Introduction

This is the fastest completion of Yūjin Mario 3, one of the most famous Super Mario World hacks. Yūjin Mario 3 is often called Kaizo Mario World 3 in English, but I prefer to use the former, the Japanese-originated name, in this description.
The run consists of numerous innovative strategies, most of which are rather new and look different from each other. Few of them are intended solutions (see original videos). This also shows a new feature of Yoshi, which can be seen nowhere else.

Game objectives

  • Emulator used: Snes9x 1.43 v17
  • Aims for fastest time
  • Takes damage to save time
  • Abuses programming errors
  • Manipulates luck
  • Eat no chucks

Background and History

自作の改造マリオを友人にプレイさせる (Making my friend play through my own Mario hack) is one of the most famous series of playing videos in nicovideos. It is often abbreviated as 友人マリオ (Yūjin Mario). In the series, TAKE (the uploader) made his own hack, and he made KIBA (a friend of his) play it. The released patches for the first and second sequels were named kaizomarioworld(2), so it is often called Kaizo Mario World, or simply Kaizo, in English. (Videos of) Yūjin Mario 1 and 2 were uploaded in July through October of 2007, and the third sequel was uploaded in October-November of 2012, which was over 5 years after the legendary impact.
These hacks are meant to harass KIBA in an unexpected way (so that they entertain viewers). He had beaten lots of ultrahard levels produced by TAKE's innovative and creative ideas, and he has made a deep impression on many people since then. The hack design, however, was not really good, which prevented its quality from being topped. In the third sequel, the level design is rather improved.
Yūjin Mario is one of the most famous video in nicovideo, where it is usually called 友人マリオ (Yūjin Mario). Part 1 of Yūjin Mario 1 has 1.4 million views as of February 2013, and two of the accidentally deleted videos also had over million views. Yūjin Mario is also one of the games which made TASes so popular in nicovideo.
Yūjin Mario gave a deep impact to Super Mario World Hack communities. Ever since then, the word Kaizo is often used to mean “as hard as Kaizo” (改造 (kaizo) is a Japanese word meaning hack). You can see its influence, for example from Kaizoman666's name. (I'm not so familiar with this topic that it might be inaccurate in some places.)

Goal setting

In working on this hack, the problems were 1) to eat a chuck or not, and 2) any% or all-exit.

Eat chuck or not

If we are allowed to eat chucks, we could get a cape in the very first level from baseball chucks, which are placed in other levels such as the third, or the sixth etc.

any% v.s. all-exit

The secret exit of 梅田地下街 leads to two extra levels, but they are rather boring and make no difference in the later levels unless the eat-chuck glitch is allowed.
We couldn't find a cape run such entertaining, and in our opinion, a capeless (= eat-chuck glitchless) any% run is the best way of showing off entertainment to the full extent.

Hack difference between the original version and the released version

What I can tell is the following:
  • In 和歌山, a coin is added at the lowest question block so that you cannot go into the inside of that space while the effect of the P-switch is being active. The goal is one tile higher than the original.
  • In 天国, blue P-switches are placed in a different way so that you cannot get multiple P-switches nor a grey P-switch by block duplication.
  • There is an extra level following クッパ城東京支部. This is a maze level, and has a secret exit, which leads to two level. One of them is a boss-rush level, where you can fight against the bosses of Yūjin Mario 1 and 2. The other level is a yellow switch palace, in which there are a Yoshi, fireflower blocks, and a Yellow Switch.
  • There are yellow blocks in 地獄, 天国, and くっぱ城京都本部. They, when activated, are supposed to make these levels easier.

