Submission #9292: iMathII & cstrakm's GBA Mario Kart: Super Circuit in 22:56.80

This TAS was submitted with permission from the original author, iMathII. More information about the resync and verification process will be detailed later.

.srt subtitles for the above encode (needs offset if adding a publisher logo)

Hi, I'm iMathII, Welcome to my Mario Kart: Super Circuit All Cups 150cc TAS! This TAS was made using the Japanese version. JP version has a longer intro than US version but makes up for it later with a JP-exclusive glitch. This TAS allows all glitches and shortcuts. The banana glitch will be used on almost every track in the run. By hitting a banana on the finish line, then hitting a wall, you can make the game think you're crossing the line every other frame, ending the race almost immediately! I will provide comments to some of the tracks that need more explanation. The bk2 file actually contains subtitles, also provided by CoolKirby. Set your GBA Window Size to 4x or above (full-screen should also work).

Reading the commentary in the author encode is still recommended.

These are the cups featuring original tracks. The Special Cup gets unlocked by beating the previous four.

In Peach Circuit, we use banana glitch, Riverside Park too uses banana glitch.

In Shy Guy Beach, there are no walls on this track, so we can't banana glitch. But we can drive underwater around the finish line then touch it on the frame Lakitu pulls us out, placing us behind the line, and we get to keep our lap count! This is done on all 3 laps.

Toad has the highest acceleration of all racers, so he is used for most cups in this run. The item roulette constantly cycles in the code and can be stopped anytime with the item button. This allows me to easily choose the item I want, like a banana, every time.

The next track, Bowser Castle 1, doesn't give us a good spot to throw the banana safely to the goal, so we must carry and place it there and we can't pick up an extra mushroom. Mushroom Cup finished!

Peach is picked for the next cup since she has the tightest drifts, and acceleration is not as important.

In Mario Circuit, I first boost off a zipper panel and jump into the wall. This severely slows Peach's deceleration, and ignores slowdown from driving off-road. This trick is called ticking, and is similar to longboosting in Super Mario Kart.

Only one lap of Boo Lake can be skipped, even with the banana glitch. This makes it the longest track in this TAS. Peach can use the jump bumper to barely reach the respawn point. This strategy is fastest for the first 2 laps. Ticking is done again, using a mushroom. The trick is named for the "ticking" engine noise due to the A button not being pressed. This track's walls disappear once hit, which is why only one banana glitch can be done, after which Peach falls off. Boo Lake also only has walls on the left, so the glitch will only work once.

The next track, Cheese Land, famously does not require a banana, as the walking rats have the same effect!

Bowser Castle 2 also has faraway item boxes but it has a spot where we can throw the banana to the finish line, freeing up our item slot and letting us get a mushroom as well. Flower Cup finished!

Yoshi is picked for the next cup, for a trick in Sky Garden only he can do.

Luigi Circuit's items are far enough away that we need to use a mushroom before getting the banana. This is harder on other courses since only 1st place can get bananas and CPUs usually pass you after you boost backwards.

Sky Garden is where we need Yoshi. With no walls along the finish line, the banana glitch cannot be used. So we boost around the line using a couple of mushrooms. Yoshi's sharp turning lets him turn around completely on lap 3, crossing the finish line in midair. No other character can do this.

For Cheep Cheep Island, we swim around the finish line, and also land on it underwater, like with Shy Guy Beach, to finish two laps at once. Then go around the line once more to finish lap 3.

Now to Sunset Wilds. This track, as many others in this TAS uses a lot of MTs, or Mini-Turbos, normally done by drifting for one second in a single direction, You can also trick the game by alternating left and right without letting the D-Pad go neutral. This lets you MT on a straight path and is known as ZZMT, or Zig-Zag Mini-Turbo. When an MT or ZZMT is used, you'll see blue sparks around the kart.

Lightning Cup finished! The rest of the cups will use Toad.

