You guys are incredible!
Ontario, Canada

Very new here. Over the Christmas holidays, I had some friends/ family over, and popped in some Smash Bros into the N64 for something for us all to do for fun.

I've never played competitively, but I was curious to see what speed runs for 1 player mode were like. And holy smokes, pikashy and you other folks are amazing, I've watched a few runs, and they look like perfect games!

I don't think I can get anywhere near the top few ranks, but I think I can at least get close to the top 10 for some characters :) Watching the top videos helps me a lot. I did a Samus run that was a few seconds short of 9th, and I have to double check, but I think I just finished a Link that would be 10th, haha

Wish me luck, and all the best to you folks!

Edited by the author 5 years ago
UnKnownKrevzz, summonspeed64 and 2 others like this
United States

Best of luck to you! Just remember that you never start near the top with anybody. If you keep on playing, you will eventually get up there.

Ontario, Canada

Thank you! It'll definitely take a lot of work to get anywhere close some of those top records, but it's a lot of fun :)

Sorry, had basically everything turned off for the last few days to study for an exam.

One of the biggest things about smash 64 runs is the more you run, the better you are. Experience goes a huge way in this game. AI manipulation is something you'll learn the more you run, along with AI behaviour in general. Also, the more runs you do, the better you'll do when things don't go as expected, and will be better at doing backup strats or straight up improvising on the fly. So the more you run, the better your runs will be.

Another piece of advice I have is as cool as it is to look at what your ranking is on the leaderboard, the thing you should focus the most about is improving yourself. Using the leaderboard to get a general idea of what people have done, and to give yourself mini goals isn't a bad idea, but don't use the leaderboard as a way to see if you're doing well or not. Speedrunning (imo) is about pushing yourself to get the best run you can possibly get (doesn't matter what other people's times are, you should try to get the best run YOU can get). Using the leaderboards as your source for seeing your improvement can be mis-leading, so try to beat yourself more than the leaderboards. In the end, you'll get much better much faster if you do this. (I personally do not look at the leaderboard times at all when I do my runs, and instead try to push myself regardless of what everyone else's times are).

Smash 64 is a fun game to run, so just have fun. The more fun you have when running, the more you're going to enjoy it, and the better your runs will be as well. If you take it too seriously, and get frustrated or discouraged for losing a run, you'll quickly lose motivation and interest in the game. It's a game, so just have fun with it.

If you ever have questions about strats (or anything really), don't be afraid to ask. Smash 64's speedrunning community is always willing to help. Some are specialists in one or two characters, while others are more generalists and have knowledge on most of the cast. I'm always willing to help a fellow runner, so if you want to ask me anything, I'm always willing to help.

I'm so tired, so if anything doesn't make sense, I blame that :p

Ontario, Canada

That's awesome! Really appreciate the advice :D I had an example of a funny improvise the other day: the Pikachu round was pretty slow, and I saw an Electrode just came out. So I grabbed Pikachu and the Electrode blew us both up, taking him out with me, hahaha.

I did have one question actually: I saw on your Yoshi run, you used Yoshi's A-down attack a lot, do you do anything special there, or is it just a regular A-down attack? I think you might've done the same thing when you fought Samus as Yoshi if I remember correctly

I assume you mean the attack where yoshi spins in a circle on the ground and hits people with his tail (his down tilt).

There's two ways to do tilts in this game. One is to slightly tilt the controller in a certain direction, and then press the A button. For example, slightly press down, and then press A. The other way is if you're already fully holding the button for enough time (e.g. you're crouching because you held down long enough), you can just press A while holding the control stick at full distance. The trick is to not quickly "tap" the control stick. Otherwise, you'll either perform a smash attack, or just drop from a platform (if you're standing on one).

The thing that makes Yoshi's down tilt so special is that it has constant knockback, meaning that it deals the same knockback regardless of damage the opponent has. Normally, it wouldn't send the opponent far (go in training mode and try it out. It doesn't send the opponent far at all). However, some stages have increased knockback, notably the Yoshi Team stage, the Kirby Team stage, and the Polygon Team stage. This makes all moves deal more knockback, allowing you to KO them sooner. For whatever reason, constant knockback moves almost become instant one-hit KOs on these stages. So Yoshi's Down Tilt suddenly has massive knockback on these three stages, allowing you to quickly KO all the characters very quickly.

If you stand at a nice spot on the top platform of the Yoshi Team stage, your down tilt will cover basically the entire top platform, meaning any Yoshis that spawn on that platform will get hit by your down tilt. The positioning is very lenient if I remember right, so you don't have to worry too much about that. But once you're there, you can just do a quick down tilt each time they spawn onto the top platform (most common spawn point), and then get through the stage really quickly.

Re-reading your post, I think you may actually be referring to Yoshi's downward aerial attack. I'll leave the part above, as it may also be helpful.

