This page documents many of the tricks found in the N64 game Mischief Makers.
Some of the tricks are doable (and discovered) in real time speedrunning, while the rest of the tricks were discovered (and can only be replicated, unless in extremely rare cases) with frame advance.
Memory Addresses
Marina's Moves
Here is a very detailed list of every basic/advanced move that marina possesses.
Left/Right
Controls direction. Walk slowly left or right when on the ground and not doing any other move.
Up/Down
Holding up causes Marina to hold her arm up in a ready position; holding down causes her to crouch.
Dash
When on the ground, press either <C or >C to do a fast accelerating, but slow max speed dash. This dash comes out quicker when you press the button, and has a higher initial speed. Press <D or >D twice to do a slow accelerating, but fast max speed dash. Optimal presses for the >D dash is every other frame, since each press of >D will get stored in wait with the next one, causing each press every other frame to be registered no matter what; unlike >C boost, where you need to time the next one for it to appear. However, when you're not trying to move as fast as possible, pressing either of the buttons every other frame gives the end result of what looks like optimal dashing.
The Max speed of >D dashing is actually slightly higher than a slide jump's; however, the time needed to reach that max speed as well as the fact that the max speed also alternates with a slower speed makes the slide jump better for movement.
When you are dashing, you can cancel it with any other movement immediately, like grabbing, jumping, sliding, etc.
There is one very dangerous caveat to how input is accepted in this game that makes doing high precision turning-around-maneuvers very difficult. The nature of the >D dash/boost means that any press of the D pad, and if the same button is let go of, and after a few frames held in that same direction, a dash/boost will register. Very often you can land, and do a slide jump in the opposite direction, and suddenly your horizontal/vertical speed will decrease because a boost has been registered, when what you desired was a full slide jump. The way to counteract this is to carefully watch what buttons you are pressing/holding; with the right input, you can avoid this situation entirely.
Rolling
Pressing vC or vD twice causes Marina to crouch into a ball and roll. You can control the direction of her rolling, by using <vC or v<D when rolling right to start rolling left, and vice versa. Rolling lowers her hitbox, allowing her to roll underneath some platforms that have enough room. It is one of 2 methods for getting stuck/unstuck inside walls/floors. Example: in 2-04, after the first warp star, use the go through floor trick to enter the floor, and roll to the right to get unstuck. In 4-07, at the end where you throw the pot through the tiny space, underneath those clusters of blocks you can roll underneath to talk to the clancer, or you can stop rolling underneath the block cluster, and hop your way up into the ceiling. If you time your jumps well, you can hop all the way through and out of the ceiling; if you go too slowly, you get stuck inside the rocks.
Marina also has a mid air somersault move, which cannot be done with any input. Marina performs this move during some cutscenes, or when sliding into one of the bosses (such as LUNAR).
Boosting
Boosting is using the dash move when you are in mid air. There are many different types of boosts. It should be noted that many boosts can be performed during an action, and because of the long register time, the button can be pressed at even 5 or 6 frames before the action would occur.
The same thing with dashes apply here: C boosts register earlier and have a higher initial speed, whereas D dashes take longer to register. Note that mid-air boosting does not achieve the same max speeds that on-ground dashing has.
Up Boost
Pressing ^C while in the air causes Marina to boost upwards (has no affect on the ground whatsoever.) Marina gets pushed up in the air, slows down, and begins to descend again; the timing of up boosting makes continuous upward movement impossible. The reason is that the next boost that will register takes so long to achieve, that by the time the boost occurs, Marina won't gain any more height; she'll only hover at her current height. This can be counteracted by grabbing, which will be discussed later.
Side Boosting
This causes marina to go either let or right, and when in the air, when moving down, it resets her vertical velocity to 0, which begins to gradually drop negative again. When moving up, it has the very useful property of maintaining your current Y speed for a while longer. This can be abused easily with slide jumping, by using one of the side boosts to attain more height. Your slide jump vertical speed starts at 4 pixels per frame, and gradually reduces to 0. When you press <C or >C 3 frames before the speed becomes 3, your vertical speed remains at 4 for a longer period of time.
