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Newer Super Mario Bros. Wii Any% in 1:34:32.42 by Unknown394

Newer Super Mario Bros. Wii, a famous hack of New Super Mario Bros. Wii, is created by NewerTeam. Although it is a hack, it has a very high IGN review score and is in fact a lot more fun than the original NSMBW. The levels are carefully designed, the artwork is beautiful and new sprites are added. This run is meant to beat the game as fast as possible, which has never been done with TAS before.

Here is the Youtube Video of this TAS: [dead link removed]

Game objectives: to beat the game as fast as possible

  • Emulator used: Dolphin 5.0

Comments

This run is meant to beat the game as fast as possible, which has never been done with TAS before. In NrSMBW, there are eight regular worlds and five hidden worlds, and by completing World C, Sky City, skips Worlds 5 and 6, which are the most time-consuminng worlds. The run also skips as many auto-scroll levels as possible, although some cannot be avoided.

To play this movie, Dolphin's Dual Core and Idle Skipping should be disabled.

Stage comments: There aren't many glitches to utilize in NrSMBW, so only the stages that utilizes certain skill(s) will be explained. The rest of the levels are regular speedrun without special technique.

1-Tower
Skips 1-4. In this level, nets are replaced by honey hives. This is a vertical level, and the goal is to go up as fast as possible. During the Boss fight, Big Fuzzy is invincible while he rolls on the ground, and the fastest way to finish the fight is to hit him as soon as his rolling state is over.
1-5
Uses propellar suit to save time.
1-6
Uses Penguin Suit to swim faster
1-Castle
Avoids hitting switches (release spicky balls) and rushing through the parhana plants with invincible time after getting hit to save a lot of time. Same boss fight.
1-Ship
stomps the boss as soon as he gets out of the shell.
2-1, 2-2
Ice power freezes enemis and creates new ground to land on, and also defeats fire snakes, which saves a lot of time. In 2-2, the water draining down the pipes can both accelerate and decelerate Mario, so I walked on the ones that go forward and jump on the frame of landing on the ones that go backward.
2-3
change to fire powerup to defeat enemis blocking the way (like vertical pirhana plants) and saves time
2-Tower
This is a vertical level. A propellar suit is given at the beginning, and using it to fly upward saves a lot of time. The boss is a thomp that smashes a layer of the floor as it tries to hit you, and the fastest way to finish him is to stand at the corner so it will hit the same spot twice in the shortest time.
2-5
A secret exit is located at the top of a tall cactus, leading to 2-A.
2-A
A fast route is located at the top of the level, only accesible with a propellar suit. It basically skips the entire level.
2-Castle
Some routes have to be opended by stepping on switches that brings enemies to live.
3-1
Hills that roll forward gives Mario a speed boost, so walking on them helps save time.
3-2
Uses a star at the end to run faster and save time.
3-Tower
Another vertical level, but the second half is auto-scroll. Entering the pipe on the left saves time. In the boss figh, the location big mole is determined by a variable that stays far from Mario's location, so I have to wait till the location of the mole is set and then go and ground pound him. He is invincible when he has a spike on his head. And, if you attempt to jump around while he is invincible, the location he appears will be random and will waste frames as well.
3-6
This is a water level, so you might think playing 3-7 might be faster, but 3-7 has a section of maze and wastes a ton of time, which makes 3-6 faster.
4-1
The second half is auto-scroll.
4-3
The lst jump of a triple jump is higher than a regular jump, which can be used to reach areas without falling into water.
4-Tower
Another vertical level. The boss fight with Shy Guy is similar to a koopaling fight. Stomping him as soon as he has his sword down saves time.
4-A
The secret exit in this level leads to World C, Sky City, a short world that skips Worlds 5 and 6.
C-3
This is an unavoidable auto-scroll level.
C-Tower
Another vertical level. There is no boss fight.
7-2
Another unavoidable auto-scroll level. Playing with koopa shells like in SMW for stage effects.
7-3
The only non-tower vertical level in this run.
7-4
In space, low gravity. Mario can jump very far and proceed through the level quickly.
7-Tower
A regular gravity vertical level. The boss fight is a space enemy from Super Mario Galaxy. Just let him hit the electricity net three times.

7-Castle: Important Explaination!

Regular Speedrun, same boss fight. You might notice that after this level, I saved my progress and returned to the title screen and re-entered the world map. The reason is there is a bug in the system here. If you do not go back to the title screen, the game crashes as soon as you complete the ship level. The re-entering action is done as fast as possible.

