[COMMENTATED TAS] Kirby Super Star Ultra 100% Speedrun - 1:35:09

hey what's up my name is sam and this is my kirby superstar 100 tool assisted speedrun or tas if you want to watch this task without my commentary there will be a link for that in the description if you don't know what a task is i highly recommend checking out taskvideos.org but in short i'm able to play this game through an emulator using tools such as frame advance and save states to put in whatever inputs i want whenever i want creating a theoretically perfect speed run strictly for entertainment purposes so without further ado let's begin i'll try to explain most of the tricks in routing decisions in this run but obviously it goes just a little too fast for me to explain absolutely everything so i'll just touch upon the important points so if you don't know this game is actually a remake of the snes game kirby superstar despite supposedly being the same game they have vastly different physics and many different mechanics alongside the obvious differences and graphics and audio quality this game also introduced some more content so it's definitely a very different speed run compared to the original and the first ability we get in the entire run is beam there's really nothing too great about beam the only reason we need it is to kill an upcoming mini boss one major difference between this game and the original superstar is that you can press the select button to get rid of your current ability without being forced to create a helper which is obviously very useful i use it here to turn beam into a projectile up here i inhale two enemies with the power at the same time to get a mix starting a roulette that allows me to get whatever ability i want in this case i opt for wing wing as you can see is extremely good in a task so what you're seeing me do there is actually this move that i'm using against wispy which is called dive bomb what's good about this move is that you can cancel at any time by flapping kirby's wing this is called a dive bomb cancel or dbc by chaining frame perfect dbc's wing can move extremely quickly horizontally there's actually another very useful application of dbc's that we'll get into in a little bit here i pick up some invincibility candy which is super useful apart from obviously making kirby invincible it also makes them much faster and do a ton of damage to enemies and mini bosses you can also get invincibility by mixing for it which i'll be doing many many times throughout the run so you might want to get used to this jingle another useful bit of tech that you might notice from wing is what i call a flap cancel basically if you flap kirby's wings the frame after he jumps instead of setting him up as you might expect it actually sends them down super quickly this has many applications but it's a little hard to notice since it happened so fast so remember how i said there's a second application of dbc's well it turns out they aren't just great for horizontal movement but they also give access to some extremely fast vertical movement by canceling the dive bombs a little bit later such that kirby is at the peak of the initial loop you can do this now although that is extremely fast vertical movement wings still has yet another trick up its sleeve that is even faster so definitely stay tuned for that [Music] it's okay that i got rid of wing here we're almost at the end of spring breeze so we won't be needing it for movement anymore conveniently the ability that is closest to the final boss door is stone which is actually one of the best abilities in the entire game in terms of combat as you can see kingdom here goes down in about three hits whenever you complete a sub game there's usually this long unskippable cutscene and or credit sequence that follows however if you hold down lr select and start all at the same time the game resets while still saving your progress effectively skipping what is supposed to be unskippable [Music] next up is dynablade which is pretty similar to spring breeze except it's a little bit longer as you can see whenever you start a new sub game you lose the ability you had in the last one which means we often want to mix for an ability as soon as possible and of course we just get wing again don't worry wing isn't the only ability in this run it just so happens to be very dominant in the beginning of the run specifically so remember when i said wing has another secret trick for vertical movement well here it is this is a wing zip now i'm not sure why it happens but i do know how to do it you do a dbc then you get hit by a damage source with really high hits done like a gordo or an explosion then if you hang in the air for long enough without landing eventually kirby just flies straight up super fast and through ceilings i can then either extend or cancel the zip by either shooting a feather or flapping kirby's wings respectively so it's decently flexible outside of the initial setup here i switched to paracel for a short bit wing isn't able to hit this upcoming button which is needed for the 100 requirement and parasol is a very fast alternative [Music] parasol will get a better opportunity to shine later in the run for now though i get rid of parasol to set up for the biggest skip in the game i get bomb and then make a bomb helper when you make a bomb helper he spawns in with a lip balm already in hand before it explodes i need to mix her wing again and then get into position the bomb explodes damaging kirby and allowing him to zip straight through this ceiling skipping an entire auto stroller we're not done yet though although that's great now now we have this useless bomb helper who can only get in the way conveniently though there's a wheel pedestal up ahead that i can manipulate the helper to jump into turning him into a wheelie thus unlocking a hidden ability in this game wheelie rider by jumping on the wheelie kirby is granted access to some insanely fast horizontal movement unlike many kirby games the bass wheel ability in this game is actually pretty bad it's not incredibly fast and you can't jump during it which pretty much makes it close to useless wheelie rider on the other hand is a very strong ability for it not only doesn't have these flaws but it's also available through a helper meaning that kirby himself can have his own ability that he can jump off and use at any time throughout this level you see me alternate between using weavy writer for horizontal sections and wing for vertical sections it isn't insanely broken though since making a wheelie helper is almost never as convenient as it is here there are also a few other strengths and weaknesses attached to having a helper that i'll get into a little bit more later one bit of wheely rider attack that you may have noticed is something called turn starting for some reason if you want to accelerate from a standstill it's fastest to first turn around and then turn around again to start facing forward [Music] do [Music] do so i guess i could explain the fact that i'm doing 100 for this run i mostly did this because i wanted to make great cave offensive and milky way wishes more interesting but a funny side effect that it had is forcing me to press these two big buttons in dynablade i don't even have to go to the areas that they unlock i just have to push the buttons so it's an interesting thing to be in the run again since we're nearing the end of dynablade we don't really need wing anymore since it won't help much for boss fights instead i just burn through these mini bosses with invincibility here i jump off my wheelie and manipulate him to kill the boss on the left side while i take care of the one on the right and simultaneously set it for a mix jet might seem like an unorthodox pick here but it does have a very fast quick kill on dynablade alongside the fact that it showed up very early in the ability roulette although the order of the abilities in the roulette is always the same during a mix the ability that it starts with depends on which two enemies kirby inhaled after getting some initial damage on dynablade i hit her with jet's fully charged suplex move which hits her three times ending the fight very quickly after skipping yet another unskipable cutscene we move on to gourmet race the shortest sub game by far this game involves racing king dedede on three tracks which are all less than a minute due to the fact that kirby moves much much faster than normal this is a good opportunity for me to explain kirby's basic movement since it hasn't been too relevant until now kirby's ground speed is significantly faster than his airspeed so you'll often