Released in 2002 for the Nintendo GameCube, Super Mario Sunshine brought the 3D Mario
series from its roots into the next generation, with its bright and colorful graphics, simple yet
memorable story, and extremely fluid mechanics. No pun intended. As with any game in part of a major Nintendo franchise,
people would eventually take interest in speedrunning the game. An any% speedrun of Super Mario Sunshine entails
completing the seventh episode of each of the seven main stages, which then unlocks Corona Mountain,
the final level in the game. Timing would always end on the final platform
ground pound in the Bowser fight. The game forces you to complete the Shines
in their intended order, so given that the game only allows you to skip
Bianco Hills Episode 1, there would ultimately be 50 Shines required to finish
the game, including Airstrip and defeating Bowser. The first ever recorded full game speedrun of Super
Mario Sunshine was completed on July 22nd 2004, by a runner named "Dragorn," with a time of 1:59:49. This run's notable for being considered the first
sub-2:00 completion of the game. However, it's also worth noting that this run was what's
known as a "segmented" speedrun. In a segmented speedrun, the runner records the
speedrun one segment at a time, and is allowed to redo a segment over and over again,
until the desired result is achieved. Segmented runs were more popular back in the
early days of speedrunning, as capture cards weren't exactly the greatest, and probably couldn't record in high enough quality
for a long period of time. So people would question: How interesting could the run itself ultimately be? Well, Dragorn himself left his own comments about his
thoughts on Mario Sunshine as a speed game, and his first paragraph reads as follows: "In retrospect, I would say this was a rather poor choice
of a game for speed play. "The 2D Mario games have warp worlds and such that
allow one to streak through the game in about 10 minutes. "It takes ten minutes just to get through the
game's opening cut scenes "*grumble grumble*. "Even SM64 has tons of glitches and shortcuts for
beating the game in under a half hour. "This game, however, is the epitome of linearity. "You can't do shines out of order, you can't skip them
(except for the first one in Bianco Hills), "and you don't even get to pick what shines you collect (You need the 7th one in each level). "And this game just isn't conducive to shortcuts like SM64. "There aren't any items like the caps or shell (not to
mention the cannon, which alone provides infinite possibilities), "and the replacement of the long jump w/ fludd
also eliminates many opportunities. "And let's not even go into the fact that at least a quarter,
closer to a third, of the entire run collection "is made up of cut scenes." Initially, this game wasn't always very well received, as it was sandwiched between its more successful
counterparts; Mario 64 and Mario Galaxy. Some would argue that the FLUDD mechanic was too
much of a handicap, and/or just some unnecessary addition, and the only "good" levels were the FLUDDless stages
featuring acapella Mario music. Packaged with the fact that the GameCube itself was
not a very successful console by Nintendo's standards, it seemed that this could only impact the reception of
Mario Sunshine speedruns negatively. So, was Dragorn right? Is Mario Sunshine not worth speedrunning? Are the cutscenes just too unbearable? Is the whole game simply Hover2Win? Well today, I'll be covering the history of how the hidden
potential of Super Mario Sunshine speedrunning became realized over time. I'm AverageTrey, and this is the world record history
for Super Mario Sunshine any%. So as you might imagine, Dragorn's segmented 1:59
has very unrefined movement. He seemed to have an irrational fear of watersliding, which, at its top speed, is the fastest
form of movement in the game. The strategies used for Shadow Mario Shines were also... ...quite interesting. All jokes aside, this run definitely deserves respect for being completed in a time where there were literally
no resources or community for this game yet. It's worth noting that even in 2004, the
Blooper Race shortcut was known about, as well as hovering through the Ferris wheel in Pinna 5. And also the red coins in Gelato 6 were still pretty annoying. A few years would pass, and no any% runs
would be completed. All Sunshine activity related to any% from
late 2004 to 2008 would strictly be ILs, theorycrafting in the Speed Demos Archive,
or SDA forums, or glitch hunting. In early 2009, however, "Thiradell" decided it was finally
time to put together a solid segmented run of the game, utilizing better movement and strategies to
improve upon Dragorn's 1:59. On January 10th, 2009, Thiradell finished his segmented run with a 1:54:44, according to SDA timing. An astounding 5 minute improvement. It's important to note SDA timing, because it's actually
significantly different than the timing method used today. You see, SDA does their timing from first input, as
opposed to console reset or file select, so the timing would actually start on
the first Peach textbox. If I were to convert Dragorn's and Thiradell's runs
to modern day timing, it would be 2:00:55 and 1:55:50 respectively. So anyway, Thiradell mainly improved the time by
being much more liberal with watersliding. There still weren't really any established strategies
to traverse the FLUDDless stages, or defeat Shadow Marios quickly, but there still were a lot of improvements
throughout the run nonetheless. At the time, this run seemed pretty darn solid, but there was still a lot of things preventing
Mario Sunshine from being considered a highly-respected speed game. For example, the eel boss fight
felt like kind of a crapshoot, the casino was a randomness nightmare, and there were just so many gotdam cutscenes! Would people ever get around these kind of
issues in years to come? The time period that followed this could be seen as
an Era of Discovering Things™. No, one was really doing any runs in the game, at least
not outside of Japan, but I'll touch upon that in a bit. Instead, during the period from 2009 to early 2011, a lot of important skips and tricks were found
that would shave off significant time, the first of which being the Pinna 1 cutscene skips
discovered by a Japanese player named "datteo." In July 2010, he discovered that you could skip
both Mecha-Bowser cutscenes by simply exiting area as you were
transitioning into the cutscene. The reason this works is that time still progresses in
the game during the fade-out of exiting an area, and if a Mecha-Bowser cutscene is triggered during
this fade-out, the game gets confused, and the result is a cutscene skip. This saves about three minutes overall. Unfortunately, when applying this method to any
other cutscene transition in the game, exiting area simply brings you back to the title screen. The next major breakthrough, discovered by "axon" in
October 2010, was Yoshi Skip in Pianta Village Episode 5. Normally, you're supposed to unlock Yoshi before being able to complete all of Pianta Village, due to the entry of the secret stage being blocked