Tricks used in the run, and tips

Riding an invisible Yoshi
Ride both of a visible Yoshi and an invisible Yoshi, and dismount Yoshi in such a way that Yoshi vanishes soon. Then mario takes the form of riding Yoshi without Yoshi displayed. When you move on to the next room, Yoshi will appear. This is also used at Vanilla Dome 3 in the recent 96-exit run.
Frame rule of sprite interaction
Usual sprites can be touched every two frame. Which timng each of them can be touched depends only on the parity (odd/even) of its sprite slot ID.
Spinjumping on a melting/broken grab block
You can spinjump on a grab block at the same time it melts or is broken, even if it is not kicked (i.e. it is only released). Because of the frame rule of sprite interaction, you have to take care of the parity of its slot ID so you can touch (= spinjump on) it.

Level-by-level comments

In what follows, the headings A (B, C) indicate level name (level name exhibited in the game, English level name).

和歌山 (わかやま, Wakayama)

The coin placed below the question block prevents us from reaching the yoshi block from below. To break through it, we could revive the P-switch by pressing it near the pit but we chose the way to keep the shell with L-scroll. This is much faster than the P-switch revival method. Yoshi will be needed later so we keep it. Note that yoshi is not meant to be carried over, of course.

死の山 (死のやま, Death Mountain)

We need Yoshi in はかたわん, so we have to keep it. In the vertical map, it is fortunate for us that Yoshi prevents a yellow naked koopa from generation because of sprite slots being filled, so we can easily get the yellow shell with no trouble. Then the classical stun glitch lets us get a rainbow shell to fly through the level. Although we landed on the ground at corner-clipping, there is no loss of speed because the ground is slippery.

なばなの里 (なばなのさと, Nabana no Sato)

An autoscrolling level. The door is not meant to be entered when Mario being large with Yoshi, but the both sides of the screen are equipped with munchers so we can enter the door with no trouble.
When a naked koopa enters a shell, a null sprite is generated so we can pull off the item-swap glitch. We performed it several times for the purpose of making entertainment, lag reduction and goal-swap. Goal-swap saves much time because we can avoid entering the pipe after the goal.

一等地物件 (いっとうちぶっけん, Prime Property)

We can reach the layer-2 foothold by high jump when the layer 2 starts to go down. The L scroll is used to delay the foothold's going down
In the boss room, there is a ceiling above the screen, so we have to wait a while if we throw the block from the below. Our method is a little faster than the intended solution.

博多湾 (はかたわん, Hakata Bay)

The existence of Yoshi makes it harder to go under layer 2 (= the moving yellow layer) in the first room. If it were not for Yoshi, we could enter the pipe one cycle earlier, but we need Yoshi for the next room.
The second map is one of the biggest attractions in this run. When Yoshi is at an appropriate position under a ceiling, riding on Yoshi lets us boost through the ceiling. To get it to work, we crammed Yoshi into layer 2. At the under-mushroom part, we were boosted through a corner by layer 2.

スカイツリー (スカイツリー, Skytree)

We indeed spent three weeks at this level. It was the biggest problem to use no vine. We managed to solve it and we obtained a much better look as a result.
The first half. We at first considered that our current plan with Yoshi was slow, because we did not imagine the duplication part would be so optimizable. Later we managed to beat the no-Yoshi route. We removed a Pokey for the sake of lag reduction.
For the second half, there was no way in which we could avoid a use of the vine. Finally we got it and even saved time. This is the first demonstration of time saver with melting-block jumps as far as I know. As explained above, it is important which sprite slot the grab block is in. To manipulate it, we controlled the vertical scroll at the first block, and grabbed an extra block before the second block.

クッパ城東京支部 (クッパじょう とうきょうしぶ, the Tokyo branch of Bowser Castle)

Good luck came to us so we could get a nice pattern of Dolphins. Any L/R scroll is not used in the run.
The Princess fight is the customized Wendy fight so her pose might have affected time, but her pose is reset to the same one each time she appears, which makes it easier for us to manipulate luck. As an additional information, we can progress RNG while pressing A/B in the (fake) Bowser fight.

梅田地下街 (うめだちかがい, Umeda underground shopping center)

This is one of the highlights in the run. We make Yoshi grow underneath a ceiling and ride on it. Then downwards zipping and wall-boosting led us to the bottom of the map. Because of lag and time loss at the pipe exit, we leave Yoshi here.

