Super Mario 64 70-star in 1:01:32 (SDA timing, 1:02:35 real time) Speedrun by LeCoureur103 (2005.05.29) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJu3wnNy0n4 http://www.sm64.com/70stars/lecoureur103.html Welcome to my 1:01:32 70-star speedrun for Super Mario 64! I popped in the game for the first time in years in about February for a casual play-through. While doing so, I found many different shortcuts for getting to stars a lot faster than intended. I thought about doing a 16-star run, but concluded that such a short run would not be able to show off the vast array of tricks I was coming up with every minute. So I decided to do 70 stars instead, aiming for about 1:10 (or a rate of 1 star per minute). This quickly dropped to 1:05, then gradually to 1:04, 1:03, 1:02, and in a sort of madness, 1:01. I'm glad I kept chugging along, because the result is a run that beats the previous world record by over 11 minutes and is consistently awesome-looking throughout. I started writing down times for individual stars, and set an arbitrary limit of 50 seconds as a usable time for a star. I don't think I actually succeeded in getting 70 different stars under :50, but the intense competition between close stars led me to come up with some really neat routes, and to use some stars that you might not expect to see in a 70-star run. I also tried to take into account the time spent moving through the castle, which meant that I wasn't able to get the Vanishing Cap or its star since they're so far off the beaten path. There were other stars that were extremely fast, but required a really slow star beforehand so I wasn't able to get them (like the slow "Go on a Ghost Hunt" before the fast "Big Boo's Merry-Go-Round"). All in all, these are probably pretty close to the optimum stars for a 70-star run. Fun fact: I completed the game without backflipping a single time. Obviously, 1:01 is extremely close to the aesthetically-pleasing "sub-hour." What are the chances this can be done? Well, by crunching the data from 4 separate runs I completed, I calculate a perfect game to be a very high 0:58. There aren't that many VISIBLE mistakes in my run, but I lose a ton of invisible time simply because a human can't play with pixel-perfection for a straight hour (much less five minutes). So yeah, there's a bit of room for error... just not really room that the player has a lot of control over. Until more shortcuts and tricks are discovered to give a wider margin of error, the sub-hour run that everyone would very much like to see doesn't seem very likely. But until then, what I've done here should serve as a great starting point for anyone who decides to be a hero and try =) Enjoy the run. Extended comments: For the viewer's benefit, I'll now make some notes on each of the stars I used so you can understand what's happening and what I was thinking, that sort of thing. Maybe they'll help you if you decide to try a run for yourself. You can read them as you watch the video. It'll be fun! Beginning: I kick things off here with the nifty "Lakitu skip" trick (this method discovered by Curtis Bright?). You have to land on the very edge of the railing to avoid the trigger for his speech, which can be frustrating to do consistently; but it's a free 7 seconds, at the very beginning of the game no less, so I restarted immediately if I didn't succeed. It's just too awesome to pass up! 1. I always said to myself, "There's no way I'm using the King Bob-omb star. No WAY." But eventually I got the time pretty low (by using the world-record "Race Koopa the Quick" strategy), and this star allowed me to use the cannon for the "Shoot to the Island in the Sky" and "Mario Wings to the Sky" stars. They're both fairly quick in their own right (and having 3 stars from this level right off the bat allowed me to go straight to Cool, Cool Mountain which saves some castle time as well), so King Bob-omb is here to stay. 2. To be honest, I never timed the difference between aiming straight up, and just shooting straight into the "!" box. I always assumed this way is faster, but even if it's not, it's still cooler =) Shooting into the box is actually trickier than it looks; the box is slippery, in that you might skim over the top, off to its side, or even under the bottom of it without actually bouncing OFF. You can also aim lower so that you catch the edge of the island itself and roll to your feet, which is a couple seconds faster than shooting into the box but a much tougher shot. 3. The Chain-Chomp gave me a beatdown, probably a good 10 seconds lost... but can you really expect him to NOT give you a beatdown? An alternative to pounding the pole is to grab the little bomb guy walking around and use his explosion to push you through the gate itself. I didn't know about it when I did this run, but: 1) it's not that hard, 2) it saves about 10 seconds of cinema-watching, and 3) it's very early in the run. I encourage future 70-star runners to incorporate this trick! 4. Sort of messed up the triple jump into the chimney, 2 seconds lost. You can long jump from the very beginning of the slide all the way down to the finishing tunnel... It's really, really tricky and I never had much success with it though. The strategy I borrowed from Marshmallow is only a little bit slower, but it's easy as heck =) 5. This was another thing I borrowed from Marshmallow that I'd never even thought to try. I used to grab the baby penguin and go down the right side of the mountain to the red coin ledge, then slide down the white and blue slope down to the bottom. That way was like 5 seconds slower, and harder too. It's very easy to mess up when grabbing the baby penguin. 