Mips clip was discovered relatively early on the the piece. 2004 by Dom Dunc according to Ukikipedia. By the time speedrunning Mario64 was really becoming a thing, that was already a known trick, making it the current any%; including 31 and 50 star by that time seems superfluous. So there was any% (16), as intended (70), and 100% (120)

16 star is still there (IIRC) because it's the easiest introduction to Mario64 speedrunning. No super hard tricks (I pulled off mips clip on my third go), and not too many stars to learn. Relatively low barrier to entry.

SBLJ is hard, DDD skip even harder. They're not going anywhere.

120 is faster in Japanese because of a few things, faster intro (no voice over), no box to break in JRB for pillar star, Eyerok (boss fight in SSL) talks forever in the US version; and I'm sure there's a couple of other things I'm missing.

US is faster for 70 star because text scroll is slightly quicker, and over 70 stars (none of which include the two mentioned in why 120 is faster on Japanese) it adds up.

The difference isn't much, just down to a second or so IIRC. I've talked to many runners who don't care enough about the difference to get the other version, but you'll find all top tier runners will always run on the faster version for their particular category.

With regards to 1 key, it's not the same. Carpetless is a precise trick with a short string of frame perfect inputs required, but doable with pause buffering and enough practice. For 1-key we're talking about countless (not really - the TASers counted I'm sure, I'm just not sure myself how many) consecutive frame perfect inputs, and navigating strings of PUs

Jake Paul may be able to beat an aged Mike Tyson, but he wouldn't stand a chance against Goku at his peak. To use a somewhat silly analogy.

Look sorry, I don't mean to blunt your enthusiasm. It's great that you want to see the game improved. But this question has been asked by so many well meaning people over the years without a real depth of understanding as to what they're actually asking.

There are already many people doing exactly as you suggest. The TAS community is constantly breaking the game in new and interesting ways, and some of those ways are even possible to do with a regular controller. If anyone will figure out another way to open that moat door it's them, or the incomparable pannenkoek2012.

I'd also recommend watching the 1-key TAS explained video on youtube, you'll get a good idea as to how improbably a task opening that door without first draining the moat really is.

You say that like the community hasn't been constantly looking for improvements for nearly 2 decades.

People have been asking this question since 0 star was figured out. Is there any way to make it shorter again? I'm not saying there absolutely is no way, but at this point unless something that currently zero people know about the game is discovered, it's not going to happen.

Not unless something completely different is discovered. The TAS moat door entrance is not even remotely RTA viable.

This was done in the proposed Fish% 0 star run. Weird little run, but mildly entertaining for the different style of LBLJ.

No problem. Happy to help.

I run this game casually but have never bothered to set up recording for uploads. PB is about 1h30m for 100% and about 40m for any%. Never properly timed, just looked at the clock when I started and finished.

It was one of my fav games as a kid when I had an NES (am I showing my age?)

Anyhow, loving that this game is getting the love these days.

Nice run.

A couple of thoughts, that might save you a bit of time. I timed these to see the diff and it certainly seems to help.

After the death warp from the Golden Apple, instead of harping through Laconia and running back through Arcadia then Attica to get to Phrygia, just exit the stage back into Attica directly and go down to Phrygia that way. Saved me about a minute.

When collecting for Ares, stop at 80 olives (two olive grinds of ~40 each), go through Argolis to Ares temple. I got to the bracelet 30s faster than going back through Laconia. Crete pathway from Argolis entry green room: right left right left takes you straight to Ares' temple. Intentionally take damage on the way (my fav way is jumping over the smaller amazons but hitting them on the way down so you take damage but keep moving in the same direction, doesn't seem to work as well with the larger Amazons) so the ghosts can kill you on Ares exit and you can death warp immediately back to Argolis before Salamander farming, saves having to leave Crete the slow way, saving you an additional ~40 seconds. The salamander farm usually gives you about half of the olives you need anyway, so it's just one more slug kill fest to get up to 80, for a total of three slug farms for both Ares and Circe either way.

Don't collect the third heart on the bracelet trip, wait until the shield run. I believe this is faster as Circe and Minotaur are pretty close to each other, and it means you don't have to swim past the Tartarus entry when you come to get the shield. Collect the shield, taking intentional damage on the way, kill the minotaur and then death warp back to the start to enter Tartarus. This saved me an additional roughly 90 seconds.

All up this should save about 3-4 minutes.