Starting with Snow Land, drifting speed in snow is the same as on the road. This lets us take a shorter path to the item boxes, and is called snow sliding. Shallow water has the same behavior, and its trick is called water sliding.

Ribbon Road uses banana glitch once again. Nothing too notable.

AB spinning is another trick that lets you turn sharply by holding A+B from a standstill. It's very slow without a mushroom, so it's rarely used. An AB spin is done in Yoshi Desert right after using the mushroom. A special sound plays during this trick, but isn't heard this time due to background noise.

Bowser Castle 3 also has faraway items, so there's room to use a mushroom before picking up a banana. Star Cup finished! One cup left before the Extra/SNES cups!

For Lakeside Park, this track's items are close to the finish, so the banana must be thrown straight back and a wide turn is needed to hit it at the correct angle.

Broken Pier's walls disappear when hit, like Boo Lake's. So we break a wall in Lap 1 and curve around the finish line, like in Sky Garden. Bumping a wall 1 frame after falling off skips part of a Lakitu animation, saving a lot of time.

Bowser Castle 4 has items near enough that Toad can AB spin after getting the banana, while still having the starting boost. AB spinning from the start boost is not usually worth the fast turnaround since it slows down very quickly.

Despite being the last GBA track in the game, there isn't much to say about Rainbow Road. A simple application of banana glitch is used to finish the track very quickly.

Credits usually roll after this cup, but this TAS resets here to skip them. Don't worry, they'll play at the end! Remember, later there's a JP-exclusive glitch that makes this longer intro worth it.

These cups are from Super Mario Kart. You unlock them after beating all the regular cups, then beating them again while collecting over 100 coins each cup.

SNES Mario Circuit 1's item boxes appear halfway through the lap, so we continue driving forward to finish the first lap. This is the only lap in the TAS without any shortcuts at all.

Donut Plains 1's item boxes are the closest to the start line of all the game's courses, making this the fastest track in the TAS.

Extra tracks have 5 laps instead of 3. Other than that, Ghost Valley 1 is similar to Broken Pier's strategy, with a touch more of Sky Garden's.

SNES Bowser Castle 1 is what you've come to expect by now. Just be ready to see more BCs with even more lava! Extra Mushroom Cup finished!

So far, we've gotten triple-star ranks on every cup. This one however will be different.

Notice how in SNES Mario Circuit 2, doing an MT skips off-road slowdown, so we MT often to go off-road and take shorter paths. Choco Island 1 uses banana glitch.

The CPUs never finish a track, yet the game still generates completion times for them that would be impossible to get without glitches! This quirk was carried over from Super Mario Kart, and appears in its TAS as well.

Ghost Valley 2 is similar to GV1, but with less room to maneuver behind the finish line. A hole is made next to the start to skip laps, while other walls are bumped to reset Toad's speed and turn around quickly.

Donut Plains 2 's item boxes are just close enough for an AB spin to be faster. You can see Toad slow down as he reaches the end of the start boost.

I finish Extra Flower Cup with a B rank. The ranking system depends on much more than lap times. Time spent off-road is also a factor, which for the last cup was too long, so the game dropped our ranking.

Not much to say about SNES Bowser Castle 2, other than... SO. MUCH. LAVA.

SNES Mario Circuit 3. With no banana glitch, this would be the longest course. With the glitch, it's the second shortest!

Koopa Beach 1 is another track where the finish line can be circled around. It also has a special segment that only adds laps, and doesn't subtract them when you go backwards across it! It's not known why this is.

In Choco Island 2, we go off-road just before we would be able to charge an MT. So we can't avoid the slowdown.

Extra Lightning Cup finished! And back to triple-star rank! The last two cups also earn at least one star.

Vanilla Lake 1 is the second snow course, so the second with snow sliding! There will be one more after this.

SNES Bowser Castle 3. Jump pads in Bowser Castle tracks slow you down when you hit them, so it's faster to use R to jump over gaps yourself. On other tracks, mushrooms can be used to boost off bumpers. Just not on Bowser tracks.

