The Mario Kart 64 Tool Assisted Speedrun Explained

Mario Kart 64 is incredibly broken with skips that come in several varieties some that let you jump over walls some that abuse lacky to placements some that the developers intentionally left in and some that defy logic altogether speedrunners have been running this game for the better part of three decades and are still striving to optimize it to this day but one of them pondered a simple question what would a perfect run look like this is the Mario Kart 64 tool assisted speedrun explained Luigi Raceway is a track with a lot of shortcuts but one shortcut that you may not have heard about is this video sponsor drink control drink control's mission is to bring healthy food options to Gamers and they have a great selection of meals and snacks that will help you meet your nutritional needs cooking food can take time and if you're in an intense gaming session the meal replacement shakes are a great option to keep you gaming as the total prep time can be completed between game lobbies and if 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saves already at work he needs to select which game mode he will play on what character he will play as and which cup he will compete on but a clever trick with the controller ports lets him do all of this in just a few short frames you Grand PR s your player to select Grand Prix and 150cc he needs to do four inputs one to select the game mode two to toggle down to the difficulty and one to confirm but by using four controllers he can execute this in a single frame this is is because the game reads inputs from all four controllers while on the game select screen so by queuing the inputs he can have the game read them in order for a single frame menu this doesn't apply on the character select screen where only the first player controller is active toad Yoshi and Peach are the fastest characters but the cursor's starting position is directly above Yoshi so he saves six frames by making the objectively best character Choice he can select the cups in any order but opts to do them linearly and with the mushroom Cup on underway we're ready to go over the first track of the game Luigi Raceway at the start of the race he does two things he holds a at the correct time during the countdown to get a boost off the goal line and he enters an AB spin the ab spin is a state where you surprisingly hold a and b it reduces your top speed but greatly increases your turning capacity the only catch is you need to be going under 10 km an hour to initiate it since Yoshi starts in an AB spin then gets a boost the speed restriction never comes into effect but there is another problem he needs to jump off of DK but Luigi is in the way if you slam into a CPU while boosting and jump you will be launched into the air with the height you receive depending on the weight of your character and the weight of the character you're hitting Yoshi has the second lowest weight in the game next to Toad and DK has the highest which means you'll receive a large amount of height but Luigi is blocking the path so Drew pushes him out of the way so that the line is clear to do a CPU jump off of DK he angles the jump to pass through the grass above the tunnel which doesn't have Collision in this version and lands directly onto an item box below all while maintaining the ab spin so he can maneuver tightly the item box is confirmed on the earliest possible frame so he can pick up another item in reserve which brings us to the next part of the skip the mil style discovered by Miles buckram the mil style is a very unique trick when he approaches the sloped section the polygons are marked as tumble sections which should send him into a tumble but instead he gets a large jump so what's happening Yoshi doesn't actually touch the tumble polygon instead he lands on the seam between the drivable track and the tumble polygons and presses jump this results in a bounce with some height but it's not enough to clear the wall so he needs to do a second jump but this one is even more unique he lands on the seam again but the polygon above isn't a tumble polygon it's marked as a wall which isn't coated to let you bounce off of it so he should be forced into a tumble as there's no surface with a bounce property but if we look under the hood we see why he gets a second jump the physics calculations for the game are performed on subframes which means they run multiple times per frame we don't need to get into to how these work all that's important is that if you touch the wall first on one subframe and then touch the tumble surface on the next subframe you can get a bounce when you jump on the frame after these calculations have ran this gets him over the wall and before he lands he needs to manipulate his angle so that he can jump over the wall again as there aren't any CPUs this time this is where the items come in the Red Shell is perfect because it sends you flying with a lot of height when you're hit but there are two issues when a red is shot it will travel for some distance before it returns to the path markers in the middle of the track and continues forward as it homes in on its Target don't worry about path markers now as we'll come back to them later he can't shoot the red at any angle here because the track is narrow so he needs to find a spot where the shell won't hit the firewall and that gives him enough time to get in front of it from his current location he doesn't have time to reach the shell before this happens so he needs to use the mushroom to get out in front of it which sends him to the second lap where he repeats the process on lap three he doesn't need a red shell since he won't be completing the lap skip again so he grabs a single shroom and performs a boosted jump off the seam which gives him enough air to make the jump in one bounce this is slightly slower than a double bounce due to the amount of time he spends in the air but the CPUs have made it around the track and Luigi would block him if he did a double bounce so it's a necessary time loss so why was he able to skip a lap the answer lies in how the game