Down Boosting
The fastest form of downward motion. Down boosting causes marina to move down very quickly. Your current negative vertical speed determines what speed the down boost will be. Generally, after boosting upwards or throwing upwards, you cannot boost until the speed is at -1 or -2(this varies depending on what action you were doing.) Whenever your vertical speed is positive or 0, a down boost will cause the down speed to be -6. If you wait a few extra frames, your initial down speed will be higher. Waiting until the negative speed is -6 (which doesn't take long) will cause the speed to be -9. After each down boost, your speed decreases slightly before the next boost can be achieved. The max down boost speed is -12.
One last note about all boosts is that if you're in the air, and wanting to do many boosts in a row, if you wait for the 2nd blue trail that marina leaves when she boosts to appear, that is the optimal frame to press the C button for the next boost.
Slide
By crouching (or generally holding down) and pressing A, when on the ground, marina will slide. Marina starts at a speed of 325632, and the speed gradually decreases. At the end of the slide, marina has a pause where she can't move. If you slide into an enemy or object, you will bump into them, causing a lot of delay (a bane of speedrunners.) However, this delay can be used to the TASers advantage, as seen in the Clancer Boost trick.
If you slide off of the ground into the air, you won't have the delay at the end (a helpful trick for speedrunners.) As soon as you're in the air, you can perform some actions that normally you wouldn't be able to perform (since the slide cancels all moves except for jumping, grabbing, and talking with R/L.) In the first 13 frames of the slide, you can press down and the opposite direction of the slide to stop; you can immediately perform any action after this.
Slide Jump
By pressing jump right after a slide (vA, frame, vA) you'll do a slide jump. A slide jump has the highest X/Y velocity of any non-assisted jump, and is used throughout the run a lot. When you jump, your slide speed goes from 325632 to 323584, and stays at 323584. When you land on the ground and slide jump again, your speed goes down to 307200 for a frame, which makes Boost Grabbing faster on a sub pixel level (which will be discussed later.)
Slide jumping is the essential move used throughout the run to get places, due to its max speed and fastest form of instant acceleration.
Grab
The grab move is one of the essential moves that Marina uses to interact with her environment, to achieve her objections, throw things, hold onto things, and perform many of the advanced moves. The grab is used with the B button; each of the directions of the D pad makes Marina grab in a different way. A neutral or left/right B causes Marina to grab in front of her; holding up makes Marina reach up and grab above her; and holding down makes marina scoop down below her.
When you grab, Marina extends out her arm, and when on the ground, causes her speed to decrease. While her hand is extended, anything grabbable will be grabbed in the window of her reach; if nothing is grabbed, she will pull her arm back. When something is grabbed, blue swirls move around her hand, and the object she grabbed is pulled into her grip. From here, she can move around, throw, drop, etc. with the object.
When you are in the air, Marina grabs in the same way, except her horizontal speed is preserved rather than decreases, which is very important for some of the advanced techniques discussed later.
When you grab the object, there are some actions you can perform immediately, and some where you have to wait.
Instant:
-Throw
-Drop
-Slide (If on the ground)
Wait:
-Boost
-Dash
-Shake
-Move
You can grab objects through walls/floors/ceilings, because the hitbox of Marina's arm can extend past the obstacle, if the obstacle is thin enough. Grabbing is also required for many of the bosses, as well as performing many of the actions required to make the blue exit star appear, such as grabbing and shaking white clabballs to make warp stars appear, grab and destroy mini bosses, grab clanballs to make items appear, etc.
Grabbing also has defensive properties. You can grab almost every harmful projectile, even ones that should normally melt Marina into slag! (she is a robot, after all.) By grabbing at the projectile, you will either grab the object, or of it's not grabbable, it will disappear and become gems.
Shaking
Shaking is one of the essentials moves in the game (in addition to having the famous phrase for which this game is known for: "Shake Shake!") Shaking occurs after you've grabbed an object, you press either down C or twice down on the d pad. Marina will shake the object up and down. If there are any items inside the object, they will appear once per shake.