by jelly that only Yoshi can clear out. This meant that originally, the any% route forced you to
complete Pinna Park before going to Pianta Village, in order to fulfill the requirement of unlocking Yoshi:
completing Episode 4 of Pinna Park. However, when Yoshi Skip came around,
this opened up routing possibilities that completed Pianta Village much earlier in the run. On top of this, the time saved from not having to
use Yoshi to enter the secret is around 25 seconds. So it's no secret that the casino in Sirena Beach
Episode 4 is extremely annoying. There are two spinning slot machines to deal with, on top of a finicky tile-flipping puzzle that opens up
the way to the secret entrance. Thanks to a discovery from "Manocheese"
in February 2011, all of the random elements in the casino can be skipped by simply gaining enough height to climb
over the top of the curtains. Without this skip being possible, Sirena Beach would have undoubtedly been the
most annoying world in an any% run. Other smaller skips were also found during this period,
such as Mole Skip in Pinna Park Episode 2, a banana clip in Sirena Beach Episode 3, some major abuse of invincibility frames to skip a
large portion of Pianta Village Episode 3, and a spring clip to skip the boss fight in
Noki Bay Episode 2. But who would be first to put all these skips and tricks
together into a full-game, single-segment run? Well, the answer isn't entirely clear,
but let's dive right into it. So you know how I mentioned Japan earlier? It turns out that the Japanese were the original pioneers
of what could be considered the modern era of SMS speedrunning. There were two dominant any% runners
that emerged from this region: toobou and chibi, who later changed his name to sincos. And I will be referring to him as such
for the remainder of this video, just so that everyone knows that I'm not referring to... ...yeah, you get the idea. Both toobou and sincos began learning
SMS speedrunning in 2010, and both strived for a run that was out of this world, to a degree much, much higher than any Western
runner could even hope to achieve. The first notable modern any% record using
all the previously-mentioned skips was 1:34:50 by toobou in October of 2011. Unfortunately, the history of world records between
Thiradell's 1:55 and toobou's 1:34 has not been documented. It can safely be assumed that the Japanese players were
single-handedly developing the any% meta over the course of 2010 to early 2011, using skips that both Western and Japanese
speedrunners had discovered during this period. Considering how low the standards of consistency were at this time, this run was nothing short of impressive. Interestingly, the route at this time opted to complete
Pianta Village at the very start of the game. It was probably known this wasn't
the most optimal route, but this was likely used as a way to get Yoshi Skip
out of the way as soon as possible. Yoshi Skip was a major run-killer when it wasn't very
well-understood, and sidestep with the only known method. This was the first instance of modern eel strats being used. The eel fight in Noki Bay Episode 4 was extremely hard
to do consistently fast before any strats were developed, but toobou manages to pull off a four-tooth eel, meaning then he cleaned off the four middle
teeth before provoking the eel into eating him, and thus manipulating him to not go back into his
hidey-hole and waste a buttload of time. He also successfully pulled off the cutscene skip, which occurs as long as you're flashing red from taking
damage at the same time that you spray off the final tooth. toobou (translated from Japanese) - "Finally made it. "[laughs] An improvement of 8 seconds! "I improved my time by 8 seconds. Thanks for watching!" In a couple of months, sincos would fire back with an
any% speedrun that would set the bar extremely high. In December of 2011, sincos achieved a time of 1:33:01. This run was mind-blowing, to say the least. Such insane levels of consistency and execution
had never before been seen in SMS. As a bit of an aside, I remember before I got
into speedrunning SMS myself, as soon as I saw those windmill wallkicks,
I knew this guy didn't mess around. Due to the nature of how Nico Live, a Japanese
streaming website, handles broadcasting, both toobou and sincos used a timing method
that was acceptable at the time, later frowned upon, and then eventually deemed
unacceptable on modern leaderboards. It wasn't segmented, nor RTA, but they used what's
known as "Time Attack," or "TA." A Time Attack run is a single-segment speed run that
allows the runner to pause the game and the timer, and the runner can then resume the game and timer
at any point that they choose. The reason this was convenient for
Japanese speedrunners is that Nico Live forces the broadcast to segment
at 30-minute intervals. Because of this, Japanese SMS speedrunners would
complete 20 to 25 minutes of gameplay, and at a given text box, pause the game and timer,
and then segment the stream. While this did solve the issue of Nico's broadcasting system, there was a clear advantage to doing this
versus doing an actual RTA. It wouldn't be until the latter half of 2012
that new world record runs would arise, as sincos's 1:33:01 was just that good for the time. toobou got the record back on August 17, 2012. toobou (translated from Japanese) - "I'm gonna do it..! "YES!! "I'm gonna get it this time!!!" "YESSSSS!!!! "I DID IT! "I did it! "I'm ecstatic! "I'm so happy!" "Shaking... "My hands are shaking!" The route used in this run was new, as
Bianco Hills was completed first again, and Ricco Harbor was done really early in the route,
right when it's unlocked. He also utilized advanced ship
movement in Pinna Park Episode 5, which has an extremely tight window to hover to the
boat, side-flip to the sail, and then spin-jump to the catwalk. sincos then got a time of 1:32:31 on October 7th, 2012, but unfortunately, he either unlisted or removed
the video from his YouTube channel. toobou proceeded to tie this time on November 8th. Later in the month, on November 22nd, toobou improved
the record by 24 seconds, getting a 1:32:07. A notable strat used in this run was an improvement to a
previously-known banana clip in Sirena Beach Episode 3. In May of 2012, UrBoyGraham discovered what would come to be known as "The Banana Split." By backflipping into the glass wall and timing a throw, this served as a much faster method of
clipping into the pool room. Amongst any healthy competition of a
speed game rising in popularity, some... shady business is almost guaranteed to occur. In 2012, racing on SpeedRunsLive, or SRL,
was becoming very popular, and racing SMS any% was no exception. Racing was all in good fun, and wasn't taken too
seriously or observed with much scrutiny. That is, until one such race would change this forever, as it would cause figureheads of SMS to begin to crack
down on those who don't provide adequate proof of a race they participated in. There is a cycle that was considered to be the stuff of
legends at this stage in Sunshine's development. The chance that any of these Chucksters decide to stop, as well as the amount of time that they're stopped for,
is entirely random. Ideally, the Chucksters early on are mostly on a