see me puff whenever kirby goes airborne in order to reduce the height of the jump and reach the ground faster despite this here you actually see me jump twice after sidekicking this is because kirby accelerates quite slowly on the ground but he instantly picks up speed if you jump immediately after dashing however this only saves time if you have some method of reaching the ground quickly after jumping though in this case i bonked my head on a ceiling sometimes i do flap cancels sometimes i do a downward charge if an ability has that etc another strange thing that you may have noticed is that i sometimes turn around when i puff this is to conserve momentum when kirby is moving very quickly such as during gourmet race the best way to conserve that speed in the air is for some reason to puff backwards here you even see me cross an entire gap without jumping for running off of the ledge and puffing backwards keeps some of kirby's running speed for longer and is therefore faster this third race supplies abilities in the beginning of which i of course choose weighing however using dbc's here is actually slower than just flying normally i still occasionally use them for vertical sections though by the way moving in the air with a wing is just ever so slightly faster than running on the ground at least in gourmet race fun fact this third race is the only one of the three that i couldn't beat the previous task record for since there's a strat that uses pausing to save in-game time but obviously loses real time which is what i'm going for and with that gourmet race is complete there isn't a final cut scene so he moves straight onto great cave offensive this sub game by contrast to the last one is one of the longest in the game and it's all thanks to these treasures there's 60 of them and we have to get them all because this is 100 naturally many of these treasures are very out of the way and require specific abilities to access this makes for some of the most stability diversity in the entire game outside of maybe milky way wishes [Music] and of course after saying all that i just get wing again to be fair wing was basically made for the next few rooms as many of them complement wing's strengths very well in addition there is a treasure at the end of this section that requires the ability to cut ropes and wing is one of the only powers that can do that [Music] i haven't even mentioned the other movement based moves that wing has which just goes to show how insanely good dbc's are wing also has this forward dash which is good in situations where i want to move forward but not up since dbc's move diagonally up the dash is occasionally useful [Music] there's also this even less useful dash that goes diagonally down which just simply does not have that many applications outside of combat [Music] see you bonkers believe it or not that will not be the only time bonkers falls to his death in the sub game [Music] [Music] [Music] with wing's job now completed it's finally time we get to see some extended use of a new ability jet although we did see a little bit of jet's combat strengths which we're also seeing a bit of here i have not yet touched upon its movement which is very good in this game jet's main strength is its ability to move very quickly horizontally without losing any height of course this makes it sometimes awkward to use when not moving in a straight line but it is possible to slightly adjust kirby's height in between boosts much like wing jet also replaces kirby's puff with an alternative move except instead of a flap it's a hover hovering isn't quite as good as the flap since it doesn't allow kirby to move through the air at running speed but it is still more effective than puffing in terms of vertical movement speed and cancelling height from jumps [Music] um [Music] [Music] jet's big mechanic is that you can store charge and depending on how much charge you have you can do different moves most of the time we want to fully charge up so we can use this burst move for damage and for occasionally hitting buttons through walls like you see here charging with jet also shoots a little bit of flame behind you which believe it or not is actually one of the best projectiles in the entire game for dealing a little bit of extra damage to bosses and for knocking enemies out of your way the reason why it's so good is because you can very easily cancel it into either a boost or a hover or really anything you want it's really nice [Music] so it's right about here where the routing options and the great cave offensive diverge immensely immediately i get rid of jet and mix for invincibility this is because invincibility is the only thing that can speed kirby up while swimming recollecting jet is unnecessary as we'll soon see since i still have invincibility running into these enemies would instantly kill them so instead i hit them with puffs in order to mix for wheel get a wheelie helper and then get jet once again from a very conveniently placed jet enemy having a wheelie helper is nice in a few spots but the main reasons i want one will become apparent a little later [Music] [Music] i intentionally waste a bit of time here in order to manipulate these enemies to get closer to each other so i can mix for more invincibility it may look like my wheelie is on the edge of death here but jumping on him while invincible actually makes him invincible as well even after jumping off of him again this is a helper jump as the name implies you can jump off of your helper in order to get quite a bit of hype which is very useful only really when kirby doesn't have wing this upcoming boss is called computer virus and it takes the form of a turn-based fight so it's extremely important to kill each of the phases in one turn so the boss never gets a chance to attack and waste time having a helper actually increases the health of bosses so this was quite difficult to do the first phase wasn't too complicated but the second and third required me to manipulate my wheelie to do some damage for me whether or not he decides to attack depends on his position so here you can actually see me push him to the left a little bit in order to just narrowly one cycle the wizard phase it's also worth noting that while manipulating wheelies position i also had to simultaneously manipulate rng in order to ensure that i had the first turn to attack instead of the boss rng if you don't know stands for random number generator and it's responsible for determining the random events that happen in this game such as boss movements and attacks i can manipulate rng in order to trigger the outcomes that i want by doing different movements and causing sprites like dust to spawn rng manipulation is mostly relevant during boss fights so i'll go more in depth the next time it comes up for now though it's time to tackle the tower a convoluted labyrinth that boasts some very wacky routing [Music] jet's burst here travels so far through walls that i'm able to access this treasure from what is supposed to be the exit saving a bit of time this battle here is another instance where i manipulate willy to do some damage for me he kills the enemy on the right so i can end the fight closer to the door [Music] so yeah bonkers maybe this time he'll actually stay down you might notice here that my wheelie helper starts taking a lot of damage although this might sound nonsensical this is actually intentional damage and will be used for a later trick to save a fairly significant amount of time here i'm forced to get rid of jet in favor of stone which is needed to hit a post and access a required area of the tower this section is one of the main reasons i went out of my way to get a wheelie helper since stone offers no benefit in terms of horizontal movement here i manipulate my wheelie to take even more damage which is crucial for the upcoming trip before that however i hit this post with stone and then do some elevator skips by sliding in between the elevators floor and the actual floor i can squeeze right into the elevator shaft and fall with stone which moves downward much faster than the elevators and with that it's finally time to kill wheelie killing your helper is one of the only ways to change its power without changing your own this is important as killing mini bosses is one of stone's specialties but i also need a fire helper to lighten upcoming fuse underwater this helper killing strat is one of the main reasons getting a wheelie is faster than not here i get a suplex which actually has some pretty good movement options it has a very fast forward charge that can be cancelled if you run into a