Hello all, and welcome to my seventh Paper
Mario: The Thousand-Year Door Tool-Assisted Speedrun. It’s been a while since my last TAS for
this game, but it was a pleasure to come back to this game once again. You’ll notice right off the bat that there
are some additional text boxes in this title screen, and that’s actually because I have
the memory card inserted. Unlike every previous iteration of the TTYD
TAS, we need to make use of the game’s save functionality in order to perform a newly
discovered trick, called Blimp Ticket Skip. It’s thanks to SolidifiedGaming’s glitch-hunting
efforts that there is finally a method for this long-theorized trick, and this was pretty
much the reason that I decided to return back to this game. Through the video’s title, you’ll notice
that I did not reach a sub-2 hour time, which we originally thought would be possible, however
after sitting on it, I really don’t feel upset at all. This TAS is the result of the hard work of
several people that have helped within the community, and after watching this hard work
all come together to result in this TAS, I just can’t be upset. I would immediately like to thank SolidifiedGaming
for his continued work in glitch-hunting this game, Masterjun for his work in reverse-engineering
a sizeable skip in the middle of the Prologue and jdaster and trivial171 for their work
in RNG manipulation and reverse-engineering certain battle mechanics. I would not be as satisfied with the outcome
of this TAS without you guys, so thank you a lot for your help along the way. As I mentioned, this TAS includes the newly
found Blimp Ticket Skip. I’ll explain the execution of the trick
when it occurs after Chapter 6. After Palace Skip, Blimp Ticket Skip became
the next holy grail of timesavers in TTYD, and it could save up to 20 minutes depending
on which theoretical method to perform it actually turned out to work. Blimp Ticket Skip allows us to reach Glitzville
and obtain Yoshi without the need to complete Chapter 2. We do need Flurrie and the Super Boots from
Chapter 2, however, but this trick effectively cuts out the majority of the Great Tree. Coincidentally, this trick was made public
as soon as I finished my last final exam before summer started, so since I had a bit more
free time I decided to jump back into TTYD. So Starting on May 5th 2019, I began working
on this TAS and was able to finish it on August 24th 2019, totalling 111 days or about 3 and
a half months. With about 64,000 rerecords, this is an improvement
of 15:54 over my previously published TAS. We estimate that about 1 minute was saved
due to skipping a small sequence in both the Prologue and late-game, 11 and a half minutes
were saved due to Blimp Ticket Skip, 1 minute was saved in Chapter 7 due to a new sequence
skip, and 2 and a half minutes were saved due to a newly found warp at the very end
of Chapter 8. We’ve reached the Rogueport Docks, and once
I gain control of Mario you’ll see that I continuously jump, making use of a trick
called Speed Swap. In this game, your up-and-down (or Z axis)
speed is about 19% faster than moving left-and-right. As it turns out, you can move up or down for
1/60 of a second (or 1 frame) and continuously jump on the first frame possible to preserve
this larger speed value. This trick most likely saves several minutes
overall from faster movement. We meet up with Goombella who’s being attacked
by Lord Crump. We can take him out easily in two turns with
double jumps and a superguard. If you time a B press within 3 frames of your
enemy hitting you, you will ignore any damage taken and instead deal 1 damage to the enemy. Interestingly, all enemy attacks in the English
version of the game can be superguarded, however the Japanese version has several enemy attacks
which cannot be superguarded, and as it turns out, we’ll have to take this into account
later in the route. After the fight, a hoard of X-Nauts ambushes
Mario and Goombella. Each X-Nauts movement is actually dependent
on RNG, and as a result, this cutscene is dynamic, meaning its length can vary. To optimize the cutscene, I had to try to
get an RNG value that resulted in all the X-Nauts reaching their standing position (aka
before they jump at Mario) as fast as possible. With that out of the way, I can regain control
of Mario and make my way towards Central Rogueport. Once inside Central Rogueport, Mario and Goombella
discuss a bit about themselves, what they’re doing in Rogueport, and Mario will reveal
that he has a magical map that can help them search for the Crystal Stars to save Peach
and subsequently the world. Once Toadsworth comes on screen, there’s
a mini-cutscene that plays in the background between the Craws and the Piantas. Only after this cutscene ends can we progress
to the end of Toadsworth’s dialogue. To take advantage of this, I wasted frames
in certain parts of the text boxes to change RNG for optimal Zess T movement in the top-left
corner of this room. However, as it turns out, it’s actually
faster to skip her sequence entirely. To skip Zess T, we will be using a respawn
glitch in the sewers to reach West Rogueport underground after Chapter 2. Unfortunately, this means we will not be able
to backtrack to Central Rogueport to grab the Ultra Hammer, since we would have to loop
back underground to get past Zess T. And, because we skip the Ultra Hammer, I will have
to use a different version of Palace Skip compared to the last few TASes. There’s also a small bug where Goomther,
the Goomba in this cutscene, can walk backwards, however I’m very saddened to say that I
did not succeed in getting it after spending an hour or so on it. Once I regain control of Mario again, I make
my way straight to the item shop since we skip Zess T. Once inside, I purchase 7 Fright
Masks and 3 Fire Flowers. There’s a 1 frame window where you can hammer
and still grab the item, so I do that a couple times for fun. Fright Masks are the quickest way to end battles
against weaker enemies. However, they only give you 1 star point after
the battle. In order to optimally route our XP leveling,
we will need to use Fire Flowers instead during some fights. I head outside and hit the save block. There’s extra dialogue when you hit the
saveblock for the first time, and it’s actually faster to get this dialogue over with than
have Goombella yell at you for not saving at the end of the room. This is a newly discovered trick called Fence
Skip. This NPC named Goomfrey can only walk in a
circle that I’ll call his home. When he reaches the edge of his home, he will
step outside for 1 frame, realize he reached the edge, and turn back to face the center. However, on the frame that he steps outside,
we can walk up next to him, and pause and unpause. As a result he will remain stopped outside
of his circle. We can then manipulate him to walk in front
of Merlon’s door. When we try to enter, Goomfrey pushes us outside. When we are in this black void, certain object
hitboxes are unloaded, allowing Mario to walk through the normally solid fence and enter
the sewers. This skips the entire sequence of talking
to Professor Frankly, saving almost a minute. However, when we enter the sewers, the game
advances our sequence to one that assigns Frankly as your follower, so he will appear
anyway. For a more detailed explanation of Fence Skip,
check out the video on my channel. This Goomba Trio fight can be ended quickly
through the use of a Fire Flower. Goombas don’t give much XP to begin with,
so a Fright Mask won’t set us far behind. Interestingly, in the English version of the
game there is a method to skip this battle. However, it doesn’t work in the Japanese
version of the game because the moving platform actually doesn’t move as far to the left
as in the English version. This trick would save around 45 seconds, so
it’s a shame this isn’t possible for this TAS. After this fight we discovered you can just
barely land on the top ledge on the right side to catch the first platform cycle. This is not possible on the left side due
to slightly different wall hitbox placement, and this method is slightly faster than waiting
for a bit and then jumping from the left stairs to the platform. Since I used a Fire Flower, I freed up a spot
for another item. Since we pass right by this Fire Flower, I
grab it while making my way to the pipe. In addition, I break both blocks in front
of the pipe because there are several instances where I’ll need to head to the left from
the pipe. Rather than go around the left block both
times, it’s faster to just break it immediately so I can take a direct path to the loading
zone. Though we are able to skip certain paper abilities,
the airplane ability is required to reach Chapter 1 and to get to Grodus’s Lair in
Chapter 8. Once we grab the key for the airplane curse
chest, I make my way into the back room to obtain the airplane ability. Going back to version differences, it’s
important to mention why I’m using the Japanese version of the game. The Japanese version of the game was released
