Mario Superstar Baseball Any% Speedrun Notes
Captain Glitch: The captain glitch is performed at the captain select screen at the beginning of the run. Performed by holding “L” or “R” one square before the captain you want to select. Then hold the control stick to the right, and then stop on the captain you want as the main captain that gives the team name, and the one you control on the overworld. This glitch allows access to both of the teams. So in this example. Yoshi is the overworld captain, but Wario’s team is in the default lineup, but you can substitute players from Yoshi’s team into the lineup. In the run you will see me substitute both Yoshi and Birdo into the lineup for fielding purposes.
Main Strategy: Win each game 10-0 via 1-inning mercy.
Fielding Strategy: Birdo, Yoshi play SS and 2B for catching infield line drives. Putting Birdo in the lineup is also important because she gives the team 4 team stars instead of the default 3 team stars. Since Yoshi is technically the overworld captain, but the majority of the players in the lineup or Wario players. That makes you start off with 3 team stars, so getting the 4th team star is big for characters that have the line drive star swing i.e. Magikoopas and Waluigi.
Lineup Strategy: Make every batter a lefty because starting off on the right side of the box makes them closer to first to beat out throws to 1st on bunt hits, and other infield singles. Yoshi bats 9th because he has a high “score a run” mission flag appearance rate. Birdo bats 4th because she can bunt it to 1st Base, and beat out the throw. This is only applicable in the Mario game when Pianta is at 2B. Pianta is too slow to cover 1st base in time, so Birdo can beat the throw to first. If Monty Mole is the 2B when the game starts then this strat can’t work because he covers 1B in time. Characters like Magikoopa, King Boo, and Petey. (Yes Nick, even Blue Mag is too slow to where this strat won’t even work even if Pianta starts at 2B.)
Mission Flags: So Mission flags are the worst part about the run. They appear randomly, but there is some manipulation that you can sort of control which ones show up or not. Example: “Steal a Base” mission flag only appears when the leadoff hitter gets on base and they are a speed character i.e. Yoshi. So putting him at 9th in the order lets him never get that mission flag.
MAIN HITTING MISSION FLAGS “Get a hit” is the most common mission flag you will encounter. Can’t really control when it appears. Each “get a hit” mission flag costs about a total of 3 seconds because of the cut scene that plays. “Get a hit” can still appear even after the opponent’s captain gets taken out of the game. So a character like Monty Mole can come in and pitch and because he’s a new character the game wants you to try and unlock him for your team so they will sometimes cause a mission flag to appear when they pitch. Same thing goes for multi color characters i.e. Pianta, Noki, Toad, etc. If the default color character comes in: blue pianta, blue noki, red toad, etc. then a “get a hit” mission flag will also appear, but if a color variation comes in like Pink Menace, Mint Noki, or Purple Toad, etc. Then a mission flag will never appear when they pitch. So ideally when you tire the captain out you want the AI to substitute a color variant pitcher so that no mission flags will appear. You will see me have bad luck with this when Wario substitutes Blue Magikoopa instead of a color variant Mag.
“Score a Run” The absolute worst mission flag you can get to show up. Majority of the time it only shows up when Yoshi is batting. It’s the worst because not only does it have the same 3 second time waste that Get a Hit does, but the game also takes 2 extra seconds for the AI pitcher to pitch the ball, and if you don’t score the run as soon as possible then, then the pitcher will keep taking that 2 extra seconds to pitch the ball until a run scores.
“Hit a Sacrifice Fly” Not as bad as “score a run” because a cutscene doesn’t play at the beginning but it still makes the pitcher take 2 extra seconds to pitch the ball.
All other mission flags that appear like “drop a successful squeeze bunt”, and “steal a base” aren’t too bad because a cutscene doesn’t play at the beginning but they still waste time at the end, because a cutscene still plays for whether or not you succeed or fail the mission flag.
DEFENSE MISSION FLAGS “Get the Player Out” This is the equivalent to the Get a Hit mission flag. It’s the standard mission flag that can appear, and like Get a hit. This mission flag will only appear when you’re pitching to unique characters i.e. Monty Mole, Daisy, Dixie, Goomba. As well as the color variant characters default forms: Blue pianta, blue noki, red toad.
