Super Mario 64 DS is a remake of the original Super Mario 64. It features 30 new stars, redesigned courses, 4 unlockable characters and a complete visual overhaul.

This is a run that bans tunneling, the major glitch used to beat the game with 0 stars as in the current publication. Instead, this uses more or less the same route as the 2017 publication, which was from before tunneling was discovered in 2021. 2467 frames, or 41.24 seconds are saved over that run. Most of this timesave, though, was actually found before 2021, so this run has been in the works since before tunneling was found. For example, the Wario painting clip which saved time on the Endless Stairs Skip was found in late 2017.

If this is accepted as a new branch, we propose "3 stars" to go along with the tradition of naming speedrun categories after star count. But it might be better to add in or replace it with "no tunneling".

Frame counts when comparing strategies will be given at 60 frames per second, although most of the important addresses for the game almost always update every 2 frames, giving a visual rate of 30 frames.

Read the game resources page for information about the glitches used.

In 2020, Adeal found a faster moat skip method, by slidekicking from the top of the slope to the left of the waterfall instead of on the waterfall itself. In 2024, Rupa TASed the movement to reach this slope, and Adeal TASed the slidekicks and downwarp.

In 2020, Sharkey found new movement that made it faster to drain the water in the basement. Specifically, you can delay the long jump over the water and then jump in and out of the water to do less swimming. Then in 2021, Really_Tall found more timesaves: doing a water jump to the 2nd pillar, crouching to slide down the slope, and most notably sideways long jumps up the slope after the water.

Sharkey TASed the movement to SSL, instead of LLL, and here is the biggest route change. In 2020, Sharkey found a fast way to cancel the Klepto star. It was also known that we could cancel the top of the pyramid star with the upper pyramid loading zone to collect 2 stars in 1 trip into the stage. It turned out to be faster to do these 3 stars than collect the red coin star in LLL. At first this route was only 40 frames faster but eventually it was improved to over 15 seconds faster, mostly by using shell hyperspeed to open the pyramid (suggested by ThePianoEnthusiast) and by cancelling the top of the pyramid star by clipping through the rising pyramid top instead of using a fly guy (found by Really_Tall).

Really_Tall found the movement to go to the shell. Migu TASed the shell hyperspeed to open the pyramid, and Really_Tall TASed the out of bounds clip and the star cancel. For the Klepto star, Rupa re-TASed the first half, and Sharkey and Migu TASed the star cancel.

Rupa saved 4 frames with cleaner movement.

Rupa saved 26 frames by using Y run.

In 2021, Bobbybob suggested eating the lakitu to perform an egg reset and climb the vine faster, and use this egg in the fight instead of a goomba egg. Sharkey91 TASed this but it was not faster. Soon after, Really_Tall found the Sideways Long Jump technique in hopes of saving time with this strategy. It is most useful on slopes that you can’t long jump on when facing up the slope, but can long jump on when facing down the slope. There aren’t many of these in the game, but the bridge after the vine satisfies this condition. Migu TASed it and saved 14 frames, and Sharkey91 improved it by another 8 frames. In 2024, Rupa redid this whole section saving another 50 frames.

We save time from not talking to the Toad, since the new Endless Stairs Skip doesn’t need a rabbit clip.

Rupa found it was faster to delay the long jump and start the triple jump earlier. This initially saved 10 frames, and then Migu TASed it and saved another 4 frames.

In 2021, Really_Tall found that it was faster to do long jumps up the stairs instead of just running. This also made it faster to charge Y run at the beginning. Migu TASed the spiral staircase movement.

The new version of Endless Stairs Skip uses a clip through the Wario painting, found by J_duude, instead of a rabbit to get out of bounds. The mirror clip was TASed by Sharkey. Rupa TASed the painting clip. Bobbybob found a Heaven’s Portal out of bounds behind the Wet-Dry World painting which warps you up to the stairway to Bowser in the Sky, past the teleporter that checks if you have 80 stars. This was TASed by Sharkey.

In 2021, Adeal and Really_Tall discovered that it is barely possible to do a triple jump with Y run speed off the box, dive at the peak of the jump, and wall jump the wall of the platform above. The box first needs to be pushed because this moves the box up slightly. The starting vertical velocity of a jump is proportional to your speed, but if there is a large difference between your motion and facing angles when starting a jump, your horizontal speed is dramatically reduced, which is done here. Sharkey91 and Migu TASed the triple jump. Migu and Rupa TASed the movement up the rotating elevator. This saved 96 frames in total.

Coming from this direction, it became faster to activate the staircase which makes it possible to do a strat that was theorized while making the previous run. We can do another low-speed triple jump from the top of the stairs and dive and wall jump off the side of the arrow platform, instead of landing on the checkerboard platform as in the previous run. This was TASed by Migu and saved an additional 182 frames. Afterwards, Migu found a way to land and double jump immediately after the first jump on the stone walkway, which was 10 frames faster than the previous method of cutting the double jump short.

In 2021, Really_Tall managed to initially grab Bowser 16 frames faster than before. In 2023, Migu saved an additional 28 frames by optimizing the rest of the fight. In 2024, Adeal saved 2 frames at the end by minimizing the amount of time it takes for Mario to look at Bowser.

Thanks to J_duude for finding the Wario painting clip, and thanks to ThePianoEnthusiast for suggesting shell hyperspeed in SSL.