a few months before the PAL and NTSC_U versions. As a result, certain mechanics are different
which cause certain tricks and glitches to operate differently. Because of this, the Japanese version ends
up being around 15 minutes faster. Funnily enough, thanks to glitch-hunting success
in the other game versions, the gap between NTSC/PAL and the japanese version is much
smaller than it used to be. At its largest, the japanese version was over
an hour faster. It’s amazing to look back and see the incredible
glitch-hunting developments over the years. I’ll put it this way: Since my first published
TAS, the final time for the TAS has been lowered by almost 3 hours. Normally after getting the airplane ability,
we want to make our way to the Thousand-Year Door to activate the magical map and reveal
the location of the first Crystal Star. However, we can make use of a trick called
the Blooper Skip to make our way to the Chapter 1 pipe without completing the Blooper fight
sequence, which only occurs after you visit the Thousand-Year Door. If you jump on the first frame when entering
a room and continuously jump or land on a boat panel and then fall into a body of water,
the game will fail to update your respawn location and will instead place you at coordinate
0 on the X and Z axes. This respawn mechanic is called the Hazard
Respawn Glitch. And with that we’ve entered Chapter 1 with
a time of 9:14, which is 1:11 faster than the previous TAS. As a result of skipping the ending sequence
of the prologue, Frankly is never set to stop following us. From this point until the start of Chapter
2, Frankly will be tagging along for the ride. There’s an interesting theoretical timesaver
here. In order to unlock the pipe to Hooktail’s
Castle, we have to place down a Moon Stone and a Sun Stone on two rocks on either side
of the center pedestal to reveal two blue blocks. We then have to hit both of these blocks within
a certain amount of time between each other in order to reveal the pipe. The pipe located within the center pedestal
still has a hitbox before getting rid of the pedestal. Therefore, if we were able to somehow activate
this pipe without getting rid of the pedestal, we could effectively cut out the entire Petalburg
and Shhwonk Fortress sequence. In the following room, we can again make use
of the Hazard Respawn Glitch like I did when entering Chapter 1. Instead of jumping first frame, I can actually
start a speed swap because the respawn boundary for the body of water doesn’t reach the
edge of the room. Once I land from falling, there is one frame
where I can jump mid-air to land on the other side of the water. This allows me to skip going into the background
and revealing the bridge. This bridge will later appear on its own when
I advance to a later sequence. So again, to enter Hooktail’s Castle, we’ll
need to head to Shhwonk Fortress to obtain the Moon and Sun Stones. In order to unlock the path to Shhwonk Fortress,
we first have to talk to the mayor of the town one room over. There is a way for us to get out-of-bounds
in this room, and we’ve theorized that we could go around the gate blocking our way
towards Shhwonk, however there are invisible walls that prevent us from bypassing the gate. We’ll first have to talk to the mayor, Kroop,
and request that we pass through. After that we’ll have to talk to the gatekeeper. As I make my way over to the gatekeeper I
receive my first email in the game. At this point, the game detects that I have
not yet opened any emails so some text boxes pop up describing how to access and view emails. This text will repeatedly show up for each
email I get unless I open an email at some point. Because of this, I will have to read an email
later in the chapter. We also get a quick chat in with Koops, who
we’ll obtain later in Chapter 1. It’s also worth mentioning that angling
slightly towards walls gives Mario an additional speed boost, so if there are any fences, for
example, that aren’t too far out of the way, it’s usually faster to push off of
them. After this room is a Bald Cleft fight, however
we can make use of Goombella Buffers to avoid them. By activating Goombella 3 frames before moving
towards a loading zone, the game will fail to check if you are in contact with the loading
zone, allowing you to pass straight through it if done right. Because of this I can walk out-of-bounds along
the perimeter of the room and reach the other loading zone. I can repeat this trick again for the Bristles
fight. Interestingly, the positions of the left loading
zones are actually different between the two seemingly identical rooms, resulting in there
being a small gap between the wall and the loading zone in the Bristles room. We’ve theorized we could maybe squeeze through
this gap without Goombella Buffering to save a few seconds, but we were not successful
in getting Mario’s hitbox through that tiny gap. In order to enter the Shhwonk Sewers, which
hold the Sun and Moon Stones, we need to first take a quiz hosted by this Thwomp. He just gives us some general trivia about
locations and items. We complete the quiz when we get 5 correct
answers. After each answer, there is a chance for the
Thwomp to ask, “Are you sure?”, except for questions 1 and 5 where the Thwomp will
always ask this. In addition to answering correctly, I also
have to manipulate RNG to avoid this extra “Are you sure” dialogue. Since Frankly was never set to leave our party,
he just awkwardly stands next to the Thwomp which I personally think is hilarious. With 5 correct answers, the Thwomp ends the
quiz and moves to reveal the pipe to the Shhwonk Sewers where we’ll at last find the Sun
and Moon Stones. There were several instances where I had to
backtrack to this location, and as a result I was able to dedicate more time to testing
our route. As it turns out, it was fastest to go to the
right towards the Sun Stone first before going to the left. This is ultimately due to the pipe slightly
blocking my path if I were to try to go directly to the left first. In addition, I also grabbed the Multibounce
badge. This badge will allow me to jump on, and therefore
eliminate, each enemy in a battle in a single turn. It will be used in Chapter 3 and Chapter 7. Each of these stones is guarded by a group
of Fuzzies. They only have 3 health so I can quickly take
them out just with a Fire Flower. In previous versions of the TTYD TAS, I have
managed to manipulate an HP Drain item to appear in the audience, which can be used
to deal damage to the mini-boss of the sewers a little bit faster than I normally would. However, due to the Blooper Skip I performed
to get to the Chapter 1 pipe, I am left without any audience to manipulate items from. In addition, it’s interesting to note that
these Fuzzies cannot drop items after the battle, so unfortunately, I can’t get an
HP Drain drop either! I’ll take this time to explain how manipulating
RNG works. RNG is the implemented system for determining
random events occurring. You can think of RNG values as a list of seemingly
random numbers. If I get an outcome that causes me to lose
time, I can simply advance to the next number in the list and I will have effectively changed
the outcome of the random event. Mario makes a random noise every time he jumps. As a result, RNG is updated when I jump. So by jumping a different number of times
while I’m speed swapping, I can effectively fluctuate what RNG value is used when determining
certain events. In this scenario, the Fuzzies in that narrow
hallway are always a pain to deal with, so I can jump a different number of times such
that they do not encounter me and such that I don’t have to move out of my way to avoid
them. For this Gold Fuzzy fight, I can simply double
jump, double headbonk with Goombella, superguard, double jump, and use my last remaining Fire
Flower. When the Fuzzies come to surround the Gold
Fuzzy, their movement is randomized and because of this, the cutscene is actually dynamically
lengthed. This is pretty much identical to the way the
X-Naut ambush cutscene in the prologue works. As a result, I had to brute force wasting
frames in different spots in the battle to result in the shortest cutscene duration I
could manage. To go into more detail on how this manipulation
works, RNG updates to the next value in the list twice per character of text on screen. So if I have a text box with 50 characters,
every 1/60th of a second, the game advances 100 RNG values farther in the list. To take advantage of this, let’s say I only
want to waste 1 frame. Well since there are different text boxes
in the battle, I can waste that 1 frame in different spots in the battle and effectively
get different outcomes. Since I have successfully obtained both the
Sun and Moon stones, I can make my back towards Hooktail’s Castle after passing through
Petalburg. These rooms are super easy to optimize since
I’m going left the entire time. The only trouble arises when enemies are in