tracks progress the course is divided into into sections which are tracked in memory as you drive the lab inside of each section are path markers and if you look at the progress UI every time your character advances they're getting associated with A New Path marker if you're within 20 path markers of the Finish Line on either side the goal will be turned on otherwise it's deactivated and the line extends far beyond its visual representation if you haven't left the starting area on lap one or after completing a lap and drive backwards over the line the game will also sub ract a lap from you to prevent cheating Additionally the game will only start counting progress on a lap when you get associated with a path marker greater than 20 and for this skip you're leaving the Finish Line area when you jump the wall so the Finish Line gets turned off when you land the game has to assign you a path marker so it gives you one in the tunnel which is greater than 20 so the game assumes you're making progress on the lap when you jump the wall it sees that you're within 20 path markers of the finish line so it activates the goal which let you complete complete the lap basically as long as you start a lap with the Finish Line active you only have to hit a path marker outside of the 20 marker check for it to deactivate the finish line and assume you're making progress Mumu Farm doesn't have a known shortcut so the task relies on perfect driving to beat it as fast as possible which means it's a good time to talk about the main mechanic of Mario Kart the mini turbo on its face the mini turbo is simple enough press R to initiate a jump and keep holding it to enter into a slide while sliding steer your stick the direction you want to go then counter steer a couple of times to build charge and once the smoke coming out of your tires turns red you release R for a small speed boost that sounds simple enough but there are lots of intricacies to be accounted for from start to finish there are seven different states you progress through when performing a mini turbo and each has a required amount of frames that need to pass before you can transition to the next with the first five states having static requirements the final two have some variation as to when you can let them go but this is situational and depends on factors such as how long of a turn you're in as it can be beneficial to cut a mini turbo off and start a new one before reaching the Glide turn or to hold one of the final two states a bit longer to get a better angle on top of this there's a secret piece of tech called a xenos slide where you toggle the stick while sliding to build more speed and the faster you toggle the more you speed up the zenos slide does have a trade-off however as the longer you hold a mini turbo the more speed you'll lose due to curving your angle more steeply which results in a less direct route so this is typically only used on long slides where you can save a few hundreds of a second or when benefiting from a boost speaking of boosts since this track doesn't have any shortcuts items are used to generate a lot of speed so let's look at the physics of the star and mushro room when under the effects of a star your speed is increased by 20% you can still do mini turbos although they become more difficult to optimize as the increased speed doesn't come with increased handling so your turns won't be as sharp and the mini turbo frame requirements remain the same the benefits of a star last for 9 seconds which gives weatherton a large window for adding in Xeno slides on the long mini turbo sections a mushroom has a much shorter duration lasting about 3 seconds and only increases your speed by 10 % with another 3% being achievable if you perform a zenos slide while boosting due to the shorter duration it can be very difficult to find spots for the xenos slide to be beneficial making a shroom one of the hardest items to optimize in fact across the entire track there's only one xenos slide and it occurs on the final shroom to save just a few hundreds of a second the next track doesn't have a skip either but that doesn't stop it from having broken interactions in fact as far as skipless tracks go it's the most broken in the [Music] game out of the gate an exploit is used to trick the game into thinking you're in second place so you can get a star at the Koopa shaped Rock there are two paths you can take but path markers only exist on one side of the Rock So by taking a wide angle to the right when entering the left path Yoshi gets associated with a path marker earlier in the course and won't get close enough to another until after an AI has passed him so while in first he's technically in second he will only be in second place for half a second so he confirms the item for a star which is a 5% chance speaking of items it's about time we went over the RNG the game has a total of 14 items and depending on what place you're in when you confirm an item box the items you can receive will vary in first place there are only eight items you can pull with green shells and bananas having the highest chance of appearing but in second place you can get anything except a single banana or the blue shell so when you can take a second place item without sacrificing time it's almost always worth it to get a star so how does weatherton Ensure he gets the exact item he needs it's not dumb Luck instead he manipulates RNG but it's not as simple as pressing a few buttons Mario Kart's RNG formula has four parameters the RNG value which is a random number from 0 to 99 the ab buttons which is a counter that goes up each frame one of these buttons are pressed the race frames which is a counter that goes up each frame of a race from start to finish and the last item selected which is the item table number of the last item the player had there's only one variable that can be controlled and that's the ab buttons if you hold one button the counter goes up in increment of one if you hold two it advances by two and holding all three buttons advances it by three three since these buttons all affect driving in a large way there's only