It's the mid 90's, and you’re actively looking
for the next hottest game to play. Up to this point you’ve mainly been a fan of the
collection of Mario titles released so far - but what else is being released to compete?
I heard that Sonic guy is making a bit of a name for himself with multiple releases already,
and those Sony guys seem to be promoting some promising new adventures, but that's quite a
bit of a leap - What about Nintendo's offerings? You had companies like Rare and Capcom providing
many new experiences - but that was far from the entire Nintendo platformer scene up to this
point...what about this silly pink blob? In 1992, players had their very first
taste at a completely new world thanks to Kirby's Dreamland on the Gameboy, and with
it selling over 5 million units when all was said and done, it was safe to say that this
was the birth of a completely new series. Over the next couple years it wouldn't
just get another Gameboy release, but also on Nintendo's other systems at the
time: the NES and Super Nintendo. With the latter being my main focus for today,
I want to talk about debatably the most important and influential of all the games
released on said platform: Kirby Super Star. Over the years, not only has this game been
enjoyed enough to the point of getting a remake a decade later, but still has
a community dedicated to exploring, routing, and trying to speedrun the game
as fast as possible. A lot of people who have run the Kirby series enough have
debated that this particular title may in fact be the most difficult of them all, with it
notoriously being very RNG heavy and fast paced. Today, let's dive into the current fastest
ever completion of Kirby Super Star, and analyze why this run is as
challenging as people say it is. So before I simply dive straight into the run
itself, I want to talk about some different things. Those being: the basics of the game,
the route that this world record run uses, and lastly - some quick other notes
to know before watching the gameplay. Instead of this being one consistent game
start to finish, Kirby Super Star consists of six sub games with various rules and goals,
with there additionally being some other bonus game content like a Boss Endurance mode.
Like any standard Kirby platformer title, the main things you need to know
in order to play as Kirby is: Being able to swallow enemies
which gains you different powers corresponding to what you swallowed.
Being able to perform a type of hover fly With those two points being far from the
only thing you can do, you can control Kirby in other ways like exhaling whatever is in
Kirby’s mouth, or being able to perform a slide. Getting the simplest of basics out of the
way - let’s get into more of the actual run. Today, we are talking about the fastest completion
category of the game - which happens to be Any%. The record in this while making is a 33:01
by Yotta - a person who over the previous 5 years has not only held onto this record - but
has repeatedly beat it - not just a few times, but a total of 19 improvements
now as of the beginning of 2024. Moving to what the route of this Any% world
record actually entails. Let me simply state which sub-games are played, and then we can
dive further in towards what each actually is. The route requires you to complete
only four of the sub-games out of the starting list. This is not the
same four that are unlocked from the very start - with Spring Breeze and Gourmet
Race not being required to beat the game. This leaves the other two
options which are required: Great Cave Offensive and Dyna Blade - with the
first half of the route starting in this order. Following this, Revenge of Meta Knight is played, which requires Dyna Blade to be completed
first. With the final sub-game, Milky Way Wishes requiring not just Great Cave Offensive
to be finished, but also Revenge of Meta Knight. Real quickly, if you’re interested in
more speedrun content similar to this, I recommend subscribing to the channel…
Anyways - we got the route out of the way, so now it’s time to get to properly analyzing the
run, level by level, and strategy by strategy. To start up a new run, players can
either do a standard game reset, or perform a “soft reset” within the
game by pressing the button combination Left + Right + Start + Select. It’s
important to note that all types of resetting were previously banned, with it
not being lifted until November of 2022. There’s different reasons why this may have been
previously restricted, such as players possibly wanting to keep the integrity of the run being
a consistent start to finish full playthrough. Entering the actual run, you may remember I
said ‘Great Cave Offensive’ is entered first even though the required Dyna Blade
is also available from the get-go. This is done for some important reasons. The
first relates to what is called “mix” which describes the function of Kirby being able to
get a random copy ability after swallowing more than one enemy at once. This is activated by the
player through a roulette wheel that pops up once swallowing the enemies. I’ll get into this more
in not too long once getting into the actual run. The second reason this sub-game is done
first is due to two repeating bosses in the game being RNG: “Fatty Whale” and
“Battle Windows”. Just like the mix, I’ll get back to this once we get
to the appropriate point in the run. Immediately as the run starts, you
have to skip tutorials entering the first sub-game. When selecting
“no” for the first tutorial, you are presented a second one, which
is skipped with a buffered start input. Within the first minute of this run you’ll also be
introduced to tons of minor optimizations that all add up. The first is the simple fact that Kirby
runs at a faster horizontal speed while having something in it’s mouth. This is intertwined with
another seemingly minor, but actually important piece of tech. By intentionally getting as close
to an enemy as possible before inhaling it, you minimize how long Kirby is in this “inhale state”.
