Mario Kart Wii: The History of the Ultra Shortcut

mario kart wii has a strange problem this problem has nothing to do with the gameplay the graphics the music or anything like that no the problem is with the game's mechanics many tracks allow you to do large skips and still have the lap counts a common definition was made for all of these shortcuts the ultra shortcut for the past decade players have worked with each other to discover as many Ultra shortcuts as possible this is the story of those players and their journey to break Mario Kart Wii as much as they can [Music] you [Music] [Music] Mario Kart Wii was released in April 2008 as with all Mario Kart games before it you can play time trials to improve your fastest times on each course Mario Kart Wii had a brilliant feature that made it so easy to share your fastest times with others you could upload your best times as ghosts and anybody could view or race against it this combined with the growing popularity of internet forums and YouTube meant that the mario kart wii time trial scene exploded right out of the gates hundreds of players will lower the world records down for each of the 32 courses in the game small corner cuts won't be featured in this video like Bowser's Castle Bowser's Castle 3 DK mountain and desert Hills since they don't quite fit the definition of an ultra short cut these are nothing like what was about to be discovered a couple of months after the game was released something huge was found it was a shortcut that would go on to be one of the most famous in the entire Mario Kart franchise and you might have heard about it before it shook the internet when it was discovered with video after video appeared with it on YouTube this is the grumble volcano or for a shortcut [Music] someone named Ridley discovered that after driving around the track you can line yourself up just right use a mushroom and launch off of these blocks to land on the rock formation to the left of the finish line this rock formation when then act as a mini version of the whole track if he simply drove around it the game would count it as a lap being driven a couple of different methods of getting on this rock would be discovered the first was going backwards right as the race began to respawn right behind the blocks you can jump off of this method wasn't too fast since he would fall on the lava and getting picked up by lakitu took a lot of time so that's where the second method came in you could boost here left right as the race began jump off of the road at a perfect angle and land on the rock formation straight away he took less than 10 seconds to drive a lap on this rock so that meant that people were finishing the course in under 30 seconds now there's something that I haven't mentioned yet everything that I just described was discovered on the same day on that magical day June 1st 2008 the world record was lowered 18 times if you were around playing Mario Kart Wii on that day you had a realistic chance of snagging the world record for your own just a few of those 18 World Records have surviving videos a 126 from alvin from literally minutes after that trick was originally discovered a 35 second time from alvin from a few hours later and a couple of times in the twenty second range from Fujio Massa and yeoman these times only stood for a couple of hours or even just a few minutes before being lowered by somebody else later that same day at the time of discovery this trick was very poorly understood everybody knew how to get to the rock formation but the way you drove around it had to be strangely precise he had to go forward past the finish line on the rock that figure 2 started in the lap and you also had to go slightly out of your way to pass over this Ridge on the other side nobody knew exactly why but it was theorized that it had to do with invisible checkpoints that you had to cross for a lap to count all that really mattered though was that the trick worked years later small optimizations were found such as using a mushroom earlier on lap 3 and weaving around the rock at this to launch up faster after a battle between King Alex and nayaki the record would eventually go under 20 seconds which is where the record is today in 18 second time from the Aki but let's not get too far ahead of ourselves as of June 2008 this was the only game braking shortcut in mario kart wii shortcuts like this that cut out nearly all of the track were rare in most Mario Kart games with Mario Kart 64 being the only real exception to that rule Rumble volcano is just an anomaly but it wouldn't take long until the next one was discovered just three weeks after grumble volcanoes trick was found mushroom gorge was broken in a similar way and this shortcut to is one of the most iconic in any Mario Kart game the earliest video footage of this trick comes from a Japanese player with the username green bean you start the race drive forwards a bit turn around and boost off of a trampoline mushroomy you can bounce off of if you angle your vehicle back while in the air you're then able to ride along the mountainside go above the finish line drop down behind it and cross it to finish a lap this works because of a