my path. In that case, I can just jump a different
number of times to produce scenarios where enemies are not in my way. In addition, I grabbed the POW Block back
there for use in the Red Bones fight in Hooktail’s Castle. In West Petalburg, I can get a small boost
by falling overtop of the small Toad NPC to save a couple frames. In the next room we encounter Koops again,
who met us briefly after talking to the gatekeeper in Petalburg. Koops now wants to join our party to avenge
his father, who supposedly went off into Hooktail’s Castle never to return. It’s interesting to note that I can actually
enter Hooktail’s Castle without the normally required use of Koops through optimizing my
movement between the blue switches, so it’s actually possible to skip Koops. I even did so in previous versions of the
TTYD TAS. However, we will need Koops in order to perform
Blimp Ticket Skip, so I cannot skip him in this TAS. Before we head off to Hooktail’s Castle,
we first have to deal with Koops’s girlfriend, Koopie Koo, who asks that Koops not go to
the dangerous castle. Koops denies her request and stands firm that
he wants to go with Mario. As I make my way left towards the bridge,
I grab a Fire Flower which, in addition to the POW Block from earlier, I’ll need for
the Red Bones battle soon. And as you can see, even though we skipped
the bridge when going to Petalburg, the bridge appeared out of thin air on our way back since
our sequence was updated. Like I mentioned, I can access Hooktail’s
Castle without the use of Koops, and this method is actually faster than using him. Normally you fall very slowly after jumping
on these blue blocks, however if I pause on top of them and then jump first frame, I can
immediately jump towards the other blue block without falling slowly. This gives me a four frame window to hit the
other block, assuming perfect movement. And with that I have revealed the pipe to
Hooktail’s Castle. Whenever we are in the background of a room,
it is always fastest to constantly perform small jumps. For some reason, your jump speed in the background
is greater than your walking speed, and on your jump descent your speed is constantly
decreasing. Therefore, constant, small jumps are best. Upon entering Hooktail’s Castle, we can
just barely make it across the bridge with a speed swap jump. This skips the use of a plane panel, which
saves around 10 seconds or so. Once inside the castle, I quickly grab the
Power Bounce badge, which I would argue is one of the most overpowered badges in the
game. This badge allows you to continuously jump
on enemies so long as you time your A presses correctly. After a set number of jumps that varies by
enemy, you have a chance to get what we call “capped”, which means you are forced to
stop jumping. In this jail cell room we encounter Red Bones. By activating him and jumping shortly after,
I can begin a trick called Red Bones Skip. After the Dull Bones ambush me, if I jump
right before Koops starts talking, I can cause the battle to instantly start. This skips the process of me hammering my
way through the Dull Bones towards the Red Bones. We don’t really know the specifics of why
this works yet unfortunately. I can quickly take the Dull Bones out using
the POW Block, and finish off the Red Bones through a Fire Flower. I choose to level up FP, or Flower Points,
rather than health or badge points. Power Bounces cost 3FP each, and I’ll have
to Power Bounce the Chapter 1 boss 3 times for a total of 9FP. Jumping first frame after leaving a battle
activates what we just call Speed Glitch, where my jump is immediately cancelled, and
our speed is for some reason set to 3, which is 12% faster than speed swapping or 50% faster
than normal walking. In the following room, I ride the purple block
up to the top and go through the loading zone so I can set up for a Goombella Buffer similar
to that from the battles I skipped in Shhwonk Fortress. I activate Goombella, wait 3 frames, and then
move left towards the loading zone to completely bypass it. I can then navigate out of bounds to fall
back inside the room. This skips the process of obtaining the key
for the door in the previous room to save a few seconds. After switching to Koops, I have to shoot
him towards this red switch to raise up a jail cell door so I can pass onto the next
area. If I jump under the small arch in the jail
cell, I can actually obtain speed glitch just like after the Red Bones battle, increasing
my movement speed until I open the door. I open the chest to reveal a key for the black
chest in the previous room, which will give us a new ability. For now though, I have to deal with this maze
room. A ceiling with spikes on it is being lowered
slowly, and I have to escape before the timer runs out. As I make my way towards the door I can constantly
make use of wall pushes to propel myself forward and save a few seconds. Now that I have escaped, I can use the newly
obtained key to unlock the black chest. This new ability will allow us to transform
into a thin sheet of paper, allowing us to squeeze through small spaces. In addition, our hitbox becomes a bit smaller,
which will have certain advantages later in the run. I can now use the paper mode ability to squeeze
back through the jail cell bars. Afterwards, I make my way into the cell to
the left to grab the Attack FX R badge. This badge, when equipped, will produce a
cricket noise, which will actually lower the Chapter 1 boss’s defense stat, allowing
me to actually do damage with my jumps. Next I will have to backtrack a few rooms
to grab a key that is behind another set of jail cell doors. Once I make it back to the Red Bones room,
I can use paper mode to get behind the jail cell bars. On the first frame of unspinning from paper
mode, I can repeatedly jump to delay the unspin animation. When I delay it, I’m actually able to move
faster than if I were to unspin normally. With this key we can unlock a higher level
of the castle. To skip the process of using Koops here, I
can jump on the switch, pause and unpause, and immediately jump off of the switch towards
the block right before the block rises up in the air. During that pause I actually equipped Power
Bounce and Attack FX R. In this room, I can jump on the switch, pause
while going into paper mode, and unpause after the transformation is done to perform what’s
called a “Paper Mode Cutscene Walk”. I’m actually able to cover some distance
while a cutscene is still occurring. I’ll be able to make use of this in Chapter
2 as well. After barely avoiding the Dull Bones I can
skip the use of Koops here by making use of the same switch pausing technique as earlier. I was able to somehow get Koops to fly upwards,
and I’m still not really sure why. Partners in this version of the game are not
programmed well, as shown by this random moonjump. I first head towards the left room to obtain
the key for the right door. In this room I meet Ms. Mowz who is snooping
around for items to steal. Among these items is the key to the right
door. After leaving the room, I would normally encounter
this Dull Bones. However, if I pause frame perfectly I can
actually avoid the battle altogether. In the following room, we normally need to
use the airplane panel to reach the next door, however I can make use of a trick called a
Double Jump. First I shoot out Koops and hold him there
such that I can let Koops go, jump, and trigger the battle via Koops. So now I have entered the battle in midair. Upon leaving the battle, there is a one frame
window where I can jump midair now. As a result, I can just barely make it up
to the top ledge without ever having to use the plane panel, saving a few seconds. To access the next door I’ll need to lower
this block and grab the key. Here’s another example of the great programming
for partners. I’ve now reached the top of Hooktail’s
Castle and have to walk up the spiral towards Hooktail’s Lair. Hooktail’s first phase has 20 health, so
we can first do 11 Power Bounces and then 10 Power Bounces. The first bounce doesn’t do damage because
the cricket sound from the Attack FX R badge only affects all attacks after the first one. Like I said, Power Bounce “caps” are randomly
determined, and they are determined on each jump after a certain number of jumps. So I can perform what’s called a stylish
trick on different jumps to get the RNG value to fluctuate when determining whether or not
to set the cap on a given jump. It’s faster here to get chomped by Hooktail
than to avoid taking damage. For the last phase of the battle I can simply
do 10 Power Bounces to defeat Hooktail. I found it funny that since Frankly was never
intended to be here, his lighting is completely incorrect. So Koops is reunited with his dad, and we
obtain the first Crystal Star with a time of 28:37, which is 45 seconds faster overall
than the previous TAS. Time was lost compared to the last TAS because
I did not perform Koops skip like in my old TAS. However, the cutscene with Koops’s girlfriend