6. I didn't really want to use this star since it takes 56 or more seconds... Eventually I did end up using it as a substitute for "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" or whatever from Rainbow Ride, which is tons more difficult and just about the same length. 7. I really like this star. Jumping from the beginning all the way to the bottom is super cool, and a few seconds faster than bouncing off the flower-dude's head as well. My success rate with the jump wasn't that good until I started to rotate the camera to the right. 8. I usually go for this star first in Whomp's Fortress since the text box at the beginning puts the red coin Thwomp in just the right position for me to jump on his head without any trouble. There's a route for this star that is actually about 10 seconds faster, invented Curtis Bright, which is really crazy and random. My way's still pretty quick anyway. 9. Doing the Ground Pound through the King Whomp was something I picked up from StefanvanDijke's 16-star video. Pretty nifty. 10. Nothing too out of the ordinary here. I really like this star since it's so quick and easy =) 11. I messed up the wall kick here a lot more than one might suspect >_> 12. Shooting into the cage from the cannon takes almost exactly the same time as flying up with the owl, and I'm actually not very good with the owl. 13. The very fastest way to do this star is about 5 seconds faster than what I did here. After bouncing off the wall, you triple jump up the slope with the red coin, wall kick off the left wall up to the center of the rotating walkway, and dive over to the star. I wasn't aware of this method until like two weeks after the run was done, which sucks because it's cool and I could have saved 5 seconds =( 14. I borrowed the general idea here from the world record (12.4 seconds?) video, but I didn't do it nearly as efficiently, so I basically lost a second on this star (and the next). 15. Yep. 16. Note how I long jump away from the circle before I teleport to the level =) 17. The Bowser stages are among the most technically-demanding in the entire game. You have to be precise in every single thing you do, or you're probably going to die... This particular run fortunately went very well. Note that running through the level without the coins or star can be done in 32 seconds, whereas getting the coins and star can be done in 1:06. The difference is 34 seconds, which is what I consider the time it takes to get this star since you have to go through the level anyway! I missed a Bowser throw, and I almost NEVER miss on this first one. 18. Lining up the shot to hit all 5 coins in a row is really hard for me. Honest. 19. I like this star, too. Quick and to the point. 20. The wall kick up to the second floor is one of my favorite tricks. The Big Boo fight could have gone a little bit better though. 21. I normally grab MIPS on my first dive, going left around the corner in front of Lethal Lava Land. I missed, but didn't panic and still caught him right in front of Shifting Sand Land (as I've done many times before), so no time was lost. Hurray! 22. The triple jump to the roof of the building is a Marshmallow-ism that I used. While doing this star, the green shell likes to randomly explode while going up the pillars... If it happened on the first pillar, I would have long jumped over to the pyramid and gone for the "Shining Atop the Pyramid" star. If it exploded on the second pillar, I would have died, no questions asked. If it exploded on the third or fourth pillars, I would survive and still go for this star, albeit on foot. Luckily, none of these things happened =) 23. This is among the top 5 toughest tricks in the whole game, and I'm really glad I succeeded on this run-through just because it's so damn cool. Instead of waiting for the vulture at the pillar, you catch him at the top of the pyramid and kick the star out of his claws! What you do really depends on the Shy-Guy, though: if he shoots fire or flies away early, you use this method; if he flies at you, you bounce off his head and smash into the vulture in mid-air then float slowly down to the star; if you mess up at any step of the way, the contingency is to go straight for the pillar and meet the vulture there for a loss of 7 seconds. 24. Super slick. It never occurred to me to go over the hill at the beginning until I saw Stefanvandijke do it. 25. What I always used to do was jump on top of the grey box past the volcano and long jump to the Bully's island, grabbing the edge and not touching the lava... I often died while doing so. This run was the very first that I started just long jumping into the lava and losing like 2 seconds, but at least I didn't die! 26. The fight against the mini-bullies can be won in one shot: when you land, run to the middle to grab the attention of all three, then lead them to the side and do a single ground pound. I think I only ever succeeded once with that because they liked to knock me into the lava... I started to attack them one at a time, and had some good success with that, so I'll take the loss. 27. Yep. 28. The triple jump off the blue arch is pretty slick, or at least I like to think it is. I almost always undershoot the star, or hit it dead-on. I have never gone PAST it before. 