fast cycle with little to no stopping time, and the very last Chuckster is on a slow cycle, having to
stop a lot, and for an extended period of time. If the last Chuckster is slow enough that he's in this
corner when you get to this section of the level, it makes a cycle that saves a minimum
of 20 seconds possible. Before it was known that you could mash the Y button
to reverse a Chuckster throw, the chance of making the cycle was deemed to
be nearly impossible in an RTA. This very cycle plays a pivotal role on this scandal. On December 14th, 2012, this any% race took place. Now, you'll notice amongst these results that there was
a runner by the name of ramel1234567 who got disqualified. Well, to put it simply, Ramel spliced a mid-1:31 run for a
race, and streamed the video playback as his race proof. He didn't do this just out of nowhere, however. He had consistently good race times leading up to this moment, which were also most likely faked, just to make his
supposed world record race time seem more realistic. The early Chuckster cycle that I previously mentioned
went on to be known as the "Ramel Cycle," as he made this cycle in his spliced run. The SMS community quickly found out
that his time was faked when his stream temporarily went down and then back
up as he was being asked during the credits to do a specific movement on the file select screen
as a sort of proof call. Funnily enough, Ramel, who later streamed
under the name "innom1ne," would go on to legitimately get a 1:31,
and a top three time at that, but it was never allowed on the leaderboards
or acknowledged by anyone due to his previous splicing incident. From here, toobou went on sort of a tear,
while sincos couldn't quite keep up. toobou improved his own record a few times, managing
to get a 1:31:58 on December 29th, 2012, barely achieving a 1:31 before 2013. He then got a 1:31:38 on February 15th, 2013. And keep in mind that all the records up to this point
have been either segmented or done with the TA method of timing. It seemed like toobou was such a dominant force, but it was only a matter of time before another runner
would rise up to the challenge. That's where Samura1man comes in. Samura1man, a speedrunner from Finland, began
seriously running SMS in the summer of 2012. And he improved... fast. Like, really, really fast. Samura1man - "Oh. GG." Samu - "That was the run, guys." Samu - "Oh. My. God. I did it! "1:32. 1:32!" Samu is basically the kind of person who can get
really good at any game he puts his mind to. Coming, into 2013, Samu was definitely a top runner, but
didn't seem like he was nearly in contention with toobou yet. But on one fateful February 28th... ...that changed. Samu - "OOHHHHHH!!!" "Yes." Samu managed to clutch out a PB by a minute. This was also the first time in history that the any%
record was done RTA, as opposed to TA, which meant that it was done in one sitting,
without ever pausing the timer. This record may have only been by eleven seconds, but there is no doubt that it left a huge impact on
SMS speedrunning as a whole. He truly proved that you don't have to be Japanese
to be the best at Sunshine. toobou would quickly return to the any% grind, and he took the record back by three seconds
just a couple weeks later, once again using the TA timing method. He then beat his own 1:31:24 by one second
exactly a month later, but the important thing about this run was that it was
the first time toobou managed to get the record using RTA. No video footage currently exists for either of these
two times, but the 1:31:23 stood for a while. Considering that Samu's former record was
extremely good for his own standards, and he would need to practice and improve his skills
before once again taking the record. Small movement optimizations were being developed,
but no new strats were really found during this time period After a couple months of grinding, Samu managed to
drop the record down by another 15 seconds. Samu - "Oh, yeah! Yes! "There you go! A new world record! A new world record!" I personally saw this run live, and while it sounds cliché, it was definitely one of the best examples I've ever seen
of how you should never give up. Samu pulled this run off immediately after losing two PB-pace runs in a row to Noki Bay Episode 6. Samu - "Yes!!" Samu - "Wh- Oh! "You can't be serious!" Samu - "What!? [distressed gasping] "Noooo..." Not only is "The Shell's Secret" considered
to be the hardest secret in the game, but it's also at the very end of the run, so it can
definitely create a huge mental barrier. By this point, there was something on everyone's mind,
as the times seemed to be approaching a certain special goal. Samu - "I'm going to prove that sub-1:30 is possible. Kappa" Sub-1:30 would be the ultimate crowning
achievement of SMS any%, but it would just barely be possible
with the knowledge at the time. Within less than a month, toobou managed to get the
first ever 1:30 time, with a 1:30:45 on August 17th, 2013. toobou (translated from Japanese) - "Yes!!
Oh shit! the timer! THE TIMER! "It was 45, 45! I did it in 45! YES! I did it in 1:30:45 just now! It was 45 seconds.. haha! "Yes, yes, yes, yes! [laughs]" There really weren't any significant discoveries
in the game for the majority of 2013. Just a ton of grinding runs or races, and a
community expanding at an alarming rate. The rivalry between Japan and Europe,
toobou and Samu, was raging on, and other runners were sneaking up in the background. Yamata, Stelzig, and Pyroshade, each representing a different country. Samura1man later achieved a 1:30:49. Though not world record, it showed
that he was more than capable of it. Samu would pull in over a thousand viewers
every time he streamed attempts, as viewers eagerly anticipated the low 1:30,
if not sub-1:30, any% time. Well, on September 3rd, 2013... ...this happened. Samu - "AUUUUUUHHHH!!! "Well. "That's the new world record." This went down as one of the most legendary
speedruns of SMS in history. Samura1man accomplished this run with essentially
the same knowledge that was around for months, just with insanely consistent gameplay, and
fairly solid luck throughout. But how much did luck, or uncontrollable factors
within the game, play a role? The variance in Petey patterns in Bianco Hills Episode 5 can realistically cost over 40 seconds, even up to
a minute, over the optimal pattern. The Plungelos on the mirrors in Gelato Beach Episode 2 have AI that causes them to walk around randomly
until they spot you. With bad enough patterns on the double
and triple Plungelo mirrors, it wasn't uncommon to lose upwards of 20 seconds. There's the previously-mentioned Ramel Cycle that
generally cost over 25 seconds if you don't make it, and keep in mind that, with less polished movement,
Ramel Cycle happened around one in ten times, assuming you played perfectly. The manta ray fight in Sirena Beach Episode 1,
which was barely explored, was essentially random and
could cost you a ton of time. And finally King Boo, who can randomly give you
extra cycles, costing around seven seconds each. Top-level runners would almost need
to get good enough luck overall, otherwise they would have to play out of their mind
