[TAS] Casino Bingo Slide 64 In 1'34"63

In this video, I complete "Casino Slide 64" - a hack created by Aglab2 and the winner of the second 'task' of Simpleflips' ROMHacking competition - in 1'34"63, timed from the first frame to the frame Mario turns to face the camera after collecting the star. I chose to use this timing system rather than the TASVideos system as this system more accurately reflects the time taken to reach the end-credits, and ensures that the fastest run gets the fastest time (see this joke SMW TAS which has a TASVideos time of around 93 seconds, yet takes so long to complete that all structure in the known universe will have decayed long before the run is over for an extreme example: https://youtu.be/n_PylKovg5k).

This hack is designed to be completed in 4 stages, which are:
1. Navigate from the start to the warp at the bottom
2. Go down the first slide, collecting numbered casino chips. You must get enough to get a complete row, column or diagonal, but collecting more will make step 3 easier.
3. Navigate back to the top & enter the final slide. The chips you collected earlier are now platforms, which you can use to climb up. Trying to do this without a bingo will trigger an anti-cheat mechanism, placing you in an area that's almost impossible for a human to escape. It's possible for a TAS to get out (and might be faster), but I opted against using it in this run, as it would be less interesting.
4. Complete the final slide in under 35 seconds & collect the star.

My movement during steps 1 & 3 was somewhat unusual, and used techniques that don't look optimal at first glance, such as sliding and quickturning, stopping & punch-starting again rather than just walking forward. This is because the level is set to have the 'slide' floor type (used for Princess's Secret Slide in the original game). This has a few notable properties:

• Standing on any non-flat surface will cause Mario to slide
• Mario doesn't accelerate from rest as quickly as usual, gaining only 1.1 speed rather than over 8. I overcome this by quickturning to face the correct direction, and using the punch-trick, which immediately gives Mario 10 speed.
• Sliding doesn't reduce Mario's speed nearly as much as usual. Since sliding is not bound by the 48 speed cap, this means turning while sliding is a convenient way of maintaining more than 48 speed while changing angle. Mario's speed can then be recovered/increased by being airborne, allowing for significant speed accumulation, and saving a fair amount of time.

During the slide sections (steps 2 & 4), it is optimal to be airborne wherever possible, as sliding has a speed cap of around 105, whereas speed increases without bounds in the air. Furthermore, Mario moves slower on slopes due to the de-facto multiplier. Ideally you would want to be airborne & building speed all the way, but sooner or later you have to land otherwise you'll just fall to your death. This turns out to not be a problem, because if you land for a single frame before becoming airborne the frame after, the speed cap is not applied. Furthermore, the slope still applies its acceleration, causing Mario to gain up to around 5 speed each time. I abuse this glitch very extensively in both slides, allowing me to gain as much as 150 speed, and saving many seconds.

During step 3, it is fastest to intentionally die at the wallkick area rather than manually crossing it, as Mario will respawn on the other side.

Step 4 has a weird start, where the whole stage appears to move relative to Mario, causing him to seemingly fall through the floor, before returning to normal. This glitch is entirely visual, and does not affect the gameplay. I've seen it in a couple of places in Last Impact as well, and I'm not sure why it happens, but I'd guess it has something to do with how hacks handle cameras.

This run is the single largest TAS project I've ever completed alone, with a total rerecord count of 10,586 (my first TAS to go over 10k!). I was inspired to create this after seeing TomatoBird8's playthrough (https://bit.ly/2E10tiJ) of the hack. I completed step 4 first (because if I lost motivation at this stage, I could just upload this part), before slowly working on the other parts occasionally over the following 3 months or so. Unfortunately, when I came to hex it together a few days ago, I found that I couldn't make step 2 sync with step 1, so I ended up remaking it. This was a blessing in disguise, however, as I found a way to continue conserving speed right to the very end, saving 29f & making what was the worst part of the run an awful lot cooler.

This run is definitely improvable, but hopefully not by too much...

Shoutouts to:
• Aglab2 for making the hack itself: https://bit.ly/2Qvo4cC
• Simpleflips for running the hacking competition: https://bit.ly/2y7AJxt
• TomatoBird8 for making the playthrough that inspired me to make this TAS: https://bit.ly/2CtxjY3

Don't forget to check out the rest of my channel & subscribe before going to theirs though 😉