“Strike em’ Out” Same thing as Get the Player Out” but this mission flag only appears when you pitch against the opposing team captain.
“Finish Them Off in Three Batters” This one isn’t too bad because a cutscene doesn’t play at the beginning, one will play at the end though whether you succeed or not, but if you strike out the last batter then a cutscene does not play for succeeding or failing. Instead the game tells you if you succeed or fail during the strike out animation, so you do not lose time at all for it.
Overall for these mission flags, if you can’t get first pitch contact outs then striking them out in three pitches is a very good thing to go for because striking the batter out makes it so that a cutscene doesn’t play at the end for “get the player out” “strike em’ out”, etc.
Gameplay Strats - Hitting: Main basic strategy is to use star swing hitters to get on base and set up runners on 1st and 3rd. Setting up runners on 1st and 3rd creates the bunt cheese. The bunt cheese is executed by stealing with the runner on 1st, bunting the ball and then the AI tries to throw the ball home to get the 3rd base runner out. Retreat the 3rd base runner back to 3rd. This allows all runners to be safe. Then drive in runs with the next batter Create the 1st and 3rd bunt cheese and rinse and repeat. The bunt cheese also works if you have runners on 2nd and 3rd. It’s easier this way because you don’t have to worry about stealing with a runner. This is the main strategy used for every game.
RBI Cutscenes - RBI cutscenes only play when an rbi is scored on a regular hit. The RBI cutscene plays for each run scored up until you get 4 runs. Once you get the 5th run, you do not have to worry about the RBI cutscene. HOWEVER: The RBI cutscene can be skipped if you perform sacrifice bunts, or even better get a bunt single. This is extremely important in the Peach game.
Gameplay Strats - Pitching: Main strategy is to hope that that AI swings at the first pitch to get a quick fielding/contact out. Ideally a line out to the infield. If the first pitch out can not happen, then it’s best to go for the strikeout since more time can be lost in case they hit the ball on the 2nd pitch and it’s a high fly out. King Boo pitches the Mario game because he has a fast curveball speed, plus he has a good star pitch that is a super fastball which is good for going for the third pitch strikeout.
Peach Game: Most unique game in the run. Peach has a majority of Toads in the field, so the strat is to get the bases loaded, and do a late purple steal with every runner when the ball is traveling on it’s way to the batter. The batter bunts the ball, ideally to the first base side. The Blue Toad fields it, and when they throw it home, the runner just barely scores, and the runner makes it to 1st base, and everyone becomes safe. This is huge because this avoids the RBI cutscene from happening. Now this strategy can work against every team, but Peaches' team is the most consistent and easiest to do it against because the Toads have weak arms, and the other teams have strong throwing arms that makes it risky to go for. Also, going for star swings against Peach is risky because all Toads including Toadsworth and Toadette have gigantic hitboxes that snag a lot of star swings that would be out of reach for other characters on Mushroom Difficulty.
MARIO PITCHING: Starting with the Peach game, substitute Mario into Pitcher. Mario is a great pitcher because he has a fast curveball, and the super fastball star pitch that KB has, but also he has a pitching animation cancel that allows him to throw the ball quicker each time.
DK Game: DK is the hardest pitcher to face against because he has a really fast curveball and his side arm release is tricky to time up the hits. Barrels can cost some time because the AI gets hit by them a lot, and this wastes time because it takes longer for the next batter to come up since the ball is still technically in play and not fielded.
Wario Game: Wario is fairly easy to hit against because of his slow pitching, the main thing you have to worry about are the tornadoes in the outfield. Majority of the time if a ball gets hit into the tornado then Magikoopas in the outfield will catch it because the AI reads it perfectly. Waluigi is also a huge hit box at 2B, so like the Toads, star swings can be very dangerous near him.
Bowser Game: Most important thing about the Bowser game is that it is the only game where there is a 0% chance of mission flags ever appearing. Since it’s the final game, and you can’t unlock Boswer characters there’s no need to worry about mission flags appearing which is great.
Thank you guys for reading these notes. I know there’s a lot of intricacies to the run, but I appreciate you guys taking the time to commentate the speedrun.
