Emulator/Sync Settings

• Emulator Used: Dolphin 5.0 Lua + TAStudio (Syncs on Dolphin 5.0)
• Dual Core and Idle Skipping Off
• DSP HLE Emulation
• Use PAL60 Mode
• Use one GameCube Controller, zero Wii Remotes
• ISO MD5 Checksum: PAL 1.1: c2255d53e08d6e1e6d25114be9f1bec1

Game Objectives

• Completes the main story as fast as possible
• 100% Completion
• Uses hardest difficulty
• Takes damage to save time
  • Takes damage to save time
    • ...Like, WOW, that’s a lot of damage
• Uses death to save time
• Heavy glitch abuse
• Heavily manipulates luck
  • Heavily manipulates luck
    • For the love of all that is holy, that’s a bunch of manipulation
• One player in a multiplayer game
• Genre: Fighting
• Genre: Platform

Game Overview

Region Choice

Difficulty/Category Choice

Game Mechanics

Basics

Other Techniques

• Dash Dancing: By turning in the opposite direction in the first six frames of a character’s dash, the character dashes again. While its usage in combat is severely limited in comparison to Melee (Which has a larger time window), it can be quickly used to generate dust and advance the RNG (Explained below).

• Fox Trotting: The act of repeatedly entering a character’s initial dash animation (Instead of transitioning into a run) by rhythmically tapping on the control stick. Several characters have Fox Trots that are faster than their run speeds.

• Turn-around Jump: The act of jumping in the middle of a character’s turn-around animation; this is used to better position needed aerial attacks.

• Shield Drop: By holding one’s shield and slightly lowering the control stick, one can drop through a platform. It’s one frame faster than the traditional method (Holding down for two frames while in an idle or turnaround position), and also retains momentum from a dash.

• Directional Influence (DI): The ability to influence the trajectory one follows when launched by an attack. It is affected with precision down to individual control stick values (With the exception of the control stick’s deadzones) when bouncing off of walls or ceilings, and to the cardinal/diagonal directions at all other times.

• Smash DI (SDI): The ability to influence one’s position before being launched by an attack, possible during the attack’s “hitstun” period (When the attacker and attackee appear frozen). Unlike DI, SDI is only precise to the cardinal and diagonal directions. One can input a diagonal after a cardinal (I.E Left, then Left+Up), but not the reverse (I.E Left+Up, then Left).
  • Shield SDI: Similar to SDI, but when shielding an attack. Can only move left or right.

• DACUS: Short for “Dash Attack Canceled Up Smash”, performed when a character cancels a dash attack with an Up Smash. Can provide significant boosts in speed, depending on the character.

RNG

The Item Drop System

Item Odds

Stickers

Damage Boosting & Bounce Boosting

Loading

Miscellaneous Tricks

• Pause Glitch: Pausing on the frame one enters an Ambush causes the camera to continue following one around instead of centering on the main fight area. The camera’s own blastzones also still exist, which means moving far away enough from an enemy causes it to despawn. This is used in many areas to completely skip past a fight. As the fight area’s blastzones also still exist, however, I can’t move too far on my own without dying - this is why you often see me perched motionless in an arbitrary location with the glitch active - I’m right at the edge of a blastzone.
  • Reverse Pause Glitch: Found at the absolute tail-end of the TAS, it turns out that pausing on the frame before an Ambush finishes makes the camera enter a very weird state, following the player without regard for the regular camera boundaries and often attempting to center on particular locations. This can be used to completely skip several autoscrollers, which is timesave in the range of minutes, but that’s for another day.

• Ambush End Damage Boost: When an ambush ends, the camera goes back to following you instead of centering around an area. If one takes damage before the transition occurs, the camera doesn’t freeze in place.

• Clipping Through Collision: Under very rare circumstances, it’s possible to clip through certain walls or ceilings as if they didn’t exist, through abusing moving pieces of collision, one’s own collision points, or simply hitting a wall-ceiling corner at the right speed. This is used a few times to go to unintended areas, or skip sections completely.

• Map Menu Skips: When the map shows up after a stage clear and new characters join your party, there’s a one frame window that lets you choose the next level before the map menu pops up, saving 2-3 frames.

• Character Storage: By hovering over a completed stage on the map, and pressing a direction and A on the same frame to hover over an unfinished stage that doesn’t start with a cutscene, the game appears to let you choose your difficulty (Which is unaffected in reality) and more importantly allows you to play as characters from the previous stage; this saves time from loading optimization and especially if the previous character is faster than the intended options.

• Input Buffering: Alongside its generally slower game speed and loading times, Brawl is also infamous for its large buffer window, which causes specific actions to be queued before the current animation is complete. While this can be a detriment in real-time play, it does allow one to combine actions and do them in a single frame instead of two, like jumping and using an aerial attack at the same time.

100% Category Specific Notes

• Finding every Gold Cube, breaking them, and collecting the items that spawn
  • The items that spawn from a Gold Cube vary with difficulty; on Intense, they have an 85% chance to drop a Trophy, and a 15% chance to drop a CD. As CDs give an extra popup when backing out of Subspace (Which is necessary for 100% completion), it’s faster to have only trophies spawn, as they save about a third of a second per CD not collected.
    • Additionally, there are also several items out in the open, without a Gold Cube to break, that also need to be collected. There also appears to be some items out in the open that I don't collect, due to them not actually being required for 100% completion. It all has to do with whether a particular item respawns on subsequent revisits of the level after being collected or not; if they respawn, they're not required. All the proper items were known in advance, so the levels didn't need to be revisited to check, obviously.

• Entering every door, including optional doors not required to finish the level
  • While most optional doors also contain Gold Cubes, requiring actual traversal, there are a handful of doors that do not; in these cases, the room can be immediately exited without worry.

• Saving every character in the Subspace 1 and Subspace 2 levels, after Tabuu fires his Off Waves
  • In the any% TAS, only Peach was saved because of her usage in The Great Maze. Now, I have several extra rooms to go through in order to save all the others.

• After reaching the credits once, beating the three secret characters (Jigglpuff, Wolf, Toon Link) that are behind now-available doors.
  • This means that parts of The Swamp and The Ruins don’t need to be fully completed on the first visit, as the necessary items can be collected on the second trip - in a faster manner - before reaching the secret characters. This cannot be applied to The Forest, as its optional door is only a short distance from the starting area.

Stage-By-Stage Comments

The Beginning

The Midair Stadium

• Room 1: As it turns out, in utter violation of the 10+ year status quo involving speedruns of this game, Mario is faster in a TAS setting by manipulating the CPU Kirby to use his Down Special (Turning into a very fast-falling stone) and pushing him off the edge with Mario’s own Down Special.

• Room 2: Peach was chosen over the other three characters because of her absurd damage potential in the form of Stitch Face turnips and Bob-Ombs. While the general strategy for this room is the same as before (Defeating enemies ASAP, launching them into other enemies to despawn them more quickly, and continuous RNG manipulation for items), the fight was completed much faster than before. The Cracker Launcher is primarily responsible, being ridiculously powerful in a TAS setting with extreme control over where shots go alongside its high fire rate.

• Room 3: The fastest strategy to beat Petey with Kirby is using aerial Hammers, alongside the occasional aerial attack when spacing for the Hammer isn’t good enough. It’s possible to deal damage “twice” by hitting a cage and Petey at the same time, which I use across the fight to make it end more quickly. I also have to manipulate RNG so Petey only swings the cages around, as his jumping attack is much slower.

Skyworld

• Room 1: Pit can fall faster than his fast-falling speed by using his Up Special and moving downwards, which is useful at several points. By canceling the Up Special with an aerial attack and having the attack’s cooldown end just before I fall through a “soft” platform, it’s possible to use the Up Special again even though I haven’t actually landed on the ground yet. I manipulate a Bunny Hood to appear from the turquoise cube, which doubles my running speed. Fox Trotting to the door is one frame faster than running to it.

