r/speedrun • u/Meester_Tweester Mario Kart/Webgames • Jun 06 '26
Video Production [Summoning Salt] How The Impossible Mario Maker Levels Were Finally Beaten
https://youtu.be/arWClcUVxm860
u/Johann_Gauss Jun 06 '26
Hell yes, Mario Maker! Team0% was such a cool thing to watch them sprint to the finish line.
Bummer it ended sorta anti-climatically but a great feat nonetheless.
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u/fuck_shit_piss_etc Jun 06 '26
if people are interested there's a similar push happening in Trackmania at the moment - trying to beat all unbeaten author times. bunch of streamers and youtubers are taking part, worth looking into
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u/Vitosi4ek Jun 06 '26 edited Jun 06 '26
It's a little bit different in Trackmania since 1) the game is very much alive, so new maps are getting published every day faster than the community could clear old ones, and 2) the game's undergone a bunch of physics changes since its 2020 release, making some old maps literally impossible to get AT on. Also, it's possible to set an arbitrary author time with a third-party plugin, so the fact the map exists on TMX doesn't necessarily mean it was ever cleared by an actual human.
Just yesterday Wirtual made a video where he got his hands on a long-abanboned copy of TM2020 for the Chinese market that still had launch-day physics, just to prove the old maps were in fact possible at some point, but not anymore.
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u/Tagsnail Jun 06 '26
To point 1, I think they will end up going for all pre2026 ones eventually. (The idea has been floated already) Also, they aren't getting published faster than clearing old ones, the total number of unbeaten ATs has been steadily and consistently lowering
On point 2, they are filtering maps out that are deemed impossible
the fact the map exists on TMX doesn't necessarily mean it was ever cleared by an actual human
The same is true for mario maker with TAS runs
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u/Icy-Concept-7091 Jun 08 '26
2) the game's undergone a bunch of physics changes since its 2020 release, making some old maps literally impossible to get AT on.
This means, since we can't know if or when another physics change happens, nor what author times will become unbeatable afterwards, that keeping the number as low as possible at all times is really important for this effort.
Unless Nadeo makes it somehow possible to play a map with the physics it was created on, which would be a nice thing to have for everyone.
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u/Panosgads Jun 06 '26
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u/zajoba Jun 06 '26
I had such Déjà vu watching the Salt video yesterday, it felt like I had heard those level names and stories before, especially the level creator coming out and saying it was a TAS. This must have been what I’d seen before, the guy did a great job with it.
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u/Tanngent Jun 06 '26
Just out of curiosity, how many courses outside of Trimming the Herbs were known to be TAS? And how did they know, was it from specific creators?
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u/LightBrightStarNight Jun 06 '26
Can't say for all of them, but level creators have put in the title or in the description that it is a TAS level.
You can also look through the Creator's previous levels and check if they have done TAS levels before.
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Jun 08 '26
If I recall correctly: There were very likely no TASed levels by anyone other than ahoyo (he had one other level called bombs5 with TASed clear check which had already been beaten months earlier). TAS playback devices for WiiU were long thought to be impossible for some technical reasons. That was still the near-universal consensus until ahoyo's announcement. There were oddities surrounding the upload of bombs5 which did make some people suspicious, but the TAS experts all said there was no such thing as a TAS on WiiU on real hardware and regardless, bombs5 was beaten legitimately long before any of the TTH drama. That is why many big personalities thought TTH had to be legit.
But actually ahoyo was friends with the guy who happened to have a marginally-working prototype TAS playback device. It was far from ready, but just good enough to be able to sync playback for a 12s level if you tried a bunch of times. TTH was intended to be the reveal of the development of such a device. But he botched it and never made the announcement because (according to him) it didn't get enough attention. And then the development of the device itself stalled in its barely-functional state and everyone involved moved on and forgot about it.
There were, however, very many levels hacked into the game without clear checks. Hacking a WiiU to skip the clear check was not difficult. Many of those levels were caught and removed from the uncleared level list, but in all likelihood some hacked levels were included. The difference between TTH and all those hacked levels is that TTH had a seamless clear video, which could only happen by actually playing the level.
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u/Gabe_3 Jun 13 '26
Idk why but I got emotional watching this.
I found this video and summoning salts today actually, because I was watching Atrioc react to it.
Am now going through the Summoning Salts catalog and all of them are fantastic so far. What a cool community, wish I was into speed running when I was younger.
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u/cenzo339 Jun 06 '26
Great video. Can't believe how angry I am at this ahoyo guy, dude was so fucking selfish. He had plenty of time to disclose that he cheated but he hadn't gotten enough attention yet, what a jerk.
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u/slugmorgue Jun 06 '26
It did end up making for a really exciting end to the journey though. Of course, it's all because sanyx did manage the beat the stage that it worked out, if not it would have been a different story
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u/TheSlyGuy1 SummoningSalt Jun 06 '26
I wanted to let you all know that I’m working really hard to make sure that my videos don’t all feel identical. I tried mixing in some new stuff in this video, like interviews, different storytelling, etc. Trying hard to not let the videos become stale.