in order to compensate for bad luck. Amidst the race for sub-1:30, quite a number of strats were being developed towards
the end of 2013 that would definitely help. toobou himself discovered two strats within
Pianta Village Episode 4. He found that it was faster to keep holding the chain
and pushing the Chain Chomp forward, as well as manipulating the Chain Chomp to go into the
pool area and, with a well-timed grab, make him fall in. Five-tooth eel was increasingly becoming the norm,
better strategies for secret stages were coming out, and overall, people began really analyzing for more
subtle movements of SMS to see where frames could be saved. Samura1man and toobou were still grinding runs
almost every day, but the grind was nearly beginning to feel exhaustive
for both runners and viewers alike. Awesome Games Done Quick 2014 came around
and, as always with these large marathons, much of the attention within the speedrunning
community shifts away from the usual streamers grinding runs to supporting or even attending the event itself. Well, it just so happened that
a couple days into this marathon, while everyone was focused on the event
and least expected it, this is what transpired in Japan: toobou (translated from Japanese) -
"YESSSS!!!! "YESSSSSSSS!!!!!!!! "I DID IT! I DID IT!!!! "I REALLY DID IT!!! "I MADE IT! I REALLY MADE IT! "I REALLY MADE IT! I REALLY MADE IT!!" On January 6th, 2014, toobou proved that sub 1:30
is possible with his run of 1:29:50, a run that achieved the SMS community's dream time,
and better yet, didn't even have Ramel Cycle. This started to lead to a hive-mind belief of the
"inevitable fate" of Mario Sunshine. It felt as though there was nothing else to
really explore with the category, with the exception of a little-known cutscene skip
discovered way back in October 2012 by the famous Japanese SM64 runner, Honey. "Honey Skip" is a trick in which you clip into this building, and if you manage to die on the same exact frame you
enter the cutscene trigger for Pinna Park, it will skip the cutscene. The reason that you die is that there's a death plane
in most of the out-of-bounds areas that will kill you if you're touching the ground
for the duration of one second. Even though Honey Skip was kinda known to be possible
for over a year, there were no reliable setups yet created for it. People thought that the setup would be too slow
for to be worth it anyway, and you can really see why if you knew that the original
setup involved some janky Y-camera turn alignment. Top-level competition seemed to die down, and, with the exception of SRL races,
motivation for running any% was somewhat declining. toobou's magnum opus, the sub-1:30 run,
would mark the end of an era. So there's something I've been kind of brushing over
for this entire video thus far; Gelato Beach. Gelato Beach in an any% run... ...sucks. Gelato 1 is okay, y'know, "The Secret of the Sandcastle"
or whatever, sure, I'll give you that, Episode 2 sucks, Episode 3 is more or less an autoscroller, Episode 4 is more or less an autoscroller, Episode 5 is more or less an autoscroller, Episode 6... sucks, and Episode 7 is Shadow Mario. There is an interesting aspect to Gelato Beach, however,
that doesn't apply to any other world in the game. The Episode 8 Shine, "The Watermelon Festival,"
exists in every episode of the world. Since the beginning of SMS speedruns, people would occasionally theorycraft ways to clip into the glass and collect the shine in Episode 1. - "Gelato Beach Skip? Oh my God." Thus unlocking all the episodes immediately,
making Episode 7 available. People already knew that the Shine was
in fact a physical Shine, because an alternate method of Gelato Beach Skip
was already known. Exclusive to the Japanese version of SMS, you can use Yoshi in Episode 6 to clip through the
ceiling, and dive-ground-pound into the shine. People using NTSC-J had a slight advantage
because of being able to avoid Gelato 6 in any%, but it really didn't save that much time, since you still
ended up doing the same number of Shines. Obviously, years went by with no success in finding the
skip, and it seemed as though it was hopeless. Then one day, along comes this Spyro speedrunner. That's right, the long sought-after Gelato Beach Skip, or
GBS, was found on February 21st, 2014 by Touval1, who doesn't even run SMS! This just goes to show that sometimes, having a fresh
pair of eyes is exactly what you need to solve a problem. And if he or she is already a talented
glitch hunter, that also helps. While this may seem like an obvious solution, the reason
it took so long to find it was due to how precise the setup is. Not only does the angle require you to grab a straight
edge and align the camera forward, but you must align the camera from this direction, rather than this direction, otherwise it still won't work. The discovery of the skip quickly went viral, and
SMS runners were absolutely ecstatic. Not only would this save over ten minutes in any%, but it skipped what was widely agreed to be
the most boring world in SMS. The race was on as a mad dash to get some
free world records ensued. After gaining enough understanding of the skip to at
least get it within ten attempts or so, Samura1man started doing runs as soon as possible. The first run that Samu completed using this skip resulted in a 1:24:24, a five and a half minute improvement using a skip that saves ten minutes. Obviously, there was a lot more work to be done. I previously mentioned that the United States was the
weakest region by a considerable amount, but that wouldn't stop Paperario1231, as he fully capitalized on this moment for the U.S. to
finally hold a world record in any%. Paperario - "LeeDUUHHHHLL!!!" - "What the hell?"
- "What was... huh?" Paperario - "Screw it! If I don't get a 1, 2, 1- 1- 1- 2... "Yeah, I'm not gonna get it. "I don't even fucking care. I don't even fucking care!" Paperario - "I DID IT!!!! I DID A 1:22!!! BY- BY ONE!! FHAH!" - "Um, okay." - "Nice- nice job, Paper." Paperario - "Eurahh!! World record!"
- "What's your final time? "What's your final time?" Paperario - "World record for an hour until toobou gets it!" - "Whuh- whuh- whuh-" Paper managed to sneak in a record for America,
and a 1:22 at that. And as expected, a mere 20 hours later,
Samura1man got a time of 1:22:35. An improvement, yes, but still not even close to meeting his full potential. toobou quickly got a run of 1:21:45, but of course this
still wasn't good enough to be worth highlighting. Within a couple of hours, Samu not only achieved a
1:20:36, but then a 1:20:32 immediately after that. Samu - "PB! [laughs]" All on February 22nd. The original GBS setup, which lasted for all of...
one day, involved using two coconuts. One to disable the hitbox of the blender,
and the other to do the skip. As you can see, by this point the one-coconut
method already became the standard. The very next day, toobou managed to get a 1:20:08. So within just a couple of days of GBS being found, the
record had almost been dropped down to a sub-1:20 time. Samu and toobou were the only runners who could
realistically get a sub 1:20 at this point, so it was only a matter of who'd be first to get it. Well, one month later, toobou finally got