wall and a downwards kit although it's quite short-lived here there will be surprisingly another instance of extended suplex usage later in the run so definitely stay tuned for that here i actually die i lose my ability in my helper but i spawn right at the entrance of the tower so i don't have to backtrack through other rooms i just did it doesn't matter that i lost my abilities anyway since it would be a crime to do this upcoming room with anything other than wayne [Music] hero is able to actually quite easily set up for another wing zip i especially like how the camera struggles to catch up with kirby so he's able to collect the treasure off screen [Music] [Music] spoiler alert i will be using another death warp in a little bit since the chameleon is considered this area's boss the respawn point is set here instead of the entrance to the tower shooting yourself out of cannons is actually pretty fast most the time it's just that wing is so much faster that they simply aren't worth it here [Music] going down ladders is pretty slow so here i do some flap cancels off of them in order to go down faster [Music] yeah it's death number two since we respawn in the boss room we have access to the three abilities that the game gives us in the room next to it as you can see i opt for an interesting combination of an ability and helper the helper will become relevant later but the reason i want plasma is because it's the best ability in the entire game when it comes to attacking through walls i use this here to destroy an off-screen block so i can access the next area and i'll be using it again in a bit to skip a puzzle as far as movement with plasma goes it leaves a lot to be desired the only benefit it offers is being able to generate a bit of a shield so i don't have to worry about dodging enemies of course i also make sure to mix in a healthy amount of helper jumps for these vertical sections this is that puzzle i was talking about as you can see we usually need the ability to cut rope and hit posts but plasma has the key to the back door i need to get stone here because surprise surprise it's required for you another upcoming treasure and with that the tower is complete now i just need to book it out of here luckily our ninja helper is in the perfect position for me to steal his ability and run ninja has some of the most unique movement in the entire game by cancelling its downward kick with a backwards puff the momentum from the kit can be conserved and these puff cancels can be chained to maintain a pretty solid constant speed you'll also see me occasionally puff forwards in order to shoot some era enemies when they're in the way throwing knives are also an extremely good projectile as they are very fast here i use one to hit an off-screen button i purposely get hit here as soon as possible to use ninja's counter and get the height i need in order to exit the room ninja also gives kirby a wall jump although it's a little slower than i'd like it does provide better vertical speed compared to puffing [Music] here i turn my ninja ability back into a helper so i can get jet not only do i need to be able to light these fuses which jet can do in ninja can't but jets also just a faster ability in ninja generally speaking despite ninja's bag of tricks here i'm just barely able to make it into this cannon in time before the fuse goes off i hit this block which usually blocks the fuse with an upwards boost which usually sends kirby very high but similarly to a flap cancel with wing i'm able to short the height that i get from it by boosting immediately after jumping which is what allows me to make it just in time [Music] [Music] say hello to wheelie again if you're already tired of seeing this fella don't worry this is one of the last times he'll appear in this run so savor it while it lasts [Music] one of the downsides to having a helper is that when getting on a warp star your helper has to teleport to you before you can actually take off to avoid this here i hop on wheelie so i can take off immediately after touching the star whenever i have a helper i have to take some pretty creative liberties in order to make sure i waste as little time as possible to my helpers random positioning [Music] for some odd reason this specific mini boss has a weakness to fire based attacks so jets hover actually destroys it as far as i know there's no other enemy in the entire game that has a relevant weakness like this a tiny but very neat optimization here i inhale and enemy the frame before entering this water in order to expand kirby's sprite and hitbox allowing me to collect this treasure sooner [Music] here i use crash because it's required it would otherwise be an absolutely useless ability but it is just simply the only way to press this underwater button pay attention to my wheelie helper here i make sure to trap him on the other side of this sliding door this is to make him start teleporting to me before i even grab the warp star allowing me to take off almost instantly [Music] i need to be able to cut rope for the treasure in this room so what better ability to get than cutter cutter has a few decent movement options and it's forward and downwards thrusts so it isn't completely helpless either this maneuver is pretty cool i cut this rope through the ceiling in order to drop the platform and then jump off of the platform as it's falling to get some height cutter is a little short-lived however as i mix for stone here i need stone nord to kill an upcoming boss interestingly hammer is actually able to kill the boss a little bit faster than stone but it comes up later in the mix roulette so stone comes out on top overall last treasure collected now i just need to beat the last boss and book it out of here the boss itself isn't too complicated i just hit him with stone every opportunity i can while making sure wheelie doesn't get any of his own weak hits in every boss has a bit of an invincibility period in between hits so i need to make sure that every hit counts [Music] [Music] and with that the great cave offensive is finally complete we don't get too much of a break though i skipped this cutscene and dive straight into revenge of meta knight [Music] this sub game introduces dialogue so i guess this is a good time to acknowledge the fact that i am playing the japanese version of this game not only is japanese faster in its tech scrolling in this sub game and the computer virus boss fight but it's also the only version that has wing zips so it's much much faster than any of the other versions i mix for ninja here it might seem like an unorthodox ability but it actually saves a bunch of time in a few key areas for example i found that like stone ninja is one of the few abilities that can do elevator skips although this looks like a boss fight it's actually an auto scroller meaning i can't do anything to make it end any faster the weird movement i'm doing here is just for the sake of doing weird movement and now for the real reason i chose ninja this room has some underwater air pockets that i can exploit in order to get a ton of underwater speed don't blink or you'll miss it usually puffing underwater is impossible since there is no air but if there's an air pocket puffing allows me to conserve momentum through the water which is also usually impossible since water slows you down significantly both wing and jet remove kirby's ability to puff so they ended up being incredibly slow in that room and paracel is just ever so slightly slower than ninja of course as you probably have already noticed this is another one of the many auto scrollers in this sub game i like to use these to show off some of the weird and wacky tech that you might not usually see during the run wings placement here is so convenient it makes me wonder if the game's developers knew how good it would be in the next area it isn't particularly fantastic against wispy but it is actually the best ability in the game at killing two wispies since it can hit both of them with each attack i tried for a while to see if there was a viable wing zip setup in this room but it turns out wing is just good enough on its own funnily enough we run into another instance of there being two bosses just asking to get obliterated by wing i kill them such that they both end up in this left corner so i can inhale him for a mix i'm not sure why but there's a hole in the ceiling of this room that allows me to get to the top of it without having to travel back and forth a literal perfect scenario for wing the developers definitely knew too much i'm forced to switch to fire here in order to light this canon's fuse