The Hidden Shortcuts of Mario Kart Double Dash

[Music] this is mario kart double dash and for a decade and a half it was known as one of the most polished games in the mario kart franchise most entries in the series are loaded with game breaking shortcuts 64 is famous for its large skips wii has a faulty checkpoint system super circuit is perhaps more broken than any other these games all have healthy time trial competition and both non-shortcut and shortcut world records that have been tracked for many years but then there's mario kart double dash immediately upon its release in 2003 a shortcut was found on waluigi stadium and for the next 15 years that was it doubledash has always had a competitive time trial scene but it's been nearly exclusively non-shortcut racing with one exception the developers had managed to create a shortcut free game for years doubledash's speedrun scene grew as players mastered its racing mechanics and optimized non-shortcut races but all of a sudden in 2018 double dash's reputation as a shortcut free game was put on its head a game that was almost completely void of any glitches quickly became one of the most broken in the franchise this is the story of the mario kart double dash shortcut revolution [Music] first off what is a shortcut well to count as an official shortcut in the mario kart time trial community it not only has to save time but also be unintended by the developers for instance the jump at the start of yoshi circuit doesn't count as a shortcut since it was intentionally built into the course double dash came out in november 2003 we don't know who discovered it and it's unknown exactly when it was found but by the end of 2003 a shortcut had been discovered and for the next 15 years it would remain the only shortcut in the game this is waluigi stadium [Music] about two-thirds of the way through a lap you can drive off this slope and hit into the fence with enough speed to get thrown into the air if you make it high enough lakitu thinks you fell off from this bridge which is right before the finish line so he picks you up and places you down there it saves just under 2 seconds per lap and can be performed on all three laps while it's unclear exactly when this trick was discovered it's known to have existed within a month and a half of the game's release and quickly there was discussion on the double dash forums over whether or not shortcut times should be put on the website ultimately the community decided that since the shortcut was one of a kind it wouldn't be tracked on the website so the players page contained a space for non-shortcut records on every track but nothing for waluigi stadium shortcut still some players chose to drive shortcut races anyway records began to be set in december 2003 but video proof was much less strict back then even more so for an unofficial category not on the main website however one three lap video from back then still exists a run from 2004 by ipusen and yep it looks like it's from 2004 alright the biggest strategy he used was executing frequent mini turbos by starting a drift with r moving the stick in the opposite direction and back to neutral twice and then releasing r you get a short boost of speed mini turbos are key to getting fast times and ibusen performed them constantly through his three laps he also did the shortcut on the right slope instead of the left which was slower but likely a bit easier the biggest driving technique discovered was atec first seen in runs from 2004 but expanded upon by jsx in february 2006 if you release accelerate between mini turbos the cart sways back and forth less saving fractions of a second as you're able to take straighter lines and more direct paths forward thanks to that and other small driving optimizations the record still sees competition to this day with the most recent world records being set in late june 2022 but it all started back in 2003 double dash was brand new there is reason to believe that this shortcut was just the beginning and that in a few short years there would be skips all over that's how it went for previous games in the franchise and that appeared to be happening in double dash just the same but instead this game's history took a different path years passed still no new shortcuts the game's time trial scene grew bigger and bigger and by the mid-2000s it was vibrant with top players from all over the world but other than the occasional waluigi stadium race the competition was exclusively non-shortcut the focus was on optimizing every last millisecond from the 16 courses improving lines performing more mini turbos and implementing atek by 2008 mario kart wii was released and within months that game had massive ultra shortcuts breaking its tracks mario kart double dash several years older still had just one shortcut the years continued to pass and suddenly five years turned into 10. still there was nothing new mario kart double dash was an unbreakable game and that's all there was to it in over a decade of searching absolutely nothing had been found well okay there was one thing in mario kart double dash horses are surrounded by invisible planes that are nicknamed lakitu zones when you fall off a track and collide with one of these zones that's lakitu's cue to pick you up and drop you back on the track but this system isn't perfect suppose you fall off and manage to not hit a lack of two zone what happens well in that case you've officially made it out of bounds and lakitu still picks you up but he sets you back somewhere a bit different [Music] no matter where you go out of bounds lakitu sets you just behind the finish line since you never hit a lack of two zone the game doesn't know where to put you and sets you down right at the end of the course unfortunately crossing the finish line doesn't count a lap but at the very least this did provide some intrigue if players could somehow figure out a way to get a lap to