Hi all! I was wondering if everyone would be interested in replaying a classic game from our childhooods in a whole new way?

I always thought 2D Mario Platformers were too easy and there are not many of them, so to make each game longer, I tried to speedrun Super Mario Brothers 2 (Game Boy Advance version) and I was shocked that I was able to slice 1 hour off my original try of getting through all 20 levels without dying once.

My first try was 97 minutes and my best time was 35:57.

But what I find frustrating is how people who compete online either use suspend states to smooth out every little jump, which feels like cheating, action replay devices to unlock things that are not in the main game, but they pass off without mentioning that, or find glitches in the code like jumping into a bottomless pit that somehow deposits you at the end of the level to cut 15 seconds off a level, whereas when I try the same trick, I die every time.

So I feel it would be much more enjoyable and informative to figure out what the best time is for each level in New Super Mario Brothers DS without any suspension points, action replay devices, or glitches.

The reason I picked New Super Mario Brothers DS is because the SNES/GBA 2D Mario Platformers have a stiff running style, which does not make it ideal for pixel-perfect precision. The New Super Mario Brothers Franchise has a much smoother pace and smaller steps are much easier to take without running off the cliff.

In my quest to 100% complete every available gameplay option, I also added extra challenges based on what levels present. For example, in Level 1-1, instead of having just 1 pure time trial for the main level, I have 5 time trials, 3 time trials for the 3 Star Coins, 2 time trials to collect every single coin, 3 time trials to defeat every single enemy, 2 time trials to do a perfect tile walk of the entire level, and 2 time trials to do a perfect tile walk of the entire level, collect all 3 Star Coins, collect every single regular coin, and defeat every single enemy in a single run.

In addition to the 17 challenges for each level, I build out a large sample size around every single power: Small Mario, Large Mario, Fire Mario, Shell Mario, Mini Mario, Mega Mario, and Star Mario. So each level has 119 unique challenges!!!

A few interesting conclusions so far:

A) Large Mario is just as slow as Small Mario, but because Large Mario takes up so much more space on screen, some of the more cramped jumps have WAY lower margins of error, so the degree of difficulty for the 5/7 powers that are not Small Mario or Star Mario is so much higher!

😎 Despite Mario's size filling up half the screen as Mega Mario, it takes the Small Mario to Mega Mario combo 12 seconds longer to finish the level with how slow Mega Mario's running speed is.

C) If you whack the Mega Mushroom out of the ? block, but let it roll all the way to the edge of the platform, you can knock the entire flagpole over, but hilariously get punished for knocking the flagpole over by the remaining seconds timer not converting to points like they usually do.

D) If you happen to knock over all the staircase blocks but 1 column as Mega Mario, Nintendo was smart to include 3 invisible blocks to give you the necessary height to clear the staircase to finish the level. If Nintendo had not thought to include that, it would create an automatic death scenario.

What are everyone's thoughts on my project/challenge series?

I will do a separate ultra thorough article on all 80 levels in the game!!!

Definitely sounds like an ambitious idea..

I'm not sure if many people here would be up for such a project, doing over 9,000 level runs on any game is a crazy commitment, even with a lot of people and the runs on the level leaderboard here already cover most of the optimal strats for beating each level anyway so there'd be a lot of repetition.

Also I feel some of the goals you've proposed seem like they'd be too arbitrary or hard to define. What is a "perfect tile walk"? How do you know if someone has done a "perfect tile walk"? For your powerup ideas, do you have to start the level with that powerup (not possible with mega or star) and keep it for the whole level, or do you just have to pick one up at some point during the level? Not to say they couldn't work but when objectives get too specific it becomes harder to enforce those rules and the rules themselves would have to be incredibly precise to avoid disagreements. Maybe it'd be better to start out with a smaller list of objectives - and with those that are easier to define (like collecting star coins).

That said though, you're more than welcome to run whatever you like and if any of these categories get popular enough we could consider putting them on the category extensions leaderboard.

Also I'm not quite sure where your thoughts about speedrun competition being mostly cheating and abusing save states comes from? The majority of speedruns are perfectly legitimate and most communities ban the use of save states and cheats during runs. Additionally we have moderators to enforce these rules and ensure that runs that are illegitimate don't make it onto the leaderboards. Granted there are still some cases where cheated runs slip by - no one is going to be perfect at catching all of them but those cases are very rare. As for glitches, I'd suggest reaching out to people who run the game if there's a glitch you're struggling to perform as sometimes there's a lot more setup required than what you can see in videos and there's plenty of people who run these games to help you out. Some games also have separate categories that do and don't allow glitches and if you want to do a glitchless run of a game but there isn't a category for it yet, you can always suggest it to a game's moderators.

Thanks so much for the reply!

Here are my comments:

1. One thing I accidentally left into my post is how PACKED Levels 1-1, 1-2, and 1-Tower are.

The levels with alternate exits and 2+ extra rooms in the same level create so many more combinations than levels with 1 exit and 0-1 extra rooms.

For just Pure Time Trials alone, Level 1-Tower has a crazy TWELVE routes, whereas Levels 1-3, 1-4, 1-5, 1A, and 1-Castle all combine for just 14 routes.