8-1, 8-2
Auto-scroll levels
8-Tower 1
Vertical level, no boss fight.
8-Castle
This is a trick the NewerTeam played on the players. This is not the final level of the game, but rather a entrance to the other half of World 8. No boss fight.
8-Train
Auto-scroll level
8-6, 8-7
Uses the propellar suit that has been kept all the way to fly through big parts of the level to progress quickly.
8-Tower 2
The lava chases you upward. Uses propellar suit to progress quickly. Again, Kamek's loaction is controlled by a variable that is far from Mario's location, so I have to wait till Kamek's location is determined and then stomp him.
8-A
This level takes less time to complete than 8-9.
8-Final
To get to the Bowser fight, you have to hit three switches in three diferrent areas. During the first phase of the fight, I used the propellar suit that I got way back in 2-Tower to fly over Bowser and hit the switch. Unlike the original NSMBW, you have to hit four switches instead of one to finish the first phase of the fight. In the second phase, you're given a clown car with a cannon, and the fight is finished after you hit Bowser 25 times. There is a long delay before you can make your next shot, so I used the time to position myself for the next shot. Due to the management of the obstacles, I have to switch between hitting Bowser from the front and from the back constantly to avoid getting hit, which looks like it wastes time, but in fact it saves time. The movie ends on the frame Bowser starts falling.

Other comments

This run is an hour and a half long, and there are some intersting stage effects to see. Hope you enjoy this movie.
Some entertaining moments:
1-2 underground section
1-Castle "Pirhana Rush"
2-1 "Freeze them All"
2-5 Autoscroll section
2-Castle "Boosting to live"
3-1 "Hammer Bros Party"
3-Castle "Fun with Fire"
4-1 Autoscroll Section
C-3 "Fun with Parabeetles"
7-2 "fun with koopa shells"
8-1, 8-2 "Cannon Game"
8-Train "Hot Rush"
8-6 "Dangerous Actions"
8-A "Let's Ride the Dry-bones"

Samsara: Judging.
Samsara: Since there are serious problems with optimization, known glitches are not used, and the author is working on a new run to implement known improvements, I'm rejecting this run in favor of the upcoming one.