地獄 (じごく, Hell)

We tried improving the first chuck part by making Yoshi escape. Corner-clipping is used to skip the first thunderbolt. Yoshi doesn't escape shortly after we ride on him. This is used to skip the Pokey. The reason that we got to the midway gate is that we boosted through a ceiling later.

天国 (てんごく, Heaven)

To avoid a large amount of loss at getting a rainbow shell, we used a shell jumping with speed 49. It would cost more time to stomp the shell in a usual way, but if we spit it out as soon as Yoshi faces right then it will be spit out closer than usual, and hence we jump on it sooner. To take over the shell placed at the very beginning, a little trick is used around the first ON/OFF block.
The latter half is accessible via flying toward the right of the pipe, but then the auto-scroll would start earlier and we would lose much time consequently.

クッパ城京都本部 (クッパじょう きょうとほんぶ, the Kyoto headquarters of Bowser Castle)

The cycle of a fireball of the Bowser statue depends on the in-game time, so either L/R scrolling or pausing can progress its timer without the lava layer down. At the first statue, we delayed the level entrance and used L/R scrolls; for the second, an R scroll and a pause are used. We finally see an effective use of pausing in a TAS.
As noted above, the RNG can be easily manipulated in the Bowser battle.
In fact, there is no need to use the reserved mushroom at the end of the battle. If it had not been for the reserve, we could have saved some time at the last of the previous level, but in any way we would have to delay the next level entrance, so there would result no difference. That is to say, it does not matter at all whether to use the reserved powerup or not.

Special thanks to

  • pirohiko for all his support. He always surprises us by his godly sight;
  • gocha for the useful lua scripts;
  • Lil_Gecko for his excellent run;
  • Niconico community for related videos
  • those who show interests in our work; and also
  • TAKE and KIBA for the greatest hack and videos.

Nach: Yet another hack from an awful hack series. My perspective on this is that this new hack is still far from decent. However, the issues with the hack were not as pronounced as with the prior two. Yes, there still are blatant violations of proper aesthetics, with chompy piranhas floating in the air and similar, but it's not as bad and as frequent as seen previously.
Regarding making full use of the game engine, this hack doesn't do so, but comes much further than before. Multiple exits, more power-ups, more enemies used, background movement, etc, give this game more to offer. There were also quite a few creative things done that I don't think I've seen elsewhere, like the whale sections becoming more annoying that a cheap cheap assault. This hack also finally offered something new and somewhat fresh with its Bowser fight, so it seems like the hack is starting to have something to offer.
The pigeonhole problem that was seen in other hacks like this is still present in this game, and for that alone, I would normally outright reject the hack. But Mister and ISM did an excellent job of breaking free of the constraints the game puts on the player. If not for all the abuse of going around the levels, making use of illegal power-ups and so on, allows this to appear as a TAS, and not just a follow the puzzle run. Those looking to submit a faster version of this run take note of this key point, without a potential speed for entertainment or "game breaking" trade off in this area, the run is unacceptable.
The overall response for this run was pretty good. I also asked some of our most prolific critics of TASs and hacks to share their opinion, and it seems our strictest viewers enjoyed this run as well, therefore based on the feedback, I think this run of this hack has done enough to become publishable.
Regarding using a deprecated emulator, there really needs to be serious weight put into considering rejecting this. Especially considering that this uses 1.4x and not even 1.5x. However, I reviewed the various discussion threads, and I see Mister mentioned active work on this hack and others well within the continuance time frame. I also see, that for other TASs, others asked for continuances on Mister's behalf, as it seems he wasn't sure if hacks needed them. Since we know ISM and Mister were working on this for a while, and aren't just trying to mess with the system, and springing upon us a run started after the allotted time, I'm willing to be more lenient and consider this run as going along with the "spirit" of the continuance system.
Accepting, although barely.