The quicker an enemy can get into Kirby’s mouth, the sooner you can continue to move again.
Another instantly observable piece of tech is intentionally sliding of this ledge - with
it cutting off the end of said slide. Typically sliding on its own is slower, but ledges can avoid
the end of the slide that drags if timed well.
Sprinkled between all this tech is the important
“mix”. With these two “Birdon” enemies being positioned in a way to swallow them at once - a
roulette appears which spins between different possible abilities. If you’re not familiar at
all this may seem like a random roll of the dice, but this roulette can actually be stopped.
While it is challenging, with enough practice you can get any desired ability at a consistent
enough rate. In this case, the goal is the wheel. Collecting this ability leads to a plethora
of even more movements you can take advantage of such as a “turn” or “pivot boost” -
where you get a quick speed boost when timing an opposite direction input.
There is also summoning wheelie, which happens to be the fastest for horizontal
speed, but has very poor mobility going up and down. Fortunately this first sub-game’s
layout works out pretty well using this. Using this ability brings us to the first, and
definitely not last, mini-boss in the game. If you blink, you may miss even seeing this first
one - because you can instantly kill it thanks to being in a “high jump” state under said boss.
This is achieved by footstooling off a Helper, which puts you in a state which can hurt
enemies and instantly kill minibosses if you are underneath them. Grabbing the hammer from this
mini-boss is very important for upcoming bosses. Getting back on wheelie, the level immediately
presents multiple more ladders that require you to go up and down. This can be a bit annoying
with wheelie due to needing to climb down slightly before going through them. Additionally
you can “ladder bonk”, which requires jumping into the one tile gap the ladder resides in.
This allows you to go up as soon as possible. Double tapping the d-pad doesn’t have
any correlation with this trick - you don’t need to do that in order for
this to work. The double tap d-pad is just so that Wheelie starts his wheel
attack a bit quicker than if he wasn’t dashing (there is no additional horizontal speed
added to his attack either, it's strictly used to save a few frames on starting the attack)
Before approaching another boss, we can observe another piece of important movement knowledge
that may be easily overlooked. Downward slopes carry momentum into the air, which is why
they are abused in this room. When jumping with the wheelie, you will actually get
hit in the air if you hold the B button, which means that when jumping, it’s
important to let go as soon as possible in order to avoid this damage. Don’t ask
why this happens, it simply just does. And now we get to what can be considered the
first major choke point in regards to RNG: Fatty Whale. It can do one of two patterns:
1. The Ball, which is what you ideally want, and 2. The Flop, the less desirable outcome.
Here in Yotta’s record, he got the better one.
Besides just the patterns, there are
so many ways to kill Fatty Whale, with a comparison of different strategies being
made. Yotta does the “Shin+Celabeat” pattern, which is named after ShinKuribo - a
fellow Kirby runner. A notable thing to mention doing this is the fact that the
last hammer flip hit is only a 3 frame window. Conquering the boss, this follows with many
more pieces of tech - mostly wheelie related. In the following room you’ll immediately see
Yotta jump a lot, and this is because wheelie jumping results in giving a slight speedboost.
He eventually hops off it which makes the next water room possible to traverse.
After getting through the water, Yotta immediately has to move downwards to
progress forward, and can do this thanks to pressing down to go through platforms -
with him moving right while falling here to lessen the amount of time Kirby will stand
on the platform waiting to fall through it. Getting back to the wheelie,
it is put in a “jump higher” mode. Wheelie will enter this if
you jump while in a dash state, and press Y immediately after. This makes
this jump up to the higher platform possible. This takes us towards the next boss on the list: Battle Windows. Each Windows boss
here has a 25% chance of attacking first - with each of these costing between
3 and 12 seconds depending on what happens. The first is Slime, which he kills in one
hit. This happens to be a four frame window. You can do this by using the wind-up
of Hammer Flip to do a bit of damage, then the final blow is what finally finishes him
off. This is thanks to having low-enough health. Secondly is Puppet which is taken care of with
a Hammer Swing, which leads to the final enemy: Magician. With it needing two hits after a
Hammer Swing, the best option here is using the back hitbox of the standard Hammer move.
While that may be the end of another boss, Great Cave Offensive is not over yet. Exiting the
fight, the old tower section is skipped with this not being required in any% - which leads to a few
more things before finishing this sub-game up. Dropping through some platforms with Wheelie,
Yotta intentionally shields and unshields, which allows you to drop through them
faster, It saves even more time with Wheelie Rider in comparison to solo Kirby.
