The Hardest Challenge in Mario Kart 64 Was Just Achieved After 24 years!

it finally happened for the first time in 24 years one person holds every record in mario kart 64. the road to this monumental achievement was filled with intense battles and new discoveries that led to the biggest record frenzy since the game's release it wasn't all grit and determination along the way there were new strategies and game-breaking tech that contributed to one player holding all the records this is the story of mario kart 64's first perfect champion [Music] [Music] i'd like to preface this by acknowledging that some of you will be upset about the hoarding and i do understand your frustrations but for this video we'll be looking at the timeline of records and the strat discoveries that went into this achievement the hoarding was covered in my previous documentary so if you're just hearing about it or want more information please go watch the final chapter of that video with that out of the way let's dive into it so what does it take to be champion the distinguished title of champ in mario kart 64 is awarded to the player that generally has the most world records with some variations it's calculated by an equation that factors in your total number of world records and your average finish on tracks which makes it possible to have fewer records but still be champ in some cases back in late 2020 there were two players battling for the title matthias roostermeyer and dan burbank matthias would take the title back after the hoarding and would hold on to it for almost 200 days but dan slowly built up records and laid claim to it once again this was dan's longest reign during that period which started on january 7th 2021 and the battle raged as expected with each player grinding tracks for small optimizations across the many turns and jumps but all of that would change on march 14th 2021 back in the early 2000s there was a record submitted by troy ullman on luigi raceway that had what the community called the mystery boost as troy popped a shroom for the final off-road corner something bizarre happened despite following the same path as his ghost he managed to gain a significant amount of time so the question became how this wouldn't be answered for almost 20 years but on march 14th 2021 drew weatherton and forest 64 released a video that explained precisely what was going on and it all stemmed from an accidental discovery on february 20th a custom mario kart track designer by the name of dead hamster posted in the discord that he found something that he doubted a use would ever be found for while driving on a custom track he jumped to a section that was supposed to be marked as off-road upon landing two things were noticeable the first is that his speed wasn't reduced and the second is that the particles from the tires being off-road were not being kicked up it was from this event that force and weatherton based their investigation and with some help from micro 500 they discovered that the particles and the speed not being reduced were actually the same thing as you touch different sections of track the game adds a value to each tire based on what type of ground it's touching and depending on what terrain it's in contact with the speed of that tire is altered which affects the overall speed of the cart the hitbox of each tire is offset slightly from that of the cart this means that if you get close to a wall you can have the tire clip through and since there's nothing on the other side the tire is marked as touching nothing as the game thinks it's above the water below the track this state is referred to as null tires and while it's active the tires affected will ignore the terrain they're on and stop kicking up particles when on off-road surfaces it doesn't last forever as once you jump to start a mini turbo or drive over uneven ground the tires will be marked properly again so what did this discovery mean for non-shortcut time trials runners were aware that it could happen on certain tracks before weatherton's video it just added a better understanding of what was happening while null tires does add some time save to a few tracks it wasn't the biggest strategy that the video revealed for that we need to look at bowser's castle while looking for an application of null tires they found that it could happen over the bridge but the position required was so precise that it wasn't thought to be viable instead they discovered a new strat for maintaining speed around corners while doing a mini turbo so it's time we explained the most utilized mechanic in the game mini turbos occur by doing a jump then toggling the control stick to one side so you can build up a speed boost that is released when you stop the drift you know when to release it based on the color of the smoke coming from your tires and it adds about 10 units to your max speed until it wears off when taking a mini turbo around a sharp corner you will lose some speed due to the angle of the turn but weatherton and forest found a new method to preserve speed if you jump when the mini turbo boost is applied going around a corner it will delay that speed loss and turn you sharper and if you start another mini turbo from that jump you can nullify the speed loss even further for bowser's castle there are 6 spots on the f lab and 18 on the three lap for the corner jump but it's not the only thing weatherton found he discovered a new way of doing the stair section in previous runs it was believed that driving down the stairs was the fastest method but by jumping from a second stair you move faster than just driving down them directly after the stairs he also found a better spot to use the second shroom on the f lab that saved two tenths of a second and in time trials that's the equivalent of finding a major skip these discoveries had big implications on bowser's castle and once the video was released on march 14th it only took a couple of days for the first records to roll in so let's start with the flap dan had set the flap record the previous month with a 43-15 and just three days after weatherton's video matthias would tie that time he didn't stop there and during the same session he would take another .02 off of the time before he cut stream but this wouldn't be the last time the record was lowered that day perhaps the most unexpected twist to the story on bowser's castle is that a player named dot man would lower the record after matthias except he used the ntsc version to do it this is impressive for one reason ntsc runs at a higher frame rate than pal which makes lining up mini turbos a lot harder the majority of top players play the game on pal for this reason but back in the day this caused a rift in the community due to the inaccessibility of pal to north american runners that spilled over into one of the most notorious cheating scandals in mario kart history for dot man to get an