I did a comparison of ImDangerous20's 3:43 and my 3:42 a while back comparing how we each lost and gained time over each other, and I noticed that ImDangerous20 had bopped the last koopa much later than I did, yet he was actually ahead of me afterward, can somebody explain this? (skip to 2:55)

That’s really weird ?

So in your run, it takes approx 10s for the shell to start moving. In his run, approx 6s. Interestingly, I also compared with another run (bjw's run if you want to check) and it's approx 8s in it.

Now to be perfectly clear, that's something that is completely new to me (and probably every other player), but after watching those three examples, I think I figured out what caused it: you grab the shell earlier than the two other players after hitting it, almost instantly. bjw grabbed it after a bit, and aldyn grabbed it super late (almost too late).

So it would seem that the timer for the koopa to wake up goes faster if you're not holding the shell??? I'm gonna post that in discord and see if someone can test that theory.

Thanks for the theory, I think I will test it out a bit. (btw Aldyn is me on the right)

Oh sorry you put the names in the other order so I didn't realise (I mean, i knew you were on the right in the video, just didn't realise which name was who). Should have noticed with the times in the title.

About the theory, it's already been confirmed by or4ng33xp0 on discord. The tl;dr is that the timer for the koopa to wake up decreases twice faster if you're not holding it (every 2 frames versus every 4 frames), until 16 frames before it starts shaking. At that point (16 frames before the shake), it decreases every frame for any scenario. So if you want to optimize the slow setup, you want to grab the shell just before it starts shaking (or when it starts shaking) and then quickly jump into the pipe.

That's pretty cool, I just applied it and got a PB with it in 5 attempts Keepo I think that's pretty interesting I had always been playing the game wasting 5 seconds just by grabbing the shell as soon as possible instead of waiting.

Awesome! I have been struggling to get a PB in this category so this should make a PB free.