Wheelie notably has a faster fall speed. Traversing through a handful of more rooms,
Yotta approaches the final boss here - Wham Bam. The timing on this boss is key, as you want
to start revving with Wheelie the moment the hand appears. If you do it too soon you won’t do
as much damage, and if you do it too late, you will get hit and deal zero damage.
Yotta deals enough damage here to be able to kill Wham Bam with a Hammer throw, with
the hammer not being needed anymore. With the boss being defeated, it’s time to leave, and
ends with a section that can be easily cleared with Wheelie. Wheelie can jump in the air like
any other Helper in the game, and only gets a certain amount of full-height jumps in the air,
until eventually switching to shorter ones. Said jumps can be restored by bonking into a ceiling,
which allows you to get out of this ditch using full height jumps. All that is left now is
holding start to skip the ending cutscene. Instantly jumping into the next sub-game,
Dyna Blade, this can quickly be entered thanks to buffering the cursor, and mashing to
enter. Holding down B on the world map here, levels can immediately be entered.
The first level immediately starts with another Mix setup, with it this time being Jet.
When airborne with Jet, you can be in two states: No Dash or Dash. When jumping from a dash, you are
able to do semi-charge Jets immediately, and when chained together are called “Jet Strings”.
With a new ability, there’s plenty of other important things to point out with it - such
as ladders behaving in a weird fashion with Jet. Jetting towards them in a dash state will
immediately put you on the ladder when holding up - with a lack of dash state not doing such.
This tech is followed with what is called a redline, a real term referring to a Jet going
faster than its maximum safe speed. In this game, it refers to when you take the momentum
of Jet, and use it for horizontal speed. We can see this being used in the following room
as well, leading to another quick miniboss - Chef Kawasaki. Similar to the Bonkers fight
in Great Cave, Kirby can enter a “high jump state” by using Jet, which instantly kills
mini-bosses. This mini-boss can be killed very quickly - doing what is a very early corpse kill.
Yotta just barely hits it while it is airborne. Beating this reveals the first, and very
much not last “goal game”, which appears after clearing levels in this sub-game.
This can give you a wide range of prizes, but to simply get this over with for the speedrun,
runners simply mash all four action buttons to immediately get shot out of the cannon.
Entering the second stage, it immediately starts with a setup for the most broken thing in
this run up to this point - setting up for a wall clip. The setup goes as follows: You first break
the top block here with Jet Sparks which gives you a hole to Jet jump out of and also reach a
bomb block. After jumping, you summon helper and go high enough that the CPU Helper teleports to
you. This CPU will only latch onto Kirby if he is floating downwards. Once latched on, start
approaching the wall and face left while using the momentum to go inside. With Jet Helper’s
hitbox only facing in front of you, turning around allows y ou to enter the wall, allowing
you to go out of bounds upwards to the door here. This clip has a bit of a history, with
it originally only being thought to be possible with the Ice and Mirror
helpers due to their hitboxes, but JetToast later found it was possible to clip
with Jet too. This led to a change in route using this discovery. The trick in its current fashion
is known among runners as “Any Partner Clip”. The next room after this regrabs Jet from
Helper. Moving backwards to grab it here may seem counterintuitive, but it allows
you to swallow Jet faster. Additionally, you can jump out of a dash to
start up Jet Strings immediately. This level has yet another notable
skip - this time completely avoiding a miniboss. While breaking this wall
with Jet Fumes, you can charge and go off screen. If you are not in the bounds
of the screen, the boss won’t even spawn. Entering the third stage, it features multiple
more redlines, with the tight spacing making this beginning difficult. Eventually running
into a room where you’re forced to run down sloped hallways, Due to the download slopes,
Jet Kick is the better choice over Jet Charge, with the former sending you
forward instead of downward. Reaching the end of the room, Yotta has to
break this bomb block, and before they break he slides off the blocks so he can get
closer to the door while charging Jet. With this over, it's back to some more redlining,
and some really quick mashing up a ladder. Jumping into the fourth level, Yotta early
on opts to pick going to the right over the left in this room, with redlining being so
overpowered. Getting to the top of said room, it ends with him using Jet into the feather
projectile so that he doesn’t get hit by it, and has a neat setup for the bomb block break.