Shaking is used to:
-make items appear from objects/enemies/clanballs
-make clanballs create a warp star
-combine objects with the clanpot
-perform actions necessary to defeat bosses, like shake them on the ground, take away their items, etc.
While both the down c button and the d pad make Marina shake, Marina shakes faster when using the d pad. Because of the "register" rule of the d pad, with TASing it is rarely necessary to use the c button for shaking, unless in some circumstances (like if you only need to shake an object once.)
There's 2 methods to begin to shake an object faster than normal. One is to use advanced shake cancelling by pressing vD twice to start a shake, but in between those presses press <C to boost sideways just beforehand. If the boost moves you into the air, you can boost back onto the platform; you'll have done a quick shake of an object, and can repeat many times. (note: not likely possible that these shakes register an object that needs to be shaken multiple times to combine objects in pots.)
The fastest way to start registering a shake is to have been in the air and boosting down; the first frame that you touch the ground, you can begin shaking. Grabbing an object prevents you from shaking immediately, but you can jump. So grab, jump, boost down, shake allows you to start shaking the object you grabbed very quickly.
One last note is that if you grab an object which has gems inside it (like clancers), pressing the shake button every other frame (C or D) causes one gem to get shaken out every other frame. The shaking speed itself doesn't change, nor do the number of shakes, but it's possible to shake out every single gem inside a clancer incredibly quickly.
You can cancel a shake by pressing neutral B. If an important item is needed from the shaking, you can grab, shake it quickly, let go with B, and collect the item instantly while the "shake shake!" sound is still playing.
Throwing
Once you are holding any object, you can throw the object (or even yourself!) Whether you are in the air or on the ground, what object you're holding, all determine what happens when you throw the object.
One very important aspect of throwing is that you can speed up the rate at which you throw greatly by releasing and pressing the B button again. Holding the b button makes the throw faster; but the fastest technique of throwing by far is as soon as you press the B button to throw, let go of B for one frame, then hold B for the rest of the duration of the throw (you can let go 4 frames before the orange swirly lines appear.)
Press neutral B to let go of the object. You can immediately perform actions after you do this.
On the ground:
-Throw object up
- Throwing directly up is the slowest of the throws.
-Throw diagonally up
- Throwing diagonally is the same speed as throwing horizontally. You throw the object at a 45 degree angle.
-Throwing left/right
- Same speed as diagonal. You throw the object directly in front of you.
-Throwing down
- When on the ground, throwing down is the fastest throw in the game. Marina throws the object straight down, and the action causes her to get pushed up into the air. This is the only ground throw where this occurs.
In the air:
-Throw object up
- The second fastest throw in the game. Marina throws the object up while doing a backward flip.
-Throw diagonally up
- Equally fast as throwing horizontally in the air. Marina winds up and throws the object at an upward 45 degree angle.
-Throwing left/right
- Same as diagonal throwing, but object is hurled horizontally.
-Throwing down
- Slowest of the aerial throws. Marina takes some time to wind up, and throws the object straight down (or diagonally down, if you hold left/right). The action for throwing down is the same for diagonal down throws. Like when on the ground, the action causes her to move up in the air at a speed of 2. In speedrunning, this has a usefulness in attaining more height to reach high platforms, because numerous boost grabs to attain height are near impossible to perform in real time.
Talk
When standing next to a clancer, and a speech bubble appears near him, press L or R to talk to him/her. There are also pink clanballs that give hints; these need only be grabbed to start conversation.
When talking, hold L or R to make the speech scroll faster, and press L or R to proceed to the next clip of text.
When a chat box is active, the in-game time is paused. This is explained more in the Text Trick.
Z
Use Z to skip cutscenes (not all are skippable. Just the long ones not at the start of stages, go figure!)
Teran
Teran is a playable character in the game. He's one of the hero clancers Marina encounters, and he plays for 2 stages. He has different controls than marina does.
Dash
Press >D twice, and hold in the direction you're moving.
