This TAS of Super Mario 64 aims to grab all 87 trees in the game in record time. The run utilizes TAS-only tricks and ignores the RTA ruleset for entertainment reasons. The final time for this run (based off VI/s) is 8:28.483. The encode provided includes a 2.733 second timeloss in Wet-Dry World, hence the time discrepancy. You can find a video of the improved segment in the detailed breakdown.
Disclaimer: This was submitted by kierio04 with express permission from (and submission comments written by) the main author, frKieran
Game objectives
- Aims to grab all trees in the fastest time
- Takes damage to save time
- Heavy glitch abuse
Work for this project was started on October 31st, 2024. It helped me improve my skillset as a TASer and I believe most movement in the run is completely optimized. There are segments in this run replicated, hexed in, or referenced from runs made by other TASers, who will be listed below:
- Krithalith - Castle Grounds beginning BLJ, scattershot VCutM BLJ, (replicated) SSL beginning movement, THI SBLJ. (Death%, 1-Key, SSL IL, THI IL)
- Crackhex - Movement to enter SSL. (16 star SBLJless TAS)
- Manama - Triple jump glitchy wall kick in THI
- FeijoadaMolhada - Beginning movement of WDW (Quick Race Through Downtown IL)
- ChouxZi3 - Beginning movement of WDW, (replicated) SBLJ strat from HMC entrance area to the BitFS SBLJ spot
- Jeaze - I used the routing from some of his TASes as reference, namely CCM.
- 1-Key Team (Krithalith, MKDasher, SilentSlayers, Alexpalix1, Crackhex, Superdavo0001, tesserakt, Plush, snark, IsaacA) - VCutM BLJ, MDS, basement water enter, BitFS course & fight
Route
The TAS begins in the Castle Grounds, where a large number of trees are. I then go to the basement using the Moat Door Skip (MDS) from the
1 key TAS. In the basement, I visit SSL and BitFS (giving me the key to upstairs). I briefly visit DDD to pause exit and go to the lobby, before visiting BoB, CCM, and WF. I then go upstairs to visit SL, before pause exiting back to the lobby (skipping the necessity of collecting a star). I do this again for WDW and THI, before going to the Castle Courtyard to finish the TAS.
| Course | Trees |
|---|
| Castle Grounds | 26 |
| Shifting Sand Land | 1 |
| Bob-omb Battlefield | 17 |
| Cool, Cool Mountain | 13 |
| Whomp's Fortress | 1 |
| Snowman's Land | 9 |
| Wet-Dry World | 2 |
| Tiny-Huge Island | 2 |
| Castle Courtyard | 16 |
| TOTAL | 87 |
|---|
Detailed breakdown
Castle Grounds
We start off the run in this stage, where we immediately head over to a BLJ spot instead of going to a nearby tree. The reason is simple, we need a path we can follow in a line to grab every tree with no backtracking. The trees on this map can be thought of being in 3 different groups. Starting near the middle one, we can go to the left one, which requires us to back track all the way over to the right group, and vice versa. This is way we do a BLJ to the back of the right group. The BLJ uses pause-buffered inputs to build up as much speed as we can on the tiny slope. We end up being in the long jump state next to the first tree with hyperspeed, and something interesting happens, we instantly leave the tree and conserve our speed in a different direction. To understand why, we must look at how grabbing a tree works. If Mario and a tree (or any pole)'s hit box collide, Mario's X and Z position will be modified to be the same as the tree/pole object. However, his Y position can remain the same, which causes a bug when Mario grabs a tree below its base Y position. Instead of updating to the grab pole action, Mario instead either becomes idle or enters freefall, depending on how close the floor is below him. If he enters idle, he can instantly change his direction. But being set to idle sets your speed to 0, so how do we conserve speed? Simple, we press Z on the frame we go idle. See, sliding speed conserves through certain actions like grabbing a pole, and is updated whenever horizontal speed is. However, in this case, sliding speed isn't reset when we become idle, so we can start sliding with the speed we had earlier. Grabbing a tree in this way also has the benefit of converting your negative speed to positive depending on the angle you slide out. It may not look like we slid here because it only happens for 1 frame. We initiate a slide kick from this crouch slide which also instantly lands, so we then do a forward rollout, which again instantly lands. We now would enter walking here which caps to 48 speed, but instead we start turning around. Turning around usually depletes your speed quickly, but since we have such a large amount and there's no speed cap on this action, we can conserve our speed over to the 2nd tree at the back. Once we get there, we walk for 1 frame and dive below the tree, initiating another instant-release (the name of this exploit)
After we do that, we expertly conserve speed with instant releases on the remaining trees leading up the final one in the right group of trees. We then head over to the BLJ spot used in 1 key, except here we use it to butt slide off the bridge and instant release the tree at the back of the left group. We grab all the trees in that group, and then the middle one. Once we get to the final tree, we then do the BLJ used in 1-key to enter VCutM.
Vanish Cap Under the Moat
The movement here is the same as 1-key, we long jump over to the elevator and BLJ to millions of speed. The moving elevator displaces us to the death barrier. Once we exit VCutM, we arrive near the waterfall in the castle grounds, in a swimming state, one of the states that doesn't reset sliding speed. Once we get up to the waterfall, we re-activate our speed by pressing Z, and navigate parallel universes to start walking behind the moat door, allowing us to enter it without collecting the basement key from Bowser.