Following this with a very short room, this leads to perhaps the worst
room in the game: The Tac Room, named after the enemy of the same name which
appears a bunch here. Using a few redlines to help get past this, the last one performed is
pretty tricky due to the room lagging a bit, as well as the factor of lava
being under the breakable block. This leads to the final stretch of this level,
with it starting off in a room with three minibosses. All of them are skipped, with Yotta
going off-screen once again. All that is notably left in Dyna Blade is..well…defeating Dyna Blade.
Grabbing these stars here are notably difficult, with their jank hitboxes requiring
you to position in a specific spot. Yotta sadly barely missed a major time-save which
is RNG reliant. This crazy head spring attack is one of many possible attacks - with this specific
attack allowing for a one-off kill. Yotta gets the RNG, but misses the final hit of the star by a
few frames. With that not happening, the boss requires slightly more work to be defeated
- with Yotta resetting to skip a cutscene. We are now far enough into the run to
dive into the first sub-game where RNG manipulation is relevant - Revenge
of Meta Knight. Here’s some general information about manipulating RNG in this game: When the game is reset or first started,
RNG will start at the hex value 77 77, or 119 if you want to put it in decimal.
This value is always consistent, so if you play perfectly after this point,
you will always get the same exact RNG. When booting up the game, you are greeted
with the Kirby Super Star logo before file select - and once this appears, RNG
advances every single frame as long as you stay on this screen. BUT..there is
a solution to this. By buffering inputs, you can skip this screen immediately on the first
possible frame - which leads to consistent RNG. With RNG being advanced by a ton
of things in this game, it is ultra important to play consistently in
order to keep desirable RNG. The most notable things that advance RNG
include dash clouds, landing stars, and enemy actions as they spawn on screen.
With that, let’s get into the actual sub-game. Booting up the game, it immediately
starts off with some dialogue text scrolling, but instead of mashing, this
can conveniently be buffered with Y or B. Getting past the first wave of text, it’s time
to immediately once again focus on another mix. Typically a Jet mix would be a runner’s
immediate choice, but Yotta is going for an over-the-top 2 second timesave which aims to skip
a cutscene for the upcoming Heavy Lobster boss. For the mix, he is planning to get Crash,
but for faster movement he is going to wait to activate such till the end of this room -
this is due to Crash not having any mobility benefit. Keeping proper RNG through this part
of the run is insanely difficult as you can’t accidentally bump into walls, or get hit by
anything - this requires perfect gameplay. This leads to the Heavy Lobster cutscene skip
- and let me explain why this even happens: For this particular cutscene, the
game runs this specific routine: Does Kirby have Crash?
Is Kirby currently performing a Y button action?
If both are true, skip the cutscene Developers oddly intended for this cutscene
to be skipped with crash by using the Crash ability that destroys everything on screen.
Doing this on its own would not save time, due to how slow the Crash cutscene is.
The huge oversight is that the Y button press could be for any action, not just the Crash
ability. Kirby puffing in the air is considered a Y button action, which translates to
both of these conditions being met. There’s also another notable piece to this puzzle
though: Kirby still has Crash, and this game does not have an ability to discard abilities that are
obtained. The only way to get rid of Crash here is by either using the ability, or getting it popped
by an enemy. With the latter not involving a long cutscene - this is the best course of action.
Soo..with RNG manipulation in this cutscene, Yotta floats up in the air and puffs right before
getting hit by Lobster - this consistently rolls a 1 of out 8 chance of the ability popping….can I
remind you that everything I just described to you only saves two seconds???
– Having no ability now, this leads to
another mix setup - the final one in the run actually. Keeping the right RNG in place,
he does an extra dash on his way to the two enemies needed in order to manipulate them.
With Jet acquired once again, not too long after is another mini-boss skip, and bonks against
this wall to gain enough height to prevent the boss trigger. In a water section following
this, Yotta also starts charging his jet here, which is stored for when he gets
to the door a few seconds later. Getting plopped into an auto scroller -
there’s nothing notable timesave wise, but there is some showing off that can
be done here. Jet has a unique property where if you are above the screen and start
hovering, the game will immediately snap you to the screen bounds. Abusing this, you can
go above an area during the autoscroller and hover- making Kirby go inside the wall. This
is followed by another cool jump that happens due to jumping and immediately landing on
a floor above you. It takes all your jump momentum and flings Kirby high up into the
air with the help of moving left or right. Once this autoscrolling is over,
it’s time to fight another boss: Whispy Woods. This fight is pretty straight
forward, with each kick dealing a different amount of damage. Doing a “Y Tap” kick will
deal more damage over more hits. In comparison, a “Charge Y” kick will do one large blow of
damage - which is useful for the end of the fight. With that boss over cough cough sorry-a
bit of a tickle in my throat. The next stage begins with a required movement: jumping
over this tiny hill to get just enough height to safely get past enemies, and then has
to climb up platforms. As he does this, Yotta charges Jet so he could eventually
Jet Jump for additional height.
