Some old SM64 strat comparison videos
Uploading my solitaire video reminded me that I have a decade+ old channel with a handful of videos associated with my interests over the years - mostly SM64 and Trackmania stuff.
I really liked looking over my Mario strat videos so I thought I'd share them here.
Please stop slidekicking
Tiny Huge Island red coins is a nasty little star. When I was playing actively, it was a recommended "beginner route" star if players were uncomfortable with Tic Toc Clock or Rainbow Ride stars - arguably easier strats, but very late in the run and with big consequences for failure.
It's also (naturally) one of the 120 star tasks, and I was watching puncayshun using slightly suboptimal movement and got a bit testy about it, making this short video to show that a common move (slidekicking into the wall and falling) was slower than simply jumping or kicking over the edge.
It's very rough, but I got it done before he got back there the next run, so was able to post it when it was relevant. It's the little things.
Skipping BBH isn't bad.
I got back into SM64 a bit in early 2020, and was keen to play the game in a way I personally found fun rather than just doing the fastest strats.
A key benefit of this was that it meant I could skip 2 of the faster stars in the run because I hated the level and hated running over to it. Big Boo's Haunt has a janky camera, some really awkward movements, and when something goes wrong the recoveries always feel terrible. Plus, the castle movement is slow - 10s of corridors and 2 extra doors? Can't possibly be that bad to skip it.
So I put together a clip showing the two routes side-by-side, subbing in a slower Hazy Maze Cave star and the aforementioned THI Reds. My route was about 4s slower, but I'd regularly lose that much time messing up a simple jump in BBH so I consider the trade worthwhile.
WDW 100c backup for uncooperative skeeter
I really love Wet Dry World - fun movement, a clean 100 coin star route, and a nicely compact arrangement of obstacles that makes for some fun backups and advanced strats.
The 100c star revolves around killing a couple of skeeters though, and they move in a fairly unpredictable way, especially the second one which we collect which has about 10s to move around before we hit it and this introduces a lot of frustration if it jukes you while you have the blue coin timer running.
I didn't think this was worth actively skipping as it can be very quick, but I did want a better backup plan than "chase the little bastard around" so I timed out grabbing the small box near the end star - in the end, a lot depends on how quickly various aspects go: the best skip is about 2s slower than the best skeeter, but the worst version of both are about equal.
When you know you're getting the worst skeeter it's arguably worth it to just run off and play fast and in flow, and collect the box at the end.