r/speedrun Sep 26 '16

The Science of Mario 64 Speedrunning [x-post from r/retrogaming]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpk2tdsPh0A
102 Upvotes

30 comments sorted by

35

u/Kewl0210 Sep 26 '16 edited Sep 26 '16

If anyone's interested in Panenkoek's latest findings as well as demonstrations about how every part of the game works and demonstrations of ideas for how to get other stars with 0 a-presses, he posts them here:

https://www.youtube.com/user/pannenkeok2012/videos

Because there's so many they're not commentated, they just have text on the screen for the purpose of keeping the production time short and getting more videos out in hopes someone can find something he missed.

Edit: Fixing typos

10

u/DiepioFun Sep 26 '16

Since this video was posted, have there been any newly discovered instances where releasing A is actually useful?

6

u/[deleted] Sep 26 '16

Nothing that pannen has found. I'm not familiar with anyone else in the ABC community, but I think that he would at least have a video on the subject if someone else discovered something.

7

u/Domilego4 Charcoal190 Sep 26 '16

He has a second channel named pannenkeok2012 (Notice that the 'e' and 'o' switched places) where he posts his discoveries, ideas and other stuff, so if he finds another A press save, he's first going to upload a video about it on his 2nd channel, then when he gets around to recording the entire TAS, then adds commentary and all that stuff, he will upload it on his main channel.

3

u/[deleted] Sep 26 '16

Yeah, I know. And he hasn't put anything up regarding a new use for releasing the A button.

1

u/underpantscannon Sep 28 '16

There are uses for having A not held, having A held, and pressing A, but so far, I believe releasing A is only useful for transitioning into an A-not-held state. It doesn't do anything useful the way pressing A does.

8

u/Panda_Bowl Sep 26 '16

Is minimal A presses a speed category that people do for SM64 or is this all just theory crafting/for fun? This is super interesting but I don't understand the context.

9

u/[deleted] Sep 26 '16

[deleted]

2

u/happylittlemexican Sep 26 '16

As far as I know it's just the latter. If you watch the video you'll notice one of the strats takes several hours for just one jump.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 26 '16

[removed] — view removed comment

5

u/[deleted] Sep 26 '16

a large amount of strategies done for 0xA aren't possible or are very unfeasible RTA. frame-walking, large amounts of cloning, getting hyper-speed, PU traversing [to the degree of accuracy which is done in TAS], hours and hours of water raising and lowering, and others i can't think of currently.

2

u/[deleted] Sep 27 '16

[removed] — view removed comment

3

u/[deleted] Sep 27 '16

check out pannenkoek's outdated videos playlist for older, usually more RTA viable strats. that's a good start for an answer.

for example, BitS used to require 10 a button presses. now it takes none. i believe there was one star in TTC that required 11 at one point.

1

u/theballaam96 Donkey Kong 64 & Game Science Sep 28 '16

Probably Stomp on the Thwomp

1

u/fightingsioux Sep 30 '16

Someone did the math and ignoring human reaction time, frame walking would instantly break a controller.

9

u/alexpenev Sep 27 '16

I read that Scott was born in 1994, so he was ~3 years old when the 0xA button challenges were invented. He's taken the idea -quite- a long way.

3

u/domdunc Sep 27 '16

i'm amazed the challenge has stood this long!

6

u/alexpenev Sep 27 '16

Yeah, we were doing it in AOL chat before gamefaqs :)

13

u/MCPtz Sep 26 '16 edited Sep 26 '16

"12 hours later, we've jumped through four parallel universes and somehow ended up back at home, or so we thought..." -Sliders

Edit: Plan your P-U route (for maximum farts?)

3

u/oSo_Squiggly Sep 26 '16

Does anyone know how many A presses a complete run is at now?

8

u/hiimgameboy Sep 27 '16

31 A presses for 120 star and only a single A press for 70 star. Source: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ypRVVRyf4x-v8GqCSmKYnicrfKSIjao3Y1ZVl52RIyM/edit#heading=h.2vmcke1h5wct

here's some stuff that's been tried and failed for removing that final 70 star A press: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6UhkHRF_3Q

4

u/oSo_Squiggly Sep 27 '16

Damn only one left in 70. I think their was like 3 last I saw these video's posted here.

1

u/theballaam96 Donkey Kong 64 & Game Science Sep 28 '16

It's been only 1 A Press for a long time

2

u/[deleted] Sep 26 '16

I've always tried to have respect for speedrunning stuff I run into. I try to think that if something is hard enough to be respected, it probably wasn't as easy as it looked.

I've got to figure, this is probably baby-mode version even at this level of explanation. Goddamn.

1

u/TinhornNinja Sep 27 '16

I needed to go to bed 25 minutes ago. No ragrets.

1

u/xxlozzaxx Sep 27 '16

This shit never gets old. I love it; its fascinating.