This leads towards the not just single - but
Double Bonkers mini-boss fight. Normally they can be killed instantly with a Jet Jump, but
because two of them spawn at the same time, a change in strategy is needed to
kill the second one fast enough. The first of the two is killed quite quickly,
using a setup that destroys the corpse as it is falling down. In regards to the second one, you
want it to jump. Bonkers has 3 attacks, with 2 of them that jump. This means it is a 2 out of 3
chance that Bonkers will jump, and is also a 1 out of 3 chance for an easier jump
pattern. Yotta got the easier one here, but unfortunately he didn’t charge Jet enough
to do the jump, so he ends up missing, and has to finish things off with standard attacks.
This is instantly followed up with some more movement between small gaps, most notably in
the next room where the ceiling gap allows you to skip a majority of this section.
The movement following this is tricky, with the sword enemies having a lot of health -
which means they won’t just simply die using Jet attacks. This room enters another which features
cannons that can be lit up with Jet’s fumes. Getting through a section featuring
Dyna Blade, this room in particular lags a ton due to background particle
effects, and Dyna Blade’s sprite. Skipping two mini-bosses, Yotta clips
back in bounds - and enters an elevator room. What’s interesting here is that the
fastest way to utilize elevators more often than not is by riding on top of them.
This is because they will automatically move if Kirby is above or below them. Yotta
lowers the first elevator by going under it, and then also goes to the right
to lower a second elevator above, before even stepping onto the first one.
He does a precise Jet Jump to get on top the second - and then Jets over to the top
of the third elevator. This room ends with one last full Jet charge - and since this
room has a lot of sprites - he additionally reduces lag by making sure the Jet charge
fumes hit the right wall while charging up. This puts you right into another double
mini-boss. Doing this fast requires quick killing the first one, which is followed
by using the corpse to instantly kill the second one. This is very challenging, this
second corpse is killed by kicking it once, then Jetting into it to destroy it.
This makes Kirby bonk off the wall to gain enough height to continue
Jet stringing towards the door. Between boss fights, we can also observe that
when Kirby is Jetting in dash state, his hitbox seemingly becomes immune to certain things -
with him visibly going through statues here. This takes us right into the Combo Cannon fight
- which has a pretty cool setup. Kirby first full charge Jets into the base of it to do some
damage to the main cannon. Invincibility frames after this Jet attack just barely allows you
to jump through this laser cannon - which puts Kirby on the platform. After, you grab the
bomb it drops to finally destroy the cannon. With that, it’s time for another
stage - and this first room lags really bad. Most runners mash Y here
to get Jets out as fast as possible due to this - with there not being a
consistent timing thanks to the lag. This lag can be attributed to particle
effects once again, but also thanks to text scrolling during gameplay - which
majorly increases lag during gameplay. Finishing out this room - you have to grab a warp
star, and the timing Yotta does here is really impressive. This is because just like the statues
he was able to breeze through earlier - you can also do this with warp stars if you don’t time
jetting properly. Most runners hover in the air to get out of a dash state to guarantee grabbing
this, but Yotta here refuses to leave dash state. Breaking these bomb blocks in the fastest way
thanks to Jet Sparks, we stumble into another mini-boss that also has a skip, but this one
is a bit unique. This is due to there being no easy way to jet jump into jet strings in dash
state, and there is also a ceiling above you. Ultimately, the fastest way to get over this boss
is to charge individual Jet attacks over it - which is difficult to do in an efficient manner.
With another auto scroller, the best way to save time here is to avoid anything that can lag the
game - most notably because of text scrolling once again. A ton of this ending Heavy Lobster
fight will just consist of shielding inside it so there are minimized chances to lag the game.
Heavy Lobster can do four different patterns at the start of the fight - with top level runners
practicing all four of them to perfect this fight. Yotta got the fastest pattern here, but the
time difference between patterns is very minimal. You may notice leaving this fight
that his ability is gone - with Yotta summoning a Helper at just the
right time during screen transitions. This doesn’t properly spawn the Helper -
and is useful with Jet not being needed going forward - and saves a second and
a half over properly summoning such. In the sixth stage, we get to see a new
copy ability be introduced: Plasma. Some things to know about Plasma: Charging it
requires pressing inputs on the D-Pad, with a full Plasma charge taking 16
D-Pad inputs. Full charge Plasma also provides Kirby a small shield which can be
useful. Most runners use a technique named the “Diagonal Method” - which is to bring your
thumb between two diagonal inputs on the d-pad, pressing two inputs per thumb movement - on
screen are a couple pretty clear examples of such. There’s more about Plasma I will talk
about once it’s more relevant in the run. Until then, there are immediately some things
that change thanks to Plasma - Such as hitting this switch with the Plasma attack which
allows for the door to go up sooner, and switches also being able to be activated
thanks to a Full charge Plasma - which notably has back sparks which shoot diagonally away.