the first sub-1:20 in SMS any%. But he didn't just get it by a little bit. His time was actually a 1:19:34, completely smashing his previous record by over 30 seconds. This run was an extremely solid run with the strats that
were known at the time, plus the addition of GBS. A great surge of popularity for running SMS
came directly from the discovery of GBS, so it makes it all the more insane that the 1:19:34 stood for over five months without being contested! This is perhaps when toobou, already being a dominant player, was at his most dominant. A few weeks prior to performing this legendary run, toobou delivered this tweet that states; "Toobou the WR hog," and at the time, this tweet
really couldn't have been more true. Shortly after this record, Samura1man decided
to take a brief break from playing SMS, and the other top runners would need to seriously grind
if they could even hope to get the world record. Over the upcoming summer months,
several runners were improving their skills and closing the gap between themselves
and the world record. Previously, I mentioned how Honey Skip was
considered to not be viable for any% speedruns, but Stelzig went on to develop the first
reasonable setup for a run. By aligning Mario's forward position to where his shadow is first visible, standing in a specific spot, and ground-pounding
at the very end of a neutral hover, you can buffer a diagonal sidestep
into the cutscene trigger, and hopefully die on the exact
same frame that you enter it. Stelzig, a competitive Melee player and SMS speedrunner from Denmark, had a plan to eventually defeat toobou with the help
of his Honey Skip setup, which saved roughly ten to twelve seconds
if performed quickly. Stelzig kept grinding away at Sunshine over the summer
of 2014, and was excelling in various categories. When it started to dawn on him that he had the potential
to take the most prestigious record in SMS, he shifted his focus entirely to any%
toward the end of July. Stelzig - "1:20:01!" Stelzig would sometimes like to grind offline attempts
so that he could watch videos or streams during runs to take his mind off the pressure. On August 1st, Stelzig uploaded an
extremely heartbreaking video that showcases an offline world record-pace
run that died on the Bowser fight. Unfortunately for Stelzig, he just
couldn't quite handle the pressure. Chokes of this magnitude can psychologically
be tough to overcome. As the month of August went on, Stelzig couldn't even
manage to get a 1:19, let alone world record, despite proving beyond a reasonable doubt
that he could do it. Stelzig - "WHAT!?" Well, there is a good ending to this story,
as Stelzig's hard work did pay off. He achieved a world record time of 1:19:24
on August 25th. He finally overcame his mental block,
and for the first time since late 2012, someone other than Samura1man and toobou
(and Paperario) held the any% record. About a week before Stelzig took the record, Samura1man started doing some SMS any% runs just to see how he would do, but wasn't entirely sure if
he would come back to serious grinding or not. He actually managed to get a 1:19:36, just two seconds
off toobou's former record, four days before Stelzig's 1:19:24. Samu - "Woah, damn! [laughs]" In the latter half of 2013, Samura1man and Stelzig
became European rivals over the 120 Shines record, which is essentially the 100% category for SMS. Viewers were excited to see these two
trade the record back and forth, using many zigFrogs or samuKappa1s
to show their support. This rivalry transferred over to any% when Stelzig fully
established himself as a threat with his world record time. Autumn of 2014 came around, and Samura1man was
hard set on going for not just world record, but the first ever 1:18. After about a month of grinding, Samu finally bested
Stelzig's time by about four seconds. Samu - "[inhales] Ohh my God." Samu still didn't use Honey Skip at this point, so he
even had a ten-second deficit to account for. So guess what happened just as Samu had begun to take in the excitement of once again being number one? That's right, toobou had been grinding any%
attempts this whole time, but coincidentally, he achieved a 1:19:08 merely
a day after Samu got world record. Not only was this a large improvement to the record, but in addition to not using Honey Skip,
this run also didn't have Ramel Cycle. toobou's record was truly daunting, as some of the
strategies that were used seemed so crazy. This would mark the beginning of the journey to 1:18
for all the top runners. Many American SMS speedrunners
were racing any% regularly, sometimes on a nightly basis, over the next dozen months or so
following the discovery of GBS. When racing was extremely popular, there was no denying that the US had a lot of solid players, but no one was really a world record contender. As fate would have it, one particular American
was on track to break this mold. I will just let the following clip introduce him: Kaffelon - [heavy breathing] [heavier breathing] "YES!̞͚͉̟̹̫ͫ̈̒́ͫ!̣̖̺̥̥̘͍͖̋ͪͧ̔ͬ̂!̯̯̱͍̲̱͖͓̠̄ͣ̈́!̬͉͉͉̤̑̾ͥ̓̏̄̄̑!̳̜͈͔̜ͭͪͭ̋̾̋̂!͎̱̺͎̘̫̘̫̃̎ͬ̅" [LOUD MICROPHONE FEEDBACK] "Yes!! Yes!!" This is Kaffelon, a speed runner from Utah. He began running SMS during the latter half of 2013, but the incredibly active community that arose during
2014 is what really motivated him to become a top-tier player. Kaffelon was very serious about the grind,
and was building up consistency quickly. He would often win any% races amongst the other
high-level SMS runners, and this video from Q_qqq2 proves it: ♫ DJ Khaled - All I Do Is Win ♫
♪ All I do is win, win, win, no matter what ♪ ♪ Got money on my mind, I can never get enough ♪ ♪ And every time I step up in the building, ♪ ♪ Everybody hands go up ♪ ♪ All I do is win, win, win, no matter what ♪ ♪ Got money on my mind, I can never get enough ♪ ♪ And every time I step up in the building, ♪ ♪ Everybody hands go up ♪ Everyone knew that 1:18 was realistic
after toobou's 1:19:08 happened, and Kaffelon was dead set on being
the first one to achieve it. Kaff - "Fast boat hype!"
- "Always gets a fast boat in this run." Kaff - "OOOOOOOHHHH!!! Third place!!" 2014 was coming to an end, and it seemed that one of
the top runners was destined to get the first 1:18 any day now. Well, on January 14th, 2015, Kaffelon, but more
importantly the USA, would leave its mark in SMS history. Kaff - "Yeȃ͈͎̆ͮ̆̎͌͌h̪̹͇̬͔̩̩̘̄ͪ!͇͇̼͈͓͕ͪͭ̍!̲̯̈́̌͛̇͊!̫͉͚͖͚̂ͤͣͣ̃̇̿͒ Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!" [button-mashing] - "Did he do it?! Kaff - "I GOT ONE Ė̖̝̩̦̗̆̒͂͟I̵̛̹͍͓̝̯ͬͨ̇́͆͒̔Ǧ̭͕̔̅̀͜H̡̺̳͔̟̠̝̪̺́͐ͅTͦ͛̂̅̊̅̃̅҉͏̵̵̠̫͖̱̻͉̠̦͇̥̗͖̪͕͎ͅE̎̓ͨ̾͏̸̴̷̧̗͖͔̻͔͚͎̦̪̬̳̖͎̭͈̭͈͕ͅE̷̢̯̲̟͔͖̺͈̾͗ͦ̈̂̓̔̒͋ͩ͢N̶̖͚̯͎̫̻͎̭̭̤̲͉̆̑̈́̽̐̍͆̌͜ͅͅ!̴̷̷̧̭̙͈̪͉̣͉̙̜̦̣̬̯͉͙͙̯͋̈̍͛͐͑̆ͩ̈̽̾́͂ͩ!̧̡̳͖͎̲͎͈̣͙̩̠ͦ̇̍̂͗ͣ̃ͯͪ̿̈ͣ̓̑́͟!̢̗̻̞̺͉͔͕̣͕̰̭͙̠̭͉̉̉̋̌͋ͥͥ͑ͥ̈ͫ̓́̚͘͟͞!̡̩̯͔͕̻͇̠ͤ̓ͫ̿ͬ̒ͨ̑̍͊̐͒ͥͮ́̚!̧̡̊ͦ͗ͩ̃̊ͮ̐͡͏̧̮͙̖̗̪͎̞̯͙̩͇̥̳̮͖!̀̋͆̌͏̞̺̞͕̩̜͈̠̼̮͍̦͚̺͎͓̱̣̺" [LOUD MICROPHONE FEEDBACK] - [laughter] Kaffelon was the first American to put in the work
to get a solid world record time. This run was truly inspiring, especially for
the Americans within the SMS community. Kaff's Dad - "Zach, you did it!"
Kaff - "Dude, world record hug, dude!" Kaff's Dad - "World record hug!