fire is actually another ability that is surprisingly good in this game it has two relevant moves fireball and fire wheel fireball can move fairly quickly through the air his fire wheel can travel on the ground when landing the more interesting of the two is fire wheel since you can carry its momentum through a backwards puff if used off of an edge unfortunately we'll have to wait to see fire's full potential a little later for now i turn it into a helper so i can use kirby's base inhale in order to kill these uh mini midi bosses i don't know how else to describe them i run all the way to the right here to trigger the second elevator above me to start coming down sooner so i don't have to wait for it once i'm up there i actually manipulate my fire helper here to finish off the mini boss on the left for me so that i can kill both mini bosses at the same time allowing me to set up for a mix and finally we get to see parasol truly shine but before we get into that i make sure to turn my fire helper into a beam helper who will act as a surprise tool that will help us later i then use my invincibility to hang out in this boss's hurt box while throwing all of his projectiles back at him killing him very quickly now we can get into paracels movement its aerial dash is insane for some reason it goes super fast and it's very easy to keep its momentum the only issue is that it covers such a large distance that you actually need a good amount of space to pick up speed luckily these rooms have a good amount of space parasol also has a somewhat slow but still very useful downward dash as well as a glide that grants some surprisingly fast horizontal speed in the air another strange quirk with paracel is that the paracel itself has a constant active hitbox this hitbox can hit bosses and deal almost no damage so you'll sometimes see me block in order to put the parasol away and avoid hitting anything with it here we see a good example of a room with very little space in which there's only so much paracel can do to go fast yet another auto scroller exciting except this time i have paracel which has a significant amount more to show off compared to ninja i refuse to explain any of this nonsense so and it's boss time i spend a good amount of this fight not only manipulating the lobster guy here to do the right attacks and give me stars to throw at him but also manipulating my beam helper to attack and throw some stars alongside me although helpers usually make boss fights longer as a result of the health increase mr beam here actually makes up for it through his damage well done shooting myself down with this cannon is actually faster than kirby's base falling speed in fact since i'm falling at a constant speed anyway i might as well set up for another mix i love these rooms the combination of parasol's base speed invincibility and the wind makes for some frankly ridiculous speed it doesn't really matter how fast i go here since all i care about is trapping my helper on the other side of the sliding door as i'm going down the elevator this is to manipulate him to do a decently big skip for me i usually have to go all the way around to press this button but my helpers got it covered his real intention was to hit the enemy next to the button since that's what the ai is actually designed to do but the end justifies the means now that his job is done i execute my helper so he doesn't increase the next boss's health goodbye old friend speaking of this next boss you'll notice i don't have an ability that's because this guy only takes damage from his own lasers for the first laser i make it shoot itself forcing the boss to move on to its next attack quicker its next attack can either be three flamethrowers or one i not only make sure only one appears but also get all the way to the right of the screen in order to make it shoot as soon as possible this attack is always a big fire move and i can't do anything to make it faster the next attack will be a laser but whenever the turret comes down there's a chance it does a little searching animation before actually aiming at kirby and shooting i make sure to prevent that from happening yet again making the attack end sooner i get hit twice here in order to manipulate the boss to send out another singular flamethrower before getting another fast laser as you can probably tell there is way too much variability in the way this boss acts so understanding how to manipulate his attacks through rng manipulation is very important finally moving on from that behemoth of a boss we get to chill again with another auto scroller i hope you enjoy watching me tease it getting abilities and experience near death on these disappearing blocks multiple times [Music] [Music] i actually do do something productive at the end here i mix for plasma which will be useful in taking care of the next set of mini mini bosses as you can see frame perfect mashing allows for some pretty quick plasma usage unfortunately we do not get to see much of this move used against bosses in this run however we do get to see it delete many of these guys in just a few simple swipes which is quite satisfying side note i'm not sure why but the audio in this text is just completely gone there are a few instances of missing sound effects in this run but this is definitely the most jarring i don't need an ability going into the mennonite boss fight since he forces me to pick up sword anyway sword is such a garbage ability so i refuse to explain any of its nuance in fact i only use it twice in the entire fight since i can just burst meta knight down with bass kirby and some stars you'll notice i take a bit of a damage boost in order to immediately inhale this star from afar it's also incredibly important that i hide midnight's true identity so nobody watching this video gets spoiled also i know i said we were done with wheelie but he's kind of forced into our hand in this final escape sequence here i guess this is a good opportunity to talk about an optimization with wheelie writer that i didn't mention before that being that riding on downward slopes speeds you up whereas riding on upward slopes slows you down it's minor but we might as well honor willy's final moments with some of his tech at this point you know the drill skip the cutscene get back to the file and start up the next sub game this time i go to milky way wishes this sub game is one of the most unique for kirby actually can't inhale enemies to get powers instead we have to collect abilities at which point i can switch to whatever ability i have found at any time and of course collecting all of the abilities is a requirement of 100 this first level is fun since it houses the three abilities we have seen the most in the run so far jet wheel and wing although this might sound like these are the only abilities i will be using throughout the course of this sub game that's actually not the case since finding an ability forcefully switches you to it it's sometimes faster to just roll with what you have instead of wasting time switching to a better one for example base wheel isn't as good as jet but it's good enough such that it would waste time to switch off of it of the three abilities i have so far jet is the best at killing bosses however as you'll soon see things will change once we get access to some of the better boss killing abilities [Music] i can go through these levels in any order that i want the first choice is obvious since it's close to the start and has all the best abilities so from there the best course of action is to tackle the secret stage this stage gives us the copy ability usually a hilariously useless ability in normal play since kirby can already do that but in this sub game it actually has an application which is kind of crazy all things considered [Music] conveniently the very first enemy we see in this level is a ninja enemy which just so happens to be the ideal ability for this room i copy him use ninja's counter for movement for the second time in this run and then move on to some mini bosses i haven't gotten a chance to talk about ninja's above average damage output and i never will because we were forcefully switched off of ninja and no longer have access to it using your current ability as a projectile to finish off a boss fight is a common tactic in the sub game since you are often forced off of whatever ability you have anyway here we see hammer for the first time in the entire run which is pretty crazy considering how often it's used here on out hammer is fairly well known for being very good against bosses here we see this boss get one shot because of its weird fire