I was messing around in HMC today curious if i could find a way to climb the hill in the middle of the water area with the star since i still havent gotten the hang of the box triple jump trick. I ended up figuring out how to jump up the slope. Im not a scholar by any means so others may have figured this out and it doesn’t save anytime over the triple box jump but im still curious if this is a new discovery cuz i didnt think you were supposed to be able to get up that slope. There may be other uses of the logic behind this even though this trick itself doesn’t save any time.

Hi everyone. I just finished up a week and a half grind discovering shortcuts and other mechanics in the game. This Speedrun community is pretty small and ive found it hard to stay motivated when it feels like im just racing myself (im not even in the top 3, i just mean i dont think anyone else is actively trying to apply shortcuts to push what’s possible with this game. I love this game and i know other people do too so im trying to understand why so few people actively Speedrun it. I imagine the main reason being the amount of luck it seems to take to put up a great run with no loses (at least for me), but if so i think the addition of shortcuts really help with that. They allow you to get away from the other players and have more control. I hate getting an hour into a run and losing a race at the last second because of the tiniest mistake or freak accident. It makes the game feel RNG based even though its not technically RNG i think. So basically i want to see if i can muster up some competition and collaboration in the community to make speedrunning this game a bit funner. Im sure part of the reason for the lack of active runners is they are just focused on other games but with the addition of shortcuts we have a frontier of possibilities most games dont have as much of. I love Mario 64 for example, but with hundreds of runners trying to break that game open they’ve done a really good job and now the opertunity for new discovery is slim. RR64 however is just scratching the surface. I broke the shortcut mechanics down in about two days of trial and error, i think there is plenty more left to be discovered and i find that exciting. So i dont know if my words make anyone feel like firing up this game again but i id feel a lot more motivated if there was a sense of competition and collaboration and activity in the community. To that end, i started a Discord Page for RR64 Speedrunning. Im actually kind of a noob when it comes to discord so im happy to let someone who knows what they’re doing run it but i wanted to get the ball rolling. Its attached to my “Denim_ak” discord account and thats linked to my profile here on Speedrun.com so if the link below expires then you should be able to find it off my profile i think.

https://discord.gg/pggk4GDR

Im going to try to get some of my gamer friends who’ve never tried speed running this game to give it a go. I think some more competition around here would be fun.

Hi. Don’t know if im the first but ive discovered how to beat the mechanic in the game that fails you in big game races when you “cheat” by taking huge shortcuts. I will recap the discoveries i talked about in my last post “questions about shortcuts” while filtering out what is no longer relevant. Here is everything ive learned:

The “Cheat Fail” as ive come to calling it can be circumvented allowing for giant time saves on certain levels. Normally if you try to take a big shortcut, the second you emerge back onto the road (thats actually a part of the course or is some cases directly adjacent) the game brings your bike halting to a stop and chastises you for cheating with a message that says “cheaters never prosper” before taking you to the “Wrecked” screen and asking you to cough up 1-3 thousand dollars. This mechanic can be beaten allowing you to trigger the end of the race without being labeled a cheater. I’ll explain what you need to know to accomplish this but first let me define a few terms:

Cheat Fail - When the game decides you’ve cheated and ends your race and demands your money

Course Road - a section of road that is a part of the designated path for that race. These roads will trigger the Cheat Fail if re-entered wrong after going off road for a lengthy shortcut.

Non-Course Road - roads not on the race’s designated pathway, can drive freely on these without the risk of triggering the Cheat Fail

Progressive - The direction you would need to travel on a Course Road to be making progress towards the finish line.

Regressive - The direction you would need to travel on a Course Road to be losing progress towards the finish line.

Flashy Crash - The name i gave to a maneuver where you purposely crash into one of the big yellow or orange flashing arrow signs in order to respawn yourself on the Course Road with a huge lead and the ability to once again drive freely on the Course Roads without triggering the Cheat Fail.

Forced Respawn - Basically any other version of crashing yourself into a specific spot on purpose with the goal of respawning back on the Course Road with the lead you acquired from a shortcut.