• Room 2: After finishing the starting Ambush as quickly as possible, I damage boost over to the first of many Gold Cubes littered throughout the game. I then manipulate another Bob-Omb drop to fly over to the end of the level, and use the Pause Glitch to despawn the Greap off-screen, which is faster than fighting it normally.

• Room 3: Similar to Room 1, I repeatedly use Pit’s Up-B to fall down as quickly as possible to the autoscrolling cloud, during which I build up damage to skip the fight at the end of the room. I need to enter an optional door for 100% completion before that, though.

• Room 3 Optional: As the room contains no Gold Cubes, it would be beneficial to leave immediately, if it were possible. However, the room starts off in a slow autoscrolling state, scrolling upwards until focusing on a turquoise cube. The camera only unlocks after breaking this cube, so I hit it from below the platform with an Up Air, and fall back down to the door. Another turquoise cube is present at the bottom of the level that drops five stickers. I ended up manipulating one I need for future levels by accident, so I collect it before moving on.

• Room 3 Cont.: Using the Glunders’ attacks, I proceed to Bounce Boost right over the fight trigger onto the launch pad, which sends me the remaining distance to the final door.

Sea of Clouds

• Room 1: By getting a good enough room seed, I’m able to get several Bob-Ombs all in a row from Peach’s Down-B, and proceed to Bounce Boost almost all the way to the end in one go. Before the launch, I pluck yet another Bob-Omb, and carry it with me until I need one final boost.

• Room 2: I proceed to RNG manipulate and damage boost just like before, until I need to fly to an optional door for 100% completion. As that room contains nothing important, I leave immediately and continue boosting to the actual ending door. I quickly manipulate a Maxim Tomato from a Poppant before doing one final damage boost, as my damage is actually too high to damage boost properly in the next room without it.

• Room 3: After Bounce Boosting and canceling my vertical knockback by landing on the ground quickly enough, I fly over to the Generator “fight”, plucking a Stitch Face and destroying it in a handful of frames. I then pluck a Bob-Omb, drop it, and pluck another one right before the Bob-Omb hits in a similar manner to the first room. After flying to the next fight’s area, I intentionally damage boost in a way to freeze the camera, and Pause Glitch the fight so the enemies spawn outside of the camera’s boundaries, despawning immediately after. The Generator doesn’t despawn, however, so I destroy it myself with Stitch Faces as I did the first one. My damage here is just slightly too high to successfully launch with a Bob-Omb to the end, so I grab a food item from the nearby Glunder I defeated to heal a tiny bit.

The Jungle

• Room 1: The turquoise block at the start of the level has a 50/50 chance of containing a Super Mushroom or a Poison Mushroom. I manipulate a Super Mushroom alongside a Bob-Omb from the nearby Goomba, and proceed to build up damage while moving through the level. With a Super Mushroom, Donkey Kong’s roll is much faster than his run speed, so I do that when the camera unfreezes from the damage boosting until I reach the cannon. I cancel Donkey Kong’s landing lag by partially charging his Neutral Special and canceling it, which saves a few frames. This room contains a 100% objective in the form of a Gold Cube, behind blocks that need to be broken from being launched from a cannon, so I do that before Bounce Boosting half-way past the series of cannons, and launching to the end with the rest of them.

• Room 2: I Fox-Trot a number of times to manipulate RNG to get a Super Mushroom without needing to pause-buffer RNG (Saving two whole frames). I then roll until I reach a trophy hidden behind a special blockade; I use his Down Tilt to hit the trigger, grab the trophy, and damage boost with the help of the Koopa to another optional door. There’s nothing in that room, however, so I immediately exit. I then bounce boost again using the Koopa until I reach another fight, and then use the Red Paratroopa to bounce boost over its trigger. The level isn’t properly initialized beyond this point, so it has the visual side effect of Donkey Kong seemingly walking on air.

• Room 3: Here, I manipulate many required stickers from the enemies present, alongside collecting yet another trophy for 100%. After reaching a high enough point, I use the Hammer Bro’s attack to fly to the top, and enter the door on the first frame it loads in.

• Room 4: Unlike Pit, Donkey Kong doesn’t have any methods of increasing his fall speed beyond his natural amount, so I fastfall down to another optional door, break-and-collect the Gold Cube inside, and continue falling down to the end of the stage. I improve the fight over the old any% TAS by doing a Goomba hop to grab the Trophy Stand instead of a double jump.

The Plains

• Room 1: 100% requirements include a Gold Cube hidden at the top of several breakable blocks, and a hidden door near the end of the room. I use a series of damage boosts to reach the Gold Cube, manipulate another Bob-Omb, and proceed to use the ascending blockade to clip out of bounds to get to the door faster.

• Room 1 Optional: I make my way to the Gold Cube in the room with a series of Neutral Aerials and Side-Bs, before making my way back. While it looks like I miss a trophy out in the open, that trophy is not considered for a part of 100% completion (As it respawns on revisits of the level, unlike Gold Cubes, which do not respawn).

• Room 1 Cont.: I use a Bounce Boost from the nearby Primid’s charged attack and slide to the exit.

• Room 2: This room is effectively one giant autoscroller, occasionally interrupted by several fights. Pit’s very large recovery allows him to cheese all the fights present by using the Pause Glitch, despawning all the enemies below him. During the third fight, I carefully manipulate RNG to get the Glunder to drop a Bob-Omb, and grab it before making the camera snap really far away with the Pause Glitch (Which despawns the remaining enemies). The last fight can be skipped in a very odd manner: By reaching an X Coordinate of exactly 1,300, the ending trigger in this room activates, whether you’re in a fight or not. It needs to be exact, as any more or less means Pit dies from hitting the blastzone. This is precise down to a hundred-thousandth of an in-game unit (Where characters move several units per frame), but I’m able to manipulate it very quickly by oscillating the control stick in an exact manner. The Bob-Omb I manipulated in the third fight is used to damage boost to the ending trigger.

The Lake

• Room 1: Rayquaza is defeated by using a series of Up Airs and Back Airs as quickly as possible, while dodging his own attacks and occasionally pause-buffering RNG so he doesn’t use any slow ones.

• Rooms 2-7: By pressing B right before Fox’s Side-B activates, he cancels the full charge; the last possible cancel frame allows him to carry a large amount of momentum instead of effectively nothing, which saves time for a number of rooms. In Room 3, I damage boost by using the Koopa’s attack, and tech right at the edge to fall off and reach the door more quickly. Room 4 has another Gold Cube to collect, so I use Fox’s Side-B to hit it while building up damage from the enemies close by, before finally Bounce Boosting over to the ending door. In Room 5, I use a series of jumps and double jumps to ascend through the level, before getting hit by the Borboras to reach the door. Room 6 has a shortened Side-B to get over the first Towtow, and a damage boost from the Auroros to reach the end more quickly.

• Room 8: I use a series of Side-Bs to reach the fight, and then Pause Glitch to despawn the Giant Goomba and several regular Goombas. I chain a series of Goomba stomps on the remaining few, manipulating a Bob-Omb from one of them, and then damage boost back to the door while breaking the necessary block.

• Room 9: I Side-B and jump in such a manner as to barely have enough height to hit the required switch with Fox’s Neutral-B; I then do another sequence of Side-Bs and Fox-Trots to the necessary door.

• Room 12: I farm more stickers in the downtime waiting for the autoscroller to finish. Additionally, there are two 100% objectives, in the form of an optional door and a Gold Cube.

• Room 12 Optional: The room is separated into a series of levels that can only be accessed by hitting the circular rail to break the series of blocks. I use Fox’s Neutral-B to hit the first one, and his Back Air to hit the second one, in order to reach the Gold Cube at the top of the room. I then collect its trophy and fall back down to the door.

• Room 12 Cont.: I then break the Gold Cube further along in the autoscroller and manipulate RNG slightly for the following room.

• Room 13: I manipulate a Bob-Omb from a Goomba and Bounce Boost to the cannon. At this damage percentage, I end up flying too high under normal circumstances, but I manage to find a position and DI angle that lets me partially clip through the terrain, which lets me reach the cannon anyway.

