I just had the thought that clearing every star mission in challenge mode would be a fun speed category for this game. Anyone else think so?
I totally agree! I've actually been working on how to optimize star mission completion for a while now, but haven't had much time because of school.
The other day I finally discovered a way to start routing All Star Missions. Here's a few things I discovered:
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This category will require you to play through Challenge Mode 4 times. The reason for this is because of the mission, "Be the MVP in the last game!" Four characters have this mission: Luigi, Birdo, Bowser Jr, and King Boo. The first three characters all have it as their Special mission, however King Boo has it as a Star difficulty mission. So you'll have to play through Special 3 times, and Star once. I suppose you could do Special 4 times since it opens up more missions, but it will be harder, and you'll potentially have to play games that last 2 innings longer. You must choose Peach and Bowser as captain once each on Special because Peach's special mission involves her being captain, and rounding up all the other characters. You also must choose Wario once as captain, but that could be done on either difficulty.
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The "MVP" missions are my current framework for a route. There are 17 total characters that have winning "MVP" as part of their missions. Assuming you'll play the minimum 20 games required in the run, you'll have to keep this in mind. If you take away the "Last Game MVP" characters and games, you have 13 characters with 16 games to work with. For reference, these characters are Mario, Yoshi, DK, Diddy, Waluigi, Peach, Daisy, Toad, Toadette, Toadsworth, Magikoopa, Bowser, and Dry Bones.
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Peach has one Star difficulty mission that kind of messes with this route, "Shut out Bowser". During one final game, Peach will have to be on the mound the whole time, but Luigi, Birdo, or KB will need to be named MVP.
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Minigames will need to be routed in. A lot of minigames. Most missions involving minigames can be completed starting on Star, but Waluigi's Special mission is "Clear all Minigames." Luigi and Wario also have Toy Field as missions, which gets unlocked by beating every minigame once. The money from these minigames should be used to buy items, since every captain will need to buy their specials for a mission. General items might be able to help too for stuff like Mario's perfect game or grand slam missions.
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Because of the unpredictable nature of baseball, I'm thinking this category might require a lot of saving and soft-resetting at first.
If you have any ideas to contribute to the route, please feel free to share.
It turns out that pitching missions in general have to be very carefully routed. This is all under the assumption that we're not trying to play the same game twice, of course, for a total of 20 games during the run.
There are 11 characters who have to pitch an entire game because of Complete Game, Shutout, or Perfect Game (in Mario's case) missions. 3 characters have to get 3 or 5 strikeouts for a mission, which will require them to be pitching for most of the time anyway. They'll all have to have games all to themselves on the mound. Of those 14 characters, 8 also have MVP missions, so they don't cause additional problems. There are 10 more characters that have pitching missions and you'll have to squeeze them into the remaining 6 games.
For the remaining 9 characters with MVP missions, they'll basically have to fulfill those without pitching.
Good news and bad news. Good news is that I'm through the second playthrough. Bad news is that I've come to realize that the ending cutscene and credits are upnskippable, meaning you'll lose over 10 minutes throughout the run just by being forced to watch those. The other difficulties don't make you watch the credits though, so the fastest thing would be to go back to 1 Star, 3 Special. For now though I'll finish the 4 Special route I'm on.
I added this as a category for you guys, enjoy :3
I'm almost done with the 3rd of 4 playthroughs. The fourth one is with Bowser. I'm going to try to put up a guide once I finish. In the meantime though, I'll link a few docs.
Here's the notes I've been taking while routing. I'll keep updating them as I go.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1022Hrr1gPMFQ1RZwL9PFMCKUt9BRQqZT-lkZIOPBX9o/edit?usp=sharing
Here's a kind of scouting report for all the characters. It tells you the best way to pitch to each character, list the different types of missions, and then all the missions for each character. The last part is taken from an old gamefaqs guide.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JpxwvaFHHXBTyYIqKwFoMkVEr9FLj9xPAEDVPRq2Wyo/edit?usp=sharing
Thanks for adding the category! I have some suggestions about the rules though:
Run must be played on a new save file. Timer starts on selecting your first captain. Timer ends on the final out of your final game where you complete your last mission(s).
I also think resetting should be allowed.
The run is complete. I got far from every star mission, but now I can finally move on to the next step, which is to route in the ones I missed back into the route.
So I’m looking at doing a run of this on Friday, so I’m looking to finalize a route for my run. That google doc is a little confusing, so I’m trying to create a route that tells me what captains to choose, what pitchers to use for each game, what mvps to get, and where minigames/shopping should be routed in. I’m going to try and figure that out on my own, but any help would be appreciated. Also, when could/should I reset so that I don’t lose any progress? There are a few missions that I struggle to get at all so some tips on them would be great: Catch a booted ball Climb up the wall and make a catch Crush someone with a body check
Thanks in advance and I hope I can kickstart this category
Here's the pitchers i used:
For the booted ball, I actually got it twice when Blue Pianta lined a ball to left where Baby Mario was playing. IDK why this worked on two different occasions, but hey.
The body check is basically RNG. There's no button to activate it, so basically just run to the base at full speed. Try getting in a rundown first if you can. This will require the fielder to be on the base and not running towards you.
For the clamber, I have no friggen idea tbh.
This category needs AI manipulation to become good. If you have an emulator, I recommend you experiment with save states to test how the AI works. See if you can find any patterns in their pitching or something. I'd do it myself, but I have it on console.
I have it on an emulator. What things specifically would you want to test besides pitching?
Im currently going through the src page for MSB and cleaning it up, for more questions or info check out https://www.speedrun.com/mario_superstar_baseball/thread/gw737