Oh my gosh, that's so awesome!" This was an incredible way to start off 2015, and the competition would only get crazier from here. Another Japanese player that I've mentioned a couple of times earlier in this video, Yamata, was a top-five player for a remarkably long time
leading up to this point. Yamata is known mostly for his skill in the 120 Shines
category, but of course, that skill can also translate to any%. Yamata ended up tying Kaff's world record on February 7th. This is somewhat of a trend with toobou, but the next
day, toobou took the record back by four seconds, then later in the month, on February 23rd,
he got a 1:18:35. toobou was back on top, but he wasn't
yet satisfied with his record. At this point, you might be wondering why even
some non-Japanese runners like Kaffelon are using the Japanese, or NTSC-J version of the game. Well, there are some minor version differences
when it comes to the any% category. NTSC-J saves roughly a third of a second
every time Delfino Plaza loads, and this adds up over the course of a run. However, NTSC-J loses nearly ten seconds on
Sirena Beach Episode 6, due to a much stricter goop-cleaning requirement. The PAL version, which is native to most other countries
outside of North America and Japan, has the fastest text speed when using Italian text. That being said, the Delfino load times on the Japanese version are still the biggest factor. At this point in Sunshine's Development, NTSC-J
saved roughly twelve seconds over NTSC-U, and even less than that over PAL. So overall, the version differences are extremely minor, but most people still found it necessary to play on
NTSC-J to save every little bit of time that they could. Kaffelon didn't give up, as he pushed the record down
another six seconds on April 2nd. Kaff - "Can I- can I put this call on stream for now?" - "World record! World recoooooord! World record, bo-"
- "Holy shit! Oh my gosh, good job!" This was a solid run overall, with very few notable mistakes. In a matter of less than four months, the record was
pushed down to sub-1:18:30 since the first sub-1:19. At this point, any% was really starting to feel like
it was becoming optimized. So let's introduce AverageTrey, a.k.a. me. I come from the state of Kansas, and at this point,
I was 19 years old. I was known for being the 120 Shines guy, having held world record in that category extensively,
and running 120 Shines at AGDQ 2015. However, I knew that if I put in the effort, I could
potentially get a sick any% time, and maybe even world record. Throughout the month of May 2015, I challenged myself to grind nothing except for SMS any% until I either got a 1:17, or the month of May was over. Just to make things a little more special,
I also decided to use facecam, and called this month "The May of Trey's Face." Going into this month I was over a minute behind Kaff's
world record, but I was confident in myself to improve. It's important to know that this is the point where
the timing standard in the West officially changed to what we currently use today;
"File Select Timing." This method starts the timer on selecting "Start" on the
file select screen, rather than soft-resetting the console, and saves around seven seconds Japan, preferring to stick to tradition,
still uses reset timing to this day, so all Japanese players' times get converted as a result. Had File Select timing always been the standard, then that would have meant that Samura1man was,
in fact, the first person to get sub-1:30. Anyways, I present to you the results of the May of Trey's Face: AverageTrey - "Woooooooo!!" With only a few days to spare in the month of May,
I not only achieved the any% record, but this was the first time that anyone had
simultaneously held the record in the four main categories at the same time. Trey - "4/4 USTrey." 2015 was, without a doubt, my
strongest year in speedrunning, and it was super exciting to achieve a time that I
was constantly doubting that I'd ever reach. Trey - "Dude, I shrek'd the Kaff. "For now. "But he'll be back. "Alright? He'll be back." And oh how right I was, because only a couple weeks
later, Kaffelon improved the record to a 1:18:17. Kaff - "I actually didn't, like, I thought this was like,
shitty Corona the whole time." Kaff was on the grind for 1:17 at this point, since that
seemed to be the peak time that SMS any% would ever reach. On June 28th, Kaffelon was on the run of his life. Things were looking good leaning into Noki Bay, but in the very last episode before Corona Mountain,
things took a turn for the worse. Kaff - "How? How? "Nooooo... Nooo! I'm sorry." This run could have been 1:17, but Kaffelon
choked the Shadow Mario quick kill, costing him about twelve seconds. This was definitely the most depressing world record
in SMS history, and something that Kaffelon will
probably never live down. Kaff - "...shittiest run I've ever... "Thanks for watching... people." So you may be thinking;
"Well, yeah, that's sad and everything, "but there's nothing stopping Kaffelon from just grinding more attempts, and finally achieving the legendary 1:17." Well, that would be true, except at this point a
revolutionary discovery for any% was in the works. A majority of the group of SMS runners known as "The
Good People" were responsible for putting the pieces together in making a certain skip in Pinna Park possible. Dan Salvato, famously known for his work in
modding Super Smash Brothers Melee, created a "Practice Codes" hack for SMS. Using USB or SD card loading, one could
load the game with these codes, and use them to reload stages instantly by holding
a certain combination of buttons and exiting area. These codes were extremely useful for making
practice more efficient, cutting out the wait time of exiting
and re-entering a level. Another feature includes "position codes," which allows the player to save himself at a
specific location using the left d-pad, and then using the right d-pad, warp to this point
from anywhere in the level. On July 12th, Sidedwilliams asked ClaytonSMS to test
something using practice codes in Pinna Park. He wanted him to position-code himself in the loading zone for the Pinna 6 secret, and then in a mission other than Episode 6,
get an orange Yoshi outside the park, and use the position code to test if the
loading zone was still there. Well, it turns out... ...that it is there! So if there was just some way to get to the
Yoshi-Go-Round inside the unloaded park section using Yoshi from the beach section, there would
be potential for a major skip. It had already been known for years that you can clip
into this door in the beach missions of Pinna Park. The problem is, as I mentioned previously,
the park is unloaded. This staircase is surrounded by invisible walls that Mario
can oddly stick to by holding the control stick towards it, and if Mario sidesteps into the wall, he zips to the
bottom of the map and dies instantly. Pyroshade discovered that platforms created from
spraying an enemy with Yoshi's juice could pass through these invisible walls
into the unloaded park. It would have to be a platform created by a purple Yoshi, as pink platforms only raise up vertically,
and orange platforms are stationary. It soon dawned on Kaffelon that in Pinna Park Episode 2,
there are Bullet Bills that get shot at you in series of three, and these Bullet Bills will even shoot into the
unloaded park if you're standing in this area. Kaffelon then realized that by standing on
horizontally-moving Yoshi platforms that are able to pass through invisible walls, Mario can actually stand on the platform and be
unaffected by the unloaded park. And it was at this point people knew that this skip
could actually become a reality. So here is how the skip should work, in theory: First, you would unlock Yoshi by completing
Episode 4 of Pinna Park, then go to Episode 2 to perform the skip. You would eat a durian in order to turn Yoshi purple,
so he can create platforms that move horizontally, then you would use a glitch known as "Fruit Storage" to store a fruit that turns Yoshi orange. In order to do Fruit Storage, simply grab a fruit
with Yoshi's tongue, and dismount Yoshi before he actually eats the fruit. This allows you to eat the fruit from
any point in the level that you'd like. After storing a fruit, use another fruit to clip into this door. The standard black Bullet Bills will never give you the
proper angle to reach the Yoshi-Go-Round, but there are special purple Bullet Bills that can
spawn randomly, which have homing properties. You would create a setup that allows the Bullet Bill
to face a certain window of angles, spray it at the correct time, then ride the platform
through the unloaded park. At any point during this ride, you would eat the orange
fruit that you stored so that you can access the loading zone. And bam, you've effectively skipped the entirety of
Pinna Park Episode 5! The first person to actually pull this skip off on console was "kinikola." So there you have it! You can now access Corona Mountain with 43 Shines instead of 44! It goes by a variety of names, but it's most formally
referred to as "Early Yoshi-Go-Round," or "EYG." If this skip is done optimally, and with first-cycle
purple Bill, it could save up to a minute. But here's the thing: People thought this skip would only be possible on the
NCSC-U and PAL versions of the game, as NTSC-J doesn't have fruit storage. But a day later, "JaredsGiantz" discovered that if you set
the fruit than you used to clip through the door in just the right spot, Yoshi could eat the fruit through the door. Not only did the save time, since you could use
one fewer fruit in the setup, but it made this skip possible
on every version of the game. The first world record completed using this new skip
was also the first 1:17 ever. Yamata got a 1:17:58 on July 16th, 2015. There was obviously room for improvement,
considering how much time the skip should save. Later that same day, Kaffelon got a 1:17:55, making his quest for 1:17 bittersweet as he never quite
managed to get it without a new major skip. The biggest problem with EYG was readily apparent:
The luck factor. It could literally take over ten cycles before any
purple Bills showed up in some cases, as you're never guaranteed to get any purples
on any given cycle. This skip adding yet another major element of luck
to the run was extremely troublesome, as it would mean that the chances of an amazing run
coming together was even lower than before. Whenever a major skip is found, it's almost destined that a new up-and-coming runner
would capitalize on it and rise to the top. Nindiddeh, a fairly experienced speedrunner at this time,
had been running SMS for about a year at this point. He was notorious for always going for the most
ridiculous strats possible for his skill level, and would often pay the price for it. But the thing is, despite all the resets and ridicule he received, this turned out to be a brilliant strategy
for reasons that I'll get to later. On July 24th, Nindiddeh left his first impact on SMS
any% world record history, getting a 1:17:50. Diddeh actually skipped 1:18, which is nothing short of insanity. No one could have seen this coming. This dude who streams with compressed splits,
and doesn't even record his game audio, just came out of nowhere and swept up the any% record. And people wondered; why is there no sound? Well the answer is, "because there is none." A couple weeks passed with no new records, which is surprising considering there was
so much time that could be saved. EYG was just so difficult and random that it was hard
to clutch out a world record run. I took the record back in August 11th by finally getting
a decent run with EYG. Trey - "Didn't get gooped!" "World record!"