Skilled player (1706)
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Unknown394 wrote:
Masterjun wrote:
Why didn't you use 1.0 then?
Okay, this guy is in fact using 1.0, because I saw the entire run he did. I felt like using the newest version to make my audience feel updated. Here, as a TASer, you want the version with glitches to use; but imagine yourself being a fan of this game, would you like to see an old glitchy version or a new fixed version? In fact, the majority of audience of TASVideos can't be TASers. When making a movie, you have to consider showing it to both TASers and outsiders.
Game objectives: to beat the game as fast as possible
Doesn't that contradict with this statement? Also not every movie has to pander to outsiders; a number of highly technical runs would be completely alien to outsiders. Example: #2025: gia & Aqfaq's Genesis King's Bounty in 00:09.93. There's a "Recommended for newcomers" movie section for that reason; the TASer themselves does not have to deliberately withhold tricks.
Alyosha
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Personally I like the decision to use the 1.1 version, it seems more like a finished product. As TASing moves into newer systems I think we'll run into version differences a lot more, even games on disks get downloaded updates now. Seems like a bit of a grey area to me.
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Unknown394 wrote:
what version is this? If this is 1.0.,it might be fixed in 1.1(what I used). There was a world map glitch in 1.0 that skips two levels,but is fixed in 1.1.
If I had to guess, I'd say that this small clip probably isn't fixed, but that would have to be tested.
Current project: Gex 3 any% Paused: Gex 64 any% There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
Unknown394
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Fog wrote:
mtvf1 wrote:
Unknown394 wrote:
I have at least spent thirty hours on this run.
I have nothing to say. If you always make tas like this, you never ever make a good tas. Sorry, no vote.
Voting no because it took 30 hours (which can be a lot of time if it's spread out over multiple days) is stupid. If you're going to vote at all, vote for if it was entertaining (as the poll title asks).
I did not spend 30 hours on this single run. I spent 8 hours on this run. The 30 hours includes the failed and obsolete runs I did.
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Unknown394
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andypanther wrote:
Unknown394 wrote:
what version is this? If this is 1.0.,it might be fixed in 1.1(what I used). There was a world map glitch in 1.0 that skips two levels,but is fixed in 1.1.
If I had to guess, I'd say that this small clip probably isn't fixed, but that would have to be tested.
There is enough evidence already. I was tapping the jump button all the time in this section. He jumped and clipped through the wall, while I kept jumping (swimming upwards, you can hear the sound of Mario's head bumping onto the ceiling) and did not clip through the wall, which means this glitch is fixed in 1.1.
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Former player
Joined: 6/30/2010
Posts: 1093
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Unknown394 wrote:
andypanther wrote:
Unknown394 wrote:
what version is this? If this is 1.0.,it might be fixed in 1.1(what I used). There was a world map glitch in 1.0 that skips two levels,but is fixed in 1.1.
If I had to guess, I'd say that this small clip probably isn't fixed, but that would have to be tested.
There is enough evidence already. I was tapping the jump button all the time in this section. He jumped and clipped through the wall, while I kept jumping (swimming upwards, you can hear the sound of Mario's head bumping onto the ceiling) and did not clip through the wall, which means this glitch is fixed in 1.1.
Fair enough.
Current project: Gex 3 any% Paused: Gex 64 any% There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
Unknown394
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This reply has been deleted.
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Giving this a weak yes vote. The hack itself is very high-quality, and I think easily fits into the guidelines for the same reasons as Super Demo World. The TAS itself is fairly good; I don't know enough about the mechanics of NSMBWii (and what if anything has changed between New and Newer) but it certainly doesn't look sloppy. Maybe this should go into the Vault?
My current project: Something mysterious (oooooh!) My username is all lower-case letters. Please get it right :(
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theenglishman wrote:
Maybe this should go into the Vault?
Hacks cannot go to the Vault since it goes against the site rules.
Here, my YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/dekutony
Samsara
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Unknown394 wrote:
Seems like the judges are very busy now...
There's still well over a day and a half before anyone can even judge the run. Patience, please.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | Cohost
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Unknown394
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Samsara wrote:
Unknown394 wrote:
Seems like the judges are very busy now...
There's still well over a day and a half before anyone can even judge the run. Patience, please.
Please correct me if I have mistaken. This period of time is used for voting, right?
I love Nintendo
Unknown394
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Kurabupengin wrote:
theenglishman wrote:
Maybe this should go into the Vault?
Hacks cannot go to the Vault since it goes against the site rules.
Okay...but what about all those SMB1, SMB3 and SMW hacks?
I love Nintendo
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With respect to the choice of version, it strikes me that using the latest available patch is often a good way to define "glitchless". How do you know whether something was intended or not? Well if the developers fixed it in a later patch, it probably wasn't intended. (Of course, this relies on there being no glitches that make their way through all the patches without the developers fixing them, despite the fact that they want to.)
Unknown394
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ais523 wrote:
With respect to the choice of version, it strikes me that using the latest available patch is often a good way to define "glitchless". How do you know whether something was intended or not? Well if the developers fixed it in a later patch, it probably wasn't intended. (Of course, this relies on there being no glitches that make their way through all the patches without the developers fixing them, despite the fact that they want to.)
Thank you for reminding. Wii itself is not a glitchy console compared to the old Nintendo consoles. The 1.1 version is not exactly "glitchless", since I once managed to get myself stuck in the wall in the water level and a few more through-the-wall glitches in the game, but these do not really help to save time (getting stuck certainly doesn't, and going through the wall will bring Mario to a dead end). Also, the subversion of this is 1.11, which means it has gone through a second round of debugging after 1.10.
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Samsara
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Unknown394 wrote:
Please correct me if I have mistaken. This period of time is used for voting, right?
In a way, yes. The 3-day grace period gives runs a chance to collect feedback before being able to be judged, which helps inform the Judges and ensures they're not making any hasty, biased decisions. Voting can still happen as long as a run is on the Workbench, though. Generally, long Wii/GC runs are unstable and require a lot of effort, so we're not exactly jumping at the chance to be able to judge them. It's much more efficient in the long run to take care of the easier submissions first.
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