Shifting Sand Land
After navigating the basement, we enter Shifting Sand Land. We use the strat for Shining Atop the Pyramid to conserve our speed on to the ! box. Instead of jumping into the star, we strain a bit left in order to walk for 3 frames to jump dive on the side of the pyramid, making sure that when we rollout we have the perfect angle facing the tree. Once we rollout, we do a low-mag punch to conserve our speed after landing, and do a few frames of turning around to do the same thing. We initiate a sideflip, which immediately collides with the sole tree in this course. Since grabbing a tree with less than 10 speed imitates a faster pole grab animation, and the first frame of a sideflip gives you 9.15 speed, we grab the tree quickly. We jump dive off the tree and immediately die to exit SSL, since pause-exiting would take us to the main lobby (we don't have a basement key to get back)
Bob-omb Battlefield
The routing in this level starts out the same as Jeave's, but changes quickly since we don't have access to the wing cap. Despite that, we still get pretty close to the same time. We grab the trees where the wing cap would be, then BLJ to the tree next to the bridge. We can't instant release it since we always fall at the same Y level and same Y level rate, unlike when you have the wing cap. It's theoretically possible to grab the tree two ones after that since it's on a sloped surface, but it doesn't matter since we are just waiting on an elevator cycle. We start the BLJ on the elevator just barely within time. We then do a BLJ into a hyperspeed instant release, into a slide kick that we jump dive out of. Jumps get higher the more speed you have, so we are fast enough to land on the island. This landing is incredibly precise, requiring you to be neutral while landing, floor clip into the island without getting your speed negated by the ceiling, etc. After that we grab the tree on the island, and the remaining ones behind the mountain.
Cool Cool Mountain
The routing in this level is the same from Jeave's TAS, with a few exceptions. Besides small time save improvements, we don't dive early on one of the trees since the cannon lid is still present. We also land closer to the last tree and side flip into it to save some time.
Whomp's Fortress
We jump kick to the nearby tree and side flip into it. We can grab it earlier with a long jump, but as mentioned earlier, grabbing a tree with less than 10 speed allows us to pause exit earlier since the animation is shorter.
Snowman's Land
The route here is the same as Jeave's, but execution is pretty different and we save a great deal of time. We do two long jumps and a jump dive on the sloped surface to reach the tree quicker, we do a sideflip to get a fast pole grab animation on the windy tree, we do a jump kick and low-mag punch instead of sliding to get to that tree, and again do a fast pole grab animation at the highest tree.
Wet-Dry World
This is the most complicated strategy in the entire run. We start off with the same movement for the IL TAS of Quick Race Through Downtown, glitchy wall kicking our way up to the water crystal on the tall white platform. We initiate the BLJ in the same way, this one being brute-forced to be optimized for the water crystal touch later on. This BLJ depends a lot on the tilt of the platform to keep you grounded, as well as your facing angle, which makes it especially difficult. There is really only one PU we can access this way since we also can't walk into it, we'd fall off. We have to land in a PU at the same Y level or 78 units above it such that we land the long jump at that point in the PU. Once we do that, we do some parallel universe movement I came up with to first jump into the tunnel that loads the city area of the map, then walk into the water crystal on the main map. Our Y level here has to be the floor the water crystal is on. Since object interactions are processed before the water surface upward, we can trigger the water crystal while being upwarped by the cage. I put a lot of work into trying to find a solution where Mario is facing in such a way he can merely swim out of it, but I couldn't find anything. The next-best thing was to water jump out, and do two long jumps to instant release the trees that most people don't even know exist. I pause exit a few frames earlier by entering first person first frame we land, which is an allowed action to pause exit from.
As explained earlier, this section was improved between encoding the full TAS and submitting it here. You can watch the improved segment below:
Tiny-Huge Island
We start this course off with a triple-jump glitchy wall kick to reach the higher portion of the map, a strat found by Manama. I then quick turn and long jump twice to the remaining tree. This tree isn't on a sloped surface but I still manage to do an instant release, due to me grabbing it while I am falling. I jump kick out of the tree, quick turn, then triple jump dive, into another jump dive, to enter the warp pipe. The reason I can't just triple-jump initially from the tree is due to the fire spitter. Also, the warp pipe's hitbox is entered by only 0.2 units, a feat that took me a few hours to brute-force. Once we arrive at the huge island, we start an SBLJ to quickly get over to the next tree. We have to do a dive and instant dive recover, otherwise the landing frames don't allow us to turn in time to navigate the narrow bridge. We crouch to lessen our speed and jump backwards to grab that last tree.
Castle Courtyard
We start by going over to the right tree, which is faster from my testing. Some simple movement that's been explained earlier by me, nothing too special here. The last tree grab can be done quicker, but timing ends with last input, which is the frame I press B to start the jump dive. After that, Mario goes neutral, so he loses some speed.
NOTE: In the original encode, the TAS ended on last input at the cost of a later tree grab, and was timed as such. This was adjusted when preparing it for submission, so an additional 17 frames were added.
There might be an improvement in Castle Grounds, but that would be incredibly hard and time consuming. I will probably do an All Signs run next.