• Room 14: The fastest way to beat this fight is by letting Bowser intentionally grab you with his Side-B, and fall off the stage for a mutual kill. As we have the stock advantage, we win anyway.

The Ruined Zoo

• Room 1: Another autoscroller. I manipulate one last sticker from an enemy and then proceed to fool around. I reach a grand total of 998%, one point shy of the maximum.

• Room 2: In spite of the loading duration penalty from choosing a different character, it’s still faster to choose Ness over Lucas because of his superior damage output. I switch between edge-canceling Smash Attacks on Porky’s top alongside repeatedly using Down-Tilt (Which is actually Ness’ fastest form of damage output without edge canceling, thanks to Subspace not having Stale-Move Negation).

• Room 3: Lucas is faster than Squirtle due to his superior vertical movement in the form of the Zap Jump technique (Where double jumping and then immediately using PK Fire allows him to ascend very quickly). I do a series of Zap Jumps and damage boosts before manipulating a Bob-Omb to Bounce Boost to the fight; I then use the Pause Glitch to despawn enemies outside the camera’s boundaries, and manipulate the final enemy into dropping another Bob-Omb to damage boost to the ending door.

• Room 4: Similarly, the Pause Glitch is used here to despawn many of the Bytan enemies in a very quick manner. The room has a Gold Cube that needs to be broken, which I do right as the fight ends; if I did so any earlier, the trophy would have fallen through the ground (Due to the collision not being loaded while the fight is active) and caused a great deal of headache to collect.

• Room 5: I manipulate a Bob-Omb from the Primid and Bounce Boost on the nearby ceiling to reach the optional door as quickly as possible; the room simply contains a Gold Cube amidst some ice platforms and spikes, during which I simply break-and-collect, and move on. After returning to the main level, I Bounce Boost over the fight’s trigger with the help of a Boomerang Primid’s attack, and fall to the end of the level.

The Battlefield Fortress

• Room 1: Marth’s roll is very slightly faster than his run; I use this until I reach one of the Primids, and then proceed to use a combination of damage boosts and Shield SDI (On the Sword Primids’ stab attack, which has a much larger shield SDI factor than other attacks) until I reach another optional door. That room once again contains a Gold Cube to be collected (Alongside Fire Jyks to be avoided), which I break-and-collect before exiting. I then use the Jyk and the Armight present to damage boost again, all the way to the ending door.

• Room 2: Here, I run until one of the Roaders barely gets within spawning range, and then proceed to run back to the sole available wall present to Bounce Boost all the way to the end from the Roader’s attack.

• Room 3: Meta Knight is chosen over Marth because, well… he’s Meta Knight. The strategy for this fight is generally the same as the first Ambush in Midair Stadium, though the harsh wind present alongside the Sword Primids’ resistance to sword attacks makes things a bit tougher than usual. The item drop rate is also much harsher, as there’s a whopping 77% chance for absolutely nothing to spawn from a given enemy.

• Room 4: Meta Knight’s insane recovery allows him to fly right over a fight trigger. I then trigger the second fight, and run back to intentionally hit the first trigger. This puts the camera into a weird state similar to the Pause Glitch, which I make even weirder by then triggering the autoscroller and killing the first fight’s remaining enemy at the right time: The camera becomes uncoupled from the autoscroller, which I use to Bounce Boost to the end before the ending fight can take place. I also pick up a 100%-required trophy.

• Room 5: The minecarts can be partially skipped by manipulating Bob-Ombs and Bounce Boosting at the right time. Before I start the fight, however, I have to enter another optional door.

• Room 5 Optional: A Gold Cube is present all the way at the end of the room; a minecart is taken on the journey there, but damage boosting back (Or at all, in this room) isn’t an option, as my damage would be too high for the following room’s damage boost. Instead, I use the Infinite Dimensional Cape technique, which is Meta Knight’s fastest form of movement for long stretches of flat road (Shorter distances fall to his Dash Attack, even shorter distances fall to his forward roll, and the tiniest stretches fall to his regular run).

• Room 5 Cont.: I manipulate a series of items throughout the fight to deal with the enemies more quickly, including a fully charged Hothead, and proceed to damage boost past several sections of minecart until I reach the ending door.

• Room 6: I reach the end slightly sooner than before by ending the Infinite Dimensional Cape right at the trigger.

• Room 7: Even with my damage reset to 0, I’m still able to build up enough to fly right over the ending trigger; this is faster than the old method of gliding by a decent amount of time.

The Forest

• Room 1: The first fight can be partially skipped with the Pause Glitch; I further decrease time spent there by using one of the Primids to damage boost. I need to make my way to another optional door (Which, like most of the other doors up to this point, only contains a Gold Cube to break-and-collect), which can only be accessed from the opening at the bottom, forcing me to take the long way. After exiting the room, I damage boost with the Boomerang Primid’s attack, and Pause Glitch the second fight to despawn enemies off-screen before finally finishing the room.

• Room 2: Here, I immediately manipulate a Bob-Omb to drop from a Trowlon through a well-timed Egg Throw, which I use to damage boost across the level. I manipulate another one from the Auroros to launch myself right before a fight trigger, spot-dodging to completely halt my momentum. I once again use the Pause Glitch to despawn enemies off-screen, this time using Yoshi’s extended recovery (Alongside an attack from a Primid that’s not really supposed to be there yet) to prevent falling to the bottom blastzone. I then manipulate a Bob-Omb from the final Puppit present, and launch my way to another Gold Cube hidden behind several blocks; I then use the enemies’ attacks to launch to the door.

• Room 3: I immediately get the Feyesh to attack me so I can Bounce Boost across the entire level. I then get the Shellpod to attack me so I don’t have to spend time hitting the switch to make platforms spawn (Which is faster even with needing to wait for the camera to unlock); after hitting a switch with another well-timed Egg Throw, I use the Feyesh’s attack to Bounce Boost right over the final fight trigger, ending the level.

Research Facility 1

• Room 1: Dash Attacking through the blocks is faster than jumping over them.

• Room 2: Dash Attacking into the elevator saves a few frames over just running into it. It’s even faster to roll into the elevator at the right time, but the resulting frames saved when I tested it were lost due to very bad RNG. There’s a Gold Cube in the level that I need to break, so I do that with Zero Suit Samus’ Side Special attack to hit it from as far away as possible. I also manipulate a Bob-Omb from one of the ROBs, which I use to damage boost to the end after riding the elevator for a bit.

• Room 3: Pikachu is used over Zero Suit Samus due to his very fast movement in the form of Quick Attack Cancels, which are performed by using his Up-B and angling into the ground. Due to their very high precision (Being control-stick-unit precise, with the exception of deadzones) similar to Bounce DI, Pikachu is generally a more complicated character to TAS in comparison to the rest of the cast.

• Room 4: It’s faster to edge-cancel the Quick Attack Cancels in comparison to just letting the animation play out, which I do as often as possible.

• Room 5: The goal of this room is to hit a red switch in order to make the platform available in the upper right room; both Pikachu and Zero Suit Samus can cheese the intended route by respectively using Down-B and Up-B to hit the switch from below. While it’s possible to skip this room’s fight, it ends up being faster to do the fight normally (Especially with the Pause Glitch) due to the fact that you need to skip the room twice if you do it once. Before I make my way to hit the red switch, I need to get to another Gold Cube; I use the Buckot’s attack to assist me, both on the trip to the cube and on the way to the switch. After using Thunder to hit the switch and damage boosting from the Roturret, I manipulate a Bob-Omb from a ROB and Bounce Boost back to the starting door.

• Room 4-2: I now make my way to the second required room, again using a series of Quick Attacks. I take care to not hit the ROB, as hitting someone with the attack loses several frames over avoiding them.

• Room 6: The goal of this room is to hit a red switch all the way at the end of the room to cause a series of blockades to fall down (That prevents one from just going to the upper-left door and going to the end of the level). I ride the moving platform (An autoscroller), making sure to build up as much damage with the Jyks as I can before the platform reaches the end. I manipulate a Bob-Omb from one of the Glunders, which I use to very quickly Bounce Boost back to the start right as I hit the switch.

