Happy New Year!
As a New Year's gift, here's a new SMB2J "Worlds A-D" TAS, a 34-frame improvement over electricpants & bruhmoment's TAS.
The goal is to complete World D in the fastest time, starting from World A. Warps are used in A-2 and B-4, and Mario is chosen because he accelerates faster than Luigi. Unlocking World A requires beating World 8 at least 8 times (8 stars on the title screen).
New tricks & improvements
The main new trick in this TAS is the ground clip using a Koopa in A-1, saving 21 frames. It was found by HappyLee. No one else has done it before, and for a good reason, because it requires very precise movements.
The other 13 frames are saved in D-4, from the first and the final stage. RNG is heavily involved, because we got to D-4 21 frames earlier than the previous TAS. In the first stage, we had to slow down for 4 frames to avoid a bad Podoboo, but we still entered the pipe 3 frames earlier. In the final stage, the fastest solution with our Podoboo and Bowser should be what we did, which is 10 frames faster than the solution from the previous TAS.
Me and chatterbox spent effort perfecting the entertainment of each stage as well.
Authors' notes
Chatterbox
This run is a 34 frames improvement over the previous attempt. The time saving on A-1 was achieved by inducing the far right Koopa Troopa's shell over the cliff instead of wall clips using lifts, which was done by HappyLee. This saves one frame rule (21 frames), by completing the level 18 frames faster than the published run. While this seems straightforward at first glance, many SMB players may not have easily anticipated this improvement, as it requires landing on the second pillar at the correct speed and stepping on the exact location of the shell.
Stages with other potential for improvement were B-2 and D-4. In B-2, the previous TAS was 19 frames behind until the next frame rule, and HappyLee improved surprisingly 13 frames with precise deceleration and horizontal speed manipulation that occurred as the whirlpool pulled Mario. He had only 6 frames left until the next frame rule. After considerable research, however, he concluded that we could no longer push to save the remaining frames. The first whirlpool part, which is the most unknowing and has a lot of potential for combinations, is because we've confirmed that even Big Mario, which can clip ceilings with minimal deceleration with crouching movements, can't make any noticeable improvement.
When the whirlpool pulls Mario down, if he slows down at a specific frame, Mario will move slightly further to the right. However, as explained earlier, the time gained was sacrificed for some entertainment, as this strategy does not provide enough time savings to reach the next frame rule. This strategy was used twice on this level.
Personal comments: I'd like to put my thanks to HappyLee up top--In early December of last year, HappyLee showed me a demo movie he had done and offered me to collaborate with me on this project. I was willing to join, and we spent a lot of time searching for uncertain possibilities, but all discoveries came from him. He has done a great work at finding all these improvements. I regret that I haven't made a notable contribution to this run, honestly. Nonetheless, I could still learn a lot and it was a great experience to share good ideas and thoughts with him.
HappyLee
I did demos of this category back in 2017. I always knew about the potential A-1 ground clip using a Koopa, but it still took me a long time to actually achieve it.
I'd like to thank chatterbox, who is an excellent TASer. Chatterbox did B-1, B-2, B-3, B-4, and D-1 in this TAS. The quality is quite good, and I only changed a small part in B-2 and the ending of B-3. It's been an honor working with him on this project.
Suggested screenshot (frame #2639)
feos: Claiming for judging.
feos: Accepting over [4861] FDS Super Mario Bros. 2 "Worlds A-D, warps, Mario" by electricpants & bruhmoment in 06:27.36.
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