bug with a trampoline mushroom the momentum you have from bouncing off of the mushroom is locked in place unless he specifically hit the ground if you instead hit a wall your momentum is still preserved and if it's angled the right way like this mountainside just so happens to be your momentum is converted to allow you to ride up it later optimizations for this trick included the cookie strat of dropping down closer to the finish line using the quacker because its hitbox lets to turn in different ways while hitting the mountains maneuver more effectively using motion controls to get our better range of motion while on the mountain and Sam FS discovery that you could stay on the mountain for the entire first lap but once again just like with grumble volcano the inner workings of this trick were a mystery the game should have been able to recognize that a full lap hadn't been driven and it shouldn't have given you credit for the lap you just went from in front of the finish line to right behind it why was it all possible that was the question on one guy's mind mr. bean 35000 vr after theorizing the basics of the checkpoint system and testing it with speed hacks to make him fly farther out of bounds on Wario's gold mind mr. bean improving himself to be correct this is what he figured out get ready everyone you're about to earn a degree in mario kart wii checkpoints [Music] Mario Kart Wii breaks up each track into a series of invisible checkpoints there's regular checkpoints key checkpoints and a starting line this is a map of Wario's gold mine with the checkpoints all drawn in the regular checkpoints are in blue they're just used so lakitu knows where to place you if you go off the map you can pretty much completely ignore these ones the starting line is here in purple and the key checkpoints are in red they are the important ones since the game wants you to drive through all of these before giving you credit for a lap the starting line also sort of acts as a key checkpoint which you'll see in a minute each of these isn't actually aligned but a box that extends forward from the line to the next checkpoint if your car touches anywhere in the box then you've reached that checkpoint the game updates which key checkpoint region you were last in as you drive around the course which I'll represent with a number up in the corner if your position is here for example this number will be 0 if you then drive across key checkpoint one your number will be updated to one until you cross another key checkpoints as I mentioned before mario kart wii wants you to drive through all key checkpoints before counting a lap but it doesn't actually keep track of which ones you've driven through instead it uses a couple of rules rule number one your key checkpoint region must be updated to the one right before the finish line before you cross it in order for the lapped accounts in this case it must be region number four and rule number two the only key region checkpoints that are loaded are the region you're in the one immediately after you and if you happen to be in the key checkpoint box of the region then the key checkpoint region immediately behind you will be loaded as well and for all the regions that are not loaded which for region two would be region four and region zero the game will simply not update your position when you drive through them and this works pretty well most of the time for example if you're in key checkpoint region two and do a large skip that goes past region three so you never touch it then when you drive through Region four your position won't be updated since region four is not yet loaded the number will still be two so when you cross the finish line because this number is not for your lap will not be counted and this leads to a bit of a problem what if you're in region zero then go backwards across the finish line hit checkpoint four then drive forwards again with the game award you a lap when you cross the finish line forwards once more no it wouldn't because the developers had another system to account for this the game would subtract a lap from you if you cross the finish line backwards and automatically put your region at the last key checkpoint so when you cross the finish line you'll simply go right back to the lap you were on however the game developers didn't do one crucial thing one crucial thing that makes every single shortcut in this video possible the game will only do this lap subtraction process if you go from the box right in front of the finish line directly to the box behind it so if you're in region zero on let's say lap number two and managed to land somewhere back here without going over the finish line backwards the game will still believe they are in region zero on lap two and since you're in region zero the previous key checkpoint region is loaded region four so you can drive back to hit region four cross the finish line and the lapis counted this is what's happening on the rock formation in grumble volcano you cross the finish line to be in region zero then go outside around it to stay in region zero wrap around the back then just barely nicked the corner of the last key checkpoint region you're now at