two times that it's safe to increment RNG before a race has started and while you're in the air altering RNG Before the Race only works on the first item box you encounter so all of the subsequent boxes need to be altered in the brief amount of time you're in the air when you initiate a mini turbo either by releasing R for a few frames which will alter the count by -5 or by pressing B while in the air which has no noticeable effect on your speed despite these limitations the RNG is successfully manipulated across all 12 items picked up on this track but there's another item trick that we need to look at and that's the Finish Line glitch for some reason this polygon next to the Finish Line is mismapped and the game will interpret your position as being in eighth place while you're on it this lets you grab an eighth place item no matter what place you're actually in and weatherton uses a boo to grab a star but the boo itself isn't a normal item in Grand PR mode the the boo doesn't actually steal an item instead it functions as an item box that has a 20% chance to give you nothing when the boo is used with the Finish Line glitch you have a 30% chance to get a star which makes the RNG manip a bit easier so that's what Drew does on laps 2 and three as for the technical driving sections there are two things worth pointing out the first is the ramp leading into the tunnel which is a built-in shortcut you can't charge a mini turbo while you're in the air but you can hold any charge you've built up beforehand so so by doing a full mini turbo before leaving the ramp you can hold it in the air and let go for a boost upon Landing the last unique part of this track is that it's the only one in the game with a water hazard you can drive through it's set on a cycle so you won't have to deal with it on lap one but going into lap two The Tide is at its highest so Drew is forced to drive through it and take a speed reduction you might think it's quicker to drive around but that put you on an inferior line for the next turn and would end up costing more time than driving in the water and on lap three he has a shroom and while boosting you ignore speed penalties from terrain which lets him take the fastest line to the goal without a problem we are now at the last track of the mushroom cup where an Easter egg shortcut and unique CPU jump are the star attractions at the first item boxes he confirms triple greens while in first then sandbags into second place for a star he doesn't need two of the green shells so he fires them off before entering the tunnel then sends the third down the tunnel and we'll get to why in a second because first we have a skip to do if you're inside of the tunnel and are traveling in a counterclockwise Direction while you have a star active the game will give you a lap courtesy of the developers it only works on the first and second laps so you can't end a race with it and the way it works is a bit crazy remember how I said the Finish Line extends for a long distance that's true on every track track except for Kari desert on this course the line ends right at the wall near the goal but if you're using a star it gets extended all the way to the tunnel and is set active which is why the skip works as for the green he shot down the tunnel he's going to use it to jump the fence and get back on the track but the star is still active it lasts for 9 seconds from the time it's triggered which means he'll have to wait unless he finds a way to get rid of it which he discovered on accident while making this task if you enter a tumble while a star is active the game will remove the invincibility state from you however there aren't any tumble polygons in the tunnel but this didn't stop Drew from creating one himself when experimenting with turns in the tunnel he accidentally ran into the seam between polygons in this corner and to his surprise it took him out of the Star State the reason you tumble has to do with the walls hit boxes as this is an open corner wall hit boxes have a quarter of it sit in front and the other 3/4s trail behind when two walls are are joined together and there is a convex curve part of the hit boxes are aligned in such a way that if you drive on the seam the game will put you into a tumble due to being in contact with two hit boxes at the same time with the star nullified he heads for the green shell and jumps the fence which saves having to exit the tunnel at one of the train crossings he lands onto an item box to pick up a shroom which he uses to get another shroom on his way to complete the second lap and with the CPUs on their way to the Finish Line he sets up for the next skip [Music] there's a lawn at play here so let's break it down he shrooms to perform a large CPU jump off of Wario this gets him above the wall where he can slip through a gap and land inside of the level beneath every course is a water plane so that players won't fall forever should they get out of bounds which triggers lyu to come rescue him he's then placed at the start of the finish line and gets credited for an instant lap but why when lcu decides where to set you down the game checks for the last section you were in and then the last path marker you were associated with in that section since he jumped from in front of the Finish Line the game had this stored as his section so that's where he gets set down when he jumps out of bounds the Finish Line isn't active due to it ending at the wall so the game thinks he's behind the line and making progress on the lap so the third lap ends as soon as he's placed on the track this is quite amazing as the only reason this works is because of how the developers coded the hidden shortcut if the Finish Line didn't end at the wall the game would know you're cheating but since they offered a free shortcut why not take [Music] two since a cup has been finished a reset is performed so the next one can be selected quickly but this time he selects toad over Yoshi which is a sixf frame time loss and we'll find out why shortly he starts the race in an AB spin with a boost and jumps to get on top of Luigi since he's hitting a CPU