This one here notably can’t be hit without using back sparks, and saves time having to
go down the elevator to the right - simply hitting the switch through the wall instead.
This leads us into a boss fight once again, with this one, Halberd’s Reactor, having quite
a lot of information to unravel - sit down, this is hefty. Calling it Reactor for short,
this unique boss only takes damage by using its own turret shots to shoot its crystal,
requiring three shots to ultimately kill. Yotta starts going crazy with Plasma
immediately because he is trying to kill the cannon in front of it. He does
this because it saves time to have it destroyed if it opts to shoot later on in the
fight. Instead of charging up a cannon shot, Reactor will just skip the phase
entirely and summon another turret. It can either shoot out of this cannon, or
send out either one or three flamethrowers inside the ground. It is RNG if a turret will
immediately be sent out in the first place. This fight goes back and forth between cannon
shots or flamethrowers - then sending out a turret. There are actually two types of turrets:
Ones that will aim at Kirby from an angle, and ones that will at Kirby horizontally. This is also
RNG, with horizontal ones being slightly faster. And if there wasn’t enough randomness - Turret
Positions are yet another RNG element here.
Yotta destroys the turret as soon as it is done
shooting due to canceling waiting for the turret to go back off screen. Killing it instantly
moves onto the next attack, and also while taking out the turret - Yotta uses the back
sparks to damage the cannon simultaneously. The cannon has a chance after every turret
to shoot - and in this run it goes off the first chance it gets. This first shot is
unavoidable as it is impossible to kill this cannon fast enough. This is undesirable
- having to wait for the cannon to shoot. By the third turret, Yotta
stops shooting at the cannon, as it never ends up shooting by this point,
and instead sends out a single flamethrower that is completely destroyed - you barely
even end up seeing it. With it being only a single flamethrower, the time it took
to deal with this was extremely minimal. Alright…are you still there? I know that
boss was quite hefty, but there is still one last section to this sub-game. This
begins with another length autoscroller, and of course we have our best friend: laggy
scrolling text. Most notably here, Yotta intentionally delays this Plasma shot, waiting
till Meta Knight’s text is done to prevent lag. Before the final fight he also does a precise
elevator clip by floating into the corner, and in this upcoming section goes for what
is dubbed “Right Side” - which is quickly floating to the right of this fight to
quickly kill all of the Meta Knights. Shooting three Plasma shots allows immediate
kills among all the enemies as the spawn in. This finally leads into the very last
section: the ending Meta Knight fight. Yotta summons a Plasma helper to grab
Sword, and then discard it. He swaps it for helper, which kills him quite quickly.
This fight is technically faster using Sword, with a comparison also being shown here, but
it is very difficult. It was originally not deemed to be possible for real time runs, and
it’s hard to say what the future of this will be in full-game runs. With that, this ends
with a straight forward escape sequence that utilizes downward slopes for speed - and
now, it’s on to the final leg of the game. The last, but not least - Milky Way Wishes is the
final sub-game completed to conquer Any% - and is the most unique by far because you do not obtain
abilities in any traditional sense. Inhaling like before will not give you an ability this
time. You have to instead collect “Copy Essence Deluxe” statues which grant you that ability
forever - and also can be selected at any time. The stakes in this sub-game aren’t as high,
and losing an ability isn’t lethal as you can immediately grab it again. This doesn’t mean this
entire section is easy though. The name of the game for this sub-game is deciding the order of
planets - which has been heavily routed. Halfmoon - which is the RNG heavy level, is sadly the most
optimal when played as the last planet - which leads to it being at the very end of the run.
Yotta immediately goes to Skyhigh due to it having Jet - with that being basically mandatory to grab
first if we want to be in the game of going fast. This block inhale at the beginning of this Planet
is difficult to time correctly: requiring not just a mid-air swallow, but also needing to be
left of one-tile gap due to the wind pushing you forward. Yotta achieves this by letting go
of the d-pad which stops his dash, then jumps and inhales immediately. After inhaling this, he
immediately presses A to swallow it and hovers up to the door - with Jet being located here.
