Luigi has always been a beloved character in Super Mario Bros. series. However, in this game - Super Mario Bros. 2(J) (also his first time appearing as an independent character), his performance was really poor. His higher jumping ability was rarely utilized, and the huge inertia and worse acceleration ability made few speedrunners attempt him.
Of course, we couldn't ignore Luigi. Once I watched Mario's 'all levels' movie, I knew it was time for Luigi to embark on a long journey. Our goal is to use Luigi to complete all 52 levels (World 1-9 and A-D, requiring the game ROM that has been successfully played through at least 7 times) as quickly as possible. Some of the levels are quite difficult because Luigi's poor attributes even affect his ability to use those glitch techniques. However, I do my best to enable him to perform the actions that Mario can do, and enhance the entertainment value at the same time.
Highlights
Since there are already the warps movies (Worlds 1-8 by HappyLee and KFCMARIO, Worlds A-D by electricpants ), the same techniques will not be described again.
2-1
The Flag Despawn, since all five enemy slots are filled up, saves 21 frames.
5-2
The Wrong-Warps, the inverted pipes in this game can be accessed, saves 84 frames by skipping the cutscene.
6-1
The FFPG by the wind which has been used in Mario runs, but only saves 21 frames for Luigi.
6-4
In order to jump through two long firebars and get the appropriate Bowser mode, I have to slow down slightly. Fortunately, there was no loss of frame rule.
8-1
The second Wrong-Warps, it can only be used in warpless runs.
A-3
The third FFPG (the second is A-1) by the Koopa. It took me really long time because Luigi jumps too high so that he needs to step on the Koopa low enough. Eventually, I managed to do it using the spring. Maybe there's a faster way. Additionally, due to the interference from the Cheep-Cheeps, I had to slightly slow down to make adjustments.
B-2
In a specific place, clipping into the top block can swim through it without slowing down. It can also be done in 3-2 if the Blooper was not in my way.
C-1
The third Wrong-Warps, similar to the 5-2 and 8-1, but this saves the most time.
Acknowledgments
This is my first TAS, and perhaps it can still be improved. Anyway, thanks to HappyLee, KFCMARIO and electricpants for their warps movie, to alexyweb and Kzwbz for their Mario all levels run. At last, thank you for watching.
nymx: Claiming for judging.
nymx: Replacing with a 24 frame improvement.
nymx: Uploading a corrected version.
nymx: Well, this turned out to be a challenging one, but I’m glad I took it on. I learned a lot about SRAM and Mario speedrunning along the way.
First: welcome,
JQJ, to our community. You chose a great game and put together a strong speedrun submission. It’s especially nice to see a first submission with this level of effort—often new introductions don’t have the same quality, but this one clearly does.
Second: we ran into issues with your input file. I reached out to
DrD2k9 to confirm whether he’d hit the same problem, and he did. I then brought it to our Senior Judge,
ikuyo, and we ran into another hurdle. Ultimately, we received a strategy from
CasualPokePlayer: your input file needed to be handled as part of another SMB2 run that requires the same SRAM verification. Once that approach was used, everything worked. From there, I reconstructed the movie using that plan, and we now have a version suitable for review.
To help quantify the difference between the Mario and Luigi behavior, I calculated the latency comparison:
For reference, I did the following with your run, against the same comparable publication:
These results are close enough that I don’t see anything obviously off. Audience feedback hasn’t flagged any issues either. The run looks solid to me, and I’m happy to say congratulations on filling in the missing run!
Accepted as “Standard.”