will still occur post-Chapter 1 in the old TAS even though it skipped Koops, so I will
end up making a lot of that time back up. In between each chapter is an intermission
period where you get to play as Peach and Bowser. During Peach’s intermission, we get to understand
a bit about the X-Naut organization. She is being held captive on their base on
the moon, and she will have to navigate to their computer room to send Mario a message
regarding her whereabouts. Funnily enough, since Frankly is never set
to leave, he will follow both Peach and Bowser around the entire time. Once I gain control of Peach, the fastest
method of movement is a variation of speed swapping. If I move up or down for 2 frames instead
of one, I can actually walk for 14 frames in any direction while maintaining the increased
Z-axis speed. Once I make my way into the next room, Peach
meets the X-Naut’s supercomputer TEC. Peach interacts a bit with TEC and then transmits
a message to Mario. For the Bowser intermission, I can use the
same identical movement method as in the Peach intermission. After gaining control of Mario again, I have
to backtrack to Rogueport and visit the Thousand-Year Door to reveal the location of the next Crystal
Star. Before receiving Peach’s email, I manipulated
the Mystery in the bush to land near the bridge. This way, after I close the email and cross
the bridge, I can actually grab the Mystery item without going out of my way. I’ll end up using this Mystery during a
mini-boss fight in Chapter 2. In addition, I also grab the Mushroom here
for use in under a minute from now and in Chapter 2 for a trick called a Paper Mode
Item Jump. To perform a Paper Mode Item Jump, we first
go into paper mode up against this yellow block. On the same frame that I unspin I pause and
consume my Mushroom. This results in me jumping up in the air while
using the item. In addition, because I just unspun from paper
mode, my hitbox hasn’t grown to its normal size from paper mode yet. As a result, I am able to rise above the yellow
block, but when I fall down my hitbox is full-size, allowing me to land on the block. In addition, I used a trick called sort glitch
to actually keep the Mushroom in my inventory after consuming it. This is done by pausing in the item menu,
opening the sort menu, then changing the sort and unpausing on the same frame. This will cause the sort functionality to
still work when you re-open the pause menu. Consuming an item and then changing the sort
such that the item is no longer in the same location in your inventory results in the
item not being consumed. So Professor Frankly explains to us how to
get to the location of the next Crystal Star, and though it may seem like he’s going to
stay inside his house, there’s actually a duplicate Frankly that still follows me
around. To enter the next area, the Boggly Woods,
I’ll need to traverse down a few levels in the sewers to a back room. After making my way into the back room, I
talk with this Puni, a native resident of the Boggly Tree. We soon learn that the X-Nauts have taken
over the home of the Punies, resulting in this Puni, named Punio, being displaced. He leads us to a secret passage that holds
a pipe to the Boggly Woods. With that, I’ve entered Chapter 2 with a
time of 38:48, about 1:10 faster than the old TAS. Punio is actually not set to follow us until
a little bit farther in the chapter, so Frankly still follows us for the time being. Chapter 2 is where the run begins to break
entirely. During Chapter 2, I will actually not be entering
the Great Tree, if you’re familiar with that area. The Great Tree is the home of the Punies,
and, for now, the storyline requires that we go visit the area near the tree. These are the shadow sirens, and they’ve
sided with the X-Nauts to stop Mario from obtaining all the Crystal Stars. For now, they are somehow completely oblivious
to Mario standing right next to them, so we won’t be fighting them until a bit later
in the chapter. I obtain this Honey Syrup to regain FP later
in the chapter. In addition, I encounter this piranha plant
so that I can get down to 1HP. I’ll explain the benefits of this later. Also, it was faster to get first struck by
the piranha plant rather than wait for the plant to stop striking in the overworld before
encountering it. Unfortunately, we have to say goodbye to a
good friend. Frankly, I’m sorry but we can no longer
have you in our party. After entering the pipe into the background,
Punio appears out of thin air and will remain with us for quite a bit as well. Once at the tree, we talk to Punio and soon
realize the tree has been taken over by the X-Nauts. After a bit, Punio recalls that there is a
hidden entrance somewhere. After following him up the tree branch and
talking to him again, he suggests that we go visit Madame Flurrie, who may be able to
help. She lives farther in the Boggly Woods, so
I’ll have to go find her. Conveniently, I get to see a cutscene with
her and her house so that I can locate it. Once back in the foreground, there is a two
frame window where I can jump off of the pipe before Punio starts talking, saving a bit
of time. Once I make my way up the ramp, I can use
a Paper Mode Item Jump identical to the one after Chapter 1 to make my way up top without
using the normally intended plane panel. In addition, I also used the sort glitch to
keep the honey syrup in my inventory. In the following room, I can go into paper
mode behind this tree, unspin, and jump. The increase in my hitbox when I unspin will
cause Mario to get pushed by the tree through the back wall. This allows me to enter the pipe immediately
rather than navigate to the right and go through the hole in the wall. And with that we’ve reached Flurrie’s
house. Once inside Flurrie’s house, I need to save
and soft reset the game. Soft resetting can be done by pressing and
holding B, X, and Start. As a result, my current file will be saved
and I can return to the main menu. From here, I need to copy the file over to
a new file. And this brings me to why I had to insert
the memory card from the beginning of the game. I will actually need to return to Flurrie’s
house later in order to obtain a state called Jump Storage that can actually traverse between
different save files. I will have to save in a later state, load
the other save at Flurrie’s house, perform Jump Storage, die, load the later save file,
and execute a Super Jump with the jump storage. I’ll explain Jump Storage and Super Jumps
as they happen later in the run, so sorry for the ambiguity now. For now though, we’ve encountered Madame
Flurrie behind her bedroom door. She doesn’t want to come out because she
has lost her precious necklace and, without it, she can’t be seen in public apparently. As a result, Mario agrees to go hunt down
the necklace so that Flurrie can come let them into the Great Tree. Conveniently, I get to watch a cutscene that
shows that the Shadow Sirens that we passed by earlier actually had the necklace all along. I’ll have to backtrack my way towards the
Shadow Sirens and encounter them in order to retrieve the necklace. Sadly, there’s no way to pass through the
wall near the pipe like I did when going towards the pipe before. As a result I have to go all the way over
to the right and use paper mode to pass through the gap in the wall. While doing so, I activate sort glitch and
consume a Mushroom to bring my HP up a bit. If I did not use the mushroom, I would actually
end up dying by falling into water later. It may seem like this negated the need for
getting down to 1 HP earlier via the Piranha Plant, but I assure you I’ll explain this
later when it becomes relevant. On my way back, I can use a Paper Mode cutscene
walk similar to the one in Hooktail’s Castle in order to activate this switch while still
leaving the room. That switch will raise the airplane panel
in that room. I make sure to wait a certain amount of time
before reaching the loading zone, otherwise the cutscene will occur but the plane panel
will not actually be raised when I re-enter the room. Raising that airplane panel is faster because
when I pass through that room again, I can now use the raised airplane panel to reach
the top ledge by the loading zone without having to perform the Paper Mode Item Jump. I finally encounter the Shadow Sirens in an
attempt to get Flurrie’s necklace back. Instead of taking them out in one turns like
previous TASes, we found that it was actually a bit faster to spread attacks out across
two separate turns in order to avoid using the Earth Tremor special ability. This ability can deal a lot of damage in one
turn but takes a long time to execute. Instead, I jump on Marilyn twice, since she
has the most health. I then Power Shell with Koops to attack all
of them. From there I need to superguard Vivian and
Marilyn. Since Beldam will be defeated without superguarding,
and the animation for superguarding her is slower than not superguarding, it’s faster
to just use a regular guard. From there I manipulated the Mystery item
