I started a speedrun about a week and a half ago, and I got a 13:22 on my first run with Mario. I want to know how to be able to lower my time to sub 9 minutes by next year, but I have to balance school and sports as well. All help would be appreciated.
I am very busy with school work this week, but once I'm free, I can watch your video and try to give any advice I can to help you get your sub 9, and maybe even farther than that. If you stream your runs, I can go to your stream and give you advice while you're doing runs.
Thank you. I don't have a capture card though, how will I be able to send you the video? Btw I subbed.
Ah, didn't realize your run didn't have a video. My bad.
I'll list out a bunch of beginner friendly strats to start off with, and then we can add on from there.
Link: While it is faster to go right, I would recommend going left to start. Just repeatedly throw Link to the left, throw him off-stage, and hit him away as he tries to recover. It's not the fastest method, but it's a beginner-friendly method.
Yoshi Team: Down B is a one-hit KO, so spamming this is really good. Throws are also one-hit KOs, but overall down B is generally a better move to use.
Fox: Same as Link. Repeatedly throw to the left, throw him off, and then attack him as he tries to recover.
Break the Targets: Just SD as fast as possible. Go to the right, then fall down to the bottom.
Mario Bros: I highly recommend taking them on one at a time. While it could potentially be faster trying to get a double kill, it is much easier to see them both recover if you get greedy and go for both. Whichever one is easier to KO would be the one I would recommend going for. Same as previous stages, knock one off the stage, attack him as he recovers, then do the same to the other.
Pikachu: This stage is weird. My best recommendation is to throw Pikachu to the right, and try to knock him away as he recovers. This may take a few tries, but it's a somewhat reliable strategy.
Giant DK: Deal a lot of damage to him at the start. A quick way is to jump up to his platform, then repeatedly attack him with moves. Once his damage is high enough (I'm guessing 150% or so), throw him off, and try to attack him as he tries to recover. This may take a few attempts before he finally stays off.
Board the Platforms: Try to SD as fast as possible. The platforms that rise from the lava are well timed for you to jump from one to the next, so just do that until you safely cross the lava, then just fall to the bottom.
Kirby Team: Grabs are an instant KO if you throw in the right direction. It's the safest and easiest strat to use against them.
Samus: Deal a lot of damage (around 100%), then use up-smash to KO Samus off the top. This is a very weird stage, so it's pretty much just deal damage whenever possible, and then once the damage is high enough, use up smash.
Metal Mario: Similar to Giant DK, deal a ton of damage, then try to knock him off the stage and prevent him from coming back. I'm guessing a good damage to aim for would be around 150% or more.
Race to the Finish: Race to the Finish.
Fighting Polygon Team: Again, down B is an instant KO, and is the easiest and safest move to use. Just go to a polygon, and use down B. Sometimes you can get 2 or 3 in the same move.
Master Hand: I would recommend using smash attacks against him. It's not the fastest strat, but it's an easy and consistent strat that deals a good amount of damage.
Timing: The timer starts as soon as you press start on the character select screen, and ends as soon as Master Hand's HP reaches 0. I just thought I'd mention that since my videos have the timer continue afterwards, but the run is over when Master Hand's HP is at 0.
If you don't have a capture card, you could always try pointing a webcam to the TV. Back when I used to start running, I literally pointed my laptop at the TV, and used the webcam that was built into it to record/stream my runs. Just an idea. If you're able to get a video run, it would make it much easier to try to figure out what it is I can help you with.
Hope that helps <(^o^)>
Ok thanks. I have tried to use some of those strats, but I haven't been able to execute all of them. I usually get the most trouble on Samus, Metal Mario, and Giant DK. I didn't use those strats on them before.
Running smash 64 is a game where the more runs you do, the better you get. It's a game where you get better with experience running the game. Things like AI behaviour are things you learn more about the more you run. So all I can say is keep trying, and you'll get the run you're looking for.
I think a character that builds solid fundamentals mario, samus, or pikachu is a good choice to start running with.
DK is the easiest but doesn't utilize many of the skills required to excel overall in speedrunning the game.
If you're talking about which character is easiest to run, it depends on what you're trying to do.
The easiest character to get a fast time with is DK, since most of his strats are very simple (up-B clears the multi-man stages really quickly, and the ability to grab someone and carry them off stage can make stages like Giant DK and Metal Mario really quick and easy). Most runner's fastest character is DK.
Looking at all the submissions for each character, the easiest character to get in the top 10 would be Yoshi. He's surprisingly not ran very often, and has the slowest 10th place time, even though he is a very fast character (currently 4th fastest WR time of all characters). There are endless strats you can use for him, including very beginner friendly strats. I think a lot of people are intimidated by Yoshi due to his ability to "double jump cancel", but you rarely ever need to use it (I don't use it much at all in my runs).
That said, in general, the character you will find the easiest to run with is the character you enjoy the most, and the one you are comfortable playing. If you've been playing almost all Mario, then he would probably be the easiest for you to use. Being comfortable on a character will make you faster on that character, in some cases faster than you would be on characters others would consider "faster" or "easier".
If you do want to try out every character to see which one may be the best for you, you could always do an "all characters" run. That way you'll be able to try out all the characters, get a feel for them all, and pick which one you prefer to use. Maybe a character you never thought to use actually turns out to be really fun to do runs with.
At the end of the day, my biggest advice is do runs with a character you have fun playing. If you're having fun, it's easier to do well, and get even better times. If you're not having fun, even if it's a "faster" or "easier" character, your times will be slower, and you may just stop running entirely. So no matter what you do, make sure you're having fun. If you're not having fun, then... well, you're not having fun, I guess.
Hope this helps.
I was recording an all player run and my dad barged in and told me to go to bed. I did what you said though, and I found the easiest for me were Mario, Pikachu, and Fox. Tomorrow I should have the video.
If you enjoy running multiple characters, then you can do runs with all three of them. There's no restriction forcing you to use a single character. I myself run all 12 characters. Plus, changing characters can help keep the game from getting stale from overrunning a single character.
True. Also, how much do you play a day? I have to juggle school, sports, a girlfriend, and other things to where I only have about 30-45 minutes per day I can practice. I would like to more, and I am starting to play on an emulator at school, but it feels like I am not doing enough to be able to get to the point I want to be at.
My time I can play varies. There's some weeks where I play about 3-4 hours a day. There's been months straight where I didn't touch the game at all. While the time I can spend varies entirely, I started running over 5 years ago. Even after 5 years, I'm still finding new things, new optimizations, new AI behaviour manipulations, etc. If you don't have much time to play in one day, then maybe you won't get the goal time you want that day, but instead learn something that can help you achieve that goal easier on a future day.
I will probably have the video tonight. It might not be the best quality, but I will try to get it.
Spend time watching videos of other players with goal times for you and not just the WR, often times different and possibly easier strategies are used by different skill level players. A small amount of time spent playing is fine per day, if you come back to it a lot and watch videos of others you can improve quickly. Good Luck and Have Fun :)
Do you know how to put a video in a speedrun you are submitting? I just ran a 12:06 ish and I want to put a video in, but I am having troubles.
First you will need to upload your video file to a video sharing site like youtube or twitch, once you have it uploaded copy the address of the hosted video into the "video link" field on the submission page.