he gets some height although it's not a lot because Luigi isn't a very heavy character but it is enough to get in front of the rest of the racers he maintains the ab spin up to the item boxes while this would normally be a time loss from the reduced top speed he does it for two reasons first he will confirm a mushroom before triggering another item box which he will sandbag into a lower place to get a star and second he's going to perform a CPU jump so he needs to wait for Wario to get in the correct position Toad's Turnpike is a figure eight that Loops under itself so by jumping off of Wario you can cut out the first Loop entirely the reason toad was picked is because while he shares identical stats with Yoshi and Peach he weighs 22% less this lets him jump higher off of CPUs allowing for more distance and making this particular jump possible when he lands he uses the star then picks up a boo it's worth noting that the star's invincibility outlasts the visual effect by a small amount of time so while it may appear that the star has ended he still has a few frames of invulnerability which lets him drive through the bus without getting hit the boo serves two purposes on this track since he's in first place he's Limited in what items he can receive so a shell is selected and once the boo is used he gets another state of invincibility which lets him take a fast path around the track since he doesn't have to worry about the traffic he activates and holds the shell to make room for another item because with the CPU is only at the halfway point he needs to improvise to perform the skip again the walls beyond the fence have no Collision so he only needs the small height from hitting a green to clear the fence and grass at this angle whereas the CPU jump required a lot of distance and height due to Wario's placement it's worth noting that the many turbos he performs while under the Boo's invincibility are frame perfect in how close to the wall they are if he was any closer he would make contact and lose speed for the final lap Bowser is almost in a perfect position for another CPU jump but not quite so he gives him a small nudge to push him into place before doing the third jump on the final slide of the game you can also see his angle changed a few times this is the result of a xenos slide being used to optimize his speed to save a few hundreds of a second I'm the best [Music] after Toad's Turnpike we arrive at frap snowland the first track where you don't need to use a CPU jump to exploit the lap progression for a skip it starts off with an AB spin to get turned around there are NPCs in the way but more time is saved by hitting them than avoiding them this is due to a property of the ab spin that let you turn more sharply while in the air so the small amount they bump you vertically allows for a more aggressive line to the bridge the bridge itself isn't special but coincidentally its path marker is outside of the Finish Line proximity check which is why it's the starting place for this skip as the game will assume your making progress on the lap with this as your path marker from the bridge you'll jump onto the snow to the left of the Finish Line while taking care not to touch the track the snow is marked FF in memory which means it's unknown and not associated with any section so while you're on it your section won't get updated but if you touch the track the game will update your section from the bridge which would ruin the trick once on the snow he drives just beyond the Finish Line then hits an out of bounds trigger at this moment the game hasn't tracked you as having made any progress on the lap as it considers you to still be at the start of the race but that's about to change since we h hopped over the track from the bridge our section is stored as the one from the bridge so lacu brings us back to that location when he picks us up the game now thinks we've gone from the start of the lap to the end so by repeating the trick we get credited for a lap as we cross the line then get taken back to the end of the lap you might be wondering why the finish line is active and that's because while our section won't update while on the snow our path marker will so the game turns the Finish Line on when we're within the 20 marker check as for the technical driving details on this track there are only two things to break down at the start of each lap an AB spin is used to quickly get in position on the bridge then a trick called the fast Excel is used where you frame perfectly accelerate by triple tapping a as there's not enough room for a mini turbo to be beneficial so none are performed on the second lap he drives slightly more ahead of the finish line so that lacu will place him closer to the goal as it's faster to drive over the line on the last lap so he doesn't need to start from the bridge to set up another skip wait why was there a lightning bolt the eighth place CPU has a 1 in1 100 chance to use a bolt and since this race doesn't use any items weatherton manipulated the RNG so that we'd get to see a bolt once in the [Music] task I'm the best perhaps the most famous track in all of Mario Kart 64 choco mountain is home to the weather Tango the most precise skip in the entire run to execute the trick a mushroom is required and since it needs to be performed three times a triple shroom is the fastest option this item can't be obtained in first place so when he reaches the item boxes he grabs a single shroom then crashes into the wall to initiate a tumble this gets him turned around faster than using an AB spin since he would need to get under 10 km per hour to enter one and would lose time slowing down he uses the single shroom to boost back into the item box boxes then confirms for triple shrooms once his rank allows for it this gives him all of the ammunition he needs for three weather tkos but first he needs to get set up arriving at the Finish Line he needs to make a 90° turn to face the wall which is difficult due to how thin the track is the fastest way is by sliding the back of the cart over the wall which helps him get turned without having to compromise