Speed Strats

7-2 Lap skip found accidentally. After finishing lap 1, I boosted immediately to the left into the acid, then when Evan picked me up, he took me to the finish line again. I’m guessing I boosted so quickly that the game hadn’t updated my “last touching” platform, or my checkpoint, and the last spot I had been on was the finish line. UPDATE: I have tried to replicate this in many ways and have not had success. I need to figure this out, it’s a massive time save.

In armored sections, if there’s a pushie or stompie, you can bounce off the top of them to go through the armor. This saves a lot of time in some areas. It’s also possible with a spikie, but it’s harder and it’ll stun you. It also depends on how close together the platforms are. You can do this with opponents too, but it’s unpredictable and can easily make things worse.

You can use the rotation swing attack on opponents and stompies or spikies. One full rotation refills one boost, so it’ll probably be worth it at some point in the game.

You can use a boost to grab the finish line instantly, rather than waiting to fall onto it. This can even be done while still grappling up to it.

You can swing jump through armor. This may be why you sometimes pass through armor while boosting and grappling quickly through armor sections as well.

C down will zoom the camera out and C-up will zoom it in. Three levels of zoom, default is middle. How does this affect lag? Also, this is useful for one of the last levels where you need to scale tons of tiny ice platforms.

Duck to break ice immediately.

It’s possible to grapple an enemy and throw them up onto the platform above you. This is bad when done to CPU, but could be useful with the stage enemies. Throw a red stomper onto the platform above, especially when waiting for a cycle anyway, then use it to bounce through armor. I did this once by accident, but while it can be used to save time, I doubt it’ll be used in very many places. It’s pretty circumstantial.

It’s possible to move quickly, usually using a conveyor belt, and run into an opponent and have it launch you very high into the air. It’s also possible to do this either moving quickly or with a rollburst and run into an item box or hammer and be launched into the air.

Dropping down multiple floors is faster with grappling than with ducking, especially with certain characters, like Lizzy. This depends on how close together the platforms are.

If you are moving and do a short swing quickly, you do a quick swing. It’s not a very high jump, but it is almost instant and can still go through armor. It’s a difficult trick to pull off though. While moving, hit down or even a little in the opposite direction of your movement and B.

You can do something I’ll call float clipping. While floating from either a fan or bubbles (I think they behave identically, should look into), you can float through a platform and clip onto it and start moving immediately. This cuts out the floating down and landing, which is slow.

Ducking makes you immune to anything and everything, including conveyors, roll sections, being directly on top of a flower and even Evan!

Bursting in the air gives you the property of the ground below you (which is how burst finish works), but this can also be applied to roll sections, slime, ice, etc. It also makes your checkpoint the platform below where you did a rollburst. For example, if you rollburst in the air above a platform and go straight in the acid, it won’t bring you back to where you last touched ground but instead to the point below where you activated the rollburst.

As soon as you grapple a platform at an angle (not straight above you), hold down + the direction you are moving with precise timing (it’s almost immediately) and you’ll be launched up higher than quick swing, so you can go through armor. Pretty consistent once you get the timing and angles of it all right. Also, DON’T JUMP!

Cannot acid bounce into plunger or warp.

Roll sections are functionally the same as armor in that you can’t drop down or grapple down them or grapple up them, but you can clip through them from below.

You can jump back onto a roll section and with precise timing continue jumping backward along it. I can only see this being useful for recharging more rollbursts, which again I can only find useful for testing purposes.

When choosing the world by moving left and right, doing this with the d-pad is slightly faster for some reason. If going through all 10 worlds, it saves about a second. This also applies to all other menus after the character select. Using the d-pad for choosing a level in time trial moves it very quickly, almost too quickly to make use of it.

It looks like mashing A makes you fall more slowly while flapping than just holding it. I sure hope this isn’t useful anywhere.

Race and multiplayer in general adds a lot of lag. The bomb items add a TON of lag, so do what you can to keep them off screen, especially when they explode. This may involve zooming the camera in.

Level 1-3 I went up the fan but fell just short of the armor, started to fall and grappled upward and somehow managed to grapple the far right edge of the left armor. This may mean that armor is able to be grappled on the very edge, but it may also just be an error of this one spot.

Zooming in as opposed to zooming out seems to cut down on the lag by quite a bit. This makes it hard to navigate, but if the level is memorized, it would save time in Race. Lag is almost a non-issue in Time Trial though.

Ultra Swing - Burst one direction, quick swing (hold straight down and grapple), as soon as quick swing starts just release the stick back to neutral, then when landing you keep burst, wait a moment, then quick swing again. So far I normally gain 2-3 layers of height but sometimes I gain 5(!) layers. UPDATE: Ok, figured something out at least. It has to do with your height before you start the first rollburst. Bouncing or jumping first then starting the whole process has led to far more success.

Hold down the A button instead of mashing when the score is being tallied between levels, it’s faster. Still need to hit A to end it and move on to the next level though. Found by MigratingPig.

Shaking off Evan - after hitting the acid, Evan will want to pick you up. If you’re fully moving in a direction, however, he will decide to leave you alone. If you burst too soon, he will pick you up anyway, it needs to be normal movement. After shaking him off, you can then burst, though if you do so too soon he will come right back and grab you anyway.