overall record running on the ntsc version is quite impressive and it was the first overall record on ntsc since luke barnard's 43-43 17 years ago matthias wouldn't let this one stand for close to that and beat it the next day squeezing out more of the new strats with a 4305 on the three lap matthias would draw first blood again lowering dan's previous record by a frame on the 18th of march dan would reclaim this just two days later by lowering it by 0.07 and you'd expect the battle for bowser's castle to rage on like this but weatherton released another video as if one record frenzy wasn't enough just 10 days later weatherton posted another video that contained the following tech a further explanation of the bowser castle corner jumps and stair section one ramp strat for royal raceway and a different ramp strat for dkjp and the biggest game changer a new jump on frapp snowland that saved over a second non-shortcut time trials on frapp snowland allow players to jump over sections of track marked out of bounds that border the intended path for the three lap you would jump over the corner by the mario snowman and on the f lap you would do a jump by the yoshi snowman and the later jump as well the jump that weatherton found occurs on the same corner as the yoshi snowman except this time instead of jumping between the track and an out of bounds section you jump between two out of bounds hills it turns out that if you're on the right trajectory you can jump between two hills without triggering the out of bounds detection which allows you to cut even more off of the yoshi corner you might be thinking isn't this a shortcut and enough members of the community thought the same thing so a vote was held to determine if it would be allowed in non-shortcut going by the precedent set by the earlier jumps over the out of bounds sections the new jump was allowed after the vote and the record started pouring in almost immediately with a lot of new faces in the mix since you only have to hit it once for the flap that category saw a lot more attention with eight new records being set on the 25th alone abny would tie it and then lower it two times in one stream for a total cut of 0.12 and then dot man would cut another 10th off the record again on the ntsc version abney wasn't done however and he'd set his third untied record on the same stream with a 3796 breaking what is likely the last second barrier on the f lap dot man would tie this time on ntsc but before he could lower it more records came pouring in australian runner jay deco would take another .08 off of dot man's record and it was at this time that the two players battling for champion would make their mark matthias would drive a 37-82 and to finish off the day dan would lower that by another .04 making a total of eight new records on the frap snowland f-lab the busiest day in its entire history the three laps saw action but not as much as the flap for the simple fact that you had to hit the jump three times which lowered the success rate of completing an attempt despite this dotman would take .22 off of the record on the 25th of march lowering an untied record matthias had set earlier that month matthias did strike back and lowered it on the 27th by 0.21 and then dottman and abney had a brief skirmish with abny setting a time of 159.04 just .05 away from what is likely the three laps last second barrier dan would steadily be grinding attempts on this track struggling with hitting the new tech but he developed an audio queue for when to time his jump and would get the first 158 time on april 1st just a week later matthias would set a 1 58 74 which is where the record stood for the rest of april and this is where things started to slow down or so everyone thought contrary to how april started it wouldn't be a busy month when it came to time trials records matthias would take the champ title on the 8th and held it for 21 days before dan reclaimed it at the end of the month they would trade the title a few more times in early may with their record count being neck and neck and as the battle raged they were setting a lot of ties across many of the tracks if a tie occurs both players are recognized as having the world record with no penalty being applied to the calculation for who is champion to say this was the most active battle for champ in mario kart history is a huge understatement as not only were the record counts close the title came close to changing hands more times in 2021 than it had in the previous 24 years of the community's existence but in one week during mid-may one player would take the title back in a reign that's still ongoing to this day dan had 16 records at the beginning of may and on the 10th he started some very long sessions and within the next seven days 10 records would fall to his efforts [Music] please come on i don't think it's fast enough oh my god that run could have been so much better but world record high [Music] world record another one man go yes 19 oh i can't believe i did that [Music] nice oh my god lack three was so bad but i did it yes 419. by the end of may damn was sitting at 26 records which put him just six away from completing a full sweep of the time trials leaderboard june would be a much quieter month with a lot less activity compared to may and dan would do attempts on choco mountain when he did find time to stream july was a bit busier as dan picked up three different three lap records the sherbet land three lap the chocolate mountain three lap and the yoshi valley three lap it appeared as though he was unstoppable until the a1a decided to do something about it the a1a or anti-one alliance is a group of players that step up to the challenge of stopping any single player from achieving a sweep of all 32 records which gives them an average finish of one hence the name a1a the a1a would see some familiar faces in its ranks with zoran tintor once again grinding the dkjpf lab in a twist of fate matthias who had previously been a target of the a1a now found himself aligned with them in an effort to stop dan from sweeping every record as for newcomers we only need to look at toad's turnpike where two days after dan reached 28 records he would see a competitor tie his f-lab and his name was xander xander is another time trial player and one of only eight people to have the title of universal god which is awarded to players that break certain time barriers on each track in both shortcut and non-shortcut his tie on toad's turnpike f-lap was a shot across the bow for dan's aspirations of completing the sweep and just the next day he lowered it again to untie the record with a 5867 so how long do you think this record would stand a day a week the answer was until dan finished watching smash summit 11 that very night getting hyped up from the grand finals dan would beat sanders record just a few hours after it was set shortly after midnight and