SNES Mario Circuit 4's finish line does not extend into the wall on the left side. So we can finish laps just by bumping into the wall in the right spots. This is faster than using a banana.

Same with Donut Plains 3, except there are water hazards. We avoid falling in, using a glitch. By touching the wall on the same frame as Toad is at ground level, we can keep jumping off the block while inching around the finish line.

Extra Star Cup finished! One more cup and the TAS is over.

Koopa Beach 2 has the JP-only glitch. Only on this version, the finish line does not extend into the wall, so we can hop around it. As for why only this one was fixed, we can only guess. Maybe only this bug was noticed with the limited tools back in 2001.

The finish line in Ghost Valley 3 also has a section that only counts laps in one direction. The line also only covers the road, making it very easy to circle around.

Vanilla Lake 2 is the last banana-glitched track, as it's the last track with walls. Farewell, our dear banana-friend!

We're finally at the endgame, SNES Rainbow Road. The final, and second-longest track, as we can't circle the finish without falling off! Lakitu's animations take a lot of time, but we can use the start/drop boost to lapskip, for a nice change!

And that's it! Extra Special Cup, and the entire game is done!

Ghost Valley 1 was the most difficult course to TAS for me. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out the optimal route, but after I was done I realized there was an obvious time loss, which demotivated me so much that I didn't work on the TAS for over a year. Even after I came back, I realized there was a mushroom I had at the end of GV1 that I didn't use. It would've saved a small amount of time to fix, but at that point I was already finished recording and I did not want to bother going back and changing it.

All the other tracks probably have mistakes on them as well anyways. I didn't want to focus too much on being absolutely flawless so I could actually have a finished product in the end. I knew I would have given up before finishing otherwise. xD

One of my goals for this TAS was to beat the old TAS made by cs_trakm (Su) on every track. His TAS did not use the banana shortcut, so most of the time this was very easy. But some tracks were very difficult; for example, I only managed to beat cstrakm's Mario Circuit 4 time by a single frame! cstrakm's TAS uses all glitches known at the time except the banana glitch, so his TAS is roughly 16 minutes longer, but there is much more variety! I highly recommend watching it if you enjoyed this TAS.

When I first made it to SNES Rainbow Road when TASing, I ran into a problem where Wario would always be exactly where Lakitu put me down on the final lap, and I would get pushed off the track by Wario and lose a lot of time. I tried to solve this by doing slightly different inputs during the race but nothing worked. I eventually had to go back and redo Vanilla Lake 2, so that the CPUs would finish in a different order, and therefore start the next race in a different order... this finally worked! But only barely, as you can see in the final product that Wario is still very close to us at the end. It also resulted in a slightly faster time on VL2!

This movie was resynced and preserved initially by dekutony. This TAS originally used a hacked savefile and started from a save state. This speedrun can't be done optimally from a fresh save file, since the retro tracks must be unlocked, and the trophy ceremonies can't be skipped if it's the first time they're being completed.

CoolKirby went to the process of creating a verification movie that unlocks the extra tracks on 150cc legitimately. Then he re-resynced the TAS with this new legit save applied to it. Huge shoutouts to him for taking his time to do this!

This TAS also uses input from cstrakm's old TAS. Specifically Riverside Park and GBA Rainbow Road. So co-authorship has been added to them.

If you're interested in joining the MKSC community, you can join our Discord server. :) You can learn about and submit Grand Prix speedruns on the SRC page, and submit Time Trial scores at the MK64.com page. If you have questions, please ask in the comments of my original YouTube video, where I'm most likely to see it. I will do my best to answer all of them!

Again, huge thanks to CoolKirby for making the verification file and resyncing the TAS with it.

Also thanks to the Mario Kart Super Circuit speedrun community for their support.

Special thanks to cstrakm too! Thanks for preserving your old TAS somewhere on the Internet.

Thank you so much for watching (and reading)! It's been my dream to make an any% TAS with all these ridiculous glitches. This has been iMathII. See you next time :)

ViGadeomes: updating the movie file.