0 after the animation finishes. Therefore, punches and kicks are useful for being faster than running in some instances.
  • Kick trick: By pressing and holding B when you do an air move, if you press A (and don't release B) immediately when you land, you will do a kick. It usually isn't possible to kick while in the landing animation, and this lets you preserve speed from a long jump for example.
  • Punch trick: If you release B just after pressing A and B for 2 frames, you won't kick, you will punch instead. Thus you can punch at any speed using this.

• Y run: This is a feature of the game. If you stand still and hold Y, after almost one second you will be able to run extremely fast (even faster than the max run speed) and with insane acceleration for a short period of time. There is a timer that starts at 30 and decreases by 1 every 2 frames, though only while you are on the ground. This means just running normally it will last for one second exactly, but with lots of air time it can last for an entire star. Y run can be useful when you have to go through doors, since you can run fast immediately instead of slowly building up speed from 0. Also, with the touchscreen, you can instantly decrease your speed to a value you want instead of slowly decreasing. This can be used to turn faster by reaching 0 speed quickly.

• Air Reset
  • There are several tricks that allow you to count as standing on ground while in the air for 2 frames, meaning you can jump, backflip, kick, and in some cases even long jump from mid-air.
  • Dive reset: When doing a dive onto the ground, if you let your speed reach 0 (by letting it slowly decrease or grabbing something) you will automatically recover in a standing up animation. While in the air, you can't decrease speed during a dive, so the game assumes you're on ground after doing this animation. However, while doing a sideflip, wall jump, or triple jump (very hard with a triple jump), if you get the right amount of negative speed, you can do a dive that sets your speed to exactly 0. Thus, the standing up animation will play in mid-air as soon as you do the dive. After the animation finishes, you will be able to move for 1 frame, allowing you to jump, backflip, or kick. This trick allows us to reach new heights, as it allows infinite height gain as Mario using a wall. Here is a video explanation: Dive Reset Explanation
  • Spit reset: After spitting out something as Yoshi, there are 2 frames when Yoshi switches from the spitting animation to the walking animation where you can jump, spit, backflip, or even long jump if you are travelling fast enough.

• Dialogue in air: The check for dialogue in this game only cares about X and Z position, not Y position. This means that by using a dive reset or spit reset you can start the dialogue in mid-air. While the text is on screen the character will float, and after that you have 2 frames to do an action. However, the character will always look directly at anyone who is talking to them, so being too high above whoever's talking will lose frames because they have to tilt their head downwards. They also have to get their head back to a normal position after the text, once again wasting a few frames.

• Grate upwarp glitch: In Goomboss Battle, if you jump under the grate with a precise position and an angle to the left, there is a glitchy spot where you can hang at the very edge and cannot move at all if you stay hanging. If you manage to have the perfect position and perfect angle you will not hang on the grate, and instead enter the wall. This means a failsafe occurs and you are sent up to the edge of the grate, in a landing state.

• SSL pillar glitch: If you start walking onto a pillar in Shifting Sand Land with quite high speed (running speed is sufficient), depending on your position and motion angle, you can upwarp a little, or sometimes you can lose all your speed while on the shell.

• Fast pole grabbing: When jumping or sideflipping, if your speed is less than 40961 when grabbing a pole you will be able to jump or climb the pole instantly. Normally, you would have a second where you can't do anything, as there is a short animation. With Yoshi and Luigi (only useful to do alternate pole jumps with them) you can manipulate the speed to be negative since any negative speed makes the trick work, e.g -108108. If you are jumping off the pole, hold backwards, and just before reaching a speed of 0, press no direction so that then if you press backwards again, your speed will become negative instead of going to 0 and becoming positive.

• NPC clipping: This works by talking to a bunny or a Toad that is close to a wall while you are between it and the wall. The game pushes you out of the NPC, making you go through the wall if you have the right position.

Potential improvements

• There was a faster method of Moat Skip theorised, which would save roughly a second. This would work by climbing up the steep hill on the left side of the waterfall (closer to the starting position than the waterfall), and doing a slidekick there to fly off the hill and get the skip. However staying in the air too long puts Yoshi out of the slidekick animation, so it's not possible to hit the wall before that happens. Another idea was to bounce on the fence to be able to reach the wall, but for unknown reasons the portal does not happen.

• At least 7 frames could be saved on Shining Atop the Pyramid if the RNG was better, as we had to delay for 3 frames to make the fly guy ram. The RNG is based on the frame counter when loading the level, and affects the fly guy's position and whether it rams or spits fire. It can be changed slightly by making the other fly guy come on screen, but that only affects whether the ram or fire spit happens, not the position of the fly guy we need to use. Before Moat Skip was improved during the making of the TAS the actual star was 4 frames faster thanks to a slightly better fly guy position, hence the 7 frames overall. That position was not perfect either, just the best we got in the few times we did the level with different frame counts entering, so with perfect RNG we would probably save a few more frames too.

• Near the end of the making of the TAS, Really_Tall thought of an alternative route to collect 3 stars. This consisted of getting In the Talons of the Big Bird, then Shining Atop the Pyramid using the star cancel glitch, and exiting course. Then we'd rescue Mario, still with only two stars at this point. Then we would perform 8 Star Door Skip again as Mario to enter Goomboss Battle, get the switch star, and exit course. It would take time to do 8 Star Door Skip for the second time, but thanks to the switch star being so quick, and as it's a secret star you don't get forced to exit in a celebration afterwards, we estimated the route to be about 3 seconds faster overall. However, we found that there was actually no way to perform 8 Star Door Skip as Mario, due to the way he hits the wall after clipping through. Clipping through with a long jump meant he had too much speed and just fell to his death. So if there was a way to do that skip as Mario it would allow a very interesting route to work to save roughly 3 seconds.

• Currently the TAS collects 3 stars. This is to open the 1 star door, and to open the JRB door (which requires 3 stars) so we can do 2nd Key Door Skip, which means Bowser in the Fire Sea does not need to be beaten. If there was an out of bounds glitch in the main lobby then it would allow the game to be beaten with 0 stars. If it only worked with Mario then it would be faster once again to beat the game with 1 star, as was done before 2nd Key Door Skip was discovered.

Special thanks

Suggested screenshot

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