Jump
Teran has a triple jump (so 4 jumps in total). When aiming for speed, Dashing has a faster speed, but it takes a while to set up; over short distances, you should jump.
Punch
The B button punches. He can punch many times in combos.
Uppercut Punch
Holding ^ when pressing B makes Teran attack directly above him. It is his most powerful move, and is used in the fight versus Clarina.
Defend
By holding down, Teran goes in a defensive stance and can't be harmed.
Advanced Techniques
Here is a runthrough of many of the advanced techniques at marina's disposal. This includes glitches.
Clancer Boost
If you do an extended slide jump as you hit something, your speed increases really slightly to 325632 instead of the normal 323584 slide jump speed, but it's enough so that if you boost grab your way through a level, it saves some frames. The initial jump off the clancer wastes 1 frame, so it should only be done when a long period of boost grabbing can be done to make up for the loss.
Go through floors
If you are on a thin floor, if you either:
-press A, then vC, wait 3 frames, then press B
or
-Do a slide jump (vA, 1 frame, vA), vC, wait 2 frames, then press B.
There are limitations. It can only be done on thin floors (aka the blocks that are 1x2), some levels have a layout where it is not beneficial to go through floors, and it seems impossible to go through thin vertical walls, like those in 2-08 and 5-05.
Corner Clip
If you try to do the go through floor trick at a corner of thick blocks, you will go inside the corner and get pushed out at a max of 20 pixels. When you do a corner clip, your speed slows down slightly, so it's more useful to do it so you touch the ground sooner so that you can slide jump back to max speed, and at maximum it saves 2 frames per use.
Boost Grabbing
If you press any of the C buttons then B when in the air, your X speed is preserved. You can gain height (with ^C and ^B) and skip portions of the game by going over obstacles. This technique is used a lot not only to skip portions of the game by hovering over obstacles, but it is also faster on a sub pixel level than Slide Jumping. The reason for this is that slide jumping causes the speed to increase to 325632 for 1 frame, but also drop to 307200 for one frame. Averaged out, 323584 over long periods of time by boost grabbing is faster.
When boost grabbing, each of the grabs has a different amount of wait before you can grab again. If you grab up, you wait 13 frames (hence why up C up B boost grabbing gains height; you can perform the next boost quickest, and still maintain the initial 4 vertical speed from up C); if you grab down, you wait 17 frames; and if you grab forwards, you wait 19 frames.
The B move preserves your speed; this helps when you attain faster than normal speed (like off a springcoil), you can boost grab at way higher than normal speeds for way longer than possible.
When boost grabbing, you can press B in any direction. This doesn't save time speed wise, but sometimes you can do it to get in an extra Boost Grab without grabbing onto something.
Text trick
If you activate a text during the game, like talking to clancers or grabbing the pink hint balls, the in-game time of the current stage is paused. This helps to lower the in-game time of the stage. In some cases, waiting longer with a text open can cause the in-game time to remain paused for longer; the main instance is in 3-09, where 70 real-time frames ware wasted to improve the in-game time by 70 frames.
With the clancers that talk, it is generally optimal to activate the text as soon as you can, move as far left as possible, then slide jump past the clancer. You should time it so that the text box stays open the biggest; this is best time by either watching the in-game time memory address, or waiting for the first white letter of the text box to appear as the box shrinks in size. (Memory watching is preferred for ensured precision.)
Throw off Springball
If you grab and throw off a springball when you get on it and coil it up, you'll launch yourself off 1 frame sooner. Also, for most distances it is better to not spring the coil at max speed, since it takes 3 frames longer to launch yourself off it.
Jump high off Springball
If you hold A when going off a springball at the right frame(too soon and you'll jump off it, too late and you won't get the boost), you will gain a super amount of height. If going vertically up a spring, you'll have a Y velocity of 15. When going horizontally, you'll have a Y speed of 3, which is more than you'd usually have.
Clanball boost throw
If you press ^C then throw off when throwing off a clanball to go vertically, you gain some extra height.