• Room 4-3: I manipulate another Bob-Omb from another ROB to Bounce Boost all the way to the upper left door.

• Room 7: Here, I use a series of Quick Attacks alongside one of the ROBs’ missiles to ascend to the exit door as fast as possible.

• Room 8: You’re intended to do one final fight against a series of Metal Primids, but I instead do a very grand Bounce Boost using a series of Quark Mines.

The Lake Shore

• Rooms 1 & 2: I once again use Yoshi because Link is very slow. The fastest strategy in both fights is to lure them to the left side of the screen, grab them, and launch them past the left blastzone.

• Room 3: Yoshi is chosen over the remaining group both due to being faster and to not incur an extra loading penalty. Here, I use Yoshi’s Side-B alongside a Bombed’s attack to reach the required platform as soon as possible. At this point, I properly discover Yoshi’s Double Jump Cancel technique, which is useful in many situations (Despite this, the amount of potential timesave in The Forest is small, so it’s not too big of a deal). I use the Pause Glitch to make the fight end almost instantly, after which I manipulate a Bob-Omb while waiting for the autoscroller to end; I Bounce Boost and use an Egg Throw to enter the final door.

• Room 4: Another autoscroller (You’ll begin to notice a pattern), which I use to farm more stickers and collect another Gold Cube.

• Room 5: Despite once again being given the choice of starting with a different character, Yoshi is still predictably faster than everyone else, in areas including but not limited to the long fall after the first fight - Yoshi’s Down-B allows him to get into the minecart very quickly. The room contains two 100% objectives in the form of two optional doors, this time actually not being directly out in the open. The first door is hidden behind several breakable blocks, while the second door only becomes available when you defeat the Shaydas near the end of the level. I also found that it’s possible to clip out of bounds by damage boosting in the proper manner; while it’s not enough to skip to the end of the level (Thanks to the ending door only appearing after beating the final Ambush), it does save at least four seconds from not needing to do extra platforming.

• Room 6: This final, short room contains a Gold Cube, so I do the usual routine and enter the door immediately after.

Path To The Ruins

• Room 1: By building up enough damage with the Jyks present and launching with a Bob-Omb, it’s possible to fly right over a fight trigger to the elevator area, after which I can do another damage boost with the Gagyma’s attack. There’s a secret door required for 100% completion inside one of the several bottomless pits.

• Room 1 Secret: And this room is much more unique than the rest of them because of its structure: Four collectibles (Some always trophies, others variable like the Gold Cubes) completely surrounded by nothing but breakable blocks. Lucas shines here especially bright in comparison to Squirtle, as his Zap Jump allows him to reach the top of the room instantly after spawning. I tested several different movement options and trophy routes, and this is the best result I could come up with.

• Room 1 Cont.: The movement during the rest of the room looks (And certainly feels) awkward thanks to conflicts in speed versus 100% completion, as there’s a final Gold Cube in the room that’s placed in a very irritating position that doesn’t really let me damage boost at all. I resort to using one of the Jyks to perform the rare “Non-Bounce” bounce boost, but that leaves me with a great deal of vertical speed that would be much better used towards horizontal speed instead.

• Room 2: This is a large room separated into several platforming sections and fights, alongside an additional Gold Cube for the 100% route. After going through the first three fights (Manipulating several items to assist me, and Pause Glitching when beneficial), I Bounce Boost with the correct timing to fly over the the autoscroller leading up to the fourth fight, and clip through the pillar to fly up to the ending door. It’s also faster than the any% TAS’s attempt due to a better launch angle allowing me to skip using the elevator.

• Room 3: Another straight section of land with no other features; I save a few frames over the old TAS by timing my Zap Jumps in a way so that I have no landing lag with the final run to the loading zone.

• Room 4: Similar to the other versus fights up to this point, I goad Wario into coming to the left blastzone and throw him past the edge.

The Cave

• Room 1: This room contains two 100% objectives, the most notable one being a secret door that’s supposed to only be accessible when the retracting pillar is in the right spot. However, I’m able to skip waiting for the right moment by clipping through it with a wall bonk. After exiting the door, I’m forced to wait for the pillar to retract, but I’m able to prevent any further time from being wasted by clipping through it again - with a method that I actually found by accident. This allows me to fall right down to the (Now hidden) Gold Cube, and make my way to the end of the level.

• Room 2: This short room involves picking up a key and unlocking a barricade to a door, surrounded by flaming pillars and falling spikes. The fastest method of getting to the door is picking up the key with Yoshi’s dash attack, intentionally hitting the flame, and using SDI to move more quickly than normal.

• Room 3: This room starts off with a platforming section, which I avoid by damage boosting with one of the Koopas present. The nearby fight is actually a disguised autoscroller, as the Glires only spawn in after set amounts of time have passed. I use this downtime as an opportunity to do a large amount of setup: I manipulate an Unira and throw it in the spot the last Glire spawns in, which hits it and immediately sends it to the bottom blastzone, and also manipulate a Motion Sensor Bomb alongside a regular Bob-Omb to perform two separate damage boosts. Right as the last enemy dies, I damage boost with the Motion Sensor Bomb, which allows me to clip out of bounds as the rest of the stage’s collision isn’t loaded during the fight. I then tech on one of the platforms’ walls, still out of bounds, and use the Bob-Omb I was holding to damage boost again. Due to launch angles the camera being uncooperative, I’m unable to outright skip the Giant Goomba fight that follows, but using the Pause Glitch lets me despawn them both with little difficulty.

The Ruins

• Room 1: The first section involves several periods of waiting in the form of the elevator, the minecart, and the long fall downward (Which is helped by Yoshi’s Down-B, even when taking into account the extra time needed to get out of the water). This is also the first instance where I intentionally skip collecting a 100% required item, as this is one of the three stages which you’re forced to revisit after the credits; it’s faster to get it on the second try.

• Room 2: This is the first room in the game where Bullfrog (Star Fox Command) stickers can be easily farmed; I get as many stickers as necessary while limiting the amount of pause buffers I perform to save more time. I also build up damage up to a specific point, as any higher prevents a trick in one of the following rooms to fail. A Gold Cube is also present; due to the fact that the post-credits revisit also goes through this room again, the Cube can be collected on either visit. I do it here because I’ve gotten everything I needed in terms of stickers. There’s also another door that needs to be entered for 100% completion, which is faster to do anyway thanks to the autoscroller being canceled when you exit the door.

• Room 3: The start of this room is similar to that of The Plains, involving a large platform slowly moving across a chasm, interrupted frequently by fights. Fortunately, the Pause Glitch can be used to make quick work of all of them. In the first fight, the Pause Glitch locks the camera far to the left, which despawns a number of enemies. I manipulate a Motion Sensor Bomb from one of the enemies before moving on. For all the other fights, I exploit a glitch in the buffering system that allows Yoshi to perform two midair jumps in the same stretch of air time; this allows me to get enough height to Pause Glitch the second fight almost instantly, and allow me to move very far offscreen for the third fight and still make it back to the main platform. The next section involves a series of retracting barriers and switches that you need to hit to unlock them. I unlock the first barrier, and use the Motion Sensor Bomb I picked up to perform a very peculiar Bounce Boost; the speed and timing of the barrier falling back into place allows me to momentarily clip out of bounds, but not enough to actually remain there. Instead, the game oddly puts me back in bounds in an idle state, which allows me to immediately regain action and hit all the switches in a row, very very quickly. I make my way over to near the end of the level, during which I have to unlock a Secret Door and collect a Gold Cube that’s inside. I do one final bounce boost with the Roturret and enter the door to fight Charizard.

• Room 3 Secret: This room involves hitting a switch to unlock a path to the Gold Cube, and reaching it before the path becomes locked again. I make it to the cube with more than enough time to spare thanks to damage boosting with the spikes, and just barely manage to hit both the exit switch and the Gold Cube at the same time.

• Room 4: While Yoshi does have two meteor smash moves, their knockback is so small at low damage that it’s faster to simply footstool Charizard instead.

