Do you think you’ve seen it all about Super Mario 64, even taking an interest in its ever more incredible speedruns? However, there is something new recently, and not just anything. Two days ago, the speedrunner ChipGroove simply brought to light a new technique, located in the 9th level of the game, which saves about a second in total time compared to previous routes required to complete the famous Nintendo 64 launch hit under these conditions. And as you can imagine, hold on a second, in this context, it’s huge!
The trick that ChipGroove discovered was exploited during the quest for the first star of level 9 “Ugly Pool”, which is required to complete Nintendo’s title in absolutely all of its speedrun categories except for “0 Star” (which as the name suggests, can be completed without collecting a single star). This star is even the one and only required in the category “1 Star”, and also (and above all) count in the rules of “16-Star”, perhaps the most popular in the community. Since we are talking about performances where world records are improved by fractions of a second, you will easily guess that such a discovery is of extreme importance …
The world top 5 is held in 3.3 seconds on a performance of almost ¼ hour!
So how does it work? The technique discovered (and patented) by ChipGroove, in honor of whom it was aptly named “Chip Clip”, consists of … punch in an underwater wall, but with a speed and an angle sufficiently precise, so that the crossing of the wall is done more quickly, to join the tunnel separating the two parts of the level, than with the traditional method (which is quite simply swimming towards the tunnel). You can see which is the “normal” path to follow on the video of the current record in the 16-star category (at 11 minutes sharp). And since pictures are better than words, we let you admire the technique implemented by ChipGroove, from 7 seconds: ” ‘
As we showed you a little above, the gaps between the best players in the world are absolutely tiny in the fastest-to-finish categories, and the competition is still raging: for example, Suigi achieved the 2nd best time in the “16-Star” category less than a week ago (unfortunately for him, a few days before ChipGroove reopened the debate)! The estimated time saving being of the order of plus or minus a second, one can reasonably imagine that the competition will be relaunched massively in the categories requiring to go through the said tunnel, namely the well-named “1-Star” and “16-Star” … but also that of 100% since there are several stars to be collected in the second part of the level ! Thereby, it’s a safe bet that at least one of Super Mario 64’s speedrun world records will change very soon, and probably not just once …
Super Mario 64 Complete Solution Summary
