DCA made a fair point— yes, you can still run the game. It’s just that the rules don’t allow no-vid submissions, simple as that. And no, we don’t really have plans on reverting it back to pre-August 2018 rules, as we’ve decided as a community to not have no-vid runs submitted onto any% and IL leaderboards anymore. I’m sorry if you missed the discussion and didn’t get to voice your opinion(assuming that you’re planning on running this game in the near future)

And let me add another point — to quote Walrus: “In my opinion, speedrunning is not a basic human right that should be granted to everyone. If you can't afford the game, or your parents don't allow you to own a gaming system, then sorry but you might not be able to speedrun. It sucks, but speedrunning is not a right; it's a hobby that includes a small entry fee.” This may sound harsh at first, I know. But it also has to do with how serious you want to take this game. I myself have almost given up on running the game at one point because I couldn’t afford a capture card, but then I’ve come up with a webcam setup that happened to work almost perfectly with little to no strain on my hands. As long as you have the verifiable means to record your runs, then we’ll happily accept it. For now, any% and ILs all require video proof, and there’s really no way around it.

Just adding a small note because Pidgey missed out on the small “optimization,” and I wouldn’t want people to keep using the older trick which requires a reaction time of several frames. When you’re sliding in your blue shell from holding dash, there’s a way to come to a full stop without ever coming out of your shell; braking, if you will. Pretty simple set of inputs: while sliding with dash, start holding ↓ and release dash right after. For doing the 8-T skip, you’ll want to start holding ↓ halfway in and then release dash soon after that

↑ vid link so you don’t have to hop between tabs

I’ll skip the part about grabbing the shell since it’s really just about optimization. Nothing too important about it in regards to this trick unless you do it too slow. If you do it too slow, the goomba off screen will start climbing up the hill and you’ll have less room to work with, and likely mess up the initial “speed” throw

while still maintaining horizontal momentum from grabbing shell and turning right, do a small hop and throw it before landing on a slope. You don’t want to touch ➝ while you’re on the ground, since Mario will go into sliding animation and “drop” his shell

So the inputs after grabbing are:

1.) Dash+jump 2.) Holding right, quickly release dash to throw the shell in midair and hold dash again 3.) The most important part: as Mario finishes his throwing animation on the slope, release ➝ while still holding dash, and jump at the same time 4.) If done correctly, Mario will fly at an insane speed. All you need to do now is keep doing frame-perfect jumps to maintain the speed

Again, apologies for the poorly documented “tutorial” here. It’d be way easier if I had input display of some sort

I had plans of making a tutorial on it, but the lack of input display makes it kinda hard to explain even with vid. I’ll get into the specifics once I get home today, but for now I suggest studying the ILs by Mitch and me, along with Hartmann’s TAS. You’ll want to get the hang of the spacing between small hopping on flat ground and throwing the shell before landing on a slope. Those inputs aren’t as difficult as they look, and by timing them well enough you have several frames of leeway to do a hyperspeed jump.

If you break down OG manipulation and VC manipulation to the most basic terms, you’re basically changing the “frame” in which the game is currently on to the same value every time and playing in a very specific manner, albeit via different means(messing with the system clock vs. booting up a save state). The only difference here is this: when/how the RNG is determined.

On OG, the RNG value is determined by when the game is selected on the device’s menu(down to several frames). This input alone is a relatively precise one and it seems to be a trouble to many people, and the only way to mitigate this element of human error is to know which set of seeds give you which outcome and adjust accordingly(what HelixFossil and I do). On VC, I’d imagine the game runs slightly differently and the RNG seems to be determined down to several frames as well, except on the game/file select instead of the device’s menu(my speculation from what I’ve heard about VC so far; if the RNG advancement is the same as the OG, then I assume the consistency of manip would be 100%. Confirmation needed from VC runners). Either way, save state doesn’t seem to guarantee a 100% working manipulation to our knowledge, and it requires an input with a window of several frames.

I apologize for the long-winded post, but let me clarify my point. I’m not saying that VC manip should be legal because the difficulty of it isn’t that much different from OG; instead, I’d like to think that questioning its legality is a tad ridiculous from a technical standpoint. What both OG/VC manip does is, simply put, setting the RNG to the same value(or at least attempting to) at some point before the opening cutscene starts to play. I see that some people are simply not ok with using save states due to the unwritten rules of speedrunning, and it is very much a fair point, but in what way is it different from messing with the DS’s internal clock? You’re booting up a game in a same state for both cases, after all. This is just my two cents anyway. It’s hard to be unbiased about this since I only run on the original, but I’ve been thinking about this topic for the longest of time, and I’d like to think that my idea serves as a fair middle ground for balancing between being inclusive vs. keeping the integrity of the boards.

Thank you

Individual World (IW) runs used to exist on the main boards, but no one really ran the category and the rules were rather arbitrary so we decided to remove them. If not many people are gonna run it, then adding them back won’t do anything besides clutter up the leaderboards. We don’t ever plan on adding them back either, sorry.

Looking at the in-game timer, the difference between the two seems hardly noticeable. Even if mini Mario does indeed swim much faster vertically, you’ll unfortunately lose time over shell after the checkpoint.

