Short Track is a great event, it requires skill and very precise movements.

L.R already made a small guide about this event. I will go deeper in this event to help you getting closer to a sub 35.

My pb (2nd WW) is 34.459 (Sonic).

Notes: R = R-button L = L-button

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1. Character choice

1.1 Which character to use? Here it's going to be complicated. There are several charaters you can use.

Tails: good turning Sonic: fast Wario: average

Sonic is the option with the most risk but highest reward. You can only use him if you know how to play him.

Tails is a safe option but you can't really improve after you get to the 34.8 range.

Wario is very average, I tested him a lot. You can make turns very nicely, his boost are decent. But because of his lack of speed he can't really compete at the actual top.

So when your goals are just sub 35 I would actually recommend Tails. Sonic is much harder to play.

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2. The start 99% of the runs fail at the start. The start is INSANELY important!

2.1 Startboost The startboost isn't actually necessary. Yeah you read that right. I haven't tested it too much but you can get 8.1 splits (best split possible) without using the start boost. HOWEVER: Using the start boost is not a problem. I used the start boost in my pb, but feel free to test it.

2.2 First turn The first turn is important. Try to mash L & R the first few tenths of a second (like L, R, L, R, not much). Then hold L ASAP, try to begin mashing the R button when you see the green smoke (I call it smoke). Don't mash before that, you will crash into the wall. Dont mash too fast, just DONT. You have to get as close to the wall as possible on the straight part after the first turn. You can have little pauses between the mashing of the R button, so you will come out perfectly. You can experiment with this.

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3. What to do in a turn?

3.1 Turn with L ASAP Begin with holding L ASAP. Always begin mashing R not on the moment you hold the L button but a little later, in this way you take the turn much sharper. In my perfect runs I did every turn from the outside of the straight parts perfectly to the inside of the turn to come out on the outside of the straight part again

3.2 End of the turn You can use the strat again to have some pauses between your R mashing in the turn. HOWEVER: At the end of the turn you need to mash the R button. Try to keep holding L and mashing R at the first little part of the straight part. When you do this you will keep your speed and won't slowdown randomly.

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4. The straight parts

4.1 After the turn When you did your turn corectly, you have to do the straight part. After you ended the turn, try to mash R while holding L a bit longer than the turn.

4.2 The straight part You will need to do a VERY short amount of mashing L & R. The best is to do this as fast as possible. I often just do L, R, L, R insanely fast, but L, R, L, R, L, R* is also fine so long you can do it fast enough.

*Dont know if begining mashing with the R button instead of the L button helps, but you can give it a try since you already mash R in the turn, I will experiment with this.

4.3 Focus on the next turn When you did your mashing at the straight part you have to do your next turn again. Remember that you need to hold L ASAP, but too soon actually, I found out, makes you lose a ton of speed. Because you wil actually not turn to the lelft right away and because of you don't mash at that time you will lose that speed. So you can tell there are precise timings.

Then repeat again what I told you from 'What to do in a turn' (step 3).

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5. The ending boost

5.1 When to boost? Don't use the ending boost before the last turn. I recommend to boost exactly at the moment that your speed in the last turn will decrease, in that way you doesn't lose that much speed that you normally lose in a turn. Using the boost too early can result in a wall crash. Using it too late can lose time. Try to use it on the perfect moment so that you can cut the corner perfectly.

5.2 What to do in a boost? First hold L just as you normally do in a turn, while mashing R a bit later. Just what I told you before. Just when you are about to do your boost: Hold the R button. You will perform your boost. Try to go back to mashing R as FAST AS POSSIBLE. This will give you the last amount of speed you need and will protect you from crashing into the wall at the final moment.

This is the last thing you do before you cross the finishline.

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6. CPU's

6.1 How to avoid? Basicly, don't. Never, ever try to avoid a CPU. Focus on your own run, ignore the CPU's. You will probably crash a lot into them but you just need a small amount of luck that you will go perfectly around them.*

*Unless you do point 7.

6.2 Which difficulty? Use the normal difficulty, I tested it out and it's the safest, you won't bump into the CPU's that often.*

*Unless you do point 7.

Easy: Gives you an easy and safe start. HOWEVER: You will lap the CPU's TWICE in a run (second time is at the end, will come to that later). So not worth the risk.

Normal: Gives you a decent start (that means it's pretty safe and you won't bump into other chracters most of the times). You will lap the CPU's only ONCE.

Hard: Your start is not as safe as on the other difficulties but you only lap the CPU once. However this is on the end and can be pretty annoying. However in point 7 I am going to talk about a strat that can be used when you can't safe any other possible frame anymore.

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7. CPU insane boost glitch And yes ofcourse, even in this event there's a glitch.

7.1 What glitch? When you bump against an enemy, you will bounce in the other direction very fast. However when you do this mid run, it loses too mich time, because it gets a while to get controll over your character again. So it is possible to do this at the end, because the part after the end doesn't matter, because you already crossed the finishline.

Adding on that: The boost is even bigger at the moment you do the ending boost.

7.2 How to perform? You need to get hit from behind so that you move insanely fast to the finish line. We all know that most CPU's dont use the inside of a turn, especially not when it's the end of the turn. However, sometimes the CPU comes from the back of the turn (because they didn't turn very well) in a straight line EXACTLY in the line of the ending of your final turn. If you boost and try to get right in front of him while just taking your sharp turn you can be able to achieve this insane time save.

7.3 CPU's This trick might look one in a thousand, but you can make the chance of succeeding bigger by skipping until you get Bowser (for example) as opponent (don't worry, when you restart your run the opponents won't change, it will change when you do other things than restarting a run).

You can also make your chance bigger by selecting the difficulty to hard. You won't get a CPU in front of you until the last turn (if they don't do stupid things).

Note: Only try to do this glitch when you are about sub 34.5. When you aren't for example sub 35 yet don't panic when you see this, you need to focus on other important things first.

7.4 Time save This strat can save in the best perfect possible way 0.5 seconds. When you perform a 34.4 run and use the ending boost perfectly you can in theory get a sub 34. I got the second best (known) time. First is DU with a time of 34.130. You can see that he probably used the glitch at the end. He did that also pretty decent. He saved like 0.350 seconds over his second best (a 34.48x).

Note: There's a guy named 'Super' that uploaded a 34.0 to wiimmfi. This probably is a TAS as he has some times on wiimmfi that are just frame perfect. And with the fact that you can upload TAS times to the game. And we haven't recieved any proof yet. We will never be sure, but at least we know that his (TAS) run got a 34.0 and we know that at least a 34.0 is possible (it was also done with sonic).

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Overall notes Short Track mainly depends on:

• Getting a good start consistantly.
• Good turning.
• Knowing how to turn and how to change or pause in your mashing in a turn.
• Getting the perfect timings with: When to hold L, how long to mash L & R and when to do the ending boost.

I am trying to improve my 34.459 too and try to get the first recorded succesful CPU boost. I may have some updates soon.

This should definitely help you to get a sub 35 AT LEAST.