29. Hey, do you know what would have sucked? If instead of perfectly triple jumping over the "lego smasher" and continuing on without incident, I somehow glitched through it and lost several seconds via pounding. That sure would have sucked. ... Oh, wait. 30. Pretty slick. 31. Long jumping straight over the pit and onto the brown slope is another of StefanvanDijke's moves, very smooth. MY move, however, is getting up to the star without jumping off the monster's head =) 32. The boulders coming down the slope are random. Whenever they came along the left wall, the only thing I could try to do was jump over them. Guess how often I succeeded? (The answer is never.) 33. There are two routes you can take to get to this star, and I'm pretty sure this one is the faster of the two. 34. Bam! Surprise wall kick up to the floating platform! The crowd goes wild! 35. Talking to Toad AFTER the Hazy Maze Cave is like 2 seconds faster than doing it beforehand, or so my theory goes. 36. Jumping off the back fin of the sub is a couple seconds faster than swimming to the walkway and climbing the blocks, by my timing. I think I only timed that way once though, so who knows? I get style points for this way though. 37. I'm not sure HOW I always manage to hit the first ring at such a weird angle, but I do somehow! 38. Hitting the chests on the first try is harder than it looks. Sometimes I'd putz around here and lose 20 seconds all at once =( 39. This star gave me nightmares. There's so much potential for huge losses and even death, and it certainly ended more than one good run for me! I fumbled around when getting up to the first pole the second time, which caused me to miss the long jump over to the blue platforms that raise and lower. Fortunately I still got up there before they lowered too far, but I lost a couple of seconds because I normally wall kick off the grey railing and grab the edge instead of running up the walkway itself. In the fight, I missed a throw for about 15 seconds loss, which is embarassing because it's such a short throw and I specifically practiced it like 30 times in a row so I wouldn't miss it when the time came... The stage without coins or star can be done in 53 seconds, whereas getting the coins and star can be done in 1:33. The difference is 40 seconds, which I consider the time to get the star since you're going this way anyway! After the level, note the teleportation to the lobby, which is about 7 seconds faster than running up there manually. Then I jump up through the stairway to the second floor. Done perfectly, it's a few tenths of a second faster than running up like normal. Whether I did it perfectly here is up for debate. 40. I go for this star first since it's just so easy to enter the painting at the top when coming up from the stairs... My route over the cage and over to the black platform is 2 or 3 seconds faster than the conventional way over the narrow bridge, but probably much harder. 41. Nothing to say about this. 42. The turnaround wall kick up to the spiral ramp is cool as hell and faster than any triple jump you might try. The wall kick up the elevator shaft at the end is a little bit risky, but it saves at least 7 seconds of elevator-riding and is also mega cool. Definitely one of my favorite tricks. 43. The route I used here has potential for about 41 seconds, but I didn't do it all that well and took more like 45 I think. There's a route by Curtis Bright that can get the job done in 37 or 38, which involves wall kicking off the first "!" box to get the secret. Very neat. 44. I dislike fighting these piranhas, but I'm not really sure why that is. 45. The triple jump up the slope is pretty neat (and quick) but leaves you open to Chuckya if you don't dive. You might also have never seen the turnaround jump up near the beginning. 46. I didn't really want to do this star, but I got it down to 49 seconds, was in desperate need of more stars during the planning stage, and it's just so EASY. So here it is. The world record for the race is 9.9 seconds, but that involves getting the green shell before the race starts and that would waste time. I don't actually LOSE any time, since I can't get the star until Koopa the Quick finishes. I even took the time to kill a huge Goomba too, look! 47. The turnaround jump onto the "!" box is the fastest way up to the higher level. Sometimes I fell in the water and lost big time, but I hit it on the second try this time. After the third secret, the plan is to triple jump up onto the tree-- quick, easy, and sexy. Instead, I got hit by fire and had a huge chance of dying while running around. But when you really think about it, isn't that just as good? 48. This was perfect I think, except for the fudged-up wall kick at the very end. I love wall kicking to the wooden walkway to get in the cave. 49. I love Toad and want to marry him. 50. I always go for this star first in Tall, Tall Mountain due to the possibility of falling from the waterfall and needing to go for another star quickly. That usually doesn't happen actually, and it didn't this time either. 