to turn into a Thunder Rage. From there, another Power Shell from Koops
will knock the trio out. On the first frame after leaving the battle
I can jump to gain a bit of distance towards the necklace. After picking it up, I need to go to the right,
but I can make use of the game’s respawn system to get me there a faster way. I can go to the left, wedge myself between
the wall and the tree, and use the tree’s hitbox to push me through the left wall. As a result, Mario will respawn from where
he entered the room, which is conveniently the loading zone on the right. Since I used the Paper Mode Cutscene Walk
to raise the airplane panel earlier, I can use the plane ability for the first time. For the most part, the most optimal method
of movement in the plane ability is nosediving for 1 frame and pulling back for 2 frames. However, when I get towards the end, it’s
faster to do a bit more of a nosedive and then pull back all the way. Again, to get to Flurrie’s house, I can
abuse the hitbox of the tree to push me through the wall near the pipe. With the necklace, we can now meet Flurrie
face-to-face and convince her to join our party. Flurrie’s Gale Force will become a very
useful attack, as it can blow away all enemies from a battle within a single turn. However, that’s not the main reason we obtain
her. We actually need Flurrie to perform a glitch
called Teleporter Room Early. There is a teleporter in the Rogueport Sewers
that can warp us to the X-Naut’s secret base on the moon. In normal circumstances, we are only supposed
to access the locked teleporter on our departure from Chapter 7. However, SolidifiedGaming and I developed
a method for accessing the teleporter before Chapter 7 with the use of Flurrie. When you press X with Flurrie, Mario will
begin to hold Flurrie and squeeze her to let a burst of wind out. This ability will have certain side-effects
that allow for Teleporter Room Early to occur. I’ll explain the technical side of the trick
as it happens a bit later. Now that I’ve obtained Flurrie, I need to
backtrack towards the Great Tree so that Flurrie can help us find the secret tree entrance. While going through the wall, I use a Honey
Syrup to replenish FP for later fights. Going back through the plane panel room the
second time, it’s faster to stay in the foreground than to go to the back ledge. The only reason I went to the back ledge the
previous time was in order to hit the airplane panel switch back there. So, I’m supposed to bring Flurrie to the
Great Tree, or at least that’s the intended way. This is where the linearity of the game starts
to break entirely. I am going to skip the majority of the Great
Tree. As a result, Punio will follow us until I
get Yoshi. I do, however, need the Super Boots, which
are accessible near the end of the Great Tree. Rather than complete the Great Tree normally,
we discovered a work-around that would allow us to skip most of the Great Tree and still
obtain the Super Boots. In order to begin exploiting this work-around,
I first need to make my way back towards the Rogueport Sewers. Once back in the sewers, I need to make my
way to the Teleporter Room. I will enter the X-Naut base, advance the
game to a Chapter 7 state, and then go back to the Great Tree. As a result, the entrance will be unlocked,
and the room containing the Super Boots will be accessible through the use of another trick
that I will explain later. To get through the following 2 rooms, I can
use the Hazard Respawn Glitch to land in the center of the room after jumping first frame
when entering the room. This is the exact reason why I had to use
my Mushroom after leaving Flurrie’s house for the first time. After making my way to the western part of
the sewers, I now want to go up a few levels. On my way to the left, I use Flurrie to reveal
the pipe to the Pit of 100 Trials room, which is attached to the Thousand-Year Door room. It is faster to reveal it now as I pass by
it since I already have Flurrie out because I will have a different partner out when I
pass by it the next time. In the next room, I confirmed that it is actually
possible to jump from the slanted portion of the pipe onto the save block. I will now perform Teleporter Room Early. I first jam myself underneath the low ceiling
of this water fountain in order to obtain a state called Paper Glitch, where it appears
as if I am in paper mode, though I am walking at full speed. I then open the bar door, and Mario acts as
if he is in paper mode and slowly walks inside, stopping outside due to paper mode’s slower
speed. I can then open the door and press X to use
Flurrie’s ability several times. Repeatedly pressing X while opening a door
causes Mario to slide towards the camera, and that actually allows him to pass through
the normally solid wall around the teleporter room. From there it’s as easy as activating the
teleporter and warping to the X-Naut base. I specifically say the X-Naut base and not
Chapter 7 because the game currently does not process that we are in a Chapter 7 state. Luckily, there is a sequence trigger I can
activate a few rooms away. There is a red note that contains a password
to take a quiz in Chapter 7, and reading this note will actually update your state to mid-Chapter
7. After simply reading the note, I immediately
leave and make my way back towards the Great Tree to obtain the Super Boots. I now need to explain the super jump. During certain scenarios, we can put Mario
in a state in which he has begun a jump but is set to have not landed on the ground yet. As a result, if we gain upward velocity through
a small step, for example, we can infinitely jump upwards. I can use this to bypass the barrier preventing
me from accessing the East sewers from here. To set this up, I need to switch to Koops
and shoot him to the left such that he hits the wall and leaves his shell. I can then re-open the teleporter door while
using Koops. Keeping him far enough away from me delays
his starting animation. This delay, after re-opening the door, causes
Mario to jump on Koops for one frame, flagging that he started a jump, but never unsets that
flag. From there, I can go up a step to gain Y-velocity
and perform a Super Jump. In the meantime I have actually been carefully
manipulating RNG in order to obtain a 1 in 46,000 scenario to occur. The single most overpowered badge in the game
is the Mega Rush, and I just manipulated 2 to occur at the same time in this room by
only wasting 2/10 of a second. Items and badges in this game can randomly
appear in battles, and each enemy has a list of which items and badges it can drop. Luckily, Hammer Bros can drop Mega Rushes. Each Mega Rush appearance is about a 1 in
214 chance and battle RNG, including badge and item holds, are determined at the same
time, so effectively the chance for both Mega Rushes appearing is 1 in 46,000. I have a much more detailed video on my channel
explaining how this was done with the tremendous help of jdaster and trivial171. Please feel free to check that explanation
out and visit jdaster or trivial’s social media links in the description of this video. Mega Rush badges boost your attack damage
by 5 for each Mega Rush equipped. That’s right, you can actually stack Mega
Rushes. So, after obtaining both of these, my base
attack will increase by 10. With these newly acquired badges, I’ll need
to increase the number of badge points that I can use. For some reason, Mega Rushes only cost 1BP
each, so they are not very costly. Once I leave the battle, I grab a Mushroom
from the block. This mushroom will help me fill up my inventory,
which is a requirement for Palace Skip. Afterwards, I make my way back towards Boggly
Woods. There *is* a warp pipe in the sewers that
can take me directly to the Great Tree, however it requires the use of the Super Boots, which
we don’t have yet. In fact, that’s what I need to go get right
now. To reiterate, I want to be in a Chapter 7
state when obtaining the Super Boots because when I enter the Great Tree now, I will not
encounter any cutscenes pertaining to the Chapter 2 storyline. Likewise, all areas of the tree will now be
unlocked and accessible. We estimate that this simply saves a few minutes. You may be wondering why I didn’t utilize
this strategy in the previous TAS. Ultimately, the main constraint is our sequence
position. If we were to use this same technique to skip
the majority of the Great Tree, then we would be stuck. Yoshi is a required partner due to Palace
Skip, and before the era of Blimp Ticket Skip, we could only access Chapter 3 by talking
to a Don Pianta. This character can only give us said Blimp
Ticket if we are in a post-Chapter 2 and pre-Chapter 3 state. Due to these constraints, there is no known
way for us to obtain this necessary sequence position while skipping the Great Tree. Luckily for this TAS, I can perform Blimp
Ticket Skip to completely negate the need for the blimp ticket and therefore the required
