Heya! I became really interested in running this game recently and wanted to go ahead and get my beginner/noob questions out there.

1. I noticed in almost every Mario speedrun that you skip the checkpoints intentionally. Any particular reason for it? Is your run invalid if you get a checkpoint?

2. Is there also a reason for going out of your way to get the bottom of the flagpole? I noticed in a lot of the runs sometimes runners will even jerk back to land further down the flagpole in mid air just to get it.

3. I'm really interested in doing "All Castles" mainly, is there a reason you skip some of the mid-boss castles? Do they not count?

Thanks for any help. I've always wanted to run a 2D Mario game and felt like with a rut I've been in, this would be the perfect speedrun to get into.

Allow me to elaborate more for you :)

The mid point is usually slower if you don't have any power up, since it buffers due to the animation of making you bigger. It won't make the run invalid. And personally, I've never experienced a buffer with anything other than having no power up at all.

Touching the flag pole at the bottom of the flag is faster than going for the top. Yes, the top gives you a life. However, if you grab the top, it does the animation of sliding down the pole by about half a second longer (it's like this in every "New" mario game.) and if you're a speedrunner, you won't need the extra life at the top of the flag pole anyways.

The mid castles are considered towers in this game. The all castles run only specifies that you need to complete the final castle in every world, not the towers. The reason for this is because each official castle has a different Koopa Kid as a boss, and in 7 out of the 8 towers, it's always Boom Boom. So think of it as you only need to beat the Koopa Kids and Bowser. Also, just for a pointer, you don't need to do the air ship right before Soda Jungle (as it's not a castle, and the boss [Bowser JR.] appears twice in the game.) So I recommend taking that to your advantage as well.

Thanks a lot guys, I just finished my first run of it at 2:28:23.

Lots of mistakes and deaths, but I greatly enjoyed it.

I think the hardest stage in the run to do optimally is the Castle with the icicles falling from the roof. The timings are so precise and movement tight.

I think I'll be doing that stage safe for a while intil I get really used to things.

Got a few runs under my belt now.

52:21 is my current PB in any%. I died three times for some reason in the Backswitch level which was abysmal. Otherwise everything went well (I didn't do any of the skips as I'm still a scrub).

1:58:41 is my All Castles time right now, which I'm pretty proud of, actually. Similarly, I didn't do any of the skips like I'm supposed to haha. The elevator one is so hard, and I don't understand why I constantly take damage doing the Lava Ride one.