51. This went really smoothly. What isn't apparent in this video is the possibility of a much faster route: glitching up to where Chuckya is instead of riding the wind; bouncing off the Shy-Guy's head, landing on the slope to the right of the waterfall, and continually jump kicking up to standable ground; doing a triple jump wall kick up to the walkway in front of the waterfall; and triple jumping again right up to the star. Courtesy of Curtis Bright, that route is way too crazy for me. 52. My plan here is to bounce off the Shy-Guy and float safely to the star, just like anyone else... but the Shy-Guy FLEW AWAY. Son of a bitch. So then I made a decision, on the fly, to long jump from the end of the log directly to the mushroom. I've done it dozens of times, and it's actually quicker than floating slowly across, but I don't prefer the long jump in a speedrun because sometimes an invisible wall randomly appears in front of the mushroom and I would bounce off and die, losing nearly a minute in the process. But at this point, there was no other way! This might have been the biggest *hold-my-breath* moment of the run... Would the wall be there? Would this run be ruined? Would I have to spend MORE time on this project that had already eaten up three months of my time? ...... I landed safely on the mushroom. 53. For the longest time, I never even knew about riding the wind over here. I always went around the mountain like normal and (just like you see here) jumped over the edge, taking around 25 seconds. Then I learned about riding the wind, and I magically saved 10 seconds on this star, 10 on the "Lonely Mushroom" star, and several combined on "Top of the Mountain" and the waterfall star. All thanks to the wind! 54. Not much going on here. Jumping across the mushrooms scares me a little bit, but I've only died 2 or 3 times ever while doing it. 55. Ready for some long-windedness? Here we go. Since I didn't get the Vanishing Cap, I couldn't get "Into the Igloo" and open the cannon to shoot to this star in less than 10 seconds. Still, the route I use here is capable of 19 seconds, and when you take into account the time to open the cannon during "Into the Igloo," I really don't lose any time at all! Now then, the long jump across the bridge is extremely tricky: If you start the jump too early, you won't go far enough across the bridge and you'll be blown off. If you start it too late, you'll probably slide off the other end of the bridge. If you don't manage to long jump at all, you'll start the snowman's dialogue box and will have to triple jump OVER his breath (yes, it's possible). If you bump into the penguin, you'll land smack dab in the middle of the bridge and will get blown off, guaranteed. If you do a good jump but somehow go too slowly afterwards, you'll still get blown off. Being blown off costs 30 seconds... it was IMPERATIVE that I make this jump. The camera angle I use gave me the best success, as opposed to a sideways view. Long jumping diagnally over the gap on the other side also seemed to help a lot. What you see here is only 2 seconds away from optimal because I missed the double jump at the very end. I am obviously very happy with this outcome =) 56. By diving onto the ice and sliding into the Ice Bully, I deal continuous hits to him and push him over the edge without chance of incident. 57. This star can be done in 4 seconds flat. I don't think I do that here (more like 5!) but this is really awesome. 58. Triple jumping over the slope and diving onto the walkway of moving ice is a couple seconds faster than long jumping around the snowman. I'm not really sure how it compares to using the cannon, but that option wasn't available anyway, so I didn't sweat it. 59. I missed the last coin and spent a few seconds circling around it like a fool. That has never happened before. 60. Oh, Tick-Tock Clock, bane of my existence. Maybe I'm a fool for taking all 6 stars from it, but fact is, they're some of the fastest stars in the game. Climbing the red coin platforms at the beginning (for every star) didn't occur to me until long after I'd started recording runs, and you wouldn't think so, but it is super tough to do it perfectly. If you bump into the wall at any time, there's a really good chance you will fall all the way to the bottom, right between all of the platforms. Then if there's a bomb guy at the bottom and he explodes, there's a chance that you'll be pushed through the floor and you'll die. Sometimes you fall through the floor anyway WITHOUT the bomb guy! You don't even have to bump the wall to fall-- if you don't jump high enough to get to the next platform, you bump the side of that platform, which acts like a wall and makes you fall... So there's that. This first star went pretty much perfectly, except for the botched long jump at the end. I landed on the hexagon platform and jumped up into the cage from there, which worked really well but cost a second or two. 61. Nothing to complain about here, surprisingly. 62. Long jumping across the level and landing in the nook with the star is so badass it scares me. 63. Had a bit of trouble getting on the thwomp's head, but it went pretty well otherwise. There's a method I came up with that doesn't involve the thwomp at all: long jump off the conveyor belt and wall kick up to the platform with the star. The timing of the wall kick has to be dead-on, or you won't get high enough. I wasn't in any mood to lose 10+ seconds by falling up there, so I took the slower way. A perfect run of this star is about 45 seconds... most of the time, that won't be achieved though. If I found some better stars for a 70-star run, this would probably be the first one on the chopping block. 64. The reason I don't go directly onto the wire-mesh floor near the end is because sometimes an invisible wall appears right there. Bumping into it = falling = immediate death = whole minute lost. So, I took the safe way onto the curved platform and spared myself the grief. 