Technical questions
8 years ago
Aquitaine, France

Hey guys,

I'm trying to get into smw speedrun (11 exit) since a few weeks and i'm getting stuck on some levels due to some technical/methods issues. So, I learnt every level routes but I have some questions.

What's up with the swimming technics? When I watch some races, especially for Star World 2, I notice that they can swin at full speed in an horizontal way or even while going down. But when I try to do it myself, Mario goes automatically upward so I have to input down which slows him.

And how do you Smashola glitch? I managed to do it while messing around but that's just a 5% ratio which is definitly not ok for speedruning.

I also can't find any guide for the Bowser fight (with cloud).

Of course I did search a lot through the internet but couldn't find my answers!

I hope you'll be able to help me, see ya!

Washington, USA

Now I don't run this game extremely well, so I'm not a pro, but I can tell you things that I do know.

So lets assume you have the cape on the whole run starting in Donut Plains 1.

The swimming: If you have a cape, mario can spin with it, and it works with two buttons (X and Y) so if you're holding the baby yoshi and in SW2, you can claw the X button to spin and still be able to hold him, which will help you get through enemies. (Clawing = using another "not busy" finger, in this case, it should be your index finger.)

Also, holding baby yoshi automatically get you to start swimming full speed, so there's no need to hold the forward button. This is useful for when you need to start moving downwards to get to the key, so you could just spam the down button without having to worry about losing your forward speed. And finally, you could spam the swim button (A or B) to gain a little bit of height when it's necessary.

Smashola? Do you mean the zip trick going through the spinning breakable blocks?: While you're spinning jumping to break the blocks to get to the key, your cape will make the blocks directly next to you start spinning. The game has a limit on how many can spin at one time (I think it's 3). Once you break your 3rd or 4th block, starting holding either left or right, and you will zip through a lot of the blocks. Be careful as there is the occasion where if you zip too far, you could actually die because the game would think you just fell off screen.

I don't quite know anything about the bowser fight with the cloud unfortunately. But I think it goes that you have to jump into it and stay directly above bowser. This allows the game to act like you have jumped on the mecha-koopa that he throws out, which hits bowser immediately. However, this portion is just something I've seen on video. I'm not sure of the timing or anything, and you could look at the world record run of this to find out things like timing and positions.

Does any of this help? :)

Aquitaine, France

Hey, thanks for the answers.

I've found the spinning while holding a shell or yoshi or anything watching wr race. But when I don't press forward, I don't swin max speed at all, I go upward so I have to press down not to hit the top of the level which slows me down. I run on ntsa version, do I have to run on japanese one?

Yes I was talking about this zip glitch. I'll try to train this as you told me, I was thinking about more inputs tbh ;)

Yeah pretty much everything I understood of the Bowser fight is from wr race and other sub 11 ones. So I understood the fact that I have to stay above bowser (even if I get hit sometimes) and I also have to stay in the top left corner in order to skip some animation but it's not very clear yet. That's why I need complementary informations :)

Thank you very much though!

[Edit] Tried the smashola glitch, when I succeed, I zip too far left and miss the key, falling down, and ruining the run haha

Michigan, USA

Hello! 1.) You should definitely be holding right when swimming 2.) Zipping isn't too bad when you practice a bit. Here's how it works: The game can only handle four turn blocks spinning at once. When you get more than that going, Mario gets pushed down and either left or right, depending on what you're holding. That said, once you see four spinning, hold A, down and left/right. It is much easier to zip to the left on the first zip, and this doesn't lose a lot of time. The second one can kill you, so make sure you hold right to make it to the key. 3.) I don't run 11 Exit, but here is a fast and easy cloud fight by xsvArea51:

Hope this helps, Bramz.

Aquitaine, France

Hey!

That's what I thought for the swimming thing. So how can runners don't be slowed down in star world 2 while swimming forward or downward? Does Mario goes upward when holding a shell (or anything else) or is it just me?

Allright I'll keep practicing this and will give you guys updates, thanks.

Well this is exactly what I needed! I won't say that's an "easy" fight but I'll definitly train it like this and maybe after a few hours I'll change my mind, thanks again!

Germany

yes, mario does swim upward when holding an object. so if you want to swim in SW2 you just hold forward to go fast and if you want to go down you just hold forward and down.