weakness i kill this squid before jumping out of the water because he gets in my way if i don't i also collect stone our second boss killer and the one i'll be using for this upcoming boss the reason i opt for stone here is actually because it's faster to switch to stone is only one scroll away from wing whereas hammer is like three meaning that hammer would have to be significantly faster than stone in order to be worth using which it isn't especially since i can finish off the boss with a clean trick shot [Music] this wings up not only saves time by allowing me to clip through the ceiling but it also gives me invincibility frames that i can use to go straight through this lava and now we get to see the true potential of fire simply glorious that's not all though we also get a bit of suplex action as well it's crazy how both of these underuseabilities get such perfect opportunities to show off what they're capable of for now hammer is next up in line to show its stuff as you can see the fire move is incredibly powerful i can occasionally use the bat kid as well to slip in a little bit of extra damage per hit as well as mix in a few damage boosts in order to reduce the end lag after each attack don't worry if you missed all that you'll get the perfect chance to see as much hammer as you'd ever want during the arena milky way wishes even gives abilities like yo-yo a bit of playtime even if it is literally one frame before switching back wing's dive bomb completely ignores wind which is why i'm not using dbc's on my way up here it's also the reason why i'm able to just fly straight under this button puzzle and proceed after pressing only the last one i switched to hammer here because it actually has a bit of speed tech you can cancel its dash attack by falling off of an edge which also conserves its momentum in the air i mean the actual reason is to kill these guys real fast but the extra movement is neat [Music] [Music] uh it looks a bit awkward but hitting this block with jets upwards boost is actually the fastest way i could find to get into this door and now parasol has been added to our ever-growing collection of abilities it has some real neat uses in this next room full of air bubbles i can glide a little bit while inside them and then puff backwards to conserve that momentum underwater this on the other hand is not momentum conservation instead you just float upwards really fast underwater when you're puffed up which i guess makes sense this underwater maze is kind of long and kind of boring the only thing i can do to go faster is cut some corners using stone here is another decision made primarily because it was faster to switch to than hammer that alongside the fact that it's pretty dang fast [Music] here i get ice which is a weirdly good ability the wacky movement you're seeing me doing is actually me alternating between running and crouching every other frame in order to abuse the ice physics and go real fast on the ground the ability to freeze enemies and use them as a projectile is also incredibly useful and unique unfortunately that is all we will be seeing of ice and it's back to parasol not before of course one very honorable frame of fighter here cutter gets a teeny bit of time to do some wacky movement before it's yet again back to the big boy abilities to come back and steal the show [Music] i bet you weren't expecting fire fire is only slightly faster than parasol here mostly just because it's faster to switch to but of course that doesn't mean it's any slouch lots of fireballs and momentum conservation allows fire to breeze through these couple rooms this next section is real wacky i switched to stun in order to deal with this post without having to use a minecart then i hop into this mine cart at which point it will move and destroy the upcoming posts on its own even if i jump out of it i then switch the wing through the pause menu since it's faster than having to scroll all the way to wing which is something like 7 scrolls away now that i have wing i can set up for the final wing zip in the entire run allowing me to get through this area without having to ride on the warp star here we have yet another example of wing being able to kill two bosses at the same time before moving on to the biggest vertical room in the entire game although there is a little bit of upwards wind here it's still faster to use dbc's for vertical movement as opposed to letting the wind take me and finally the last ability i collect is ninja which has one final stretch of glory before i never use it again here i can conserve a bit of momentum through the water before this fish gets in the way i use ninja's counter to take care of it since attacking underwater slows kirby down a bit here we have our second instance of computer virus except this time the enemies are a little stronger luckily our abilities are also a little stronger hammer is able to take down the wizard in only one hit through the use of a damage boost the knight also goes down without too much effort you'll notice here that i throw my hammer away to finish off the night before switching to suplex this is because suplex is the only ability in the game as far as i know that can one cycle the dragon however i first have to manipulate the dragon to not just attack first but also do this very specific attack so i can grab one of his stars as you can see given the right circumstances suplex can be real dang good the strange movement i'm doing at the end here actually isn't just for shelf whenever you beat this boss the game awards you with a bunch of fake stats as a joke however what stats you get is actually random and some of them have longer names than the others meaning they take longer to scroll i manipulate the stats such that i get the ones with the least amount of characters in them saving a bit time this is an auto scroller so there's not much i can do aside from doing some movement for fun this is the first time we'll be seeing the starship ability so i guess i can explain some of its nuance you won't see it in this auto scroller but when the starship shoots it shoots three bullets one forward and two diagonal all of which deal the same amount of damage because of boss's invincibility periods after getting hit hitting with all three bullets at the same time does the same amount of damage as hitting with only one bullet since the other two don't register because of this in order to maximize the damage dealt i actually want to put myself in a position such that for every shot the bullets all hit at different times this sometimes is impossible so i'm usually only able to hit 2 bullets per shot which still doubles our normal damage output so it's not too shabby [Music] this upcoming boss might look like an auto scroller but the direction and speed at which the screen scrolls depends on when you kill some of these module things the first one doesn't matter but i want to kill the second one as quickly as possible in order to get the screen moving quicker that goes with the fourth one as well at this point killing one more module will send me backwards which i don't want yet i deal a bunch of damage to these two modules without killing them and then delay killing this one a bit from here i can shoot this module off screen before backtracking and killing these guys both of which i left only one hit away from death finally we have the last boss of this sub game marks spoiler alert i opt for stone here since mark spawns too high in the air for hammer to hit with its fire move so it doesn't deal damage nearly as quickly what shape the stone is when you use it is random and purely aesthetic but who would i be if i didn't flex on the final boss moving on we have our first of three boss rushes in this game the arena outside of the last boss always being marks the order of the bosses is completely random i can actually manipulate this order by waiting to enter the arena but i can't be too incredibly precise without wasting a ton of time just waiting so instead i opt to only waste a couple frames in order to get a boss order that starts with meta knight since meta knight forces you to pick up sword it doesn't matter if i enter the fight without an ability meaning i don't have to waste any time in the initial ability room if meta knight was in the middle of the boss rush instead of the beginning and if i did enter meta knight with an ability that i wanted to keep i could have made a helper picked up sword and then killed my helper to get my ability back but doing that is slower than just killing that knight with the stars so having meta knight in the beginning is actually an