• Meta Knight (Bullfrog, Ho-Oh, Ray Mk III, Electrode, Musketeer Daltania)
• Pokemon Trainer (Ray Mk III, Tractor Trailer, Link)
• Pit (Bullfrog, Solid Snake, King Dodongo)
• Yoshi (Bullfrog, Skull Kid, Bowser Jr, Solid Snake, Boundish)
• Fox (Bullfrog, Barrel Train, Electrode, King Dodongo)
• Pikachu (Bullfrog, Boulder, Entei, Solid Snake)

The Wilds

• Room 1: After immediately damage boosting with the Bullfrog sticker’s Bob-Omb, I manipulate another one from the Buckot and damage boost into the autoscroller. I then build up just a bit more damage, and manipulate another one to launch when the autoscroller ends. I then purposefully get hit by the Roader a bit further in the level to get to a Secret Door more quickly. After returning from the room, I damage boost again to the section with the breakable blocks, which requires me to stop momentarily to deal with another Gold Cube. I then perform a very precise Bounce Boost with the Quark Mine, exploiting Meta Knight’s Up-B alongside the cliff’s unique collision to perform what’s known as Mountain Clip, which lets you… clip right through the mountain, skipping an ascent, a fight (Which can, however, still be skipped), and the subsequent descent to the ending door. Ordinarily, there’s two versions of the clip: A “weak” clip that only barely gets Meta Knight through the mountain, and a “strong” clip that’s seemingly too strong, which ends up killing Meta Knight instantly off of the right blastzone. However, I realized that by delaying the clip enough while moving to the right, I can get the clipping point to be within the camera’s boundaries, allowing Meta Knight to survive.

• Room 2: Normally, you’re supposed to do a bunch of platforming sections with raising and retracting platforms until entering yet another autoscroller, but I ditch all of that and opt to damage boost into the trigger instead. With the amount of damage Meta Knight has alongside his launch angle, he can’t possibly reach the ground and halt his momentum in time to prevent his death. However, because I have to wait for an autoscroller to finish anyway, I can just cycle through Marth and Ike to get back to Meta Knight, and still have enough time to re-build up damage and manipulate a Bob-Omb for the upcoming fight. I proceed to finish off the Giant Primids in two hits each (A Bob-Omb, and a Neutral Aerial), getting another Bob-Omb to launch after the fight is done. Frustratingly, I can’t carry this momentum to the end of the room, as I need to make a pit stop at another optional door. I also tried and failed to damage boost in a way to avoid the cannons, but simply could not find a way that was faster than just entering the cannons and waiting for their cycle.

• Room 3: Another filler room with a small stretch of land, a cube, and a door. Despite this small distance, damage boosting to the door is still faster.

• Room 4: Here, we fight Galleom. Meta Knight’s amped up sword attacks shine here, as he can take out Galleom with ease while avoiding all of his attacks. In the air, Meta Knight’s Neutral Aerial is his fastest form of damage, while on the ground, both hits of his Down Smash do the job just slightly better.

The Ruined Hall

• Room 1: The first of two levels that consist of a boss fight and nothing else. This time, it’s a rematch with Galleom, who does actually have less health than the preceding fight. The Pokemon Trainer (Who spawns in with Charizard by default) is far and away the best fighter to use in this level because of his Side-B, Rock Smash, which deals crazy amounts of damage. By manipulating Galleom’s attack pattern, I can cancel the ending lag of Rock Smash at several points, which allows me to finish Galleom off even faster.

The Wilds 2

• Room 1: I start off by choosing Pit, and then choose Yoshi as my second character; the rest do not matter. The room immediately starts with Pit damage boosting and gliding over the fight trigger, to come across a section where the camera refuses to move any further. This is where the release regions of the game differ; dying in any non-PAL region, even after moving as far to the right as possible, sends you back to the beginning. For some reason, the PAL version is different, as dying after moving far enough instead sends you to a place in the map beyond the frozen camera, and allows you to complete the level as normal. With that in mind, I move Pit to just barely after the game starts warping the player differently after respawning, and then backtrack slightly to die by falling into a… pit… which then sees the end of Pit’s usage for the rest of the entire TAS (o7). I then spawn in with Yoshi, who is faster for the rest of the level and the room that follows. A hidden door needs to be entered, this time by moving one of the elevators upwards and getting to the door through the opening it left behind.

• Room 1 Secret: I have the choice of damage boosting first, to the Gold Cube, and then traversing the stage normally on the way back, or traversing normally on the way there and damage boosting back. After testing both, it turns out that damage boosting back is the faster option of the two.

• Room 1 Cont.: I then make my way back to the end of the room (Which requires me to break the series of blocks with an Egg Throw, as I need the Bob-Omb for later and Egg Roll ends up being slower), during which I clip through the ceiling using the elevator and do a very precise Bounce Boost with another elevator, all to get to the ending door even faster.

• Room 2: At the start of the room, I perform a Bounce Boost similar to the one I do in Sea of Clouds Room 3, getting close enough to the ground to change my angle but not close enough to actually make contact; this has the result of changing my launch angle to have a downward trajectory, just enough to allow me to tech on a wall further in the level and start manipulating a Bob-Omb from another enemy. I then use the Bob-Omb alongside additional SDI from the spikes to skip the intended fight and launch all the way to the autoscroller. All that remains is collecting a Gold Cube to the left of the autoscrolling section, and damage boosting to the end with the help of a Spaak’s thunder attack.

The Swamp

• Room 1: Using a buffed-up Fox, I chain together multiple Bob-Omb explosions to get to the first Gold Cube of the level; as the post-credits revisit uses Peach, whose falling speed makes her incapable of actually falling down to the proper area, Fox gets this cube instead. After the cube, I manipulate another Bob-Omb and Bounce Boost to the end of the level.

• Room 2: I perform a single Bounce Boost that takes me all the way to the Ambush at the middle of the level, which I take out with no issue, and then immediately enter an autoscroller. Much like the autoscroller in The Ruins, there’s an optional door that’s faster to enter and exit in comparison to just letting the autoscroller run normally. Unlike The Ruins, however, the optional door still has a Gold Cube that needs to be collected. It’s actually faster to collect this cube on the revisit, using Peach, as she can Bounce Boost to and from the cube, while Fox (Who only has a single Bob-Omb) can only do it one way or the other. The Reverse Pause Glitch was found on the revisit of this level, in this very room, that allows this autoscroller to be completely skipped. It’s still faster for Peach to get the door’s Gold Cube on the revisit, due to her inexhaustible Bob-Omb supply, but the first visit doesn’t even require the door at all, as Fox can just go to the end of the autoscroller prematurely.

• Room 3: Here, we fight Giant Shadow Diddy. And by “fight”, I mean we bait him to the left blastzone, again. The Bob-Omb actually does nothing useful here, so I discard it quickly.

• Room 4: I use the Bob-Omb from the Bullfrog to outright skip the fight present, but the time saved from the fight is slightly lost from non-manipulable cannon cycles. The post-credits revisit ends in this room, which means all 100% requirements beyond here need to be collected on the first visit.

• Room 7: Said 100% requirements include a Gold Cube on a very small platform, and another optional door near the middle of the room. I’m barely able to use Fox’s Side-B to hit the Gold Cube while still landing on the platform. I make my way over to the optional door by using a series of Side-Bs and damage boosts; the last one of which ends up briefly messing the camera up as I walk through the door.

• Room 8: This room contains not one, but TWO autoscrollers (One of which ends up being possible to skip with the Reverse Pause Glitch); I start the first one more quickly than the any% TAS by Side-B’ing into the trigger instead of running onto the platform. While I do end up dropping the Bob-Omb I was holding, I need to get another one anyway, as its timer runs out before the Ambush can begin. This Ambush is rather peculiar in that using the Pause Glitch to despawn enemies outside the camera’s blastzones doesn’t actually work; they just spawn right back in, which is annoying. After doing the fight properly (Which involves killing three Koopas with a single Back Air), I manipulate a Bob-Omb so I can damage boost to the end of the level more quickly when the autoscroller is nearly completed.