Not too long after this is followed up by beating the boss Kracko - and Yotta resets the game once
the game fades to black. Once this fade happens, the game considers the stage beaten,
and resetting the game is actually faster than watching the ending cutscene.
This is something that will be repeated. Entering the next Planet, Hotbeat, we can
observe some similar Jet-related tech such as Yotta dashing off this lava block to
start Jet stringing to the very end of this hallway. Going upwards, you eventually
cross paths with a Waddle Doo which can be very annoying. If you get bad RNG, it blocks
off the entire hallway with a beam attack, and you are forced to hit it - which
unfortunately Yotta has to deal with here. You’ll also notice that Invincibility Candies
are handed out quite often in Milky Way Wishes, with it doubling your speed running on the
ground. So anytime there is one right in the middle of the path, it’s worth grabbing it. While
doing this here, you’ll see Yotta start charging his jet while descending which is stored for a
second fall where it is finally fully charged. The final room of this stage has a couple notable
pieces of tech. The first being: intentionally bonking against this lava block to gain additional
height while in dash state. And the second is: skipping these cannons and falling directly into
this hole. This one may look tricky, but is pretty easy when doing these 4 Jets that Yotta did.
Those tricks walk us into the next boss: the Chameleo Arm fight. The main thing
to know here is that similar to Heavy Lobster, this boss also has multiple patterns,
but rather than 4, this one only has 2. In the third Planet, Mecheye, there is notably
a point at the end where routes start to deviate depending on the runner’s skill level. The
recommended strategy to start with is to take the elevator all the way up and go left. This
is to collect Plasma, which makes the final boss fight easier. This takes about 12 seconds though,
with it requiring you to defeat another miniboss. In Yotta’s case, he simply goes
right into the final fight here. Planet 4 - Cavios, is pretty tough. You
have to kill 4 minibosses in this one room, and while it is straightforward - it is very easy
to mess up here on a run with such high stakes.
First, Yotta quick kills Chef Kawasaki
here, and then while descending does some damage to the corpse using Jet fumes
before finally jumping into it to destroy it. This allows him to move upward out of this
arena while simultaneously killing the corpse. This is followed by a hallway that can be
tricky to traverse - with it requiring very precise spacing to get through while staying
in the air and not bonking. Ninja enemy RNG can also potentially mess things up.
Entering another mini-boss, Hammer is grabbed here, and is the final powerup to
mention for Milky Way Wishes. This powerup is essential for many upcoming boss fights.
Speaking of boss fights, here’s another: Wham Bam. This fight with a hammer requires you
to stand in a very precise position in order for things to go properly - preferably
this specific foot and tile position. This fight is difficult to properly time due to
how frustratingly small Hammer’s hitboxes are. When Yotta does Hammer Throw - this timing
is precise as well due to i-frames behaving strangely. If thrown at the wrong time, it
won’t deal enough damage to kill Wham Bam. With that it’s time to move to Aqualiss -
and here it's interesting to note that water behaves oddly when obtaining abilities inside
it. When swapping abilities, Kirby “re-enters the water”. This makes him stationary while
the animation plays out. Buut..being on the floor makes the animation end, so here Yotta
can swim up to the door as soon as he gets Jet. Traversing through more water, here,
spacing is key because this Knuckle Joe has so much health that it takes two attacks
to kill it. Trying to go through it without killing it will lead to you taking damage -
so the best solution is to kill it. This is also the deal with the one at the bottom
of the room too. Before this room ends, Yotta also intentionally clips into the corner of
this air pocket, getting a vertical speed boost. This stage ends with our friend Fatty
Whale once again - and similar to before, this is an RNG heavy fight. Unfortunately Yotta
got a bad pattern here, but still - the run continues.
— It’s now time for the second to last planet here
- Floria. The gimmick here is that you can change the season of the level by going through doors
- causing a terrain change. This is the reason for entering a ton of doors during this stage.
Overall this is a pretty easy and short stage in comparison to others, with it being the intended
first stage of this sub-game. This stage ends with some more tree-related action which is pretty
much the same deal as earlier on in the run.
Upon resetting the game once again, this is
where the true juiciness of RNG manipulation begins. This stems from Battle Windows being so
deep into this next stage, and there are several points in the level that advance RNG every
single frame. Yotta here will use a calculator to find his RNG point once he arrives at the
boss fight, which we will get to very soon.
Before the boss fight there’s a few more things.
Firstly, these minecarts can go faster when mashing Y - and then immediately after, you’ll
see there is a warpstar that when taken, brings you directly to the upcoming miniboss. While this
may seem like the straightforward thing to do, it’s surprisingly faster to skip the star
and instead progress forward with Jet.