Win Zone - The area inside and outside of the finish line that when driven across in the Progressive direction triggers the end of the race. The Win Zone extends quite a ways outside of the poles of the finish line, I haven’t measured it but feels like maybe 80-100 feet in the game

Danger Zone - The area on either side of a Course Road that if driven inside of in the Progressive direction, the Cheat Fail will be activated. This feels like about 50 feet in the game. The fact that the Win Zone is about double the width of the Danger Zone is one of the keys to defeating the games anti cheat programming.

Ok, here’s how to defeat the anti cheat programming:

The “Cheat Fail” only gets triggered when you renter a Course Road traveling in the Progressive direction. So if you renter that same Course Road facing the Regressive direction, the Cheat Fail will not be tripped. At first glance this doesn’t seem very useful since we need to drive in the Progressive direction to finish the race but we can use this mechanic when crossing course roads or to temporarily drive on a course road in the Regressive direction to get to a Forced Respawn point.

Let’s talk about Forced Respawns. If you can crash your bike close enough to the Course Road you want to respawn on WITHOUT accidentally triggering the Cheat Fail in the process by pointing the bike in a progressive direction, then you will respawn just meters from where you crashed keeping the huge lead you gained from your shortcut and you be able to drive freely on the course road again without risking the cheat fail. But there’s a catch, the game still tracks your bike when its flying around during the crash. (i think the cheat fail is activated by tracking the bikes direction but im not 100% sure, the riders position during the crash could factor in too, ive only been at this a day and just using trial and error.) so if in the chaos of you ramming your bike head on into a tree, fence or flashy sign it happens to point in a direction the game doesn’t like, it will label you a cheater and end your race. This is the hardest part of defeating the anti cheat programming.

Its also possible to fail a forced respawn by not being close enough to the course road (or some other unknown factor) when you crash, if this happens, you wont necessarily trigger a cheat fail, you’ll just be teleported back to where you deviated from the path to start your shortcut; this usually makes the race unwinable. I want to find a way to have the game update your position to first place before performing a respawn so this problem is averted but I haven’t found out how to do that yet.

Not all shortcuts require Forced Respawns but the ones that do are currently the bane of my existence. There are four shortcuts ive worked out so far that require Forced Respawns, i got to hitting them about 75% percent of the time in practice but during my Speedrun attempt today with these new strategies under the pressure and fatigue of having fought lunatics on motorcycles for an hour just to get to my first attempt, i failed both of my first two Forced Respawns and ran out of money and got a game over ending my run. Unlike losing a race where you just lose time, activating the Cheat Fail will cost you the money you need to by your next bike or end your run completely so there is risk. However, i really think performing these shortcuts is easier than surviving or staying in front of the onslaught of the other riders constantly trying to beat you to death right before the finish line. If you successfully complete a shortcut, you get away from not just the other bikers, but most time you get away from spawning cars. So you can haul ass because there is no one in your way but the game also runs faster because its loading much less content and has no reason to lag.

Ok. I better get to the point. Basically, successfully using a shortcut as a time save in this game means triggering the end of the race without triggering the Cheat Fail (despite deserving it). Since the Win Zone that triggers the end of the Race is roughly twice the size of the Danger Zone that will end your race with a cheat fail, if you drive in the progressive direction through the the part of the Win Zone that does not overlap with the Danger Zone, you will win the race without being called a cheater.

There are three ways of doing that ive found.

1. The Off Road Method - On maps where the course is layed out so you can drive off road to the finish line faster than the other riders can finish the race, you can drive straight there as long as you dont enter the danger zone. I use this on 3:2 and it save about 15 seconds. Its also pretty easy since there is no forced respawn, you just cant drive too close to the course road or you’ll enter the danger zone and trigger the cheat fail.

2. Forced Respawn Method - this describes shortcuts that wouldn’t be viable if you couldn’t get back onto the course road traveling progressively to finish the race. I use this on 5:7 “Crash and Burn” and others. Sometimes the shortcut involves going off road, other times it involves using Non-Course Roads but either way you need to do a forced respawn to be able to finish the race with a time save. Once a forced respawn is successfully completed you can just play the game like normal exempt you wont have people trying to beat you to death every 5 seconds. You dont need to do anything fancy at the finish line, you just cross it like normal.