on speed he's now in position to execute the weather tenko which requires two things a very precise angle and a very precise PR amount of height the way this trick works is a bit ridiculous but when you jump up in the air you touch the top of the wall for a single frame which for some strange reason has its geometry mapped to the tunnel section down the track so while you're touching it the game thinks you're very far ahead in the lap and are making progress after touching the top you'll start to fall and while descending you need to cross behind the Finish Line while staying above the wall section if you cross over onto the track too early the game will update your section which kills the skip but while you're over the wall the game still thinks you're at the tunnel section until you land where it then puts you at the end of the lab after crossing the line he then sets up for a second skip but I'd like to go back to the single frame he touches the top of the wall because by all accounts this trick shouldn't work as lacky to should come and pick him up as soon as he touches the wall so what gives Mario Kart runs at 60 frames per second but visually it only updates every second frame with these being known as input frames as it only accepts inputs from the player on these frames the frames in between input frames are called lag frames with physics updates taking place on both FL frames and input frames lacu will only ever function while the game is on an input frame however so if you touch the top of the wall on a lag frame physics calculations are still running so your section gets updated to the tunnel and on the next frame you're no longer touching the top of the wall so lacu will never come to pick you up to end the final lap he reverses over the Finish Line as you you can still fast excel in Reverse despite the top speed being 12 km an hour but since we are only going a few units of distance this is the fastest option over turning around and driving forward I'm the best there's a well-known shortcut on this track that was published in the official strategy guide which Nintendo Power encouraged people to use in their contest for the golden N64 controllers but that that's too slow so Drew opted for something a lot faster he needs to get Triple Reds and can't do this while in first so he drops down to Second and confirms the item on the first possible frame then grabs a second set as mentioned previously red shells use the path marker system for their pathing and if they're fired at an angle they will travel in the direction shot for a bit then turn around and take the closest path to the center it's also worth noting that he needs Reds for this skip greens won't give you enough height to clear the wall but red shells come with their own problem when you're hit by a red you bounce when landing on the ground this loses a lot of time but weatherton has a clever trick to avoid this he angles his descent so that he barely touches the wall which puts him into a tumble the tumble has a much faster recovery than the bounce and before he hits the ground he fires off another red so that he can go back over the wall a fast Excel into an AB spin takes care of the tight movement required and he repeats this skip twice on each lap but there's one shell we need to dive into on the second to last shell he fires it disappears into the firew wall only to reappear from underground just in time to send him flying the reason it goes through the wall without expiring is because the Collision hasn't loaded for the wall yet due in part to how he's jumping over the wall what happens next we don't actually know how to explain but our theory is that the shell drops below the map as there's no drivable surface on the other side of the wall it just passed through it then makes its way back to the course as it tries to find the nearest path marker before erupting through the floor for the final skip as it appears to teleport from behind the wall to hitting toad after this hit he only needs to cross the Wall one more time so he attempts to land on the finish line which requires him to exploit lag frames the position he needs to land on is so precise that on a lag frame you need to be over the wall and on the input frame you need to be past the Finish Line the result ends up being so precise that if the joystick was moved by this much of a unit it wouldn't work and for good measure he fires off his final shell so that it zooms towards the camera I'm the best we are now at the Star Cup which starts with Wario Stadium another track with a well-known wall jump skip toad is the chosen character for this cup he's not the fastest on this track due to the height he gets off of CPU jumps but he does make it up later in the cup so let's dive in the first jump is relatively easy as it's an AB spin to get the correct angle into a jump off of DK the ab spin is continued so toad can quickly turn as he executes the next jump but this time there isn't a CPU to get over the wall in this situation he jumps after making contact we'll call this a wall Ricochet since the word bounce is used for its own mechanic but all that's happening is the force being added from hitting the wall is being added to the jump input wall ricochets can be fickle with the window for the r press sometimes being a single frame and other times having an input window of four frames after the first lap he no longer needs the ab spin so he turns sharply left to maintain speed and keeps hopping the wall The Only Exception is the final jump as he uses an AB spin to turn more sharply which saves 100th of a second like the other skips in the game the reason this trick works is because you're jumping ahead to a path marker greater than 20 so the game will start logging progress on the lab when you jump over the wall you're within 20 path markers of the Finish line so when you pass over the goal you get credited for a lap I'm the best sherbet land is Another Broken track with perhaps one of the most creative skips in the entire task as weatherton is going to jump to the island in the middle here we go here we [Applause] go [Applause] [Music] the setup requires turning around so just like on choco Mountain he uses the wall to get some extra help except this time he goes into a full tumble as he has some buffer while waiting for the CPU to get into position now comes the tricky part he triggered an item box which he forced to be a shroom he's going to use the Boost to jump to the island but before this he needs to get two more item Boxes by pulling a tight Circle he can grab the first item box and confirm it for triple Reds but now there's a problem the box he used hasn't responded yet and Donkey Kong is going to take the other available box so he improvises the frame after he collides with Wario he gets launched at an angle that has him barely touched the hit box for the item box to the right which he then uses to confirm triple shrooms what weatherton is trying to do for this skip is reach a section on the other side of the track he can't reach it from this side even with a boosted CPU jump and a shell jump from the island on its own won't get him there either but with a shell jump boosted by a shroom he can just barely reach it he starts shooting off shells as soon as he lands the second shell is the one he'll be jumping off of as the first shell goes off the edge and the third shell needs to be cleared so he can use the shrooms he then enters a boosted slide as soon as it's clear of his inventory after hitting the shell jump he gets associated with a section on the other side of the course but now has to eat the biggest time loss of the Run getting picked up by lacu getting rescued from water takes the longest of any lacu event and the water on sherbet land leaves you stuck in an ice cube for an added time loss he consumes the remaining shrooms to pick up a boo and make sure to touch this polygon on the way by the finish line and he now has some time to kill while waiting for CPUs [Applause] with the CPUs in position he jumps off of Bowser and lands on the wall behind the Finish Line before tumbling down where he enters an AB spin to set up for another jump off of DK in order for the game to deactivate the finish line and start tracking lap progress he needs to get to a path marker larger than 20 with the closest spot being a path marker in section two which is why he drives out in front of the line on each lap once in section two he jumps off a heavyweight and over the wall side of the finish line line as this trick won't work if you go over the water for some strange reason the polygon for this wall is marked FF and while you're over it or touching it the game won't update your section so you can sneak behind the Finish Line without activating it as it thinks you're still in section two once you touch the track it updates your section to 18 and activates the finish line again so you get credit for a lap as it was completely unaware of the chicanery that was just pulled I'm the best if you thought sherbet land was impressive Royal Raceway will blow your mind as it's the only track in the game where Drew uses a different skip on each lap lap one he needs to get Triple shrooms so after bouncing on a wall to help him get turned he confirms the item box while in second place then immediately hits a shroom this lets him jump off of Bowser and clip to the top of the bridge while still charging A Min Min turbo the reason he's able to pass through is because the Bridge's Collision isn't active from this side he continues the shroom then hits the Boost pad where he sets up the skip you may have seen this before as it was a common method of cheating a lap from about the time of the game's Discovery to performant you take a left turn off the Boost pad and hit a specific polygon to update your section which has lacu take you to the other side of the track the original shortcut takes you in front of the item boxes but we want to go behind them so we'll hit slightly to the left which gets us assigned to a different path marker once Lackey 2 places us down both shrooms will be consumed so we can get a boo do you have any guesses as to what he's going to confirm it for let me know down below if you guessed blue shell that's correct and if you skipped ahead to get the answer then commented you owe me a subscription if you're unsubscribed the reason he's able to get a blue shell while in first is because there's a mismapped polygon on either side of the finish line which allows for an eighth place item while in first just like on Koopa troa Beach while he needs the boo to get the blue shell he doesn't need the invincibility state so he spins out the frame he activates it which nullifies the Boo due to how the operations are performed under the hood the reason he needs a blue shell over a red is because a red won't home in on him while he's in first but with a blue he can self Target which will send Toad on top of this wall the wall isn't a drivable surface so lacu will come and pick you up but by getting up here the closest path marker is on the the bridge so he places you just before the Boost ramp he needs to do the shortcut jump but needs to get more distance to avoid losing time from falling in the water and by sandbagging his speed he can do a CPU jump off Luigi with enough height to clear the water and land on the item boxes where he gets a single shroom the shroom is for the final CPU jump of the track and after he jumps off of Bowser he falls into the water lacu comes to rescue him and places him behind the line and when he crosses he's rewarded with a lap but why when he performs the CPU jump he's already at the end of lap two so that lap will count due to the previous setup but he then gets plac behind the Finish Line despite Landing in the water ahead of the Finish Line This is because he crossed over a specific seam between these two polygons which updated his section to be behind the finish line so when he makes the CPU jump as long as he doesn't touch a polygon that updates his section lacky to will take him back behind the line and while he's over the water his section won't update lacky who then places him at his last known section which the game recognizes as being behind the