post-Chapter 2 and pre-Chapter 3 state. Right before entering the Great Tree in the
background, I swapped partners to Goombella. I’ll need to perform a Goombella Buffer
just like in Chapter 1 to get past a loading zone. The room I’m about the enter normally contains
a fight with the Jabbis, a rival species in the tree. However, due to our Chapter 7 state, they’re
not there, but their hive is still blocking the doorway. Luckily there is a way to get out-of-bounds. I first get past the loading zone with a Goombella
Buffer. I then go into paper mode and go up against
the wall. I then pause, unspin, and jump on the same
frame, and un-pause. As a result, I will be pushed past the back
wall of the loading zone and get out-of-bounds. From there I can simply maneuver around the
edge of the room to get into the right loading zone. And with that I’ve reached the Super Boots. The Super Boots will allow me to do a ground
pound to break panels beneath me. This will make literally 0 sense, but I need
to go to Chapter 6 next, specifically Poshley Heights, and the only way of accessing that
area of the game is through the blue warp pipe rooms in the Rogueport Sewers, and those
pipes need to be unlocked with ground pounds. It’s a funny thing to note that normally
you are supposed to visit Toadette for 4 different upgrades, but this is actually the only time
we will ever see her in this run. In the previous room, I can use a Goombella
Buffer to quickly get to the lower level, skipping the use of the ground pound here. Grabbing the Super Boots actually updated
the game to a Chapter 2 state, so after re-entering the room with the Jabbi hive, the cutscene
with the Jabbis starts. We immediately get kicked out of the room
because there are no Punies in our party to fight against the Jabbies. To explain the weird routing a little further,
I will need to explain the basis for Blimp Ticket Skip. As you have maybe guessed already, I will
need to make use of Jump Storage and the infinite jump that we call the Super Jump. When I performed the previous super jump in
the sewers, I didn’t really explain the scenario that allows for Jump Storage in the
first place. To set up Jump Storage, we need two things:
The first is a cutscene with a position-based trigger, and the second is either Yoshi or
Koops. Since we don’t have Yoshi, obviously Koops
is our only option. In North Rogueport, where the blimp to Glitzville
is, we know of a method of getting out of bounds to land onto the train tracks from
the top of the stairs. From there, the train tracks out-of-bounds
can give us Y-velocity. So the only question is when is there a position-based
cutscene that occurs at the top of the stairs in North Rogueport? And the answer is the post-Chapter 6 Peach
email cutscene after coming off of the train. As a result, we will need to complete the
end of Chapter 6, complete the intermission, and enter the cutscene afterwards to begin
the process of Blimp Ticket Skip. Like I mentioned, in order to get to Chapter
6 in our current state, I’ll need to backtrack to the Rogueport sewers and use the blue warp
pipes to reach Poshley Heights. Just like earlier, I’ll have to use Hazard
Respawn Glitch to get on top of the giant blocks in the middle of these rooms. After reaching the left room, I can use the
newly acquired Super Boots to hit the switch to unlock the Poshley Heights warp pipe. After hitting the switch I can immediately
fall back into the water to respawn back on top of the block. It’s unfortunately not possible to jump
from the switch to the block itself because the block is too tall. Once inside Poshley Heights, I have to make
my way towards the save block located a few rooms up. In order to complete Chapter 6, I’ll actually
have to perform a Super Jump inside the Poshley Sanctum. In order to get Jump Storage, our only available
option is to make use of the save file that I created a lot earlier in Chapter 2. So I can just save my file, soft reset the
game, and load up the other file. Also a fun piece of trivia, the beginning
of the Japanese version of the title screen music is actually different than the other
versions of the game… Listen carefully and you’ll notice. Upon loading the file, I walk towards the
cutscene and activate Koops such that Mario begins jumping to hit Koops for one frame. This starts Mario’s jump and sets that flag,
but never unsets the flag. Therefore, we have established Jump Storage
and we will be able to perform a Super Jump as long as we get some Y-velocity. And here is why we had to use the Piranha
to get to 1HP. In order to bring jump storage over to the
other file, we need to die in this file. Dying in the background can be very slow,
so it is fastest to get into peril, and then only have to fall in the background once. With our newly established Jump Storage, I
can simply load up the Poshley Heights file and continue on my way towards the Poshley
Sanctum. It’s important to note, however, that I
cannot jump until I want to perform the Super Jump. Attempting to jump normally will result in
the game resetting the flag that allows for the Super Jump to occur in the first place. As a result, I have to do constant walking
speed swaps identical to those from the Peach and Bowser intermissions. I still can’t get over how ridiculous it
looks for Punio to be walking around Poshley Heights. He’ll still stick around with us for a little
while, so I hope you’re getting used to him by now. So this cutscene in the Sanctum makes 0 sense
given the current context. The Shadow Sirens somehow found this Crystal
Star, except where is Vivian? And who is this cloaked guy? Anyway, they go and steal a fake version of
the Crystal Star, and I have to venture into the background to access another room containing
the real Crystal Star. With my jump storage, I can simply walk towards
the back step, step up to get Y-velocity, and then perform a Super Jump to get to the
top left. Up top is a switch which reveals a pipe that
allows me to access the background. Once I enter the back room, I can simply walk
up to the Crystal Star and grab it. On my way back, interestingly, there’s a
one frame window where I can jump or hammer before talking to Pennington. It’s not slower to do, so I decided to do
it for fun. Afterwards, I move onto the Peach intermission. Similarly to Professor Frankly, since Punio
is not normally set to be apart of this cutscene, he is never set to despawn. As a result he will follow Peach and Bowser
around the entire time. Towards the end of the intermission, Peach
sends Mario an email, and it’s this e-mail that will occur after I leave the train in
North Rogueport that will allow me to obtain Jump Storage and therefore perform Blimp Ticket
Skip. For the most part, Bowser’s speed is the
same whether he jumps or just walks normally, so there’s not too much optimization that
is necessary here. For some reason, Bowser is really far behind
us and is only discovering the Chapter 3 Crystal Star in Rawk Hawk’s training room. After getting off the train, I can start to
set up Blimp Ticket Skip by first getting jump storage. I first shoot Koops out such that when he
returns back to the left, he’ll be far away enough for his animation to be delayed by
a frame when I press X again. As a result, Mario attempts to jump on Koops
for exactly one frame, giving me jump storage. From there I can maneuver to the edge of the
platform, pause and unpause to quickly get out of paper mode, and using the temporarily
smaller hitbox of paper mode I can move up along the railing just long enough to land
out of bounds. I can then simply super jump straight into
the background towards the blimp. With that, I’ve now entered Glitzville. For a more detailed explanation of Blimp Ticket
Skip, I have a video that I’ll link in the description. In Glitzville I’ll need to work my way through
a series of fights. In order to begin fighting, I actually need
to leave Glitzville and re-enter via the blimp again. This is because the game is detecting that
this is my first time visiting Glitzville. However, because of the fact that I am in
a post Chapter 6 state, I actually won’t be able to watch a cutscene that would normally
give me access to the fights. Leaving and re-entering fixes this issue and
allows me to access the back area of the Glitz Pit. It’s funny to note that even though I don’t
have the Blimp Ticket, Mario somehow shows the ticket to the attendant. This does not work in Rogueport though. We believe that since the game assumes you
need the ticket to visit Glitzville in the first place, then there’s no reason for
the game to check it when going back to Rogueport. Interestingly, the cutscene of the blimp arriving
in Rogueport is slower in the Japanese version compared to the other versions. The blimp actually flies at a slower speed,
resulting in an 8 second longer cutscene. Now that the flags are correctly set, I can
walk towards the back area of the Glitz Pit and I’ll be on my way to obtain Yoshi. Normally you can’t access a door if a guard