incredible time save which two abilities are available in between boss fights is also random so i manipulate hammer to be one of the abilities between hammer and stone hammer was on average slightly faster there are a select few bosses that stone can do much faster but it's slow to switch between them too often and hammer was generally able to do well enough such that switching was not worth it also another computer virus i can't one cycle the dragon this time since i don't have access to suplex so i have to endure one of the dragon's attacks i manipulate him to do his star attack since that's the fastest i also don't have to worry about the stats at the end they never show up in the boss rushes most of these fights are from the early game so they don't take very many hits to kill at all i'm kind of glad switching between a bunch of abilities ended up being slow cause it's pretty entertaining just watching one ability move through everything you may notice that some of these bosses have a little bit of an area before it it's important that i do these sections as fast as possible in order to start the boss as soon as possible i often use hammer's dash attack to do this since it's just ever so slightly faster than running or slide kicking [Music] so [Music] dynablade is a good example of a boss that is significantly faster when using stone as opposed to hammer however as you will be able to tell hammer really isn't that bad at this point you may notice that i'm taking a bunch of damage boosts in order to kill some of these guys just a little bit faster the main gimmick of arena is that you only have a limited supply of healing items and damage is pretty much permanent this means i have to be a little bit conservative with my damage boosting only using it when it saves significant amounts of time alright look it's this boss again except this time i'm able to make it way faster i start by doing as much damage as i can to the main turret in order to eventually destroy it while i'm doing this i also make sure to destroy this first laser turret immediately after it shoots as well as this flamethrower in order to end both of those attacks faster i destroy the main turret and then manipulate a fast laser before then destroying that turret as well here the boss attempts to fire using the big turret but since i destroyed it it immediately moves on to its next attack which i manipulate to be a laser waddle dee actually has a decent amount of health weirdly enough so it's fastest to just eat him instead of trying to hit him [Music] so [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] here i do some very precise rng manipulation to make stone appear and by that i mean i mash buttons until stone showed up i know i said that switching is slow but it works in this case because marx is the last boss so i don't have to switch back to hammer afterwards stone is also just simply much faster than hammer here so it makes switching worth it just for this one boss and for the second time marx gets flexed on [Music] now we move on to our first superstar ultra exclusive sub game revenge of the king this sub game acts as a bit of a remix of spring breeze except it's longer more difficult and has a very different ability route i start by getting cutter since i don't quite have a very good opportunity to mix yet and it's actually pretty good in the next room [Music] but of course as soon as i get the chance i mix for wing wing is actually kind of slow in these first few rooms and for this upcoming mini boss but there are a couple vertical rooms also coming up that wing was basically needed for [Music] [Music] wispy hair has a bit more health than usual but he still goes down the same way we've always seen him [Music] hmm now that wing's job is complete i set up for another mix and this time opt for jet revenge of the king consists of many very long horizontal rooms so jet is by far the best option [Music] interestingly enough while i mostly chose jet for its movement abilities it also doubles as the fastest ability in the game against this specific boss even more so than hammer or stone so that worked out fairly nicely [Music] [Music] so [Music] although it's no wing jet's hover is actually one of the best moves for covering these long vertical distances i also want to let it be known that i tried very hard to make switching to ninja viable here but jet is just simply too fast for this boss i want to make him spawn an enemy as quickly as possible so i can kill him with it that's why it looks like i'm barely hitting him i'm only doing the damage necessary and hitting him makes him stop moving i also manipulate him to do this specific movement pattern which is the fastest [Music] here we have another starship section and this time we can get a little bit of a better idea of what kind of damage output it has i also want to make sure that the boss dies as close to the right side of the screen as possible for the fight only ends once the boss floats off screen surprise dialogue this level mostly consists of a bunch of mini bosses and a few movement sections in between jet isn't the greatest at killing many bosses so i'll be getting a bunch of invincibility over the course of this level do these two fire lines were really annoying to kill i had to micromanage evenly distributing the damage i dealt to both of them as well as manipulating them such that i could kill them both at the same time and land in the same place for a mix unlike meta knight king diddy has some very good taste in what abilities to give me the main goal of this fight is to kill him before he starts doing his big spin move which i can't really damage him through luckily this is possible through damage boosting i haven't brought it up yet but every time kirby takes damage there's a chance he loses his ability so that's just another thing that i occasionally have to manipulate in order to avoid moving on we have our second of the three boss rushes in the game this one is unique in that you don't actually play as kirby but instead as a helper this introduces a few key differences the first and most important is that i can't switch abilities during the boss rush so i actually have to choose the one that's faster on average which is actually stone this time playing as a helper also means that puffing is replaced by basically just being able to jump in the air which is way better also for some reason helpers are able to maintain their running speed in the air unlike kirby which makes them move much faster in general there are a few extra unique helpers like plasma and copy but we won't be seeing them in this run playing with stone also means i get to show off its many forms including some that you may have actually never seen before it's also worth noting that this is the only boss rush that i managed to beat the previous task record for no it's not cause i'm bad it's for the same reason i didn't get the record for the third gourmet race track i'm optimizing for real time whereas most individual level tassers optimized for in-game time which doesn't tick in between bosses or during little animations like switching abilities or creating helpers since i can't even do either of those things if i wanted to optimizing for real time and in game time is pretty much the same for the sub game so i was able to actually save just a few milliseconds over the previous record this slide kick here actually saves time for the same reason dash attacking with hammer saves time in arena it starts the boss just a little bit sooner so [Music] [Music] yo is that computer virus number four unfortunately stone does just barely not enough damage to one cycle the night for this fight so i manipulate him to charge up an attack during his turn which is the fastest way to end his turn same deal with the dragon i can't one cycle him so i manipulate him to do his fastest attack i have no clue why but holding block here ends the attack sooner than if i didn't it's also worth noting that the attacks that appears when you block an attack is shorter than the text that appears if you dodge the attack or get hit i neglected to hide mennonite's identity here in favor of doing some rng manipulation hopefully me turning into this replacement mask will make up for that but anyway i didn't want to spend all this time using stone only to occasionally get some of the more uncommon stone formations i wanted to show off one of the absolute rarest and what better time to do that than during the last boss in the boss rush i'm not sure what the chances are to get one of the gold statues but i do know that it took a dang while to get samus here getting