Research Facility 2

• Room 1: This room consists of several red switches that need to be hit so barriers can be removed from your path; as it turns out, it’s possible to skip a waiting period for a barrier falling back down by hitting the switch while in the process of flying away with a damage boost. I use the Glices present to build up a large amount of damage quickly, and make it through the barrier just barely with enough room. I need to stop by an optional door very close to the true exit door, after which I damage boost to the true exit and move on my way.

• Room 2: A simple straight corridor littered with ROB enemies, like the third room of Research Facility 1. I Bounce Boost to the exit this time, instead of fumbling around with (relatively) slower Quick Attack Cancels.

• Room 3: We are tasked with fighting two Dark Samuses (Unrelated to the Dark Samus playable character in Ultimate); I quickly take them out by using Thunder to damage them a bit, and finish them off with the Bob-Omb in my hand.

• Room 4: The 100% collectible in this room is hidden among the large amount of breakable blocks at the halfway point of the level. Pikachu’s Back-Air is the perfect move to destroy them, with its multiple hits and very little hitlag per hit. After collecting the trophy and destroying the rest of the needed blocks, I build up damage with the spikes and launch to the end of the level with one of the ROBs’ missiles.

• Room 5: This room’s intended path is completely and utterly destroyed through chaining a series of Bounce Boosts and flying to the proper doors. I take an odd route to the optional door due to the room’s pesteringly unfavorable layout (With the easy routes blocked off by blocks). After getting the Gold Cube in the room and heading back out, I do one final Bounce Boost all the way to the end.

• Room 6: Due to the ceiling-floor’s thin structure, damage boosting with the right velocity and hitting the key-wall-ceiling corner allows me to snap up to the floor above, which skips half the level. I need to collect a Gold Cube on the way back to the starting point.

• Room 7: One final lone stretch of ground before the upcoming boss fight. Nothing of particular note.

• Room 8: The boss fight with Ridley. I very quickly take him out by manipulating his attack pattern so he only slides his tail on the stage; its properties allow me to chain together multiple Neutral Airs all in a row, and I get him to do it three whole times.

Path to The Ancient Ruins

• Room 1: Fox Trotting as Captain Falcon is faster than his run by a much larger amount than the other characters. I damage boost to the first optional door (Consisting of a lone, falling trophy you need to collect before it falls into a pit), then do a series of damage boosts to the room’s main fight. Similar to Sea of Clouds Room 3, I use the Pause Glitch to intentionally freeze the camera outside the main area, which causes the required enemies to be despawned immediately. I then do a damage boost to the second optional door of the level (Consisting of several collectibles), after which I do one final damage boost to the end of the room.

• Room 2: The third large-scale Ambush of the entire game. The fight proceeds similarly to the other two, especially with the amount of usage I get out of the Cracker Launcher. I finish the fight with a Reverse Falcon Punch, which actually ends up being the most optimal way I could come up with thanks to the peculiar way I despawn the Metal Primids (In which I somehow miss the middle one initially before hitting it later).

The Glacial Peak

• Room 1: I use the Bullfrog’s Bob-Omb to start a chain reaction of other Bob-Ombs which, alongside a series of other damage boosts and special move cancels, allow me to fly right up to the ending door. I end up having too much momentum, actually, which forces me to grab the ledge and do a slow ledge getup, as vertical momentum is still conserved when falling off the ledge.

• Room 2: A very long autoscroller, which I start earlier than the any% TAS by damage boosting into the trigger. The damage boosts in the following room require having less damage than I have now, so I perform a trick similar to what I did in The Wilds 1’s second autoscroller, and build up damage to the right amount. I also collect another Gold Cube before entering the final door on the first possible frame.

• Room 3: This room has two optional doors (One before, and one after the primary fight) that need to be entered. The first one only appears after reaching a specific height, after which I drop the Bob-Omb and use Meta Knight’s forward aerial attack to break the necessary blocks. After damage boosting and collecting its cube inside, I damage boost upwards in the level further, before intentionally getting hit by the Jyk to freeze the camera and pull the stunt I do in Path To The Ancient Ruins and other levels. Uniquely, the upper blastzone in this fight is partially disabled, allowing one to move as high as they want as long as no platforms are touched. I strategically use my remaining jumps and Down Special to touch the ground the instant after the fight is completed, preventing me from dying, and allowing me to enter the final optional door. I then collect its required items (Skipping the puzzle in the process), and finally make my way to the ending door.

• Room 4: Given that I’ve been playing as Meta Knight this entire time, it would be foolish to pick otherwise. I destroy Lucario quickly by using an Up-B, canceling it with Lucario’s own attack, and finish him off with a Bob-Omb.

The Canyon

• Room 1: The fourth large-scale Ambush of the game; I use Yoshi due to his better fighting capabilities (And boosted sticker set). Due to the much smaller fight area and shenanigans related to the bottomless pit, the Cracker Launcher wasn’t used in contrast to the other fights. Instead, Super Mushrooms and explosives were generally manipulated, alongside a few other key items. Several of the Giant Primids were dealt with by baiting them into jump-attacking me, and watching them fall into the pit completely on their own.

Battleship Halberd Interior

• Room 1: It turns out that DACUSing into the door is a few frames slower than just doing a regular dash attack.

• Room 2: I do a series of DACUSes and damage boosts to the main series of falling platforms, during which I use Snake’s C4 to hit the red switch that reveals a hidden door; I don’t get hit by the C4 because I still have invincibility frames from the Primid’s punch attack. After collecting the Cube inside the room, I manipulate a Bob-Omb from one of the enemies and Bounce Boost to the ending door.

• Room 3: Unlike the any% TAS, I’m required to traverse the level properly for a time in order to get to a secret door that contains another Gold Cube, but I go right back to the start of the room afterwards to skip everything (Due to the lack of a ceiling at the start of the level) anyway, because it ends up being faster to do so.

• Room 4: After entering the previous door on different frames to set different RNG seeds for this room, I finally found one that lets me get a Super Mushroom, a Soccer Ball, and a Green Shell all in a row, which lets me take out all the enemies very quickly.

• Room 5: This room requires nothing extra to be collected, which means I can bounce boost right to the ending door.

• Room 6: I Bounce Boost over to the final collectible in the level, and then manipulate another Bob-Omb from the Cymal to boost back to the start of the level. I then kill the Bombed, while manipulating another Bob-Omb, and damage boost with perfect timing to clip through the barriers and end the room early: By SDI-ing into the ceiling slightly (Which is possible to do, for some reason), I can get my final launch vector to be above the retracting barrier’s floor hitbox before it gets below the ceiling, which allows me to fly right through the seam to the ending door.

• Room 7: Similar to Peach’s float ability, Meta Knight’s glide attack also allows him to keep the item he’s holding. I use the attack on my two opponents before launching all three of us with the Bob-Omb, and finish them off with a final Up-B. I do a pause buffer to manipulate RNG for the next room.

Battleship Halberd Exterior

• Room 1: I turn RNG into my play-toy by manipulating four Bob-Ombs all in a row without even stopping to catch my breath.

• Room 2: This room contains an interesting 100% requirement in the form of a Gold Cube hidden inside a wall that can only be broken by indirect attacks. You’re intended to use the Quark Mine, but as it’s not in the right position when I reach it, I instead use one of Peach’s regular turnips to break it instead. I then bounce boost using the Quark Mine and grab the trophy just as I fly away from the area permanently. I then pluck another Bob-Omb and damage boost through the rest of the level.

• Room 3: I manage to pluck the required Bob-Omb on the literal first frame possible, which means no time is wasted in manipulating RNG otherwise.

• Room 4: I get through the fight more quickly by using a Stitch Face, a Super Mushroom, and several explosives, alongside using one in particular to damage boost after the fight is done. I then do another bounce boost with the Quark Mine, which is enough to get right to the end of the level.