is blocking it, however due to our post-Chapter 6 state, the door is unlocked. I can still access the door by facing away
from the guard. By talking with Jolene the manager of the
Glitz Pit, I set up the first fight. For each fight, the game assigns you a random
condition that you have to meet in order to advance to the next fight. Sometimes it could be “Don’t use your
hammer” or “Let your enemy damage you 3 times”. Randomized conditions can be awful to deal
with sometimes, however I can simply advance RNG to get a condition that doesn’t impede
on our route. For most of the fights, including this Goomba
fight, I’ll just be using Fright Masks to quickly end each fight. I actually need a few additional Fright Masks
later in the run, so I can make use of the audience’s item throwing functionality. The game can randomly determine that the audience
will throw an item at Mario. Each audience member type has a different
list of items that they can throw, and luckily Shy Guys can throw Fright Masks. Unfortunately, this element of the audience
is very tough to understand at the moment, so I just had to brute force for this spawn
to occur. As a result, more time can theoretically be
saved with these item spawns. I’ll have to fight 9 more rounds before
I can obtain Yoshi. After arranging the fight, I can just mess
around in the locker room while waiting for the guard to come get me. I grab a second Fright Mask here. These Dull Bones can all be taken out quickly
using the Multibounce badge, so rather than consume a Fright Mask I use Multibounce instead. I wasn’t able to get a suitable brute force
scenario for a few fights in a row, so as a result I’ll end up grabbing the last Fright
Mask I need during the second to last fight. Finally, during this Bandit fight I manage
to get the last Fright Mask. Normally, another character named Grubba is
supposed to be on the Gameboy screen when arranging fights with Mario, however since
we are in a post-Chapter 3 state, Jolene appears instead. As a result, when Jolene arranges a fight
for Sir Swoop, she ends up talking to herself. So these are the armored harriers, and they have
impenetrable armour. The only way to defeat them is using Yoshi’s
Gulp ability. As a result, it’s intended that Mario runs
away from the fight when encountering the harriers for the first time. While in the fight, I get down to 1 HP in
order to activate the Mega Rush badges for Chapter 7 fights. Sadly, because you are normally supposed to
have the Yoshi egg follow you, the game removes any follower in your party. In my case, this means that we have to say
goodbye to Punio for good now. With that, a white Yoshi has hatched out of
thin air. When naming the Yoshi, you can immediately
press the start button and the name will default to Yoshi. The Yoshi can spawn as 7 different colors,
however this is based off of the duration between picking up the egg in Chapter 3 and
hatching it. Because we never actually picked up the egg
in the first place, the duration is based off of the game’s global timer. To reiterate, I need Yoshi in order to perform
Palace Skip in Chapter 8, so now that I’ve obtained Yoshi, I can immediately leave Glitzville
and head towards Chapter 7. In order to reach the last chapter of the
game, I need to be in a post-Chapter 7 state. This therefore means that I need to complete
Chapter 7 entirely. Yoshi’s movement speed is 50% faster than
Mario’s walking speed. That, in addition to the time it takes to
hop on and off Yoshi, means that If Mario takes 77 or more frames to reach the destination
in a room, then it’s faster to use Yoshi. If it takes between 43 and 76 frames when
using Mario, then I have to make sure to test both using and not using Yoshi to see which
is fastest. While talking to the blimp attendant, I make
sure to manipulate RNG for a random event in the sewers. When I head back down into the sewers, I manipulated
a Mega Rush to appear in the Hammer Bros. battle. I need a third Mega Rush in order to take
out the Chapter 7 boss in 1 turn and in order to make the Chapter 8 boss battles go by a
lot faster. In order to get back up top and head back
to Chapter 7, I can again jump from the slanted pipe to the save block. Since I already unlocked the teleporter room
door, I can simply walk in and warp back to the X-Naut Fortress. In order to reach the Chapter 7 boss, I’ll
have to collect 3 Key Cards that are scattered throughout the fortress. The first one that I want to get is located
in the leftmost room on this level. This first tile room has a path of certain
tiles that I must follow, otherwise I’ll get electrocuted. On my way out, I grab the Sleepy Sheep to
help fill up my inventory for Palace Skip later. Once back in the hallway, I want to head towards
the room containing the red note. This way I will switch to a Chapter 7 state. If I were to skip this, then one of the necessary
Key Cards will not spawn in Grodus’s room. With my newly updated Chapter 7 state, I can
head into Grodus’s room and grab the second Card Key. After returning to the hallway, I begin setting
up for a trick called Elevator Skip. Normally I have to go to a higher level in
the fortress and complete a quiz in order to unlock an elevator, however I can completely
skip the quiz. I first lure the Elite X-Naut to the left
and encounter him. I switch to Koops and I manipulate an item
to drop after the battle. I need this item to be farther to the left,
so I can shoot Koops out, have him bring the Mushroom over on his ricochet, and activate
the elevator panel to cancel the item acquisition sequence. By getting Goombella far enough away from
me, her animation takes an additional frame to occur. I can then grab the mushroom while activating
Goombella. As a result, I can keep the text from Goombella
opened, and tossing the item away allows enemies to begin walking around the room again. Right now Mario can’t move, however I manipulated
the Z-Yux to hit Mario from far away. I had to bring the mushroom far enough left
to be in range of the Z-Yux’s zone. The process of getting Goombella far away
enough and then activating her before grabbing an item is called a Delayed Goombella Buffer,
and we’ll see this again for Palace Skip in Chapter 8. Once I leave the battle, I will be able to
walk around while still having the text boxes on screen. We call this state Text Storage. Once out of the battle, I can switch to Yoshi
and push him through the elevator walls. When Yoshi begin to fall, I can close out
of the text box. Closing out of the text box resets a flag
that keeps track of whether a partner ability is being used. By resetting this flag I can activate Yoshi
while he’s falling. This causes me to warp to his Y-position,
allowing me to drop through the floor to reach the next level of the fortress. After completing the next tile room, I’ve
collected the third and final Card Key. On my way out, I activate Yoshi right before
the HP Drain item lands on me. This actually ends up giving me Jump Storage,
setting me up for a Super Jump in the last room of the chapter. Once I use paper mode to get through the red
wall, I can step up onto the conveyor belt, giving me Y-velocity, allowing me to perform
a Super Jump. This allows me to skip going into the background
once. After grabbing the Card Key for the door in
this room, I have to head back into the background and reach the pipe to get onto the higher
level. I activate the blue switch as soon as the
platform begins moving back to the left. If I were to press it earlier, the platform
would start moving left right before the cutscene ends. It actually ends up moving too far away for
me to reach it in the first cycle, so I would have to wait for the platform to move left
and then back to the right. After putting the Card Key in, I can now fight
against Magnus von Grapple 2.0. This is the second version of Lord Crump’s
robot, the first of which I’m normally supposed to encounter at the end of Chapter 2. Since I’m in peril, I can just deal 6 Power
Bounces and take out Magnus in one turn. In order to be able to equip all 3 Mega Rushes,
Power Bounce, and Multibounce, I chose to level up BP. With the final Crystal Star, I can now access
the Palace of Shadows. Just to remind you, I only collected a total
of 3 Crystal Stars, one from Chapter 1, one from Chapter 6, and now this one from Chapter
7. When we go to enter the Palace of Shadows,
the game doesn’t check to see if you have all 7 Crystal Stars, rather it just checks
to see if you are in a post-Chapter 7 state. In order to leave the fortress, I have to
first talk to TEC on the lower level of the fortress. During this sequence, TEC explains to Mario
that Grodus took Peach to the Palace of Shadows. He asks that Mario and crew rescue her and
tell her “Thank you” on TEC’s behalf. TEC is running on backup power and shuts down
shortly after talking to Mario. Mario is now able to access the teleporter,
so I’ll have to make my way back up to the second level of the fortress. After returning back to the sewers, we meet