TASVideoAgent
They/Them
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Posts: 14776
Location: 127.0.0.1
This topic is for the purpose of discussing #3860: ISM & Mister's SNES Kaizo Mario World 3 in 17:11.23
Joined: 12/22/2009
Posts: 291
Location: Michigan
Absolutely mind-blowing TAS. Very well done. Definitely yes vote.
Current projects: Yoshi's Island Disassembly Yoshi's Island any% TAS with Carl Sagan
Masterjun
He/Him
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Joined: 10/12/2010
Posts: 1179
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This TAS is absolutely incredible! Yes vote of course!
Warning: Might glitch to credits I will finish this ACE soon as possible (or will I?)
Editor, Player (44)
Joined: 7/11/2010
Posts: 1022
I was entertained (except while flying over or under the level). The level design isn't very Mario-like, but it does at least give a lot of opportunity to show off glitches in a condensed way.
Editor, Experienced player (851)
Joined: 8/12/2008
Posts: 845
Location: Québec, Canada
Oh yeah baby!! Super entertaining!!
Active player (420)
Joined: 3/21/2011
Posts: 127
Location: Virginia (United States)
Yes, indeed. Wondering how Nach will decide this, though.
YouTube Channel - Twitter Current projects: Sutte Hakkun, Hyper VI, RTDL, own hacking projects
Editor, Experienced player (607)
Joined: 11/8/2010
Posts: 4012
This is just amazing, and so entertaining! Yes vote, of course!
Spikestuff
They/Them
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Posts: 6324
Location: The land down under.
*checks Continuances list* ...um... if this was made 6 months later I'd be voting no but it's only been 2 months so I'm voting yes very interesting to see another kaizo tas Screenshot request: Peach in lava
WebNations/Sabih wrote:
+fsvgm777 never censoring anything.
Disables Comments and Ratings for the YouTube account. These colours are pretty neato, and also these.
Editor, Skilled player (1402)
Joined: 3/31/2010
Posts: 2081
The run utterly abused the engine in so many different ways. I'm fully for publishing the run.
Active player (432)
Joined: 4/21/2004
Posts: 3516
Location: Stockholm, Sweden
Okay I never thought I would say this but this run of a hack deserves ten stars to justify the dedication we have witnessed. I have not laughed and smiled this much since nitsuja submitted his sonic 3 run where he showed it is actually possible to make sonic run vertically and whatnot all over the screen. Thank you so much for doing this run. It is an extremely entertaining run. Thousand yes votes and I hope Nach does an exception to this outstanding run. I am so speechless.. I have no clue what I just witnessed. Never seen Yoshi getting abused that much. I think in the end Yoshi kind of liked it :-) Zipping was almost like Mega Man 1 tas. That is how good this run is. This run is a very strong candidate of being tas of the year! I really would love to see if you two would investigate if any of your tricks and manuevers could be applied to Super Mario World.
Nitrogenesis wrote:
Guys I come from the DidyKnogRacist communite, and you are all wrong, tihs is the run of the mileniun and everyone who says otherwise dosnt know any bater! I found this run vary ease to masturbate too!!!! Don't fuck with me, I know this game so that mean I'm always right!StupedfackincommunityTASVideoz!!!!!!
Arc wrote:
I enjoyed this movie in which hands firmly gripping a shaft lead to balls deep in multiple holes.
natt wrote:
I don't want to get involved in this discussion, but as a point of fact C# is literally the first goddamn thing on that fucking page you linked did you even fucking read it
Cooljay wrote:
Mayor Haggar and Cody are such nice people for the community. Metro City's hospitals reached an all time new record of incoming patients due to their great efforts :P
Synahel
She/Her
Joined: 1/19/2011
Posts: 259
Location: France
I must admit, I started the movie thinking "Kaizo Mario TAS don't do justice to the games, as the whole point is getting killed by the devious traps". And I regretted these thoughts mere moments after starting to watch the movie. I feel sorry for the game for being ripped apart so much. This was amazing, thanks a lot for this.
Patashu
He/Him
Joined: 10/2/2005
Posts: 4000