• Room 5: Even with the added requirement of the Gold Cube to be collected, I save time over the any% TAS by damage boosting up to the Gold Cube’s platform from the very start. Getting the cube to remain loaded in from all the way below actually required some trickery, as a full jump wasn’t initially high enough and I wanted to keep my double jump to make the rest of the part easier. I solve this conundrum by fastfalling on the first frame that I can, which causes the camera to “lag” in its original upwards movement before moving back down. This gives the camera just enough of a vertical boost to spawn the Gold Cube, which means I can now damage boost up to it and collect its trophy. I then pluck a Bob-Omb, Bounce Boost, land on the platform, pluck another Bob-Omb, and damage boost the rest of the way to the ending trigger.

• Peach (Bullfrog, Peach, Valoo, Rusl, Boundish)
• Captain Falcon (Bullfrog, Barrel Train, Daroach, Solid Snake, Boundish)
• Kirby (Bullfrog, Barrel Train)

Battleship Halberd Bridge

• Room 1: A single fight with Duon. I now use a full-power Peach to utterly destroy it.

Subspace Bomb Factory 1

• Room 1-1: I start by Quick Attack Canceling over to the elevator, and proceed to clip through the floor at the correct moment to reach the first optional door faster with the help of a Jyk’s damage boost.

• Room Optional 1: This room involves a standard Ambush, which I take out with the help of numerous instances of RNG manipulation. I then need to collect a Gold Cube before leaving.

• Room 1-2: I then Quick Attack Cancel back to the elevator, and clip through the ceiling corner right to the next door. This also requires revealing a hidden red switch behind some blocks, but a single Back Air is enough to uncover everything.

• Room Optional 2: This room consists of a fight with two Armanks, which are notably difficult to deal with in real-time play. Fortunately, I can completely skip this fight with the help of the Pause Glitch and the Bob-Omb I’m holding, which allow me to despawn both of them in no time at all.

• Room 1-3: I then Bounce Boost to the upper area of the room and take out the group of ROBs present to unveil the final optional room of the level.

• Room Optional 3: Which consists of a sole Gold Cube on the top of a platform, which I damage boost to, collect, and fall back down.

• Room 1-4: I then perform one final bounce boost to the ending door of the room.

• Room 2: I bounce boost to the room’s Ambush, use the Pause Glitch to despawn some enemies, manipulate RNG to take out the remaining enemies more quickly, and Quick Attack to the ending trigger after everyone is defeated.

Subspace Bomb Factory 2

• Room 1: Captain Falcon’s Falcon Kick is a surprisingly useful move for crossing horizontal stretches of air quickly. I combine Fox Trots, Falcon Kicks, and Damage Boosting to reach the fight more quickly, and finish the fight by knocking the Primid into the nearly-dead Autolance. I also manipulate a Bob-Omb so I can damage boost to an optional door.

• Room 1 Optional: This room’s Gold Cube is hidden above the top of the screen, which I get to by doing a precise Bounce Boost.

• Room 1 Cont.: I use my refreshed Bob-Omb to damage boost the rest of the way to the ending door.

• Room 2: This room is separated into three areas, each with their own colored switches that need to be hit so the ending door can be unlocked. I start by damage boosting over to the top section, getting a Bob-Omb by accident that allows me to hit the switch even earlier than usual. I then fall to the bottom area, heading to the left. I use the Buckot’s own attack to launch me over to the second switch, and hit it while still having knockback. I then run to the right and manipulate a Bob-Omb from the ROB which allows me to skip the fight, hit the switch, and enter the optional door. After collecting its Gold Cube, I use my refreshed Bob-Omb to skip the fight again, and use a series of wall jumps to get back to the ending door.

• Room 3: I immediately Bounce Boost into the flames and use SDI to quickly get to the Gold Cube in the level. I then make my way back down to the main area, breaking blocks and getting a ROB to use its attack on me. I then fly through the rest of the level up to the autoscroller. While it’s possible to get all the way up to the end without triggering the autoscroller, you’re blocked by invisible ceilings and walls, which means the autoscroller has to be done anyway. Amusingly, it’s possible to trigger the autoscroller without triggering the platform you’re supposed to ride on; I show that it’s still possible to get through it with the help of frame perfect SDI and a series of walljumps. I then perform the Pause Glitch to despawn the enemies in the main area, killing one of the Primids that spawn high up with an Up-B, and reach an unintended area due to the room’s collision being partially unloaded. With the fight completed, the invisible ceilings are removed even though I’m still out of bounds; this allows me to reach the ending door without needing to grab the key to the left of the fight.

• Room 4: The final large-scale Ambush of the entire run. I save several seconds over the any% TAS’s best attempt by a series of smaller improvements, more specifically killing two of the Nagagogs in a single shot by timing Bob-Omb explosions with a powerful Down Smash hit. I also end the fight instantly by throwing a Trophy Stand at the remaining Armank, as it turns out that killing Captain Falcon early to load ROB in ends up losing more time than just ending the fight earlier.

• Room 5: I choose ROB to perform the second PAL exclusive autoscroller skip of the run, though this time it ends up being not any faster (Or possibly even slower) than the skip in other regions. This skip hinges on the fact that, like Battleship Halberd Interior’s skip, they didn’t put a ceiling in this region of the room. Captain Falcon has the capability of getting over the left wall (With the help of the Bullfrog’s Bob-Omb), but the PAL region locks the camera where the autoscroller would normally start, and ends up killing the player before spawning them in an area after the autoscroller would finish. As I need Captain Falcon for the future rooms, ROB is used instead as a sacrifice play. The other regions, by contrast, don’t lock the camera, which means Captain Falcon can be used for the entire stretch. Regardless, I skip the autoscroller, spawn in as Falcon, and fall the rest of the way to the end of the room.

• Room 7: Purely downwards SDI is faster than Falcon’s falling speed, so I damage boost from a Quark Mine to reach the second autoscroller more quickly. To my dismay, it doesn’t seem possible to skip this one, as the trigger’s boundaries alongside the lack of any collision to clip through means that it’s not looking possible despite the amount of things I tried. I collect the final 100% objective in the autoscroller before falling all the way to the ending door.

• Room 8: A final filler room before the boss fight; I damage boost down towards the loading zone.

• Room 9: Here, we fight Meta Ridley, who has a 1.2x weakness to Electric attacks. This includes Captain Falcon’s Forward Aerial (Otherwise known as the Knee Smash or Knee of Justice), which means I’m doing 31.9% per hit. Thanks to the slight wind present in the room, I can edge-cancel several Knees to finish Meta Ridley off even more quickly.

Entrance to Subspace

• Room 1: The entire level consists of a single large room with multiple fights and a very long autoscroller. I initially choose Captain Falcon to reduce loading times, as he was already loaded in during the last level. I damage boost over to the first fight, ending it similarly to the previous level’s first room, and then kill Captain Falcon to bring in someone faster, as the autoscroller has more than enough downtime. In the any% TAS, Meta Knight was used, but as it turns out, Peach is much, much faster with both the upcoming Generator fight alongside skipping the rest of them. After destroying most of the enemies so they wouldn’t get in my way, building up enough damage, getting the sole 100% collectible of the level, and manipulating a Super Mushroom from the nearby Spaak, I get to work manipulating as many Bob-Ombs and Stitch Faces as I can, dropping them on the platforms the Generators would spawn in. As the fight starts, two out of the three Generators are taken out instantly, and the final one only lasts a short time before I explode it with a Bob-Omb, simultaneously launching myself all the way to the end.

Subspace 1

• Room 1: I hyperspeed waddle to the middle of the room, damage boost with an enemy’s attack, and save Samus.

• Room 2: I use Dedede’s Up-B alongside a damage boost from the Poppant to reach a door more quickly.

• Room 3: Here, I need to save Falco and Pit, and also collect a Gold Cube. I tested several routes, and the one seen is the one that I found to be the fastest.

• Room 2-2: I again use Dedede’s Up-B alongside a damage boost from the Trowlon in order to ascend to the ending door, saving Lucas in the process.