- "Ooooooooooohhhhhhh!" - "World record, man. Here we go."
- "World recoooooord!" - "USA. USA. USA." Trey - "USA! Nepal! Nepal is back, bitch." - "Nepal! NEPAL!!!" If you compare my Bullet Bill setup to setups in previous
records, you'll notice a pretty major difference. I was actually using the High-Bill setup, which is
considerably worse than the Low-Bill setup. The reason I was still using it is that I was, uh, stubborn,
simply put. Just... don't be like me, okay? If you're gonna do EYG in Episode 2, do yourself a favor
and use the Low-Bill setup. A couple weeks later, Yamata improved the record by a second. So the time was slowly getting whittled down
to where it should be. People were just losing so many runs to bad luck on
EYG. which made any% more brutal than it ever was before. On September 4th of 2015, I was on the run of my life,
and then this happened: Trey - "Really? "Is that gonna be the death of the one-cycle? "Oh shit! No ledge grab?" Despite choking what could have been a solid run for the
time, I still ended up getting a new record of 1:17:32. Trey - "World reccieeee! "With the worst lategame of all tiiiiiime! [laughs] "Goddammit." I was pretty disappointed to say the least,
knowing what this run could have been. Well, wouldn't you know it, toobou once again took his throne back, getting a 1:17:25. It's truly amazing how toobou had been around for
five years at this point, and was still able to break the record every now and then. toobou had this strange sense of pride regarding his times, however. Being that he is Japanese, he stuck with reset timing
along with the other Japanese runners, so to him, his 1:17:25 was actually 1:17:32,
which only tied my record. He wanted a time good enough to beat the record
by at least seven seconds. Because of this, he still didn't feel it was necessary
to highlight his run, and kept on grinding to improve the record further. It wouldn't be a true SMS history video without mentioning a Japanese player named "zelpikukirby." He is undoubtedly the best TASer of Sunshine, making
an any% tool-assisted speedrun of 1:09:10 back in April 2014. On October 22nd, zelpiku discovered what would
come to be known as "Rocket Storage." You can cancel the blast off of a charged Rocket Nozzle
with the landing animation from a jump, and then sidestep off a ledge to use the stored rocket. The height gained from this is even higher than a regular rocket, and furthermore, you can charge a rocket during
the ascent to gain some additional height. Bounceyboy - "Wow, that was quite a run. "They're cheering for me. "They're cheering for my sub, uh, 1:40." Bounceyboy started running Mario Sunshine
in the summer of 2014, and over the first year of his streaming career, he would stream practice and attempts of SMS
daily with few exceptions. B-boy improved extremely fast due to not only
the amount of time he put into practice, but the effectiveness of his practice. He was a major proponent of individual world runs. IWs are useful for practicing consistency that individual
level practice alone can't exactly provide. At the advent of EYG, he was already a top ten player, and the new skip further motivated him to push the brink of what he knew he could accomplish in SMS. And on Halloween, with the usage of Rocket Storage
in Corona Mountain, B-boy made history. Bouncey - "YEAH!! "Oh my God!" But he wouldn't stop there. Bouncey - "Yes! "Yo, we did it! [laughs] "That was like, the easiest PB of my life!" Finally, a time had been achieved that was over a minute
ahead of the record before EYG was discovered. But this only raised the question;
how soon would 1:16 happen? 🤔 Surely a time of such magnitude would create a
mental block for months to come, right? Nope! So there you have it. Bounceyboy established himself as
the best runner of SMS any% at the end of 2015. Bouncey - "Oh my God! We did it! "Holy shit!" B-boy amassed an impressive following on Twitch,
thanks in large part to his passionate dedication to SMS any%. The 1:16:49 lasted for a significant amount of time, as it wasn't until the latter half of February
that it would finally be beaten. toobou (translated from Japanese) -
"YES!! Now I can go to the bathroom..." toobou was truly a machine. It's rare that such an old-school player of any game
can hold up to a much more difficult modern standard. They often say that you can't teach an old dog new
tricks, but this old dog could adapt to just about anything. B-boy had been on a hiatus from the game ever since his 1:16, but when the month of April came around, he decided
to return again to take the record back. Only three days since coming back
to streaming attempts, he finally got a run again that successfully
got Ramel Cycle. There was also an improvement to the Honey Skip setup
found by HowToCantaloupe that is still the current setup used by most people
on the day I posted this video. All you do is stand in the correct spot,
hover for a short period of time, and then buffer a fully-horizontal sidestep to the left. It turns out that this method is extremely lenient. This is also when doing a Blooperless race in Ricco
Harbor Episode 2 was starting to become standard. It had been known for years that this
could be theoretically faster, but no one had good enough movement until 2016
for it to really save time. Oh, and by the way, this run was a new record. Bouncey - "Yes!! Yes!" "Dude, it took three days! "How did this happen already?" It's always exciting to watch Nindiddeh play any% when he gets a run going, because of the strats that he goes for. It can make it more difficult to finish runs, but when he's nailing all the tricks,
it can result in some seriously impressive records. Diddeh knew that he had the potential to get the record, because his previous PB lost a ton of time to luck in EYG, but when a run came around that had good purple Bill
luck, he knew he had to clutch it out. So clearly, Bounceyboy was getting a great deal of
competition again, and he had to do something about it. After messing up the GBS setup and getting a bad pattern on Pianta Village Episode 1, this run seemed like it was curtains, but
something drove B-boy to persevere. From what I've noticed, Bouncey is one of the
most momentum-based SMS runners ever. When he's playing well, he will generally continue
to keep playing out of his mind. When he's playing poorly, he'll tend to make some... ...questionable mistakes. [crowd oohing]
- "Oh my goodness!" In this run, however, he wasn't even fazed
by his poor early game. Bouncey - "Eyyyyyy! Did it!" But he wasn't quite satisfied with this time. Bouncey - "As I said early in the run, this run sucks. "I'll get 1:15. Hopefully tomorrow. "Oh, actually, I can't play for the next few days!" People were certain that 1:15 would
spell the death of SMS any%, if only because the amount of luck throughout the run
made so much of an impact on top players. Conveniently, in the summer of 2016, zelpikukirby found
some really useful stuff in regards to early Yoshi-Go-Round. Previously, this trick was always performed in Episode 2 because there's a door you can clip through, and additionally, Bullet Bills that
can be used as platforms. But what if I told you that there is an alternate way
to perform this skip in Episode 3 that doesn't rely heavily on luck, and