the end of the lap as far as the game is concerned it's the same thing on mushroom Gorge you're in front of the finish line in region zero go back around on the mountainside to avoid hitting the finish line hit the last region and you finish the lap those were the first two ultra shortcuts both discovered before their inner workings were completely understood and now thanks in part to the extensive work done by mr. bean to figure out the checkpoint system there was a third ultra shortcut the course this time is wario's gold mine I mentioned before that mr. bean have made a proof of concept for a Wario's goldmine shortcut but he used speed hacks to make it work this video with a very poor framerate shows where he was aiming however in January 2009 his theoretical trick was made a reality it's unknown exactly who discovered or pulled this off first but on January 19th 2009 a bunch of fast times began to pop up on the leaderboard the first coming from player John 13 and the first surviving video coming from DW Fox it was a simple enough trick now that we understand how the checkpoint system works you start in zone 0 boost out of bounds in just the right place to avoid hitting the finish line and respawn a bit behind the finish line your region stays at zero from there it's a matter of turning around to hit region 4 then driving forward to cross the finish line a lap can be completed in under 15 seconds over the next couple of days players implemented this trick once and then twice and then three times into their time trials on January 21st two days after the original tricks discovery a player named Shaun tani discovered a future optimization the pipe bounce this pipe is out of balance if you make contact with it you're supposed to be picked up by lakitu and place back on the course however as sort of seals once said hitting ledges and weird angles at high speed does weird things in this game if you touch the cylinder of the pipe with your back wheel for exactly one frame lakitu won't pick you up and depending on the angle that you hit the pipe at you could fly up way into the air conveniently the underside of this bridge doesn't have hit detection only the top dose so hitting this bridge from below means you can go right through it and land on the top of course this pipe bounce can easily go wrong it's very difficult to get the exact bounce that you need to go through the bridge but if it did work you'd save time by avoiding getting picked up by latitude it took more than two full months before somebody was able to get three pipe bounces one on each lap in a full run of Wario's gold mine the runners name was didi poyo and the time was 35 seconds the record would gradually come down by a few seconds over the fall in couple of years through slight optimization eventually ending at a thirty two point eight one eight by mr. bean in March 2011 what was particularly great about mr. beans Wario's gold mine times was the fact that they were done using Luigi time trials are normally done using funky Kong with a flame runner because this combination provides both a high top speed and the potential to drift tightly mr. bean decided to intentionally throw a bit of time away by using Luigi simply because well he liked using Luigi and unbelievably even still this time of thirty two point eight one eight will go on to be the longest standing record in Mario Kart Wii six years pass without it being broken and then one day in May 2017 this happened [Music] oh yes not great oh here we go yes holy [ __ ] Wow [ __ ] hell six years the oldest record making the only 2011 record gone smashed mr. bean broke his own record it took six years for one fifth of a second to come off of his record he was the true champion of Wario's gold mind at least until 2018 when a guy simply named Justin came along to beat his record twice but keep in mind as far as ultra shortcut discoveries go we're still in 2009 and it's time to talk about yet another really famous shortcut we've seen driving on a rock formation riding along a wall and jumping through a bridge this time it's something a little bit simpler driving through a parking lot [Music] coconut mall does not seem like the type of course that would have an ultra shortcut there's very few open areas that it looks like you could leap across instead walls or other barriers separate parts of the track so to make the ultra shortcut possible you need to break some boundaries and go out of bounds on July 3rd 2011 fin tan revealed this method to the world you stopped at the bottom of this escalator which is right around the border between key checkpoint regions 1 & 2 you then do a trick off of the ramp normally an invisible wall stops you from going forward however fin tan landed the bikes back tire on this patch of green this patch of green is actually a wall a wall that's flat on the ground and facing the sky it's known as a horizontal wall in Mario Kart Wii horizontal walls have a very strange property if you touch one of them you can proceed to clip through walls it's not known why this happens but all that matters is that it does happen and it can be used right here on coke from them all touching the patch of green