Finish Line he's now outside of the 20 path marker check so it assumes he's making progress on the lap which just leaves driving over the goal to complete the race I'm the best Bowser's Castle is a track with a lot of driving as there isn't a shortcut to take advantage of on the first lap but some very important actions need to be taken taken so that a CPU jump can be performed on laps 2 and three one thing worth mentioning about the driving section is how he takes certain corners for Corners that form a 90° angle he slides around them normally but on Corners with a beveled Edge it's actually faster to slightly bump them as your cart will get turned faster without any loss of speed which brings us to the items for the first time in the task he's going to get an item other than a shell or mushroom and gets a banana Bunch while in first then sandbags to get Triple shrooms the reason he needs the banana bunch is to space out the heavyweight CPUs and it's time we talked about the rubber banding in the game the CPUs in Mario Kart do not play fair in fact they straight up ignore the physics of the game while they're off screen while players need to charge many turbos through corners to maintain speed CPUs can drive them without any speed reduction and if they take them too tightly they'll just straight up ignore Collision this poses a big problem as Drew needs specific spacing between the heavyweights or he won't be able to make the CPU jumps to accomplish this he drops bananas in specific placements to hit DK and impede his progress the only use of offensive items in the task where he isn't targeting himself with Donkey Kong slowed down he turns around for Bowser who he only has a few frames to spare on when making the jump as for some unexplained reason the bananas he released actually increased Bowser's speed with Donkey Kong he once again only has a few frames to spare and when Landing the cart will touch the wall slightly so that he can turn around quicker and use the last shroom to boost over the goal while this is the first CPU jump to involve going outside of the finish line and back in on the same jump it works the same as the others jump from a path marker greater than 20 and stay over the water until you're behind the line as your section won't update while you're over The Lava then cross the line for a lap as the game thinks youve progressed around the entire track go go I'm the best [Music] this brings us to the final cup of the game the special cup and it starts with Donkey Kong's jungle [Music] [Music] [Applause] Parkway in the first cup of a track you always start in eighth place which should be a benefit given that the shortcut is in the cave but it's actually a bad starting position for getting turned around he's forced to bounce off the wall which converts some of his speed into turn capacity which brings us to the shortcut it's possible to jump through the seam in the wall which takes you slightly out of bounds before you land back in the cave the Finish Line extends so that it's possible to cross it in this out of bound section and during the jump your path marker will get updated meaning that while you're falling you get associated with a path marker that activates the Finish Line when you reenter the Cave the Finish Line gets turned off since you get tagged to a path marker outside of the Finish Line check so the game thinks you're making progress and places you at the end of the lap and by repeating the shortcut you can then cheat multiple lap skips for laps 1 and two he needs to grab a shroom to speed things up but he won't use the first shroom immediately as he does a fast Excel on this polygon seam which helps turn him faster without cancelling his acceleration the fast Excel gives him the bare minimum amount of speed to make the jump without falling into the water and when he lands back in the cave he gets a small Tumble from hitting the inside of the wall when he Clips back in so he performs a jump that doesn't visually register to help get turned around he then does the lap skip one more time while AB is spinning and jumps at the earliest possible frame so that he spends the least amount of time in the air if he jumped any sooner he would come up short and crash land in the water for the final lap he doesn't need to complete the skip again as it's fast fter to drive to the finish line by 1/10th of a second so he takes the corner very tight and finishes the course in just over 15 seconds I'm the best another track with a skip that's been known about since the 9s Yoshi Valley tricks the game into giving a lap skip in a very unique way [Music] go the skip Works in a very clever way by using the star boost combined with a brief AB spin to get turned around you can jump just before going down the slope to clear the fence this is the easy part the key interaction of this skip is hitting a specific part of the wall and getting bounced to the left when you jump the wall you're in front of the finish line and are associated with a path marker less than 20 so the goal is active when Toad hits the wall he gets associated with path markers on that part of the track so the Finish Line deactivates it's important to note two things here since we only touch the wall and not the drivable track our section doesn't get updated if our section was updated lacu would take us to that side of the valley but since our section is stored as being by the Finish Line lacito takes us back to that side and equally important we're currently in front of the finish line and need to get behind it fortunately there's a small portion of the wall that will send you left when hit this barely gets us behind the line but barely is all we need as the game now thinks we're behind the line and that we've made progress on the lap Lackey 2 then takes us back to the section we jumped from which is right in front of the finish line and we get credit for the lap upon Landing as we've just gone from behind the Finish Line to in front of it with all of the conditions to complete a lap being satisfied when setting up the next two lap skips it's important that we turn sharply as lacat 