3. The Roundabout Method - Some races you can use Non Course Roads to drive to the finish line from THE OTHER SIDE. This takes a bit of maneuvering when you reach the finish line since just driving through it wont trigger then end of the race. You have to drive off to the side far enough away to be able to turn around without crossing into the danger zone and then drive through the win zone just like you would in the Off Road Method. These are the easiest and my favorite. The hardest part is remembering the right combination of non course roads to take to arrive at the finish line. MARATHON falls into this catagory and you can beat it in around 1m21s easy this way. Thats the single best time save i have to offer here and hilariously its the easiest. I use to kinda dread marathon but now i laugh my ass off it.

So thats it. To make a shortcut work you have to trigger the end of the race by driving through the Win Zone in the Progressive direction and you have to do that without triggering the Cheat Fail by driving through the Danger Zone or by entering a Course Road in the Progressive direction. If you cant drive straight to the finish line from the other side or take a off road route, then you can find a shortcut route that cuts off some time and then figure out where you can do a Forced Respawn that is consistent enough to be worth it. At first i always crashed into the flashy signs since they are at all the intersections i would be coming back onto the course road from and they are close enough to the road to usually work but lately they’ve been super inconsistent and ive opted for driving regressively to a fence or corner of where two buildings meet instead. If we figure out a consistent way to do them the game will be ours. For best results ive been limiting my speed to 100km per hour but too slow and you might not crash. Angle matters too. Im trying to design setups where i can hit it the same every time but its hard.

Good luck everyone. Id love to take first place but this game is mentally demanding and i dont usually do well on second attempts in a day and Im running out of time before the real world keeps me from attempting these speedruns for a while. I feel good with the idea that i helped push the boundaries of what’s possible in one of my favorite games.

Hi everyone. First of all, don’t understand for the life of me how there aren’t dozens of players speedrunning this game, its one of my top three favorite games of all time. Ok, here’s my question:

Has anyone figured out what the mechanic is behind the game making you instant fail the race when you make too big of a short cut? Does the game have set routes they anticipate players trying that could perhaps be worked around or is it triggered by a measurement of how far ahead of the closest player you are when you pop back onto the road? I could also picture a version of the mechanic where it times how long you’re off road and if you emerge in first after too long off road they fail you.

Right now im using trial and error to scout for shortcuts through level 3 race 2 Smack and Run. Ive only watched one or two of your guys’ speedruns, im guessing this isn’t uncharted territory, but i wanted the fun of exploring for myself however this would be a lot easier if i understood the mechanics behind when the game lets you use shortcuts and when it doesn’t.

My time on this game is miles behind what’s been done but this the smallest speedrunning community of the games i run and perhaps my best shot at finding uncharted territory in ways to beat the game faster and that kind of excites me. If no one knows how the shortcut mechanic works on this game perhaps ill look into finding someone who has experience looking into the game’s code to find out what it says. Thanks guys, have a good day.

I’ve been pulling my hair out cuz I want to stream on twitch but I live in remote alaska where the internet speed is trash. I thought I found a way around this when I bought a 5th gen iPad Pro, the internet speed I get from the tower are 5 times faster than I get from a hard line connection from my homes internet. I knew that you could use adapters to plug USB A into the iPad and I guess I assumed that meant that the many streaming apps built for iPad would allow you to access and use the game footage plugged into it but I haven’t found a single one yet that does. It’s hard to find a solution on a google search because it uses all the same keywords as someone trying to screen capture their iPad screen to something else. It seems odd to use an iPad as your streaming station but between the m1 chip and faster internet speeds it seems like my best option if I could get it to work. I’m tired of the audio in my streams constantly studdering. Any help someone could provide would be greatly appreciated, thanks.

Hi everybody, im a gamer from Alaska. I finally got my Mario 64 120 star down to 3:26:10 on switch but im not sure if the run would qualify as you can't see my hands the whole time and I used an external timer. there's plenty of room for improvement so im not in a hurry to submit a run but im excited to work towards posting runs im really proud of. later dudes.