means that you can clip through the invisible wall and land out-of-bounds most objects out of bounds have no hit detection meaning you could drive right through them so now it's a matter of carefully maneuvering around the key checkpoints you're initially in region 1 and drive back to get to region 0 he then drive around the finish line to stay in region 0 while behind the finish line loop around the parking lot to go over the last key checkpoint which is region 5 and drive forward to hit the corner of the finish line repeating this process of going around the finish line in hitting region 5 means you can finish the course in well under a minute the first week after the trix discovery was very hectic in the first day alone the world record was lower 24 times it included the shortest reign of a world record in mario kart wii history at 10:06 p.m. inviso 87 made a forum post saying that he had lowered the world record to a 126 32 seconds later sort of seals posted that he'd gotten a 119 sort of seals was a particularly extreme example of the lengths people went for discovering these new tricks he apparently stayed up for 72 hours straight once the coconut mall ultra shortcut was discovered and lowered the world record for in the first day new methods were found for getting out of bounds the Soraa zone method for example involved dropping down from above to hit the horizontal wall months later an entirely different entry location was found it was earlier in the course and you didn't have to stop driving because you could just hit this horizontal wall like this for years tuk hemi would be the runner to beat on coconut mall but lately the world record scene has been dominated by braixen he most recently achieved a 31 point six one five in July of 2018 but we're not in 2018 or in 2011 and around this time the fine art of flying into the air was used in ultra shortcuts it's yet another one of Mario Kart Wiis broken mechanics the wall clip ghost valley 2 was the first course to fall victim to the wall clip and this is what it looked like normally if you hit a wall at a high speed you bounce a little bit in the air as your car slows to zero however if you hit the very edge of a wall or another similar surface and get some air beforehand but backing up or doing wheelies you don't get stopped by the wall but you still get the bounce you'd normally get from hitting it the result is flying high into the air [Music] you can see with the checkpoint map that ghost valley 2 only has three key checkpoints that are drawn in red you start in zone zero and the wall clip skips over the first one you drive through zone 2 which isn't loaded but since you're still in zone zero zone 3 is loaded your region will be updated as you drive through it so because this is the last one before the finish line the lap will count it's unknown who the first person was to do a wall clip in ghost valley 2 but the first person to get a world record with one was Marco the wall clip barely saved them any time since just driving around the loop of the start is nearly as fast the current world record is a fifty one point three one nine by leaf a record that has stood since 2015 but ghost valley 2 wasn't the only course that enjoyed the mechanics of the wall clip over the following year and a half old fresh shortcuts for both peach beach and mario circuit would be found using the wall clip the one on peach beach was discovered through a tool-assisted speedrun which allows a player to rerecord and use savestates to create theoretically perfect speedruns by mark in july 2012 you clip off of a tree hit or go past the arch to activate the next lap and go to region 0 and land just less than halfway through the next lap Sam would be the first person to do this trick in real time but the first person to do it in a run and get a world record with it was king Alex 6 years later though the world record holder would once again be breaks in it was simple enough just a wall clip farther along the track mario circuit solfege shortcut wasn't quite the same it was discovered by Ridley in August 2011 the same person who discovered the grumble volcano shortcut more than three years before he drove most of the first lap as normal and then stopped right before the end he was in key checkpoint region 4 which was the last region of the lap he then carefully lined himself up and did a wall clip off of this tree to land on the track below landing in what should have been region 3 you might think that region 3 should be loaded when he drives through it since he was just in region 4 but hang on a minute remember what I mentioned earlier and if you happen to be in the key checkpoint box of the region then the key checkpoint region and medium behind you will be loaded as well the only way that the key checkpoint behind you loads is if you're in the key checkpoint box of your region the reason most of the other ultra shortcuts work is because he began the ultra shortcuts starting from the finish line box which is the key checkpoint box of region 0 so to get region 3 to load Ridley would needs to be back in this box which is the key checkpoint box of region for Ridley wasn't in the key checkpoint box of region 