Another update: it turns out that releasing X/Y actually doesn’t have anything to do with getting the jump itself; you can hold it down for the duration of the trick(for the sake of getting the initial x-velocity, obviously). With that said, here’s what I believe to be the easiest setup for non-emulator runners. I will use the (AB to jump)/(XY to dash) button configuration since that’s what I use. I’ll also specify which button for jump/dash I use since that’s what I’m most comfortable with, but of course you can adjust accordingly.

1.) Pushing up against the pipe, hold Y and quickly double tap B to wall kick (Y button will be held down for the duration of this trick, as mentioned earlier) 2.) Crouch as you land and do a full jump with B. The timing of the crouch is important, and probably one of the hardest part of the trick; tap ↓ too late and you can’t crouch-jump, but tap too early and you’ll ground pound instead 3.) Immediately switch your D-pad input from ↓ to ➝ while in midair. This will make sure that once Mario loses his x-velocity at the peak of his jump, he will pop out of the shell without releasing ↓ (removes the need for one frame perfect input, obviously) 4.) Release B slightly before Mario reaches the peak of his jump, and tap (and hold) B at the very peak. If done correctly, this will initiate the shell jump glitch

Minor update: I made a slight change in the setup for DSi. The year & date etc. are all the same, but I now exit out the menu using the blinking “:”as well.

Never thought I’d be the one to add another chapter to this tragedy lol This is the best pace I’ve ever been on. Great 8-8 RNG and decent map RNG overall, even got the right timing for Bowser Jr., but alas, I flew too close to the sun

Thank you!

With the newest rule change in a game I moderate, we decided to split the boards into official release vs emulator. The issue with this is that the two tabs don’t show up by default; instead we have to click “More...” for them to show up. Are there any ways to fix this? We don’t want to unintentionally bury the emulator runs just because the tab isn’t visible at first glance. I saw that the SM64 boards didnt have this issue, which is why I’m asking here

There’s a rule for recording VC runs???

Update: several people including myself were able to get fast 8-2. For the wall kick strat, I found out that you don’t ever need to hold left. Here’s the setup:

1. wall kick (hold dash, push up against the wall, double tap jump)
2. full jump (Hold dash, down, and right as you do so)
3. release dash, jump and down at the peak of your jump, and immediately press jump once again

SeemsGood I’ll LMAO

Hello. Just a few days ago I changed my username on a whim, but I didn’t think it through enough and it’s starting to confuse many people in the community I moderate. If it’s too much to ask, could one of the site moderators perhaps remove the 60-day cool-down just for this one time so I could change it back? Sorry for the nuisance. By the way, my old username was AndreMH and that’s what I use for all my social media accounts

Update: I contacted 3zachm; the RNG manip document in the “guides” should work now I should also add that RNG manip isn’t that important until you reach a certain threshold. I understand that saving 15 seconds over bad RNG is very convenient, but resetting over 1-2 blue shell is not a smart thing to do especially when you have other places to save time in. Unless you manage to get a very consistent manip, it’s better to just play it normally and grab the shell from 1-TH if you get bad RNG.

Hello, and welcome! I see that the link for the RNG manip guide is broken; we will fix that later. Have you read the RNG manip thread? https://www.speedrun.com/nsmbds/thread/18pf0 Either way, I’ll cover the basics of it right here. RNG is dependent on the starting time of the game (i.e. when you select the game from the menu of your device) down to a certain number of frames. The starting RNG of the game will always be the same as long as you select the “new game” file before a cutscene automatically starts to play (this happens when you wait for too long on the game’s menu). To put it short, what ultimately affects the RNG in 1-1 are just the number of double jumps (and NOT triple jumps) and the number of coin blocks you hit. Here’s a simple way to find a setup on your own:

1. Change the DS setting’s year, month and date to a certain value (any of ‘em will work fine, I use 01/01/2000)
2. set the time to a certain value (I use 00:00), and exit out the menu
3. select the game from your DS menu at a specific time. The blinking “:” works fine for visual cue
4. mash A and file select. This is to prevent the cutscene from playing out
5. play 1-1 in a certain way. Keep track of the number of double jumps and coin blocks hit. The number of double jumps that seem to work for most people is 2 to 5
6. if the red block doesn’t come to 1-2 after finishing 1-1 or doesn’t give you a blue shell, then repeat steps 1-5, but only change the number of coin blocks and/or double jumps in 1-1
7. repeat step 6 until you find a setup that consistently gives you blue shell

The reason there isn’t a universal method is because the game responds differently on different cartridges; RNG manip setup is just something you have to find on your own.

UPDATE: FINAL RULE CHANGE FOR CLARIFICATION

The three of us had more opportunity to discuss the rule change since the first announcement, and we finally came to a logical agreement. The rule change are as follows:

-All IL runs and any% runs submitted past August 1st of 2018 require video proof to be added to the leaderboards -All IL runs without video proof will be removed from the leaderboards. Note that this only applies to ILs; any% runs will remain untouched -Individual world runs will be completely removed due to their arbitrary rules and lack of popularity

Removal of runs will take place once most people have had their chance to read this.

side note: emulator discussion will be for another day, likely in a different thread

I somewhat agree with v1be. Having people submit videos to be on the leaderboard incentivizes them to take the game more seriously, overall making it more competitive. It also helps with the integrity of the leaderboards. This could be off-putting to new runners and we could even lose some members, but then again we need to think about balancing the pros and the cons regardless