count warping straight to the finish line would save massive time out of bounds mechanics were discovered shortly after the game's release but for many years it wasn't paid much attention despite its promising nature the simple fact was that without getting the lap to count it wasn't really a useful trick but still for the next 15 years players wondered if maybe there was something that could be done with it some way that the lap could count and have a shortcut be discovered and then 2018 came around the champion of mario kart double dash at that point was named goomba and in august he saw this random guy's video on mario kart wii and in it he saw that game's community figure out the checkpoint system and use it to break courses and create massive shortcuts meanwhile in 15 years of double dash its checkpoint system had yet to be solved but was it possible could a lap count when most of the driving is skipped well goomba finally decided enough was enough he began a deep dive into the inner workings of the game attempting to figure out exactly what conditions had to be met for a lapped account and over the course of several months with the contributions of community members like lothjon and tarsa mario kart double dash's code was cracked [Music] there are three conditions that must be met for a lapped account in mario kart double dash condition 1 you must start the lap in checkpoint 0 the first checkpoint on the map each course in the game is broken up into invisible checkpoints which are used to help keep track of how far you've driven this condition is pretty straightforward for a new lap to start you must be touching the first checkpoint of the course condition two you must have credit for driving through every checkpoint checkpoint bitcounters in the game keep track of whether or not you've touched any given checkpoint during a lap if you haven't it's set to zero and if you have it's set to one in order for a lap to count every checkpoint must have a bit counter set to 1 which would intuitively mean that you're not allowed to skip driving through any checkpoints however on waluigi stadium you skip several when performing the shortcut why does the lap still count well that's because there's a workaround if you hit a lack of two zone and get picked up you automatically get credit for every checkpoint between where you got picked up and where you were placed down it's known as a lack hop and is the only way around having to touch every single checkpoint and finally condition three your race completion must be greater than your number of laps completed double dash has an internal counter called race completion that starts at zero and gradually increases as you drive around the course once you complete a lap it hits one and then continues counting up again the reason this matters is because of a fail-safe developers put into the game the 50 rule if your race completion ever jumps up by 50 or more it rounds down and you lose credit for all you've driven through the lap so if you go out of bounds 30 percent of the way through a track then are warped to the finish line your race completion is set to just below zero since this is less than the zero laps that you've completed you won't get credit for a lap together these three rules were designed to prevent any shortcuts from existing in mario kart double dash and for 15 years they worked nearly flawlessly goomba hadn't figured this all out by late 2018 but he had a general understanding of how it worked now he had to put it all together somewhere and the course he looked at was mushroom bridge he had to not only get credit for driving through all the checkpoints but also avoid cutting out more than 50 percent of the course of the time it was gonna have to be a two-step process to get checkpoint credits he took the lachop mechanic to the next level by going on the grass just before the finish line you can use a mushroom and release break at the last moment to fly forward and hit a lakitu zone this zone is in front of the finish line but because of where you hopped off you're put back just before the finish line and since you get credit for all checkpoints between where you're picked up and where you're set down you get credit for every checkpoint on the course that was step one the next step was to get race completion for the lapped account together with lothron goomba took a look at the bridge right before the start by precisely jumping off at about 87 completion you can hit the wall on the other side at about 37 this is a decrease of only 50 percent so it's valid as far as the game is concerned you then respawn at 85 percent once again less than 50 percent and have therefore earned race completion for an entire lap so it was possible to do a lack hop to get checkpoints then turn around and quickly do a bridge hop to get race completion that satisfies both conditions 2 and 3 so if you drive over the finish line to enter the first checkpoint box a lap counts on september 15 2018 double dash's first shortcut in 15 years was born [Music] goomba's first three lap record with video clocked in at 115.639 about two and a half seconds ahead of the non-shortcut record he drove the first lap normally then performed a shortcut on lap two and finished with a normal lap three doing the shortcut more than once per race wasn't possible as you needed a mushroom for the laptop and your mushrooms are taken away when picked up by lakitu over the following few days goomba and a runner named j98 would trade the record down to a 114 each time doing the shortcut once and driving two laps normally however goomba then figured out it was possible to do the lack hop without a mushroom by going on the pillar next to the bridge you have sufficient height that you can bounce off the ground and make it far enough without using a mushroom this not only was faster than the old method but also meant that theoretically the shortcut could now be done