4 he drove many regular checkpoint boxes forward to do the wall clip so region 3 was completely unloaded and as a result when Ridley drove through the region his musician stayed at 4 and conveniently the finish line box from above which is the key checkpoint box from region 0 extends downward into the tunnel so when Ridley drove into the tunnel his position updated to zero and he got credit for a lap but this wasn't all he was in the key checkpoint box of region 0 that meant that region 4 was loaded as well so he drove out of the tunnel through the unloaded region 3 then drove through the loaded region 4 drove past the finish line and the game gave him yet another lap this trick would have helped a bit more over the following years as players began doing a wall clip on each lap to avoid having to drive around the whole course wall clipping without carefully lying themselves up to save a bit of time and clipping to the other side of the tunnels they didn't had to turn around after Mario circuit there was a bit of a lapse in the discovery of ultra shortcuts from mid 2012 through mid 2015 only one ultra shortcut was found it was on maple treeway [Music] this one is a very bizarre case the shortcut itself had been known for a very long time you get shot by the cannon turn around and jump to a point farther along the course the issue was when you cross the finish line the lap wouldn't be counted when looking at the course map it's obvious why feel free to ignore this garbled message checkpoints in the centre when you land after the cannon shot you're in key Check Point region two when you do the shortcut you skip ahead to region seven which isn't loaded the region right before the finish line region nine won't be loaded either so the game believes that you're in region two when you cross the finish line the lap will not be counted after the checkpoint system was figured out a tool-assisted speedrun er named Mally Oh figured out a pretty brilliant way around this you would clear a fence by hopping over it at the end of the lap the next lap starts to put you in region zero from there you could turn and boost to launch through the out-of-bounds walls and lane on the track below this causes you to skip past key checkpoint one to drive through region two so none of the other key checkpoints will be loaded other than the last one key checkpoint nine when you do the larger skip later on your position will update to region nine when you drive through it and since checkpoint nine is the last one the lapin counts Croy was the first runner to do the trick in real time it was quickly improved over the following days the checkpoint manipulation setup requires two mushrooms normally but it is theoretically possible to do it with just one similarly to the peach beach in mario circuit skips it involves using the spear as your bike to get more speed and it involves doing a wall clip off of the root of a tree to just barely make it to the track below humans have been able to get a clip from the tree before but the angle also needs to be just right to make it to the track doing this one mushroom setup plus a two mushroom setup later would be enough to set a pretty decent new world record but as of now nobody's done it so the world record is a 157 by demon so that's maple freeway from September 2012 as I mentioned before it would be a while before more old for shortcuts would be discovered 2012 turned into 2013 2013 turn into 2014 14 turned into the 2015 players were just working on improving the old shortcut records but that all changed in one week this is blaze blaze makes tool assisted speedruns of Mario Kart Wii and he has a habit of discovering a lot of glitches and shortcuts from June 28th through July 5th he made one of the most remarkable discoveries in speedrunning history three new ultra shortcuts [Music] Waluigi stadiums new ultra shortcut was possible to do in a tool-assisted speedrun but unless the strategy completely changes it will never be done by a human in a real run here's why the start of it is difficult but definitely not impossible you have to go right in front of this bump turn around and boost to get a ton of airtime from there you hit the top of the finish line to pass through the top and move visible wall that has no hit detection this is all incredibly precise of course but not impossible and all it really is is a setup for later you go from region 0 to region 2 leaving the last region loaded so the lap will count later on similar to hopping over the wall to start a maple freeway the impossible part involves a trick known as rapid-fire hop abuse to pass through the half pipe sloped to further along the course it's done by pressing the hop button on every other frame while you approach the half pipe as in you would press hop for 1 frame let go for 1 frame then press it for 1 frame let go over and over again on your approach Mario Kart Wii runs at 60 frames per second so you need to press the hot button 30 times per second on exactly every other frame for this to work and that is humanly impossible on the other hand blazes shortcut on sherbert land was humanly possible just barely at first glance it seems really simple you