Yoshi's Down Air, all I do is hold down when I'm in the air, and then press A once. If every hit connects, it does 14 hits to the opponent, and 4 damage per hit (3 if it was the last move you used due to "stale moves"). So it will do 56% or 42% damage, which is insane for a single move.

On the Samus stage, the only issue with down air is that using it alone will miss Samus for the most part when she's on the ground, so I have to knock her up in the air so that all my hits will connect. Yoshi's up-tilt is a constant-knockback move, and knocks Samus to a perfect height for me to combo into a full Down Air. And if done properly, that chain can combo into itself a few times. So on Samus specifically, I use up tilt to knock her up, then down air to deal a ton of damage.

On other stages, like Master Hand, the character is already in a perfect position for a quick down air. So all I do is repeatedly jump and down air over and over again.

Hope this helps <(^o^)>

Ontario, Canada

That's perfect! The second part is what I was asking about, and the first part was also very helpful, thank you very much!

No problem. If you have any other questions, just ask, and I'll try to answer as best as I can. <(^o^)>

i am also new into speedrunning. i ran a little bit today and feel like i want to do this. i had trouble with a few places. How can i improve my runs since it feels like if i do good in one place i don't do as well in another? Today i got the yoshi team beat quickly, but lost time in the metal mario fight, and later i got a good walk against fox but couldn't execute against samus. i have been watching your videos, especially fox, and have seen your strats, but i can't execute. Do you have any tips on helping me improve strats?

Just keep practicing and keep trying. There are some stages that won't be consistent, so in 10 runs, you may have 5 good Samus stages and 5 bad ones, for example. The more runs you do, the more chances you get of getting all the "good" runs to line up with each other. Also, the more you play, and the more you try/practice, the better you'll get at each stage, making that 5 in 10 Samus stage turn into an 8 in 10 Samus stage, for example.

Smash 64 is a game where one of the best ways to improve is to play. There's a lot of things that you learn by playing, like AI behaviour. Once you understand how the AI works, you can understand ways to predict its movements, and eventually ways to manipulate it to do what you want. There's some AI behaviour strats that can be taught (e.g. Pikachu's "glitched" recovery on Saffron City), but other things are things that are best learned by playing the game (e.g. Samus's AI benaviour).

Another thing about smash 64 speedrunning is that many characters have multiple strats on many stages. If one strat isn't working out for you, you can always use a different strat instead. So if there's a stage where a strat isn't consistent for you or you just don't like it, let me know, and I can try to give you some alternative strats to try out (or help find a way to make the strat more consistent).

What is the Pikachu glitch? I shined him once with Fox and it was a one hit and another where it wasn't.

The CPUs don't register the Saffron City stage properly. They are fine on the main platform, but don't properly recognize the parts of the stage on the side. In the gap between the main stage and the helicopter pad, the AI will attempt to recover to the helicopter pad instead of towards the main stage (not sure why this is the case, maybe because the ledge is a little lower, and therefore a little closer?).

On the NA version, Pikachu's recovery is always straight up, then straight sideways (towards the side Pikachu is recovering to). If Pikachu is in the gap between the main stage and the helicopter pad, Pikachu will up B straight up, then straight right towards the helicopter pad. However, this often puts Pikachu well past the helicopter pad, and will fall to the blastzone below. So in a speedrun, if you can get Pikachu in the gap, and force it to use its up-B in that gap, more often than not, it will up-B past the platform and KO itself.

As Fox, if you stand on the top platform (where Pikachu spawns), and shine Pikachu when it's around the middle part of the platform, Pikachu will fall right into the gap and instantly KO itself. You can watch my Fox run for an example of this: . Pikachu's position is fairly specific, but has enough of a window for it to work out. In this run, I use Dair so that if Pikachu walks left, Dair catches Pikachu and positions it perfectly for a shine KO. You don't have to do that, you can just wait for Pikachu to walk into position before you shine it.

I tried it out and it works, saving me a net of about 5-9 seconds. I am also getting better at the Samus stage and am improving on the team stages, which is saving me about a minute in total. I don't have any way to record. Do you have any social media accounts? I sometimes stream by IG live.

I don't really use social media personally. Others might, but not sure. Even if you pointed a phone at the screen, that would work. Obviously it's not the best solution, but it would work, and we could see what you're doing to be able to give you better advice.

When I started running, I literally pointed my laptop at the tv screen (it has a webcam built into it). It was horrible quality but it was a way I could record, so I did it.

Ok. I have tried to upload runs of Mario & Yoshi on NES, but my phone just refuses to upload anytning above about 4 minutes, and usually puzzle games have shorter runs than games like smash 64. Is YT live an option?

If you mean livestreaming on youtube, I don't see a problem with that. If Youtube will save your broadcast, then that would work out fine.

I use Twitch for streaming, and it saves your past broadcast for 14 days (though you have to check a button that says "save my past broadcasts", for some reason it's turned off by default). But anytime within those 14 days, you can make a highlight of your run, and then it will be saved indefinitely.