a samus statue is perhaps the only real interesting thing that happens in this fight however this guy really isn't too different from the normal version of the rock hands dude moving on yet again we have the longest sub game in the entire run meta nightmare this sub game is probably the most different out of all of them as i play through spring breeze dynablade great cave offensive revenge of meta knight and milky way wishes as a completely different character meta knight meta knight and kirby have completely different mechanics obviously meta knight can't inhale so he doesn't have copy abilities so he has access to the exact same moves throughout the entire sub game instead of copy abilities meta knight's gimmick is that he has a point system killing enemies and bosses will earn you points which can then be spent to use four different abilities the one you'll be seeing the most often is called meta quick and it grants meta knight a ton of extra movement speed much like invincibility candy don't worry too much about the other point based abilities i'll go into them in more depth when they become relevant for now let's discuss meta knight's basic movement as it's completely backwards from kirby's meta knight moves much faster in the air than on the ground he also has a flap much like wing kirby but it's a little bit worse it unfortunately does not allow meta knight to keep his running speed in the air meaning i can't just fly through every room without touching the ground it does still allow for flap cancels however so those will become much more relevant meta knight also has a few movement based attacks the first is one you've likely already noticed his forward dash although it does move very fast you usually need a lot of space on the ground in order for it to be worth using the other most common attack for movement is his downward thrust which not only sends him down very fast but it also sends him up a ton at the very beginning which is occasionally useful these moves are also his most damaging attacks so you'll be seeing them quite often his upward sword thrust is also pretty good so you'll be saying that a little bit as well as a quick aside this sub game is another example of one that uses in-game time so my time looks a lot slower compared to the current tas of meta nightmare this is mostly due to the other point based abilities specifically making a helper and tornado tornadoes are simple they do a bunch of damage but have an extremely long animation it pauses the in-game timer so it's basically free damage if that's what you're going for but for real time it's almost always slower than just doing damage normally creating a helper on the other hand saves in-game time in a really neat way again the animations pause the in-game timer so they're only slow when optimizing for real time but the animations also cancel whatever animation meta knight is currently in this can be used to cancel the end lag of the forward dash and carry its momentum through a jump sending meta knight flying through the air unfortunately as much as i tried i could not make this viable at any point in the run but if you're interested in the differences between real time and in-game time runs i'll link isman's current meta nightmare task in the description so you can check it out after watching this one anyway back to the task we're actually watching we get to see the auto scroller that we skipped as kirby exciting since i was kind of bored i decided to challenge myself by seeing if i could get this enemy at the beginning of the auto scroller all the way to the end he dies if he gets hit by these explosions so i had to do some pretty careful juggling unfortunately he does have a limited amount of health and each juggle does a bit of damage so i'm forced to switch him off for a new one i'd still consider the overall challenge a success though i had nothing better to do anyway you might notice here that i jump off of thin air this is what i call meta knight's double jump glitch if you go airborne without using your jump usually by sliding off of an edge do an aerial attack and then cancel the attack by pressing the jump button meta knight will do a jump in mid-air instead of a flat this is actually much more useful than i thought it'd be especially in the form of aerial flap cancels they're hard to notice but they do say some good time [Music] [Music] another my new optimization here usually there's a period after jumping off of a ladder where you can't climb one again however i get around this by attacking and then immediately canceling the attack allowing me to jump up a section of this ladder which is faster than just climbing up it me occasionally you'll see me do a flap cancel in between dashes this is because meta knight's little charging animation that he does before dashing actually carries whatever forward momentum you had previously this means that doing flap cancels can give a little extra distance per dash which over longer distances can save time by allowing you to avoid dashing a few extra times so [Music] so [Music] don't worry the great cave offensive won't last nearly as long as it did last time meta knight doesn't have to collect any treasures so he can just charge for it the entire time making quick work of this level yeah bonkers this time for good trust me these mine car sections were always a pain since i had to figure out where the ideal spots for flap cancels would be usually i want to be on an upward slope so i can reach the ground faster and initiate a dash sooner on that note flap cancelling on a downward slope is almost always a bad idea since meta knight stays moving in the air at a relatively low speed for longer also fun side note i have so many points stored up that i decided to throw a heel in that last room just to flex there are some actual applications of spending points on healing that i'll get into in a little bit but this one was just for fun uh look it's our old pal computer virus back again to get one cycled on every phase unlike the last two appearance of this boss however i do have to worry about manipulating stats at the end again i use a heal here because i actually couldn't find any other way to manipulate this specific stat to be a shorter one so there you go an actual practical use of the heal but don't worry i still managed to find even another application that we'll see a little later [Music] [Music] [Music] so so here i do something pretty neat i jump in the mine cart in order to instantly snap to the front of it and then immediately flap cancel out of it it barely saves time but in a way i almost like the small tricks that meta knight offers more than the big time saves that routing differences can make with kirby [Music] and now we move on to the most nonsensical level in the game meta knight destroying his own ship at least the dialogue was removed [Music] what used to be an auto scroller is now just straight up a boss fight for some reason i mean i guess i'll take it it's better than having to wait [Music] um as you can see abusing these air pockets is much less exciting when puffing isn't an option although this does give me the chance to show off a strange bit of tech meta i can do underwater when you attack underwater all of your speed is lost once the attack ends however if you initiate another attack immediately after you can soar to keep your speed you probably missed it but i used this to reach the last air pocket sooner it's faster here to burst down both wispies at the same time rather than focusing on one at a time this is because wispy has a particularly long invincibility period after getting hit so it's more efficient to deal some damage to the other one while waiting for one to become vulnerable again when you attack enemies with an aerial attack it sends you up a little bit i use this here to jump up these platforms just a little bit faster these guys were super annoying to optimize it's the classic story of having to simultaneously find a way to kill them quickly and manipulate their movements so they end up in a favorable position in the end i liked how it turned out but dang it took a while only some of meta knight's abilities can light this fuse unfortunately his sword beam projectile is not one of them so i actually have to walk up to this fuse to light it [Music] [Music] here we see the only instance of a reverse elevator skip jumping up through this elevator shaft turned out to be faster than riding it up another double mini boss fight this one didn't take as long but was still quite the doozy as for this canon boss i don't have invincibility like i did last time so it was