back up with Professor Frankly, who explains that we must make our way down towards the
Thousand-Year Door in order to access the Palace of Shadows. I need to continue filling up my inventory,
so I grab the Gradual Syrup and the Slow Shroom while making my way towards the pipe. One thing that a lot of people are quick to
suggest is that if we were able to get out of bounds, could I simply walk behind the
Thousand-Year Door and enter Chapter 8 early? There is no loading zone behind the door. The only way to access the last chapter is
by visiting the Thousand-Year Door in a post-Chapter 7 state. Mario and his crew have reached the final
area of the game. The Palace of Shadows is the resting place
of the Shadow Queen, the final boss of the game. I quickly grab this stopwatch to fill up my
inventory further. Mario’s hitbox in paper mode is just small
enough to allow him to pass straight through these two Gold Bill Blasters. It’s possible to just barely jump around
the fire bar at the end of the room. There’s another method to skip these bars
that makes bypassing the fire a lot easier for real-time speedrunners, but it takes several
seconds to set up. This next mini-boss is Dark Bones. Similarly to Red Bones, I have to walk up
to him to trigger him, and I’m then ambushed by a bunch of Dry Bones. For some reason, I cannot perform the same
skip to enter the battle immediately as I could for Red Bones. Instead I have to hammer some of the Dry Bones
away and encounter Dark Bones normally. I can use Flurrie’s Gale Force to kill all
of the Dry Bones immediately. When leveling up, I just upgrade my FP. I don’t necessarily need more, but it’s
faster than switching over to health or BP. Again, I
can just use paper mode to squeeze in between the Bill Blasters. To fill up the last slot in my inventory,
I grab the Jammin’ Jelly in this hub room. I now have to go through a sequence of rooms,
where the correct door is designated with a lit up torch. Failing to pick the correct door will result
in my arriving back in the hub room. In the background is the Riddle Tower, and
we are normally supposed to go there after fighting Gloomtail. However, Palace Skip completely negates the
need to visit the Riddle Tower. I will now be performing Palace Skip. I first encounter the left Ember and manipulate
an item to drop afterwards. The quickest way for me to end this fight
is to use the Showstopper ability, which is available after defeating Magnus 2.0. With the dropped item, I can delayed Goombella
Buffer into it. This will give me text storage, and I can
use the other Ember to get unstuck. Having a full inventory means I was able to
toss the item back out into the room. As a result, when I leave this Ember battle,
I can perform another Delayed Goombella Buffer into the item, giving me double text storage. I do have to be careful to keep the two different
text boxes on different parts of the message, or else closing one of the text boxes will
result in the other one closing as well. I want to be able to keep one open while closing
the other, so I’ll have to keep them staggered. I make my way to the left, swap to Yoshi,
and push him out of bounds. By closing out of one of the text boxes, I
can use Yoshi mid-air and teleport to his Y position. Luckily I can use a spring that’s always
loaded in the room below to land back onto the seam of the room. I can then use the other text box to perform
another Yoshi Teleport and use the other Ember to stop me from falling under the floor. I can then perform a Double Jump after this
battle, just like I did in Hooktail’s Castle. As a result, I’m able to just barely make
it onto a platform containing a loading zone to another room. This room contains a chest with a key which,
luckily, updates my sequence position. When I leave the room, the normally black
area will spawn. This entire process skipped the need to go
to Chapter 4, Chapter 5, and most of Chapter 6, saving around an hour. There’s a much easier version that can be
performed in real-time speedruns, however, since I skipped the Ultra Hammer, I had to
use the first discovered method of Palace Skip. I find it really satisfying to know that the
original version of Palace Skip is now technically the fastest for this route. It’s a nice trip down memory lane. After taking the airplane panel to unlock
the last door, Mario and crew finally reach Grodus’s Lair. I spend one turn getting into peril. After defeating one of the Grodus-X’s guarding
Grodus, I can deal 5 Power Bounces to take him out. Since I’m already in peril, I can quickly
do 6 Power Bounces to take out Bowser. On the following turn I can take Kammy Koopa
out with 4 Power Bounces. I again level up FP since I don’t have to
scroll over to choose it like I would for HP or BP. So normally, I am supposed to head to the
right to go to the Shadow Queen, however we have kept something secret for a few months. We have an alternate route for getting to
the Shadow Queen. I first have to head two rooms to the left. I first use the spring to go up. Then I hop back on Yoshi and land on the spring
twice. Since the spring is still moving the second
time I land, I can actually obtain Jump Storage by hopping off of Yoshi right as I hit the
spring. Then I need to go into Paper Mode and activate
the airplane panel while still in paper mode. Staying in paper mode will allow me to stay
on top of the doorframe to the right. I then have to get far enough into the wall
such that I can unspin, restart paper mode by pausing and unpausing, step up onto a higher
level of the doorframe, and perform a Super Jump. This will allow me to rise to the higher part
of the room which if you remember is where the Ember was. This room is connected to Gloomtail’s room,
and entering it in the game’s current state causes Mario to warp to the Shadow Queen. Gloomtail’s room is actually used for a
cutscene involving Frankly after the Shadow Queen darkens the world. This therefore allowed me to skip a major
part of the cutscene, saving approximately 2 and a
half minutes. Once inside the Shadow Queen fight, I first
need to get into peril, which can be done in one turn by manipulating the audience to
hit me twice. This ended up being pretty easy to brute force
luckily. Afterwards, I can deal 3 Power Bounces to
start the next sequence of the fight. The Shadow Queen will now become invulnerable
and I have to hit her 3 separate times in order to end the fight. I first jump to count for one of these three
required hits. I bring Flurrie out so that she can tank all
3 attacks from the Shadow Queen. Interestingly, you can’t superguard any
of the Shadow Queen’s attacks on the Japanese version of the game. I also manipulated a Boo to hit the Shadow
Queen at the end of her turn. This ends up counting as a second hit. Luckily, this means that I only need to hit
the Shadow Queen one more time and the fight will end. I find it hilarious that because so much of
the game is skipped at this point, this ending cutscene and most of the characters therein
may make absolutely 0 sense to some people. Now that I am in the final phase of the fight,
I can get into peril in one turn through the Shadow Queen’s small hand attack. I have to take her out in two turns, so I’ll
do 6 Power Bounces on the first turn. To skip a long sequence of dialogue from the
Shadow Queen, I can use a Sleepy Sheep to make her and her hands fall asleep. Then I can finish her with 5 bounces on the
second turn. With those final Power Bounces, the Shadow
Queen has been defeated. With only 4 partners, 2 paper mode abilities,
1 Boot upgrade, 0 hammer upgrades, and 3 Crystal Stars, Mario has managed to save the world. The game never checks to see if you obtained
all the normally mandatory partners, so this cutscene just shows all of them. With my final input, the TAS timing ends at
2:00:58.23 I’d again like to thank the following people:
SolidifiedGaming, MuzYoshi, Vynneve, jdaster, trivial171, Masterjun. You all do amazing work and I could not have
completed this TAS without you all. Thank you, the viewer, for watching this upload. Thank you to everyone who watched the development
of this TAS over on my Twitch channel. I highly appreciate your support, and it keeps
me motivated to make more of these in the future. Thank you all for watching and have a good
one!
I know this is a bit off topic, but can anyone link me some information on how to make a TAS run? I'd like to put together a TAS for Conker's Bad Fur Day. I know nothing about TAS runs, other than that I've watched quite a few.
tasmalChamp
Oh man!! Just under a minute from sub 2 hours!
Awesome run! I remember watching the old 4+ hour TAS several years ago, this is such a huge improvement. Not just because of the time, but also because of the great commentary, and the removal of that obnoxious ticking noise that everybody thought it was funny to pretend wasn't there :P
Can't believe I missed the stream yesterday! I set a reminder and everything :((( good stuff from THE TASMALLEO.