more than once in a race however doing the bridge jump once was hard enough doing it twice in a row seemed nearly out of the question later in september j98 and goomba each did more mushroom bridge attempts lowering the record to 111 but still nobody was able to get the shortcut more than once in a race players focused their efforts elsewhere and the task of hitting two shortcuts was just too daunting for over a year that's where the record stood but in march 2020 someone began playing mushroom bridge shortcut only this time it wasn't goomba or j98 it was a relative newcomer to the game one who is ranked outside of the top 40 but he was ready to try and take down a world record his name was imathy mathy didn't have the driving skills of a world champion like goomba that meant that without anything new his 111 was going to be awfully tough to beat but he had one other option he could go for two shortcuts in the same race it had never successfully been pulled off before but even with worse driving it could be enough to beat goomba mathy got to work grinding attempts getting as good as he could at the bridgehop and lachop and on march 2nd 2020 he had this attempt probably far away far into the mountain that would okay yeah it worked oh [ __ ] oh [ __ ] oh [ __ ] all right don't freaking lose [Music] oh my god there it's so bad but that's it that's it sub 111 let's go a new record by less than a tenth of a second not to be outdone world champion goomba came back and over the next few days the two of them traded world records however over the next several months matthew would pull ahead as he was able to line up faster for the laptop and improved his driving around the course yeah let's [ __ ] go dude 107 325. so now a one out of three shortcut run had been optimized a two out of three shortcut run had been optimized there was only one thing left to do hit the shortcut on all three laps [Music] a three out of three run was originally thought to be slower since you could quickly line up for a laptop after driving a lap normally however in february 2022 matthew tested with save states and confirmed that if performed optimally enough a 3 out of 3 shortcut run would indeed save time but actually hitting it was another story matthew had gotten quite good at executing the lack cop and bridgehop over the years but he would need to do three of each in a row that's six consecutive difficult tricks it could take a while to grind this out but just four days later matthew got himself on this run [Music] good let's go this definitely works [Music] hog hoggiest pog [Music] let's go [Music] here we go please oh come on 104 he was a bit upset because he wanted a 103 not a 104 but history had still been made this 104.363 the world's first three out of three run is still the record today but let's not get ahead of ourselves as far as shortcut discoveries are concerned we're still in 2018. and at this point the only time trial shortcuts in the game were waluigi stadium from 2003 and mushroom bridge from 2018 but just a month later thanks to a better understanding of how checkpoints worked doubledash's third time trial shortcut would be discovered welcome to bowser's castle [Music] bowser's castle was quickly singled out as a prime candidate for a shortcut the reason why is because of the balcony about 40 of the way through a lap on bowser's castle you drive on a balcony directly adjacent to the finish line drive to 60 and you're higher up on the same balcony it seemed natural that with so many regions being so close together you could somehow get credit for being further in the lap than you really were but for a while it didn't seem to be possible however after mushroom bridges discovery lothron and goomba looked into bowser's castle and thanks to exploiting a specific game mechanic they figured out how to use the balcony to their advantage this is the atec hop as mentioned before atec is when you release the a button between mini turbos to keep a straighter line however there's a side effect of atec your cart's nose gets slightly lifted in the air if you do a mini turbo with atek then perform a sharp turn after releasing a and then press r and a while your nose is pointed up your cart hops into the air it's called an atec hop and is the only way to hop in mario kart double dash so after driving half a lap normally you arrive at the balcony by performing an atec hop in a precise spot off the ledge your race completion goes from 40 to 60 percent as you hit the upper balcony checkpoints to 99 as you hit the finish line checkpoints and back to 40 percent as you respawn it never jumps up by more than 50 at a time so your race progression increases by a full lap and you get checkpoint credits upon respawning this trick would go on to be nicknamed the flop for laps two and three you can flop off the ledge then laphop to get checkpoint credits for the full lap and complete the race having driven hardly any of it so goomba got to work and managed to hit the shortcut after a few tries on october 10 2018 a 209 run ahead of the non-shortcut record by 7 seconds over the following few days he'd cut down on the number of tries needed to hit it taking the time down to 126 but on the 14th goomba would hit the first ever three out of three a run with three flops and three lakh hops and a final time of 106. yes dude oh my god the winner tanko a month later a runner named rick bick would be the first to cut out a laptop by hitting the proper checkpoints on the flop that lowered the record to just over a minute but just five days later goomba would return to not only take the record back but take it under a minute mario kart double dash's first ever sub minute world record yes dude oh my god 59 and then three years would pass goomba chose to play other courses in the game and most other runners had little interest in shortcuts or just couldn't compete with him but then matthew came along at first he