wall clip off of the finish line pole land in the water respawn behind the finish line turn to hit the last key checkpoint and drive forward to complete a lap what lies beneath the surface however is a world of precision you need to clip off of the finish pole here and land somewhere in this orange region without going over this section of the blue line if you hit this box at all or land outside of the orange region the game will respawn you right behind or in front of the finish line if you successfully land in the region without crossing the blue line you will respawn back here making the ultra shortcut possible you can only do the shortcut once per race since your mushrooms are taken away when you go out-of-bounds in the water the current world record of 143 point 1 3 3 by guy did the shortcut on lap 3 places final discovery was on Donkey Kong jungle parkway when it was initially found it was believed to be humanly impossible to you would drive back when the race began do a wall clip off of a tree at the top of the finish line pole which acts as a horizontal wall pass through an invisible wall and follow the track below the game believes he went from right in front of the finish line to a bit behind it so after he hit the last key checkpoint the left gets counted getting enough height from the wall clip alone was hard enough but doing that while landing exactly where you need to on a finish line pole while getting the perfect angle to land in the tunnel nobody knew if humans could do that at least not until Sam the person to do the peach beach skip became the first person to do the trick in real time about a month after it was discovered and get a world record with it players would later get creative by using a ghost to sit in the exact position you would need to be at to do the wall clip you could line yourself up with a ghost and have a much better chance at getting the angle you needed Danny G would eventually be the first person to get two of these in the same race and braixen would be the first person to get a three out of three it may not have taken him 26,000 attempts but it was still an incredible accomplishment braixen has been lowering his own world record ever since over the course of seven years we've seen ultra short cuts discovered on 10 different tracks but there's still one more track to look at fittingly the last track is Rainbow Road it's a very strange instance of a trick that only works if you're playing in the online Wi-Fi mode you start the race in his own Xero and drive to pick up a fake item box placing this next to the railing and driving into it in the right way it causes you to tumble over the railing and get picked up by lakitu what the game normally does now is pick you up and place you behind the finish line this wouldn't be a problem because you're going from the checkpoint box right in front of the finish line to the one right behind it a lap will be subtracted however this is where the online Wi-Fi component comes into play twelve people are normally in an online race if you're one of the first six lakitu will drop you in the correct checkpoint box if you're one of the last six black Atun will instead drop you in the box behind it lap doesn't get subtracted you could turn around hit the last key checkpoint and drive forward for a lap skip and that is every single ultra shortcut in the history of Mario Kart Wii except for one believe it or not Rainbow Road actually has a second ultra shortcut it hasn't been done by a human before at least not yet but it's probably going to happen someday it was discovered relatively recently March 2016 by esta LOI 62 you drive slightly forward then turn around and hop along the tiny space between the outside of the railing and the track believe it or not getting back here is the easy part the hard part is getting from here to the track below you must do what's called a spin drift it's where you drift to the right then hold the stick back to the left hop perfectly off the edge of the track use another mushroom while in the air and if you do all of that correctly then you can just barely make it back to the track if you don't go far enough you won't go back in the key checkpoint region zero so the last region won't be loaded and the lap will count if you do any of these inputs incorrectly and land short of the track the trick won't work everything needs to be perfect but technically nothing here is impossible and people have come close to doing it before it's not inconceivable and it's probably even likely that someday someone will pull off the Rainbow Road ultra shortcut there's no big success story yet but just luck of all the courses before it the story of Rainbow Road will be written the only question is who's going to be the author this has been the history of the ultra shortcut thanks for watching [Music] if you enjoy watching speedruns be sure to give all the runners in this video a follow on twitch and follow me at twitch TV slash summoning salt thanks [Music]

Channel: Summoning Salt

Views: 12,801,108

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Id: mmJ_LT8bUj0

Length: 32min 8sec (1928 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 27 2018