much harder to avoid damage while standing on this small bit of ground the invincibility frames that i can get from the dash attack came in real handy here so for this auto scroller or at least the first half i wanted to see how few jumps i needed to do to get through it i need the initial jump but from there i only use slide kicks and other trickery to get around if i had a helper i think i could actually get through the entire thing without having to jump at all since i could do helper jumps which don't require the jump button but unfortunately i was not quite willing to waste a few seconds of time for an arbitrary challenge maybe that's a task for another time but for now the auto scrollers are done for good and it's back to business for the rematch on this lobster guy i actually have to use some quickness in the middle of the fight to avoid getting hit while he's zooming around by the way if you're wondering why i always do a flap cancel after doing a normal ground attack it's because if i don't then attacking again makes meta knight start doing his little combo move which is usually not what i want generally speaking i want to be able to do a dash attack afterwards and in order to do that i have to do a flat cancel [Music] since i don't have a beam helper i have to go all the way around and hit this button myself it's actually almost faster to use a tornado to hit the button without having to go around but the tornado animation is just simply way too long uh oh it's this boss again alright let's explain the manipulation this time site this is the only time i'll use a tornado but it's well worth it for this guy it's way faster than using his stupid lasers and ending his attacks early one thing you may have noticed is that i jumped as high as i could before using the tornado this is because it shortens the amount of time it takes for meta knight to fall back on screen after the attack and since it wouldn't make any sense for meta knight to fight himself that level just ends with that boss meaning we're already moving on to milky way wishes there's no map screen for meta knight so we're forced to go through these levels in a different order than we did last time [Music] boom [Music] i can actually use meta knight's downward thrust to move up through these air pockets through the conservation of vertical momentum god that sounds so nerdy for this water maze i actually damage boost through these squids meta knight's underwater attack is so slow and the hit stun from running into these guys is barely anything so the damage is well worth it do i pop a heel here to get back to health i lost in the previous stage not only does full health just look nicer but you also need full health in order to shoot the sword beams which i'm gonna want to be able to do in a bit and that's our second practical use of healing every other instance is just for fun also one thing that i've been using throughout the entire run but i've never explained is shield dropping whenever i drop through a platform i always block first this usually only saves time when dropping through a platform after landing on it since blocking cancels the landing lag but i use it pretty much every time i drop through a platform in general just cause it doesn't waste any time and i think it's cooler [Music] so another bit of meta knight tech that i've been periodically using that i don't actually have a name for for some reason if you do an aerial attack after bonking your head on a ceiling then you fall faster than if you just let yourself fall i'm not entirely sure why but it does save time in some areas so i'm not complaining [Music] [Music] this stage is pretty neat i take pretty much none of the same routes through the individual rooms compared to kirby so it's a cool little change in scenery here i avoid using the cannons altogether it's faster that is charged through these blocks myself since i can't fight the wind like wing can i hit this button through the wall in order to take the underground path then i gotta do this button puzzle as intended this is where i wanted to be able to use my sword beam which is why i need full health here so i use a very room specific tech in this upcoming room which has upwards wind if i slide kick on the ground then i immediately go airborne with sliding momentum this would be a bad thing since you usually can jump while in the air but i can just use meta knight's double jump glitch to get around that so you'll hear me sliding all over the place this is the sixth and thankfully final fight with computer virus unfortunately it's also the longest since meta knight has a little bit of trouble killing the higher level phases much like this fight in helper to hero i manipulate the knight to charge up an attack and the dragon to shoot stars during their respective turns and of course i manipulate the stats for one last time since i'm not kirby there's no starship section and the final boss is replaced with a new guy galactianite who has a pretty solid theme outside of that though this boss is incredibly annoying and i express how i feel about him right here before the fight starts this boss has two modes that i call fighting mode and center mode he starts off in fighting mode and i try to manipulate him to stay in fighting mode for as long as possible before he moves on to center mode while in center mode he is not only out of reach in my dash attack but he also takes half damage i then manipulate him to only ever do this spinning beam attack he has a chance to spawn many mini bosses and then run away while i kill them which is obviously extremely slow and with that galactianite is dead and we're done with meta nightmare we're not quite done yet though because after this shortcut scene we have to do the third and final boss rush in the entire run the true arena which is also just the last thing in the run in general [Music] [Music] much like the regular arena i manipulate the boss order such that the first boss is one that i can fight with no ability which in this case is the airship so i don't have to spend any time in the ability room i delay killing the airship for a bit at the end for two reasons one i want him to get closer to the right side of the screen so he despawns faster ending the fight sooner and two delaying the fight is the only way i can manipulate hammer to spawn after the fight in the true arena one of the abilities that is offered in between bosses is always sleep which is useless so effectively only one ability is given unlike last time this is actually precise rng manipulation not just mashing i'm mixing in pivots in between the squishes in order to spawn as much dust as possible and advance rng as much as possible so that stone appears that sounds like i'm lying but i swear that's how rng works at least in this game anyway although stone loses a bit of time on a couple upcoming bosses compared to hammer it's much faster at killing these mini bosses and galactianite so it becomes worth switching to overall there's not too much to explain here so enjoy stone plowing through some of these final bosses uh so [Music] so and with that the final final final boss is dead and the run is finally complete not gonna lie i'm not entirely sure how task timing works but the final time for normal speed running was 1 hour 35 minutes and 9 seconds for reference the current world record for 100 by a human is just over two hours as for how long this test took to make it was about a year of very on and off work i definitely went a few months without doing anything but also occasionally went pretty hard sometimes so it's hard to tell exactly how long it took hours wise for my first task though i'm super proud of the final product it was a ton of fun i learned a lot about not just about tassing but also how this game works and how games in general work if you made it all the way here then i'm legally obligated to thank you for watching and ask for likes and subscriptions and whatnot honestly i'm more excited to see what your comments are uh what you guys think of this sort of stuff i might task another game and if there's enough demand i might give streaming a try to show off more the process uh but for now my name for the past hour and a half has been sam and thanks for watching again and that that's it that that's the end of the video

Channel: Sample

Views: 1,410,009

Keywords: tas, kirby, speedrun, kirby super star ultra, kssu, kssu tas, kssu speedrun, kirby super star ultra tas, kirby super star ultra speedrun, kirby tas, kirby speedrun

Id: NuYGNlidKfw

Length: 96min 55sec (5815 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 16 2021