2 places you on the path marker you were last associated with in the section you're being placed in and the lap skip won't work if he places you on a path marker greater than 20 as the Finish Line will be turned off for laps two and three Drew doesn't have the start boost or a mushroom to take advantage of as grabbing items would lose time but with the mini turbo he gets just enough speed to clear the fence and make the jump I'm the best we are now at the second last track of the game and it's a last track with no RTA skip which means it's time for more CPU jumps the first lap is spent driving but since he can only get just so far ahead of the CPUs it doesn't need to be perfectly optimized and you'll see he doesn't Jam in manyi turbos when under the effects of the star since the CPUs will just cheat harder to catch up he does have to take an inward turning slide on the ramp section to keep the car grounded otherwise he would get air and lose speed aside from that there's not much to talk about on lap one except which path is faster in the bat house which is the right side by exactly one frame in case you were wondering at the start of lap two he has just enough time to turn around and make the jump off of Bowser and upon Landing he make sure to clip the fence which helps him turn faster you can already see DK on screen at this point so he takes a second hit on the shroom and then bumps the wall to lose his boost state which gives him enough Mobility to turn around at this point he has no time to spare and mus shroom immediately in order to hit DK and not only is the window to perform the skip tight but from this angle he doesn't have any leeway on re-entering the track it's precise down to the frame the reason he used a golden shroom and not triple shrooms is because the golden shroom lasts long enough that he can use a fourth Boost after he lands on lap three to save more time at the end I'm the best we are now at the most iconic track in all of Mario Kart Rainbow Road and weatherton doesn't disappoint for the finale out of the gate he uses the Boost to go backwards so he can pick up two items a blue shell and then a golden shroom he picks up a blue shell for a few reasons first it's faster to equip a blue shell than triple Reds the blue shell travels faster than a red and if he picked up the Reds he would need to shoot off two of them which also takes time but the blue shell does come with a drawback when when you're hit with a red or blue shell you're sent into a tumble which isn't a problem if you're on the track but we're going to use the hit to get out of the track and while you're falling in a tumble your speed is slower which is unacceptable so he does something ingenious to avoid the tumble he shoots the blue shell backwards and then the magic happens the frame he gets hit he uses the super shroom due to a bizarre physics interaction this changes the order of operations for the collision and the Boost in the subframes and he's left in a state where he gets the height from the hit and the Boost from the shell but no tumble State the golden shroom is important because it will expire before he lands whereas if he took the triple shrooms he would have two more charges to consume after landing this way his item slot is open and he can immediately set up another skip when he gets placed down he's now in first so blue shells and triple Reds are off the table but triple greens are a possibility and let him avoid having to get items again so he forces greens then equips them on the first possible frame when you shoot a green shell there is a brief period of time where you're immune to your own shell so he makes sure to hit the green on the first frame the invulnerability drops and then starts his fall the Tumble from a green while falling isn't infinite like a red or blue and during his descent he fires off one of his remaining shells as he won't be needing both he repeats this a second time and if you listen closely you can hear the blue shell he initially fired making its way around the spiral this is because weatherton wasn't in first when he was hit so the shell didn't expire which leaves just too many turbos to complete the final lap the reason the lap skip works is the same as a lot of the other tracks so I'll put the words on screen and you can say it with me this time when he leaves the track his section is behind the Finish Line as he goes by the goal he's within 20 path markers so the finish line is activated and the game thinks he's in front of it when he's placed back on the track he's in first place as the game thinks he's just progressed around the entire track and when he crosses the line he'll be credited for a lab I'm the best throughout the video you may have noticed this icon in the bottom that was having the item odds from each track fed into it if you were wondering what the odds were of this run happening without manipulation it's this a number so large it's not named let me know what we should call it down below and that's the Mario Kart 64 tool assisted speed speedrun but this was released in 2016 it's been 7 years since then and if you follow my channel you know there's been a lot of discoveries in the meantime in fact when drew first made this task he didn't know why a lot of this stuff worked as the details wouldn't be filled in until recently as more people took an interest in the game when an updated task is released I'll be sure to let you know as multiple tracks will need to be overhauled and some tracks that previously didn't have skips have been broken in fantastic ways but that's a story for another time thanks for watching and I hope to see you in the next exciting episode of absoft z Oh and please support me on patreon

Channel: Abyssoft

Views: 287,069

Keywords: mk64, mario kart 64, mario kart, tool assisted speedrun, tool-assisted speedrun, TAS, speedrun, world record, skip, shortcut, skips, all cups, abyssoft, speedrun explained, history, tas explained, discovery, drew weatherton, abney317, micro500, nintendo

Id: 2lKlje27SpA

Length: 49min 38sec (2978 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 08 2023