struggled to set any records on bowser's castle but in september 2021 he finally came through with a 58 second run but what matthew would do just four weeks later was far more impressive he would discover another shortcut known today simply as the big bounce and this is why [Music] the big bounce is essentially a larger version of the atec hop instead of angling your cart's nose up with atec you want to very precisely maneuver your cart along the edge by then rotating around your nose is pointed up much higher than it would be from atec you can then use a mushroom and do a more extreme version of the atac hop called the extreme hop by using another mushroom when you land you perform what's called a shroom bounce and get even more air enough to hit the lakitu zone and respawn on the balcony this saves close to 10 seconds if performed optimally but adds another layer of difficulty still it didn't take long before matthew was able to hit it in a run and lower the record by another six seconds yeah oh let's go nice job dude goomba didn't take long to respond taking another two seconds off mostly via a faster big bounce at the start that's where the record stood for about six months but in april 2022 matthew would come back once more and finish off a 49-second world record with one of the most sarcastic celebrations in speedrunning history yeah oh wow matthew's 49 second run stands as the record today bowser's castle has had dramatic record cuts over the years but without new strategies it shouldn't go very much lower after bowser's castle it wasn't obvious which course would be next there were several that had potential although nothing that could quite be put together one day in october 2018 goomba was streaming on twitch and wanted to demonstrate some shortcut theory for his viewers so he loaded up mushroom city goomba showed his chat that if you could somehow hit this lakitu zone from the bottom the game would set you back on top and you'd skip a good chunk of the course however he had tested this before and the lap didn't count when driving over the finish line so he drove forward to show his viewers how a lap wasn't counted [Music] what what but that's not supposed to work had no idea what had happened but he quickly figured it out this part of the course contains both checkpoint boxes 24 and 25. they extend infinitely upwards if you touch the lack of 2 zone in box 25 you never actually leave this box when you respawn so neither race completion nor the checkpoint bit counter gets updated if you touch it in box 24 on the other hand you respawn outside of it so the lap counts as it does on other courses so that was figured out in october 2018 but this was all just the proof of concept goomba had no method of actually touching the lakitu zone from below he did it before with a moon jump code so it remained on the shelf for the next two and a half years but in march 2021 matthew solved it again his method was quite similar to the big bounce on bowser's castle you angle your nose up on a slope then do an extreme hop and do a shroom bounce to get enormous height and touch the lakitu zone as long as you do so in checkpoint 24 the lap counts and just like that the mushroom city shortcut was born [Music] matthew was the first to set a three-lap record on mushroom city just hours after the shortcut was discovered this was quite a difficult trick to hit and he still needed to drive well enough after for it to be faster than the non-shortcut record but he did 133.369 let's [ __ ] go [ __ ] goomba began doing attempts too and thanks to a particularly fast shortcut hit he beat matthew and set the record yes over the following few weeks the two of them would once again get into a world record battle matthew came up with a slightly faster way to do the shortcut from the front and thanks to that plus improved driving afterwards the record came under a minute 30. but the biggest improvement would be discovered that september when matthew found that the shroom bounce wasn't needed if you got your nose in the air enough and didn't extreme hop it was possible to reach the lack of two zone without using a mushroom now that technically opened the possibility of doing the shortcut more than once in a race but it was an extremely difficult trick tougher than any other shortcut in the game many months passed and the record remained with just one shortcut out of three doing it more than that was just too big of an ask and then on june 3rd 2022 matthew did this [Music] oh come on oh my god dude you're in a world record video i just did the first two for three mushroom city glitch wait really yeah i just have i just have to not [ __ ] the bed lap three now [Music] 120 he had done it again the world's first two out of three shortcut hit on mushroom city to this day it hasn't been replicated will a three out of three ever be done maybe one day but keep in mind how long two out of three took for now a 120.634 is where the record stands but these three lap runs aren't the only types of world records set in mario kart double dash the game keeps track of not only your fastest three lap race but also your fastest individual lap on any given course on the double dash players page this is called doing a fast lap or flap for short so that means it's possible to go to bowser's castle and do a flop on your flap i just wanted to say that but anyway flap world records are tracked right alongside three lap records and carry a similar level of prestige but in 2021 a pair of shortcuts would be found that were slower for a three lap record but would save time over a flap record they would become the game's first flap-only shortcuts first up discovered in march 2021 we have luigi circuit the shortcut on luigi circuit is one of the most clever in the game step one is to drive most of a lap normally then before getting credit for the lap you turn around and go back out to the front of the course by doing an