• Room 4: I hyperspeed waddle to the left this time instead of the right, canceling the hammer’s charge by getting hit by the Giant Primid’s attack. I save Ike, damage boost from the Bytan to the upper area, break the chain reaction block to unveil a door, and enter it.

• Room 5: I save the Pokemon Trainer and Pikachu in this room. Notably, I hyperspeed waddle both to and from Pikachu, with the return to the door being rather hilarious in that I’m just barely able to out-waddle the chain reaction of all the blocks disappearing.

• Room 4-2: Now I save Donkey Kong and damage boost from a Feyesh’s attack, letting me reach another door right as it gets within the camera’s blastzones.

• Room 6: I save Fox and Olimar in this room. You’re initially surrounded by Quark Mines, with the intended solution being to use one of the three characters’ available projectiles (Luigi’s fireballs, Ness’ numerous special moves, or Dedede’s Side-B). However, I’m able to perfect shield one Quark Mine, which explodes the rest of them, without incurring so much as a scratch. I save the two characters required and immediately head back out.

• Room 4-3: While damage boosting from a Mite’s attack, I save Marth, and enter the door to finally progress beyond this section.

• Room 7: I hyperspeed waddle across a large section of flat ground before unleashing it on a Puppit, knocking it upwards. I break a path through the breakable blocks, and Bounce Boost with the Puppit’s attack, launching me to the end of the room. I have to take a quick detour to save Mr. Game & Watch, but quickly proceed to enter the exit door.

• Room 8: I save Diddy Kong and Captain Falcon, damage boosting with the Mite to reach the latter more quickly before instantly dropping and fast-falling to the exit.

• Room 9: I save Mario - the final character to save in this level - before doing a series of jumps across the floating platforms to reach the ending door.

• Room 10: Now, we fight Bowser. Dedede gets an easy kill by inhaling Bowser while fast-falling off the edge into the abyss, and wins because he has the stock advantage. Unfortunately, however, the thematic parallels to the first fight in the entire game are now lost because Kirby (And his Kirbycide technique) is no longer used anymore.

Subspace 2

• Room 1: Amidst a series of damage boosts with Bob-Ombs and Quark Mines alongside collecting a Gold Cube, I save Peach (Who’s the only character actually used beyond this point), Zelda, and Meta Knight. Ironically enough, the trophy I get out of this Gold Cube is a CD Trophy, as if the game really wants me to collect a CD (Which I’ve been manipulating to not happen due to their waste of time) by any means necessary.

• Room 2: With a long fall downwards to the mandatory fight, I collect Link, Yoshi, and Lucario. I cheese the fight by using the Pause Glitch, which ends up being a wait for the Armight to spawn and then instantly despawn. I then manipulate a Green Shell during the autoscroller, and Pause Glitch the second fight so that enemies die off-screen, before saving ROB and entering the door.

• Room 3: I shield-drop through the starting platform and Bounce Boost in a particular way to hit the wall on the opposite side and fly through the level. I have to pit-stop early to save the Ice Climbers, though, but start Bounce Boosting again with the Shellpod soon after. I fly over to another Gold Cube, and manipulate another Bob-Omb from the Glire. After collecting the Trophy, I use my midair jumps alongside a down throw to Bounce Boost with the help of another Shellpod, and SDI to the upper platform and fly into the next fight. This fight consists of a sole Ticken alongside Snake’s trophy to be saved on the opposite side; I save Snake while waiting for the Ticken to helplessly fall into the abyss. After that, I run over to damage boost from the Roturret’s attack, just barely being able to trigger the final fight of the level. I use the Pause Glitch to despawn the multiple Gagyma the fight offers; while I do die in the process, it’s still much faster than having to deal with them. After I respawn, I immediately run to the right, despawning the remaining Tickens, and end the fight. I damage boost with the Bob-Omb, save Wario, and enter the door.

The Great Maze

The Forest Revisit

• Room 1: After the credits roll and all the post-credit popups are blitzed by, I enter back into Subspace. I visit The Forest first, and still roll with Peach, as she is the best fighter to deal with the secret fights, bar none. The secret door in this level is just a short way from spawn, and can actually be entered during the first fight. I damage boost with one Bob-Omb, manipulate RNG slightly to pluck another one, use the Pause Glitch to make the door within the camera’s range, damage boost again, and jump into the door.

• Room 2: The secret character fights, rather uniquely, are treated as regular Brawl matches, on actual Brawl stages instead of being in Subspace itself. This means a 1v1, no stickers, no Bullfrogs, all for the pretense of being a fair fight. The problem with that, is that we’re using Peach. Who has a dainty little thing called the Stitch Face Turnip. Whose Z-Drop (A 1 frame action, basically) deals 31%. That can be repeatedly spammed, especially with Peach’s unique float cancel. Needless to say, Toon Link is defeated within a few short seconds of the fight starting.

The Ruins Revisit

• Room 1: I manipulated RNG during the downtime in the Toon Link fight so that I could quickly spawn two Down-B Bob-Ombs after dropping my first one. With this amount of damage built up, I can outright skip the elevator using a corner clip, and then manipulate entire chains of Bob-Ombs to fly through the level. I wasn’t actually entirely sure if it was going to be faster to use Peach on the revisit to pick up the trophy I intentionally missed, but my gut decision was correct. After that, I chain RNG manip after RNG manip to fly to the end of the room.

• Room 2: Unfortunately, I have an autoscroller to go through once again. At this point, I just fool around. Entering the optional door to prematurely end the autoscroller is still faster. The actually important door is not that far away anyway; I damage boost with the Bob-Omb and SDI downwards to the door, as SDI is much faster than Peach’s falling speed.

• Room 3: And here, we fight Wolf. Which goes about as well for Wolf as Toon Link performed in his fight (Which is to say, utterly destroyed within a few seconds).

The Swamp Revisit

• Room 1: Peach takes a rather unique stroll through this room in comparison to Fox on the first visit thanks to her falling speed being so low that it can’t even overcome the wind. I’m forced to do a series of rather odd Bounce Boosts to reach the Goomba that Fox originally does; it’s smooth flying after this, fortunately.

• Room 2: And here is where I found the Reverse Pause Glitch, quite literally in the last remaining minutes of the entire TAS that took me eight months to make. After Bounce Boosting to the fight and taking it out with ease, at 2:30 in the morning I questioned in my infinite probably-sleep-deprived wisdom what would happen if I tried the Pause Glitch during the transition between a fight and side-scrolling. Thus, the Reverse Pause Glitch was found, and the entire speedrunning community went into an uproar (Fun fact: It was initially thought that this only worked in areas that immediately transitioned into an autoscroller from a fight; it was initially given the name “Notoscroller” before I found it worked on all fights). Using this newfound monstrosity, I skip the autoscroller with the help of several Bullet Bills and enter the door.

• Room 2 Optional: I manipulated RNG so that I’d be able to pluck a Bob-Omb immediately after reaching the Gold Cube, with which I Bounce Boost back to the door I came from after collecting the final trophy of the run.

• Room 2 Cont.: Unfortunately, the autoscroller kicks back in properly after I exit, which means I’m in another waiting period.

• Room 3: The second fight with Giant Shadow Diddy goes about the same way as it did the first time; I discard my Bob-Omb, lure Diddy to the left blastzone, and throw him off.

• Room 4: Unlike the first visit, my damage is not reset, which means I can damage boost to the fight instead of using the launch pads. However, this is a double-edged sword, as I have too much damage at this point to properly skip the fight without dying, which means I go through the fight “normally”. I end up using the Pause Glitch alongside some RNG manipulation to get a Down-B Bob-Omb so I can take out all the necessary enemies. Frustratingly, the final, final door is just beyond the blastzone; I simply can’t reach it until the fight is completed. I can’t actually use the cannons to reach it more quickly, as they blitz right past the door and would require backtracking. Instead, I float and double jump into the door.

• Room 5: Here, I fight Jigglypuff. And by “fight”, I mean “force-feed vegetables”. Jigglypuff is defeated. We are done. With everything.

Time Table

Improvements & Final Thoughts

Random Fun Facts

Screenshot Recommendations