Cancel hit animations
In some cases, pressing B at the right frame can cancel damage animations (this seems to work only with spikeballs; more testing needed). You can also rapidly press A to recover from a hit animation when you're in the air; this is used in the Final Fight.
Go through ceiling
In 4-01 Rolling rock, on one of the slopes you can simply jump up and through one of the ceilings, thus saving a warp star transition.
Abuse moving objects
Many objects that you cling to can move or swivel, such as ropes of clancers, clanball pinwheels, etc. When you grab one of these and press >C and >D every other frame, you can achieve movements faster than normal slide jumping. In some cases, like the clancer ropes, you can save massive amounts of time and launch yourself off at wayyyyy higher than normal speeds; in some other cases, like the pinwheels, it saves only a few frames.
Grab items faster
When grabbing any item (bomb from a bomb block, a pot/mech that you're standing on, etc.) that is directly below you, 3-4 frames before you land and the puff of white clouds appears from landing, if you press down B then, you will grab the bomb faster, since there is one less frame of grabbing animation.
React in mid air
In the beginnings of stages, if you're starting out in mid air, you can react for one frame as if you're standing on ground. Also, there's other situations where Marina can react in mid air in a 1 frame window as if she was on the ground.
Useless (for now) Glitches
Go through ceiling v1
If you grab an object above you through a thin floor, you can throw the object down by starting to throw 3 frames before you grab the object, thus propelling yourself through the ceiling. You might zip instead of moving up depending on if you're facing right or left.
Push object through floor
Same as above trick. Go through a floor and grab the object above you, and throw the object down. Using this, you can make the object go through the floor below you.
Clancer spikeball boosting
A very interesting property of the spikeballs is that by holding an object in front of you, you can get a significant boost if you make the object hit the spikeball in a specific spot. You can get boosted horizontally for greater speed, or vertically which shoots you straight up. However, there's limitations.
-Only 1 stage in the current S rank run has a situation where you hold the pot and get the boost. This is in 4-07, where the boost is attained for about 2-3 frames before the pot is thrown.
-For Clancers, the boost does not work horizontally unless the Clancer has been damaged once, and lives (doesn't get ghosted.) Most clancers die in one hit anyways, and it'd be slower to hit a clancer once, then do it again to try and get a spikeball boost. And, once you're holding the clancer, you're in a difficult situation where you can't grab new objects or boost grab without dropping the clancer, thus losing all of your speed.
-If you are able to achieve a boost like this, you can preserve it longer by landing on the ground and pressing ^A to jump without sliding. However, your speed will decrease slightly each time.
-It takes very precise positioning to make the boost be horizontal rather than vertical. Perhaps the object you hold needs to be on the opposite side of the spikeball, rather than in front of you like a shield? More testing needed.
Going through another ceiling
In 3-05, if you go through the floor before the first warp star, by going to the far left with the triangle corner, you can simply hop out.
Go into Ghost catcher Stage
By rolling under the wall at the end, you can hop up into the thick part of the ceiling/floor. If you take too long jumping up, you'll get stuck.
Lodge a bomb into the floor
This is very odd, but slide jumping then boosting into a corner when holding an object can sometimes lodge the object into the floor.
Marina stay standing on mid air
If you grab a pot when you are standing on top of it (even if the pot is in the air) and if there's no objects inside it, you are standing on the ground for 1 frame and can do just about any action. You can grab, throw, slide and jump, but not slide jump. Potential usefulness in gold gem run?
Megaman style floor zip
You can zip at 6 times the normal slide jump speed by going through a floor, and grabbing an object above you, and throwing the object 3 frames before you grab it. No matter what I did, I could not replicate it going to the right, nor in any stage without a bomb (the clancers seem to be the wrong size, but this trick works in 1-08?)
More testing needed. If it's possible to zip in any stage to the right with any object, time can be saved in a few stages.
Pull objects through walls
You can pull objects through thin blocks by starting to throw the object 3 frames before you grab the object. This can be done on thin vertical walls, or thin horizontal floors. If you are moving fast enough, you may be able to pull the object right through the wall without needing to throw at all.
(note: videos of glitches are available
here).