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ais523 wrote:
With respect to the choice of version, it strikes me that using the latest available patch is often a good way to define "glitchless". How do you know whether something was intended or not? Well if the developers fixed it in a later patch, it probably wasn't intended. (Of course, this relies on there being no glitches that make their way through all the patches without the developers fixing them, despite the fact that they want to.)
It also happens frequently that developers inadvertently introduce new glitches in patches of the game. For example, the 2007 version of the Source engine introduced a glitch called ABH that wasn't in the original version of Half-Life 2. While "latest patch" may work well to define glitchless in some games, it's not universal.
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Unknown394 wrote:
Kurabupengin wrote:
theenglishman wrote:
Maybe this should go into the Vault?
Hacks cannot go to the Vault since it goes against the site rules.
Okay...but what about all those SMB1, SMB3 and SMW hacks?
They're in the Moon tier, not Vault, and all hacks published here are all published for Moons.
Here, my YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/dekutony
Unknown394
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Kurabupengin wrote:
Unknown394 wrote:
Kurabupengin wrote:
theenglishman wrote:
Maybe this should go into the Vault?
Hacks cannot go to the Vault since it goes against the site rules.
Okay...but what about all those SMB1, SMB3 and SMW hacks?
They're in the Moon tier, not Vault, and all hacks published here are all published for Moons.
Okay thanks
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Yes vote.
Fog
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Unknown394 wrote:
Fog wrote:
mtvf1 wrote:
Unknown394 wrote:
I have at least spent thirty hours on this run.
I have nothing to say. If you always make tas like this, you never ever make a good tas. Sorry, no vote.
Voting no because it took 30 hours (which can be a lot of time if it's spread out over multiple days) is stupid. If you're going to vote at all, vote for if it was entertaining (as the poll title asks).
I did not spend 30 hours on this single run. I spent 8 hours on this run. The 30 hours includes the failed and obsolete runs I did.
TASes can go through multiple iterations, so from initial conception to completion was 30 hours.
Samsara
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What was the specific Dolphin version used? Was it the 5.0 release? Or was it one of the development builds, and if so which one?
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
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OK, now I've watched the run. I wasn't as entertained as I thought I would be. For one thing, although the level design in the hack seems very good for casual play, I dislike the music. There's not much a runner can do about that, but it started the run off on the wrong note. My main criticism is that the run looks more like a realtime playthrough than a TAS, not so much in terms of optimization, but in terms of entertainment. There are plenty of time periods where nothing much is happening and the runner misses opportunities to make things more interesting through risky play; the strategies in this run are in general very safe. A realtime speedrun typically uses the safest of several possible strategies if they're close in time; a tool-assisted speedrun should use the most dangerous if the times are identical. This is particularly noticeable in boss fights; during periods of time where the boss can't be hit, the runner finds a safespot and stands there, rather than actively dodging enemy projectiles. (3-Castle is a good example of this.) Despite looking good for casual play, the level design is often kind-of awkward for speedruns, too. The autoscrollers get tiring after a while, and several levels early on have sections which on a speedrun are just running without much variety or obvious difficulty.
Unknown394
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Samsara wrote:
What was the specific Dolphin version used? Was it the 5.0 release? Or was it one of the development builds, and if so which one?
It is the stable 5.0 release. Not a developing version.
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Unknown394
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ais523 wrote:
OK, now I've watched the run. I wasn't as entertained as I thought I would be. For one thing, although the level design in the hack seems very good for casual play, I dislike the music. There's not much a runner can do about that, but it started the run off on the wrong note. My main criticism is that the run looks more like a realtime playthrough than a TAS, not so much in terms of optimization, but in terms of entertainment. There are plenty of time periods where nothing much is happening and the runner misses opportunities to make things more interesting through risky play; the strategies in this run are in general very safe. A realtime speedrun typically uses the safest of several possible strategies if they're close in time; a tool-assisted speedrun should use the most dangerous if the times are identical. This is particularly noticeable in boss fights; during periods of time where the boss can't be hit, the runner finds a safespot and stands there, rather than actively dodging enemy projectiles. (3-Castle is a good example of this.) Despite looking good for casual play, the level design is often kind-of awkward for speedruns, too. The autoscrollers get tiring after a while, and several levels early on have sections which on a speedrun are just running without much variety or obvious difficulty.
I don't know if this is the only example, but running around during the Boss' invincible time will actually affect where the Boss appears next, since this is controlled by a AI-lized variable. Standing there makes sure where the Boss will appear next. I have tried to jump between the weapons he tosses in my obsolete run, and each time I load the state after that, the Boss appear in different locations so it wastes lots of frames.
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doicm
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I'm refraining from voting, since I'm posting about a technical aspect and haven't decided on the entertainment value of the run. There are two things that I've seen on the run so far: (1) There is a lack of understanding when it comes to advanced real-time speedrunning strats for even New Super Mario Bros. Wii. For example, in 1-7 with the penguin suit, you can use it on land to boost your speed in short spurts (even when you're not on ice). However, the runner does not use this to their advantage. Watching some ILs of the original or maybe the hack (I'm not entirely sure) may have made the runner aware of this in advance. Because they did not, it is absent from the run. Link posted of an IL from New Super Mario Bros Wii for an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3BGl3v3tts (2) There are some moments that feel like real-time speedrunning as opposed to TAS. One specific example that comes to mind is 2-T's Pipeline Tower with the use of the Propeller Cap. When using the Propeller Cap, there is some delay before you can use it again. You want to minimize that delay as much as possible so that you can move again immediately after when landing on the platform. This is key in saving frames in regular RTS/RTA runs and especially so in TAS runs, but the runner here does a jump or hop before spinning, adding some delay before the next Propeller spin. Basically, what I'm saying here is that after initiating a propeller spin, you want to land right on the platform at the peak of your spin without dropping at all. This is very doable in a TAS run (I would think). I have yet to watch the rest of the run, but this is less than 20 minutes into the run, and it's not very favorable from a technical stance. As far as anything extra entertaining besides that, nothing has been very show-off'y either to impress me. That is all.