65. This went well. 66. <3 Toad 67. Rainbow Ride. Another bane of my existence. There are infinite possibilities for mistakes (and death!) spread out among the 4 stars I get here... This level's a real run-killer, no doubt about that. The triple jump wall kick onto the rotating platform at the beginning is several seconds faster than long jumping over to the pole and climbing up it. It is possible to kick off the side of the platform and actually land ON the spinning platform to the left, but that is fairly random due to the very nature of a platform that spins-- wall kick off the wrong angle and you're pretty much dead. I settle for this method that is 2 seconds slower but tons more consistent... The long jump straight over to the falling platforms is an amazing time-saver, but pretty tough. You have to run along the right fence at full speed, facing STRAIGHT ahead, and then push slightly to the right near the end of the long jump. This whole star went flawlessly. 68. Flawless again. You could probably take a slower route without losing any time because of the need to wait for the swinging platform... 69. The triple jump wall kick up to the red coin on its own ledge is an invention of mine. It is pretty easy to mess up by falling off any of the platforms; wall kicking too low and not being able to grab the edge of the ledge; or bumping into Lakitu (if he's there) and somehow falling. After the first coin is a low jump that leads into a double wall kick off a very narrow wall. The only mistake on this star is missing that low jump and having to use a sort of drop-down triple wall kick instead. Fortunately I was prepared for this! 70. Cruiser Crossing the Rainbow. You certainly wouldn't expect this to be in a speedrun, being that riding the many carpets up and around takes like 2 whole minutes. In the planning stage of the run, I developed a method that avoids all the carpets and takes around 45 seconds. It was really tough and sort of random, but I was prepared to go for it... Fortunately, my route turned out to be worthless thanks to Curtis Bright: he had a route that gets to the star in a mere 28 seconds. Yeah, 28. Jesus. It took a TON of practice to be able to pull his route off with any consistency at all, and I even ended up having to compromise with a slightly slower trick due to the difficulty. In the real route, you double jump (or long jump) off the falling block at the top of the maze, wall kick off the falling block on the other side of the transparent green block, wall kick off the green block itself, land on the falling blocks, and do a long jump over to the falling blocks by the walkway in front of the "cruiser." This is a really tough thing to do, especially the final long jump. Doing it that way involved pulling slightly back on the control stick in mid-air-- at full speed, you bump into the wooden walkway above the far falling blocks (which caused you to die or fall way down for a big time loss). Pulling back too far means you're too low to grab the edge of the far falling block, leading to more falling. My alternative is easier and more consistent, but about 5 seconds slower. The key is to grab the edge of the very first falling block and pull yourself up onto it. Starting to run from there gives you just the right speed to long jump and grab the far block without touching the control stick at all. My consistency reached nearly 100%! The only problem was getting in position to pull myself up onto the block. The solution was long jumping to the platform below and then doing a triple jump wall kick back up... The result is a ~35 second run of "Cruiser Crossing the Rainbow" that will BLOW YOUR MIND. I even saved it for the last star of the game to further the effect =) Endgame: Bowser in the Sky is super tough to do perfectly. I daresay it is another bane of my existence (there are many of them). Without question, the toughest trick is the triple jump across the floating blocks to avoid using the moving "arrow" platform. Any slight miscalculation leads to a good 20-second fall and perhaps a spoiled run (and at an hour into it, that's no small thing!). After it ruined what would've been about a 1:01:50 run (assuming I beat Bowser perfectly, which, admittedly, probably wouldn't have happened), I practiced the jump like crazy-- the result being that I hit it dead-on in my final run here. The second toughest trick is the turnaround jump off the top of the triangle-shaped block to grab the pole. It's very narrow up there, and if you fall like I did, you face the wrath of the bomb dudes. I succeeded on the second try though, so no big loss. The Bowser fight is what really made me lose sleep... One of the more creative boss fights I've seen, but dammit, doing it perfectly is HARD! All of the throws are from far away and Bowser has to be spinning at full speed to go far enough. I missed only one throw this time, which is better than I usually do =) On the last throw, the platform was breaking up around me and causing the game to slow down. I lost a few seconds by waiting for it finish, but it was worth it when I nailed that throw. So that's pretty much everything you ever wanted to know about this run-- the thought processes, the alternatives, and the parts that inspired dread in my heart. Now any would-be challengers know exactly what they're getting themselves into ;)