then he went to sleep after waking up he would start a long session on koopa troopa beach in an attempt to best matthias's record which was just a frame ahead of his best time it took an eight and a half hour stream but dan finally tied matthias time bringing his record total to 29 and he now faced a very tough decision the three remaining records he needed were both laughs on mumu farm which he had never held and the calamari desert three lap these two tracks were some of the hardest to get world records on for several reasons with countless hours at the top level being sunk into them with no fruit to bear since he went for mumu farm we'll look at that one first and while the layout of the track looks simple it's the only non-shortcut track with rng present allow me to introduce monty mole scattered along the track are various mole hills with three separate clusters along the optimal race line for the track each time you go over a hole there's a forty percent chance that a mole will pop up and with three mole hills that means about one in five runs will complete for the f-lab with about the same odds for the three lap since a safe strat is used that goes over zero or one moles per lap with this in mind dan decided to optimize his attempts at both records he started grinding the three lap and on runs where he made a mistake on the first lap before the shroom spot he would switch to an aflap attempt on the second lap using this strategy he also decided to stream for eight hours a day to help mitigate the advantage of the a1a grinding against him these long streams allowed him to minimize the effects of rng by maximizing the number of attempts he was doing each day to dan's surprise he tied abny's record on the flap relatively quickly on just his second day of attempts but there was one other thing on his mind he had professional commitments looming in mid-august so he didn't have time for an extended battle with the a1a his stream started getting longer in the pursuit of record perfection and his focus was now on the mumu farm 3 lab his reasoning for going after the mumu records first was that if he managed to overcome the rng it would create a buffer for him to grind the remaining records since it was more likely that he would lose other records while grinding on this track his assumption wasn't incorrect because the 23rd of july would be a major setback for him with matthias untying the sherbet land 3 lab and tjl tying the mumu farm efflap that dany just set tjl had extensive experience on mumu farm having held the flap record for the majority of the previous decade and he had the skill and determination to take this track back from dan which would all but kill his chances of completing the sweep despite losing one record and having tjl breathing down his neck on another dan stuck to the three lap and with each day that went by he slowly approached the record [Music] [Music] it just happened oh my god yes yes oh my god it happened it happened a full week of grinding eight hours a day and dan finally had the most elusive record of his carding career beating the previous time by a full frame on july 29th this left two records the sherbert land three lap and what is perhaps the most technical track of all the calamari desert 3 lab calamari desert has three difficulties null tires the hill hops and most notorious the train there's only a small chance of null tires occurring here so let's look at the hill hops as there's something that you have a lot more control over at the start of calamari desert there's a small section of hills that are quicker to drive over than staying on the main track if you drive over them normally you'll lose speed so the optimal method is to jump over them as close to the peak of the hill as possible this makes them a big reset point as not only can a mistimed hop end up costing you time but it can also mess up your setup for the second hop while hill hops can be brutal to grind out on the 3 lap they aren't the most difficult part of the course that distinction belongs to the train as it's directly in your path on the final lap if you time a mini turbo just right you can slide between the wheels of the train and get by without losing any time but if you're a pixel off or have bad timing you'll crash into the train and have to start again for these two reasons calamari desert is almost as bad as moo moo farm and with only a little over a week left before he had to step away from kart dan got to work on tackling this track but the a1a wasn't going down without a fight tjl was hard at work on mumu farm and matthias had a very strong start to a stream on banshee boardwalk that happened on august 2nd with one of his first runs coming just .18 away from the record he continued playing and within the hour he had another run that was just a single frame from untying the three lap with strong runs coming in the pressure was on dan to perform and as his exit date loomed he knew that it was now or never if it didn't happen soon he might never get another chance so the grind continued [Music] no dan lost a chance at world record on the final mini turbo of the track it appeared as though the window was closing on completing the sweep and on the final day before he had to step away he knew he had one final shot i did it i did it i did it i did it i did it i did it oh my god i can't believe i just did i did it i have not even been driving well oh my god oh i was so scared right at the end i did it i'm on 31 let's go 31 out of 32. with that he was at 31 out of 32 records for the first time in his career a feat only matthias had done before him and the only track left was sherbet land 3 lab you'd think that after grinding for weeks just to get records on two tracks that dan's story would end with a 31 out of 32 battling fatigue and the mental wear of fighting the a1a he put everything he had into the sherbet land 3 lab he got on a run matthias's record was only .02 ahead of his best time it appeared to be in the bag and then just like on calamari desert oh my god oh my god i really choked it on the last mt that is just 15 minutes later the same thing would happen it didn't seem like today was going to be dan's day but he persevered [Music] i did it man let's go 32 out of 32 records it happened it's over it's over it's over it's over another tie with that dan became the first person in history to achieve a full sweep of the mario kart 64 non-shortcut leaderboard completing what may possibly be the greatest achievement in all of speedrunning thanks for watching [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Abyssoft

Views: 167,895

Keywords: mario kart 64, mk64, dan burbank, daniel burbank, matthias, mk64kr, champion, champ, 32, perfect champion, world first, history, speedrunning, world record, abyssoft

Id: xgnqURzfuOI

Length: 24min 14sec (1454 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 22 2021