is faster than the usual method? Well, zelpiku found just such thing. He discovered that if you create platforms at just the
right height and sidestep under them with Yoshi, you can clip through objects. In Episode 3, you have to utilize the tiny Soarin' Stus. Here's how it works: You eat a durian with Yoshi and throw a papaya
through the doorway for later use, then lure two of the Soarin' Stus over to the side of this
doorway, and use one of them to clip into the wall. The reason you can't simply walk through the doorway
is that it contains the loading zone to the park. Once you've clipped into the unloaded park, you lure
the other Stu towards the invisible wall, spray the Stu with a properly-aligned angle,
eat the papaya that you threw into the doorway, and ride the platform to the Yoshi-Go-Round. This method was super useful not only
in saving a bit of time, but also removing the stupid amount of luck that
went into the previous method. Using Pinna 3 EYG, which was coined "3YG,"
B-boy managed to get a new record with a run that had an extremely slow time
out of early Bianco. Bouncey - "Unbelievable, dude. 3:14 segment! This run's great!" Notification Sound - ♪ Jesus ♪ Bouncey - "Ayyyy! 1:16:08!" "This run had a 17-minute Bianco 5,
are you fucking kidding me?" SMS was on the cusp of seeing a 1:15 completion, and Bounceyboy, toobou and Nindiddeh
all had the potential to get it. The strats that top players could go for to save
one to two seconds were getting pretty ridiculous. I would like to reiterate just how crazy Nindiddeh is. He will truly go for whatever it takes to be a little more optimal than everyone else. And this is the turning point at which all of that patience with going for the best strats really started to pay off for him. The final strat that I would like to formally talk about
in this video is the fastest cycle that humans can go for in
Noki Bay Episode 6, "The Shell's Secret." Referred to as "HAM Cycle," it's possible to
go fast enough in the first section to actually reach the size with the green peg
on the spinning block, as seen in this IL from 2015 by Pyroshade. No one would
even think of going for this strat outside of IL attempts. Except for Nindiddeh. On July 23rd, Nindiddeh got the first ever 1:15
in Sunshine any%. But in his eyes, there was still much more
potential for improvements. Considering that 3YG was a thing, and luck was
no longer an issue in Pinna Park, he was only scraping the surface of how low
he could push his time. After achieving 1:15:54, Nindiddeh was already saying
that 1:14 was possible. People laughed at him. But, little did everyone know that Diddeh
was about to prove them wrong. Nindiddeh - "Okay." Diddeh - "YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!" Diddeh - "Nice." Diddeh - "Holy shart, dude! Is this 1:14 pace?" Diddeh - "O... oh my God, dude!" It was pure insanity what Nindiddeh
accomplished in 2016. As it turns out, it was a brilliant strategy to go ahead and
learn the hardest strats immediately, as it clearly helped him in the long run. Before Nindiddeh started rising up, no one could have seen it coming that a 1:14 would possibly happen at all, let alone in 2016. Some of these strategies are very all-or-nothing, and it can be hard to justify going for them if it only seems like one second, but a single second saved on multiple levels
can add up very quickly. Nindiddeh seemed to be slowing down the momentum a bit now, as a few months passed in 2017 with no new PBs. Other top runners had to simply work towards closing
the gap between their times and the daunting 1:14:58. A Japanese runner named Levaten was improving
surprisingly fast in the spring of 2017. Levaten had been around as early as 2013, but he took a break from the game for about a year,
and came back even stronger. Levaten became good enough to even contend
for the world record, which he proved in his any% speedrun in 1:15:05
without Ramel Cycle. The nuttiest thing about Levaten is that he went for
relatively basic strats for a top player, but was extremely consistent at pulling them off
in a single run. He could achieve times that were within two minutes
of his sum of best segments, which is pretty much unheard of for any other runner. Well, on May 9th, Levaten got a 1:14:55 and finally took the record... ...kind of. Not officially. [sigh] Unfortunately, he completed his run offline, and he also had a recording issue that
prevented him from having video proof. As a result, his time was not allowed
on the official leaderboard, as world record times must have proper
video proof, no exceptions. All we got was a screenshot of his splits on Twitter, and a glint of hope that someone could finally best
Nindiddeh's long-standing dominance. People were a little annoyed, knowing that there was
a time that was unofficially better than the current record displayed on speedrun.com. Later in the month, however,
that would no longer be an issue. Diddeh - "Yes! Yes. "I did it." Nindiddeh had actually been grinding any% for
the entirety of 2017 up to this point, and finally, after five months, improved his PB again. That is a true testament to how insane the 1:14:58 was. But funnily enough, this record actually had a death
in Bianco 6, which to me only further shows how insane
Diddeh's skill level is. Diddeh - "Oh my fucking God." And as of today, that's where the any% record stands, at 1:14:40. SMS speedrunning went through a variety of eras,
in which different runners reigned supreme, and I'm searching that as time goes on, there will be a new generation of Sunshine runners
that takes the game to an even crazier level. The potential of how high the skill ceiling can get
is even higher that people might realize, as the movement in this game lends Itself to a
seemingly endless amount of possibilities. Mario Sunshine is currently the third most
popular game on speedrun.com, only behind Mario 64 and the Ocarina of Time. SMS could have easily fallen under the radar, if not for its
amazing community involvement over the years. And I've gotta say, it is truly awesome that it's
received the attention that it has. Despite once being known as "the black sheep"
of the 3D Mario series, Super Mario Sunshine has been held in much
higher regards in recent years as being a true classic of the GameCube era. This has been AverageTrey. Peace.
One hour? No way I'm watching all that
Huh, that was pretty good
Ever since I heard Summoning Salt was deferring to AverageTrey on this one, I was excited. Not because I'm familiar with a lot of Trey's content, but because I hold Summoning Salt in such high regard that this video MUST be incredible for him not to make his own.
Very excited to sit down and re-experience the speedrunning history of my favorite game.
Takes the Summoning Salt model and runs with it to new heights.
EDIT: Uh, I mean, "Everyone thought that Summoning Salt had perfected the world record progression category. But on September 23, 2017..."
Watching bboy speedrunning hair loss 100% in this video is my favorite part
mario
1 hr video about sms speedrun history? ill check out the first 5 minutes... 1 hr later, I want to see more :(
Even for a non-SMS runner... non-speedrunner... non-gamer... this was incredibly interesting.
Amazing vid
It was infomational and fun for non SMS speedrunner as well. Great Video!