a-tech hop it's possible to get on this ledge right in front of the finish line you then maneuver right next to this zipper and let's go over the three conditions for a lap to count again your checkpoints and race completion are met by driving around the course which you already did but the first condition says you have to touch checkpoint zero this is normally done by just crossing the finish line but it can also be done by touching it from the other side so when you touch the zipper you enter checkpoint zero and start the lap with about a one second head start the resulting time save means that you can have an individual lap slightly faster than what you normally get beyond this the only optimization is how well you drive the subsequent lap since matthew discovered the atac hop in march 2021 he and goomba have alternated who drove better trading the record back and forth several times and at the moment goomba holds the record with a 23.390 the other flap only shortcut is a little different instead of a 23 second lap we're talking more like six or seven seconds and this time we're headed out to the desert [Music] dry dry desert had a lack hop that had been known about for years if you drive away from the road and cross the finish line as you get picked up by lakitu you'll be dropped down behind the finish line with all your checkpoints updated unfortunately this wasn't helpful unless you could somehow gain race completion along with it and for years there was no way to do that however all the way back in 2003 a player named scott r did this on dino dino jungle [Music] when a floor is sloped enough in double dash and you drive into it with enough speed while your cart is sideways it's possible to clip through it you need to get a bit lucky with your cart's positioning so it's on one side of the floor one frame and the other side the next but the key is finding a floor sloped just the right way it needs to be at the perfect angle so you can actually clip through it sort of like this downed pillar on dry dry desert this particular clip was discovered by matthew and since you land out of bounds you get warped straight to the finish line so you can drive part of a lap go out of bounds then drive around again to stack your race completion higher by then doing a lack hop to finish the lap you get your checkpoints instantly to start lap 2 and upon crossing the finish line you have yourself an incredibly short lap optimizations have been slim over the years with just a fraction of a second being shaved off at a time matthew and goomba set most of the records but famed super circuit runner rusty set a few records too this actually isn't the fastest flap record in the game as both mushroom bridge and bowser's castle have records in the 4 second range the current record here is 6.437 seconds by mathy and it seems that it can only go down by a couple hundredths of a second at most the key is getting a frame perfect lap entry combined with a small bounce when being dropped by lakitu but regardless this record shouldn't be going much lower that makes it two flap only shortcuts and four that can be done on three lap runs over the years many have tried their hand at these shortcuts some courses have a leaderboard of a few names while older ones like waluigi stadium have dozens but there's still one more shortcut to talk about to this day only one person has ever pulled it off fast enough the player was matthew and the course was wario coliseum [Music] coliseum is a unique course for one thing it's the only course in the game where you drive just two laps for the race to be complete but it's also got many places you can launch yourself off the road which gave it huge potential for a shortcut throughout 2021 out of bounds and laptop combinations were theorized yet nothing came to fruition but one night in june 2021 goomba and mathy hopped on a call and decided to look together and over the next 24 hours the wario coliseum shortcut was born first you drive to around 40 race completion then you fly off the edge of the road and by using a mushroom to pull your cart down you avoid touching any other checkpoints and land out of bounds however when respawning behind the finish line the game actually thinks you're on the track below at 55 so the 50 rule is satisfied you then drive backwards do a lack hop to get all checkpoints between where you jumped off and where you went out of bounds and when you drive forward a lap counts now is all this faster than just driving the lap normally it actually is but just barely only one person has been able to execute it fast enough to save time over a non-shortcut run mathy on june 6th 2021 he did it for the first time getting a 156.190 that beat the non-shortcut record by 1 100th of a second yes finally 156 190. let's go he'd follow this up four months later with a 155.735 and then a 155.437 in march 2022 and to this day those are the only three records that have ever been set on wario coliseum waluigi stadium mushroom bridge bowser's castle mushroom city luigi circuit dry dry desert and wario coliseum those are the seven courses that have been broken by players of mario kart double dash there exists an eighth shortcut on dinodinal jungle that hasn't been hit fast enough yet it's similar to luigi circuit where you start a lap from the other end of checkpoint zero a few years ago waluigi stadium was alone now half the courses in the game have a shortcut double dash is going to be played for generations to come and right now we're just in a snapshot of its history but if it's past is any indication players aren't yet done breaking its courses and finding shortcuts eight courses have yet to fall victim to a shortcut but it seems that their days are numbered more courses will be broken the only questions are when will it happen and who will be the ones to do it thanks for watching [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Summoning Salt