So, projecting all 80 levels to be the same length as Levels 1-1, 1-2, and 1-Tower overrates how many total combinations there are.

2. A "perfect tile walk" is Mario walking across every single inch of the level to the point that Mario has to do a pivot pose on every corner.

For levels with breakable bricks, a "perfect tile walk" requires doing pivot poses on every naturally occurring block in their original formations.

For Level 1-1, a "perfect tile walk" takes about 700 seconds to complete: the 1st 400 seconds plus 300/400 seconds from the midway checkpoint.

3. For the powers, you do have to start the level with the power and keep it the whole level, except in cases like Small Mario with the Star Coins.

In Level 1-1, you stay as Small Mario as long as you can until you need to break through the bricks concealing 1/3 Star Coins and then should intentionally get hit by an enemy to revert back to Small Mario as soon as the Star Coin is collected.

4. For Mega Mushroom/Star, you can bring those items into the level through the extra item box.

5. It seems to have been taken down, but back when I used to speedrun Super Mario Advance, someone got 60 seconds in Level 1-1 and I thought 70-71 seconds was the best I could do.

Someone literally jumped in a bottomless pit and the game deposited them right near the end of the level, but when I did it, it never happened and I lost a life every time.

Not exactly sure how they got that glitch to happen or not.

6. Is there any way to submit times without video evidence.

I do not use a cell or camera, so I have no ability to record my progress.

7. One resource I feel needs to be created that does not seem to be here now is how to perfectly speedrun each level.

There are specific pressure points that torpedo perfect runs that none of the on-site guides address.

Do you know which users are actively speedrunning this game?

Thanks so much for your feedback!

Enjoy your day!!!

One question I have is what exactly the end goal of this would be?

You mentioned that there doesn't seem to be a resource for finding optimal runs of each level, however, for the most part, this leaderboard is that resource. Most runners of this game focus mainly on full game runs and watching other runs - both full game and level runs can be a good way of seeing where to improve in a level. Though I agree that having a single document with the optimal runs for each level in all of the full game categories could definitely be useful - and I'd be more than happy to contribute to something like this. But then those runs would have to be relevant to full game runs, which most of your proposed categories aren't.

However, if you just want to have fun, then as I mentioned before you're more than welcome to run whatever you like. If you want to find others to join you in running these, I'd suggest asking on Discord as these forums aren't very active. But I wouldn't be surprised if there aren't many who would want to run these as, like I mentioned above, most runners of this game focus mainly on full game runs.

A few other things to quickly mention:

• You can't have a star in the reserve item slot (without cheats)
• To submit to this leaderboard you will need video proof. However you can always keep track of your own best times in something like a spreadsheet
• I don't know much about Mario Advance or SMB2, but if you want to figure out how to perform that glitch, I would definitely ask someone who runs that game about it as there is almost certainly more to it than just jumping in a hole

Thanks so much for your reply!

Here are my comments.:

1. I am unsure if my issue is because I am new to speedrunning, but I find it difficult to look at a level with 20-50 jumps and figure out that I am doing the 22nd/44 jumps wrong and that is why my time is too slow.

It would take me well over 1 hour to figure that out and would be way too cumbersome to feel useful, especially when I have no guarantee of finding ANYTHING in a single run!

I would find it way more helpful if someone wrote a "Top 10 Puzzles that Derail your Perfect Speedrun" article for every level, so I could just simply address those 10 problems and move on.

2. The 1st article would obviously only cover Level 1-1, but when the series is done, it would cover the entire game.

I initially started trying to speedrun the entire 1st World, but I made so many mistakes that I thought it might be better to build up more slowly.

3. What is the discord room name for this game?

I only see a link for the entire website.

4A) Is there a way you can take pictures of each part of each level with the Wii U Gamepad?

I was hoping to print out the photos of each level to make notes on each part throughout the day.

4B) If not, is there a place that already has pictures of the entire level for all 80 levels of New Super Mario Brothers DS?

5. Do you know any speedrunning websites where they would pay me for my speedrunning guides for each level?

I am going to post my Level 1-1 here anyway to give them a full template of what I could contribute, but it feels like it will take 1 month per level to fully finish each level, so it would be great if I could be paid for my extreme expertise!

The discord link on this page will take you to the server for this game

This site has maps of each level. The only way to get pictures off a gamepad would be to take a picture of the screen with a camera. https://www.mariouniverse.com/maps-ds-nsmb/

As far as I know there's no site that will pay for a guide. Speedrunning as a whole isn't really something people earn money on.

Thank you so much for letting me know about the Discord room for just this game!!!

Would it be possible to just add "Discord" as a word next to the "ROM Hacks" category?

I would NEVER have guessed the "Discord" room for just this game would have been under a blue button with 2 dots!

For the pictures, they are a great start, but they are too zoomed out.

When I try to zoom in on a specific area in a paint file, it gets super blocky.

Do you know of any other websites that take larger pictures of each individual area of each level and that do not spoil the locations of the invisible blocks?

Finally are there any websites that specialize in speedrunning?

If not, are there any websites that specialize in retro games?

I would like to try to pitch my idea to them, but I have no idea what websites exist for speedrunning and for retro games?

Thanks so much again for all of your information!!!