I've been speedrunning SM64 for almost 3 years now and one thing that I've slowly been noticing as time went on was how much time I've been wasting watching the intro cutscene over and over again. I didn't immediately notice it at first because I was playing 16 Star without LBLJ, but now that I'm playing categories that do require LBLJ like 1 Star, it's become so much more obvious how annoying it is to watch the same unskippable cutscene over and over again. And don't even get me started on if you're still learning Lakitu skip and aren't super consistent at it yet, You have to sit through 55 seconds of basically nothing, then play Mario for about 6 seconds, and then if you want to include Lakitu skip in your run and you fail it, welp that's just unfortunate for you I guess.

I believe including the option to make watching the intro cutscene optional would do nothing but good for the community, as it would allow runners to add more attempts into their session and jump straight into the action so that they can become more consistent at earlier tricks like Lakitu skip and LBLJ more quickly. All we would need to do is start the timer with 55~ seconds already on it so that it wouldn't affect the other runs on the leaderboard. We're doing nothing but harm by making it so that you HAVE to sit there, and do nothing but basically watch the screen for 55 seconds every single time you fail a run. Other runners can still view the cutscene if they want to, that's the beauty of making it OPTIONAL, you give the runners the freedom of choice!

Does anyone know if it's harder to get the infinite lives trick on the stair case in 3-1 while being small mario on the Switch rather than on a regular NES? After about 20 mins of trying or so, I was only able to get it to happen once