Views: 2,065,187

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Id: ToO7IeVx1y8

Length: 41min 4sec (2464 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 23 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/Master565]

Summoning Salt videos are so influential that they're ending up in the story lines of Summoning Salt videos

[u/violentlycar]

As someone who competed in MKDD back in the mid-00s, it is very jarring to see people setting records with anything other than the barrel train.

[u/huds601]

/u/TheSlyGuy1 Pleased to see you still producing great speedrunning content!

Do you have plans to revisit some of your old videos?

For example, Sonic 2 has seen some incredible new tech in the last 2 years, snd the WR is on the verge of breaking the 13 minute barrier.

The fight for the Sonic Classic Trilogy itself is an amazing story worth telling I’m sure.

Alternatively, given 7 of your last 10 videos have been Mario related, do you any plans to cover something outside of Mario/Nintendo?

[u/inio]

Wake up babe, new SummoningSalt just dropped.

[u/SquirrelSanctuary]

u/TheSlyGuy1 my hero! You are a top-notch histographer and creator in the gaming community, my dude 👋

[u/nilsmoody]

I never realized how much less Double Dash Content is on YouTube compared to 8, Wii or 64. Doesn't matter if Speedrun related or not. Oddly enough it is my favorite but it has gone unnoticed.

[u/MarlowesMustache]

Flopping flappers

[u/BlindManBaldwin]

Never knew this bit about DD's history!

[u/DoctorSwellman]

Salt always putting out the top tier productions 😎