My hand slipped and hit the 'Yes' button somewhere around when Yoshi spat out a buzzsaw. This run was AMAZING. Every level seemed set up to display a different aspect of Mario and Yoshi's amazing athleticism and repetoire glitches. The run was even more fun to watch on nicovideo with all the comment spam whenever something amazing happened. Entertainment level off the charts :D My highlights. Did you notice all of these? 和歌山 (わかやま, Wakayama) -Invisible/wrap around yoshi glitch 死の山 (死のやま, Death Mountain) -Alchemizing a rainbow shell from nowhere なばなの里 (なばなのさと, Nabana no Sato) -Imprisoning and freeing Mega Mole -The mysterious case of the 1up on the lone Bullet Bill -Discovering Podoboo-Yoshi -Riding a Mega Mole -Discovering Baby Yoshi-Yoshi -Glitched sprite Lakitu kill -Mario demonstrating Koopa Shell arithmetic (1 + 1 = 3) -Swapping a buzzsaw and goal tape into yoshi's mouth 一等地物件 (いっとうちぶっけん, Prime Property) -Mario pretends Fishin' Boo and their trolltastic hitboxes don't exist - two at once! -Ending 1 frame from death 博多湾 (はかたわん, Hakata Bay) -The ultra fast underwater ascension + clipping through the maze スカイツリー (スカイツリー, Skytree) -Ascending so fast the camera can't keep up *2 or more -Block duplicating an elevator for Yoshi -Yoshi gulpin' down a whole Pokey at once -Chargin' Chuck looking back as he realized he missed his one shot at jumping on Mario from above -Recharging, juggling and ascending with multiple throw blocks (and doing some block duplication while we're at it) クッパ城東京支部 (クッパじょう とうきょうしぶ, the Tokyo branch of Bowser Castle) 梅田地下街 (うめだちかがい, Umeda underground shopping center) -'OK, I got Yoshi - cya later level' *clips downwards through everything and ditches Yoshi* 地獄 (じごく, Hell) -All the instances where you sent mario and Yoshi down different paths and rejoined them later -Some interestingly multistaged clip setups 天国 (てんごく, Heaven) -Landing on the same shell you threw to grab a rainbow shell and break everything -Mario getting stuck on thin air and flailing his arms trying not to fall down, Looney Tunes style -ON/OFF block duplication to go up... and down -Extended item playaround -Doing some P-switch jumps to pretend the ending puzzle doesn't exist クッパ城京都本部 (クッパじょう きょうとほんぶ, the Kyoto headquarters of Bowser Castle) -Three wall jumps in a row -Pausing the game (THE WORLD) -Ending input
My Chiptune music, made in Famitracker: http://soundcloud.com/patashu My twitch. I stream mostly shmups & rhythm games http://twitch.tv/patashu My youtube, again shmups and rhythm games and misc stuff: http://youtube.com/user/patashu
Site Admin, Skilled player (1234)
Joined: 4/17/2010
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Hilarious playaround, amazing rerecord count, Star.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Joined: 1/13/2013
Posts: 8
Location: Tokyo, Japan
This run is VERY exciting! The vertical sky level "スカイツリー" is my favorite. :) I'm gonna vote yes.
Sir_VG
He/Him
Player (39)
Joined: 10/9/2004
Posts: 1911
Location: Floating Tower
All admit, the hack creators did a good job with creating a different final boss fight compared to other ones. It's also interesting that they removed Peach from most of the ending. She should have been removed from THE END shot, but oh well. No hack is perfect.
Taking over the world, one game at a time. Currently TASing: Nothing
Active player (266)
Joined: 9/14/2011
Posts: 349
Wow, you guys have broken this game way too far. Much more than I expected. Good work there! But sadly, I have to mention this, I wonder if this might be qualified to be published(no personal offense, I voted yes on this, too). Do we have to accept TAS of the game which is unofficial, made just 3 months ago, while its predecessor didn't make it?
Noxxa
They/Them
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Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4083
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I like it. The levels work well for showing off all the kinds of tricks that Mario can do with some TAS-precision. Yes vote.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa <dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects. <Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits <adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
Emulator Coder
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
Odongdong wrote:
But sadly, I have to mention this, I wonder if this might be qualified to be published(no personal offense, I voted yes on this, too). Do we have to accept TAS of the game which is unofficial, made just 3 months ago, while its predecessor didn't make it?
Whether its predecessors made it or not is not really relavent. The main question to ask, does this game and this run fix the flaws, or overcome the flaws that made the prequels unacceptable?
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Active player (266)
Joined: 9/14/2011
Posts: 349
Nach wrote:
Whether its predecessors made it or not is not really relavent. The main question to ask, does this game and this run fix the flaws, or overcome the flaws that made the prequels unacceptable?
Hmm, that makes sense. I'm now reading your previous comments on Kaizo 2 TAS.
Active player (383)
Joined: 12/23/2010
Posts: 30
Location: Japan
It's a fond memory that Yujin Mario series came in on nikovideo and prevailed among my friends (both boys & girls used to watch) in 2007. Those videos made me laugh at first sight. This TAS is just incredible. I cannot tell what's happening almost all the time. I sometimes forget that this is SMW. Voted yes!
Current project: Another Mana Series?
TheKDX7
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Joined: 7/9/2011
Posts: 392
Location: Switzerland
Given that this TAS risks to be accepted, that there should not be accepted? http://tasvideos.org/3273S.html
Active player (263)
Joined: 4/15/2010
Posts: 197
Location: England
Yes vote of course. It's fun to see the game destroyed and some of the strategies employed I would have never dreamed of. This game improves the level design of its predecessors severely so I think that quality of level design may not be an issue (though it is not good enough to be the quality of a commercial game, as I would say was the case with SDW and TSRPR). Still this TAS shows some of the best glitches available in SMW put to innovative use. It's highly optimized and really entertaining. The problem with Snes9x is not a huge one when we realise that the issue with using Snes9x does not apply to SMW as the only glitches used are emulator independent. Thus the only benefit from switching emulator would be changes in lag. Everything in this run is still possible on console, which I think is the only crucial point. Regardless if the issue with too many derivatives comes into play then I'm happy for it to replace 2074M. So, thanks for a great run (and for the note about parity of sprite slots affecting interaction, that's news to me).
Retired smw-96, smw any%
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Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
bahamete wrote:
The problem with Snes9x is not a huge one when we realise that the issue with using Snes9x does not apply to SMW as the only glitches used are emulator independent. Thus the only benefit from switching emulator would be changes in lag.
Those are hardly the only differences. Perhaps in overall gameplay, lag may be the biggest factor. However, Snes9x 1.4x's sound engine is horrible compared to all the other SNES emulators, especially the most modern ones. If you'd like to find noticeable differences in SMW, pay attention to the sound between acquiring a powerup, as well as spin jumping.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Player (12)
Joined: 6/17/2006
Posts: 498
Since when is this hack called "Yujin Mario 3"? Not that it isn't, but I've never heard that one before and I can't find anything that links "Yujin Mario" to this series of hacks. While the run is extremely well made, I don't see much more value in it than a normal SMW 96-exit run. I was expecting epic obstacle dodging, but instead I got Mario and Yoshi going constantly out of bounds, which totally defeats the point of this hack. I was really impressed with some of the minor optimizations sprinkled throughout the non-autoscrolling sections, but overall it was the usual stuff we see in other SMW runs and I got rather bored of it unfortunately. Voting meh.
BigBoct
He/Him
Editor
Joined: 8/9/2007
Posts: 1692
Location: Tiffin/Republic, OH
TheKDX7 wrote:
Given that this TAS risks to be accepted, that there should not be accepted? http://tasvideos.org/3273S.html
The problem with the Kaizo 2 hack was that the level design was really bad by the standards of SMW and SMW hacks. That is not the case with Kaizo 3.
Previous Name: boct1584