This miniboss is yet another double one.
The first call is to kill Iron Mam because it has no attacks where it jumps. Chef
Kawasaki is next on the chopping block, with it having a chance of jumping. If
he jumps he can be killed instantly, and if not is killed with standard Jet attacks.
One final thing achieved here before the ending is what is called an “Aqua Boost”. If you enter
the water while pressing Y, you can boost yourself upward - and if you press this frame perfectly,
you will also get a huge horizontal boost. We are now where the RNG manipulation comes
into play. Yotta jumps and lands three times here. He needs to pay detailed attention to
the direction the stars go when Kirby lands, as he then inputs these values into the
calculator using keyboard numpad controls.
While this calculator seemingly tells
you what to do based on what your inputs, there is one very critical flaw in this
tool: If there are multiple instances that can occur under the inputted
star combination within the range you provided - you aren’t able to view every
single other instance, only the first one. Here, Magician is shown to have a Ninja
ability - but Yotta actually got Fighter instead. He immediately knew the manipulation
didn’t work and gave up, and immediately started attacking Dark Knight here instead of
waiting for it to fully hit the ground, which is what you would do if doing the manipulation.
This was unfortunate to miss, but the great thing is that the game was nice enough to give him good
RNG anyway. With this happening, this calculator has since been updated - and you can view all the
possible scenarios using arrow keys to navigate. Already having to power through all of that, the
run still isn’t over yet, with there being one final stage to conquer - the Heart of Nova. This
is the beginning of yet another RNG manipulation, and fortunately this time is purely
gameplay-based instead of using a calculator. With the autoscroller and fight being
simple enough to do consistently, it’s possible to keep your RNG consistent through
the entire thing up until the final Marx fight. The manipulation here mostly comes down to “kill
these enemies, but don’t kill these others”. Once getting up to the actual boss
fight, RNG stays mostly consistent, but it sometimes can be off by one or two numbers
and can be accounted for at the end of the fight. When defeating Nova here, runners need to pay
attention to these explosion clouds extremely carefully. This basically is what tells us what
RNG number we are on getting into this fight. While Yotta’s first actions here may seem
random, these notes can be used to tell you what to do entering the Marx fight. The
fight here is a lot different when doing the manipulation over doing it normally with
Jet. This stems from the actions taken needing to be done at consistent times, and doing
it the normal way will cause varying RNG. After doing Jet attacks in the final phase, RNG
Manipulate helps knowing where Marx will teleport, and with a quick Hammer switch, Yotta
finishes this boss off, resulting in the very end of the Any% speedrun, and for Yotta
here was roughly a 7 second record: a 33:01. Soo…that about covers the entire run, but of
course with a game as complex as this - it’s far from being over. Yotta’s sum of best
shows a 32 minute time is more than possible, and eventually can definitely happen whether
him, or someone else wants to do such. With a run that is already tightly optimized,
obviously not every tiny minor timesave that is discovered will be added in, but there are
definitely a handful of examples to point out. For example, in the planet Cavios there’s
a couple examples of optimizations, but if you want a more realistic example of what
may get added, there’s this elevator section in Revenge of Meta Knight that allows you to make
the elevator go up faster - and of course, there is also some more unrealistic things
here too such as this quick moment that is really difficult to do thanks to lag.
Besides adding in new timesaves, there’s other things to be improved upon that were
already mentioned such as better Fatty Whale RNG. While obviously it is hard to predict the
future - Yotta has consistently held this record for over four years as of making this, so
it’s safe to say his times aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. With his first record being
in 2019, he has since improved this time by well over a minute over the years. On top
of this, he really hasn’t had the fiercest of competition - If we enable obsolete runs, look how
many top times Yotta has out of the top 20 here. It’s safe to say that no matter what, Yotta for
quite a while has been the king of this game, holding onto the 100% record for an equal length
of time. With such a complex set of routing, movement, tech, and RNG, this game has a huge
skill requirement for pumping out top runs, and it’s definitely not for the faint of heart.
With this being one of the hardest Kirby titles to optimize at a high level, runners like
Yotta are able to prove how insane it can get, and of course that’s not the only
person to talk about in this game. I specifically want to thank Nippo who not
only has put so much work into this game, having a top 10 time, but helped me with
scripting this entire video. This project would’ve been a million times harder without
the help of someone with such extensive knowledge in speedrunning this game. Remember
the calculator I brought up for RNG manipulation? You can thank Nippo for that as well.
With that, this was a deep dive into beating Kirby Super Star as fast as possible,
and with that - Thanks for watching.
